Hannah and the DEMON CAT

Yes, that's right. Phil, Joanna and I carved the greatest DEMON CAT pumpkin ever tonight. See the pictures below.







It worked out perfectly because I'm good at triangles, Joanna is good at lines, and Phil is good at all the hard stuff. Joanna roasted and salted the seeds, and they're very yummy.

This week I'm loading in for the next show in the Alamo, called "Thirteen Clocks"- it's a children's story that my friend Gabrielle scripted. At work I'm doing a lot of graphic design work, right now in relation to our ad campaign and also a fundraiser where we're going to try to get local restaurants to donate a portion of their proceeds on Martin Luther King day to the Fair Housing Action Center.

Rachel was here last weekend, and we did a lot of fun stuff around town. We heard a brass band play on Frenchman St., we spent some time in the quarter, as well as uptown on Magazine St. which has lots of cute shops and a great gelato place. We walked around City Park, and got "wedding cake" flavored sno-balls at a place off St. Charles. We also ate a Joanna's restaurant on Sunday morning, which was quite good.

Anyway, I'm excited about Halloween. I'm going to be a ladybug. I'll post pictures as soon as I have some.

Love all, and sorry about the infrequency of my posts these days.

Eek!

It's been awhile... I know. Maybe I'm not cut out for blogging.

I have a good excuse though! I'm designing a small show that goes up tomorrow. It's actually a series of short plays that all take place in a basement, and it's called "Root Cellar." It's going up in this new space in (yes) someone's basement a couple blocks away from me. The whole thing is designed with cliplights and practicals and it's been fun to have to figure out how to light a space when the homemade board tends to heat up dangerously if you have more than about 600 watts up. It's called the Alamo Underground because it's in the Alamo, a big fortress like apartment building sporting a pirate flag and a bunch of 20-somethings and their cats.

Since I last wrote I've been to:
1. The lake. Which is HUGE.
2. Frenchman St. Which is the place to be.
3. Pravda (multiple times)- a sort of soviet-themed bar operated by the girlfriend of one Jim Fitzmorris, a Tulane playwrighting professor who's friends with my Nola Project friends and whose political rants are famous at Le Chat every other Saturday night. Jim just got appointed associate artistic director of the Tulane Shakespeare Festival, which he is trying to reorganize into a community-based event that explores "the question of leadership." He's very interested in relevance and local specificity, and altogether I find him an exciting person to talk to.
4. A Rilo Kiley concert at a venue called Republic. Rilo Kiley is awesome. I've decided I want to start an indie rock band, but I need to learn how to play an instrument first.
5. Pretty much everywhere else in the city. My boss, James, gave me a work-related driving tour the other day that took us through the 9th ward, St. Bernard Parish, East New Orleans, Gentilly and Lakeview. Parts of the city feel very much like little ghost towns, especially the parts of the lower 9th that flooded the most. Overgrown, empty plots of land where houses were literally washed from their foundations into the road or into other houses, skeletons, total emptiness. They call it the "Jack-O-Lantern" effect when you have neighborhood where a couple people maybe move back but the rest remains dark.

Rachel is coming to visit on Tuesday which is super exciting.

First Impressions of a Second Line

So Phil and I went to Catholic mass yesterday morning at a church called St. Augustins. When I was at work on Friday a woman who does some work for the Fair Housing Action Center came in and we got to talking and I mentioned that I'd just moved here, and she told me I should come to her church because the Blind Boys of Alabama (a gospel group) were going to be singing on Sunday, and that the service would be followed by a second line.

Second lines happen at funerals, weddings, and just celebratory occasions like church services. They are a distinctly New Orleans thing. Imagine this: The Treme brass band, followed by about a hundred people, all dancing with their umbrellas (because it was raining) down the street to Armstrong Park. Most of the trip took place on Rampart St.- a MAJOR road leading downtown, which police vehicles proceded to BLOCK OFF so that this group of people could play their instruments and dance (slowly) along for fifteen or twenty minutes. I mean they just stopped traffic! And second lines are not a rare occurance- they happen all the time here. It says something about people's priorities in this city, and about the pace- no one needs to be somewhere RIGHT NOW. They have time to stop and talk on the corner, to wait for the walk sign, to sit in their car and watch a bunch of people with umbrellas dancing down the street (or do grab an umbrella and dance down the street themselves.)

Phil and I, of course, forgot our umbrella. We got VERY wet. But that was ok, somehow.

At Armstrong park there was a drum circle which we listened to for a while before heading home.

Other events of the weekend:
On Saturday I had my first (good) sno-cone. Sno-cones are also apparently a New Orleans thing. I also explored City Park a bit- I had this idea that I could walk to the lake. Not so much. A, City Park is HUGE, and B, I have no sense of direction and got really disoriented. This also happened the other day when I was in the Quarter and wanted to walk to the river.

These bodies of water elude me.

Wow it has been a long time since my last post!

I've been super busy at work, which has been mostly great. Aside from administrative stuff, I've been doing some work on a new advertising campaign- they just got a grant to design and publish ads in the media and do thinks like banners and billboards. I'm hoping I'll get to help out with some grant writing as well. I actually (get ready for this) turned down a lighting design for my job. I feel like I'll get out of this work whatever I put in to it, kind of like school oddly enough. I am already learning a huge amount about fair housing law and local policy, racial and class tensions in New Orleans, and the ways in which post-K (a common term here) legislation has hurt low-income residents on a local and a national level. Crazy shit is going down here- like Jefferson Parish is trying to block the building of multi-family homes (i.e. low income housing, which tends to have a large number of African American tenants, which means that such a policy has serious racial connotations.) And the Housing Administration of New Orleans is tearing down the "big four" housing projects in the city to replace them with "mixed income neighborhoods." Read into that. What does that mean? A lot of people argue that poverty should not be so concentrated, and that neighborhoods that are more economically integrated are safer and more diverse. But you still have the problem of thousands of residents who lost everything they had (and many of whom didn't have that much in the first place) trying to move back to a city where rents have gone up almost universally. My own next door neighbor is living in a shotgun double like mine, and is being forced to leave because his landlord is raising the rent from $500 to $800.

WHERE ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE GOING TO LIVE?
Everyone needs housing. It's kind of a basic, universal need.

Speaking of housing, yesterday Phil, Joanna and I went to the New Orleans Museum of Art mostly to see an exhibit of artwork done by children at the largest FEMA trailer park in the state, called Renaissance Village outside Baton Rouge. I had read about the exhibit in the Times, and about how art therapists are working with kids there as part of a larger effort to gain support for a children's trauma center (there is a severe lack of mental health resources in the city right now.) The work was terrifying, and sad, and sometimes full of hope. In one piece a child drew a fragmented and broken home and then "fixed" it with layers of masking tape and a cut-out of his own hand.



Another kid seemed haunted by images of dead birds, so he made some dead birds out of pipe cleaners and then created a sort of memorial for them, in a special bird cage with a woven rug.



Many of the kids, when asked to draw a place of safety, drew bizarre triangular houses. Art therapists realized that for many of these children the roof, not the house, is the safe place in a post-K world.




All of the work on display is on this website: http://www.katrinaexhibit.org/

Joanna and I also saw an interesting play the other night at Southern Rep called "The Breach" which was about Katrina via three interwoven stories. There were some very moving parts, but my favorite thing about the play was what followed: a sort of panel conversation with two local grassroots organizers and a local physician. Ryan Rillette, the Artistic Director, asked them each about how rebuilding work is going in their sector, and how they thought the rest of the country perceives the recovery efforts in NOLA. They're hoping the play will make it into the regional theater circuit in time for election season. It's already going to Seattle Rep. I got really excited about the urgency of this play, and its potential political clout. And I was thrilled to go to a "talk-back" in which the IDEAS and ISSUES in the play were discussed instead of how great the acting was.

Joanna and I are going to make a ceremony. It will involve:
a. candles
b. the sound of water
c. Bulgarian chant music

This is a New Orleans sunset. It's kind of like the sky is on fire.



Our neighbor Joey who walks his dog Mambo by our house every day says the winters here are really cold, and because of the humidity, the cold sort of sticks to you. That must be an odd sensation.

my new kitten friend

This is the cat that has adopted us. He hangs around the front porch a lot and is exremely affectionate. Joanna has dubbed him "Rubio", except I think that he is actually a she.




Joanna seems to attract cats. I walked out onto the porch the other day and there were no less than four felines competing for Joanna's attention. They were on her lap, rubbing up against her legs, purring, rolling around on the ground. I haven't seen any stray dogs, but there are a ton of cats without ID around the city. I think a lot of them became strays after the storm, and they're mostly very sweet and just want attention. I know people in my neighborhood feed them and have sort of adopted them. We aren't going to start feeding Rubio just yet, but I did buy some kitty treats at the store.

I just got back from helping Gabrielle (the playwright) and her brother Walker and some other people set up for this fundraising event at a new MidCity performance space a couple blocks away from me called the "Alamo Underground." It's basically the basement of this apartment building inhabited by young artist types (it looks a bit like a fortress, and has red roof tiles... hence the "Alamo.") We strung up a bunch of Christmas lights and Walker did some pretty sketchy maneuvering in order to get electricity into the space. He's also made a sort of homemade light board using household dimmers, but it's capacity is only 600 watts, so hopefully nothing will blow up. It's a neat space though, very new and young and raw- in need of some gel in my opinion, and some cable mats.

Last night Andrew and I went to what ended up being a very fancy event run by a local social justice org. (specifically working for LGBT rights) that was honoring Barbara Motley, who runs Le Chat Noir. Think: open bar, pomegranate vodka, catered dinner, lots of politicians. I wore a dress, but still felt a little too casual (especially because I don't own a purse, so I had to bring a more casual bag.) We had fun though, and then went to a cabaret event at Le Chat Noir called "Red Light District" that was basically a variety show with a touch of burlesque and a lot of making fun of local politicians (think: Ray Nagin puppet and lots of David Vitter jokes.) It was fun, there was more alcohol, and the crowd was a mix of young people and older people- just lots of New Orleanians interested in sharing a drink and laughing (slash shouting, swearing) about how incompetant their government is.

Then we went to a bar with Gabrielle, Walker, and a girl named Mandi. There is this great local beer here called Abita Amber, which is like the best beer I've ever tasted.

Now I am marinating tofu and watching Joanna do yoga.

Signing off.

P.S.

Did you know that the national Fair Housing Act protects people against housing discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, familial status, disability, gender and religion, but it does NOT protect people against housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation? Neither does the Louisiana law. The Orleans Parish one does... but the law is so poorly written that you could never win a court case with it.

Friday night...

It's Shabbat at the Cramer-Russo-Adams house!

Meaning a bottle of wine... a loaf of sourdough (no challah to be found) and a couple of candles (which lost a gallant but brief battle with the ceiling fan.)

We also made polenta. The other night we made quiche with tomatos and cheese and a homemade crust, which was really good. We've been cooking pretty much every night together.

Anyway, we're all exhausted from a long week. Phil just finished his first week of work (which in his case is both emotionally and physically draining). I finished my first half-week of work, and so far so good. We're preparing for a big board meeting next week, so my more formal training has been postponed until after that is over. Meanwhile, I've been photocopying a lot and learning the accounting software. I'm also working on designing some magazine ads for the organization. None of it is boring so far because the subject matter- fair housing law- is really interesting and new for me. Tomorrow I'm going to a sort of tutorial run by one of my co-workers, which I'm hoping will be very informative. There are six of us in the office, and everyone has been very welcoming. They've also given me some good tips about the city- places I should eat, and most recently brass bands I should go see play at local clubs.

This week we also saw a play called "Bury the Dead" by Irwin Shaw, which I would recommend reading. We also celebrated Phil's 22nd birthday by going to this great West African restaurant in the quarter called Bennachin's. Despite some odd service (our waiter left in the middle of taking Phil's order to grab someone's meal- "hot food is our priority here") the food was quite good. I had spinach, coconut rice and fried plantains, as well as some ginger iced tea that was amazing but extremely strong. It was nice not to have to explain my vegetarianism to flabbergasted waiters ("aren't oysters vegetarian?")

P.S. nobody recycles here- because there's been no recycling service since the storm (the plant got flooded). Every month and a half a recycling service from Baton Rouge comes down, or you can pay a lot of money for weekly recycling pick-up. I'm going to try to get my office to start recycling paper because I just can't get over the amount of waste- I literally went through four reams of paper today photocopying this stuff for the board meeting.

Also, there's a new cat in my life. It is a grey persian with beautiful blue eyes. He (or she?) hangs out on my porch and loves to be petted.