Storied and Commemorated Beyond Remembered

For a professor of American history, Boston and Philadelphia may seem like the ‘mother lode,’ but, to this observer, may pale in histories as diverse as the mix of cultures and residents of Orleans Parish.

Garden District homes bear embossed, metal plaques that typically herald an architect’s name and the year the home was built, for whom the home was built and notable residents, or both.

Statues and plaques commemorate territorial claims by the British, French and Spanish, and even the C.S.A., Confederate States of America.

The 9th Ward of Orleans Parish has a memorial to Hurricane Katrina which incorporates an ascending line of blue poles--tallest of them, over 10 feet--to mark the depth of flood waters that took 3,000 structures, displaced 14,000 people, and didn't recede until mid-October of 2005.

In one particularly lavish cemetery, many of the granite or marble repositories cost well over a million dollars to construct, have been privately landscaped and are hands-off to groundskeepers, with private funds paying gardeners to maintain the trees and flowers and grass into perpetuity.

Like Boston and Philadelphia, New Orleans remembers and, unlike them, doesn’t forget.

Ronnie Ray's Mama Just Ain't the Forgivin' Kind

“HEY LURLEEN, disspondent’s a word , right, like to say what Ronnie Ray’s goin’ through since his hog’s been stole and now this, right?”

(Sorry bout that but I couldn’t imagine the right word cuz it just don’t ever get no better for my 2nd cousin who's just hard luck in a steel case. )

He’s never smoked inside his Mama’s new double-wide which is a big step up from the two of ’em sharing that 1950s, 12x60 that looked about like twenty yards of crinkled beer can, and if the double coulda ever looked worse, now's it. .

Accordin’ to his Mama, she and him was cat-scrappin' over the remote when he heard the rain and he hollers, “Oh SHIT,” rememberin' his smokes and Bic lighter is on the table whilst a chilly drizzle is hittin' that pink slab patio like piss pourin' from a boot an' all over his smokin materials, an' all?.

Well, they was only 2 smokes left in the pack and he had a fresh pack inside, but you know no lighter's gonna work when the flint’s wet, and his dander bein’ raised has him wantin' a cigarette mighty bad right about then (his temper had 'im shakin' like a dog shittin' razor blades) and enough to wanna grab an umbrella, the fresh pack, and dry the lighter for a Pall Mall in the weather.

Thank Jesus he side-stepped the microwave to get a brew just as he hit the “START” button to dry the lighter because that smithereened glass door what blowed off the microwave with a ball o’ fire behind it lit-up the double-wide like a 4th of July sky and they was lucky to escape with their lives even though that double-wide’s a soggy smolderin heap of charred nothing and his Mama is pissed about her burnt house, now, I tell ya.

Ronnie Ray's Sellin' the Hog

Ronnie Ray told the Nashville feller he’d take the truck and let the buyer ride the Harley Davidson on over to the guy’s bank for the cash, and to sign the papers as the guy’s girlfriend pulled away from the trailer house in her shiny new Mustang.

He got to the bank and, after ten minutes, Ronnie Ray kinda chuckled that he’d have taken the long way, too, and hot-rodded the bike around town a little bit.

When 40 minutes had went by, it wuddn't a chucklin' matter as it occurred to Ronnie Ray somethin' was terrible wrong and wondered if that guy, ‘Rick,’ hadn’t ridden into the next county whoopin’ it up on the $29,000 motorcycle or piled it up somewhere outta the sirenses earshot.

Two hours passed and now Ronnie Ray blubbered whilst explainin’ to the sheriff just how he hadn’t seen his bike since this nice-enough 'Rick' and him had left the house, swearin' and moanin' the bike was prolly across the county line, underestimating the speed of the pickup and enclosed trailer that was through Chattanooga and already across the Tennessee line, headin’ South.

If he’d a knowed that girl’s Mustang was rented at the Knoxville airport---cuz it never occurred to him or the sheriff she done that--Ronnie Ray thought he mighta got somewhere with the law finding his bike and all although, as it turns out, he really wouldna.

Worser still, Ronnie Ray cancelled the insurance to save money onced he run the Craigslist/Nashville ad knowin' the bike would go fast and so, now, Ronnie Ray was exactly nowhere facin' 46 more payments of $453 a month on a ride that was gonna be chopped and cruising Florida’s coast before month’s end and iddn't that some shit?

Shards

If one dropped a mirror to find that 75% of the pieces were faced upward, there would be enough in the reflection to see the whole.

One of every four people displaced by Hurricane Katrina--and it's likely, more--have yet to return.

The connectivity of the Crescent City is a South-hewn spirit of resilience that has kept the city’s rhythm moving it along, getting back onto its toe-tapping feet, tapping into the will to move things along.

Some survivors live in scarred and broken homes that don’ t have hot water, awaiting judgements and checks to rebuild the physical remnants of what was.

Unlike the mirror, half a decade after the storm, New Orleans is coming together.

New Orleans is there, looking up, and worthy of a good, long look.

A Punch to Facebook’s Nose

 Google Me is coming.

It's no secret Google's sights are set on a knockout punch squarely to Facebook's nose or glass chin, with hope F'bookers will make the leap like cockroaches running from the animated Raid can.

Details are scarce about Google's Fall debut of its social networking application, but I'm probably one of the 25 million people I expect are standing in the cyber-line to sign-up on the undisclosed launch date.

I don't know why.

My Facebook participation seemed to demand more and more time, responding to friends, accepting and declining invitations to participate in game apps there, and the realization that there isn't an unruly crowd wondering why I'm not more diligent in updating my days' experiences and observations so the rest of the world can sigh in relief that I'm still functional.

Regardless, I know I'll be there, hoping...praying...obsessing that nobody steals the coveted "Joe Gensle" nic as I hit the < enter > key on my 'puter, with "Laszlo G. McGillicuddie" and "Grizzelda Crottenrotch" in ready-reserve if I'm to be denied.

Nelvana

The cloud that dropped onto the surface of the Mississippi River hurled rain with such fury that the drops’ felled predecessors slugged shoe-topping puddles hard enough to splash more than an inch from the riverwalk‘s pavement.

From my vantage, her navigation lights were obscured and only a river bend whispered sight of her name through the fog.

Having passed, reduced to a fogged silhouette, the freighter carefully navigated the waterway through the driving rain, avoiding sandbars and the little waterborne traffic willing to risk the conditions.

She approached the bridge just 300 yards off her bow, invisible to the eye, relying on every electronic means she had to keep her course, expertly held by the helmsman in the wheelhouse.

With deadweight tonnage over 76,000, ‘hurry’ was never a part of Nelvana’s working life, and this day weather reduced her to a blind crawl, even with the current at her stern.

Her thirst for salt and open sea, and the profitable call of a distant port beckoned.

Spring Revisited

I am wildflowers.


Without a soul, I have the precious gift of reincarnation.

I have come to you every Spring season of your life.

I shall return long beyond your being.

Your grandmother’s great, great grandmother, and hers have loosed their hair in breezes as they frolicked among us.

I shall delight your children’s children’s children, and theirs
by the grace of the same hand which has put us each in this day.

Six Haiku: Spirtual Showdown with Decadence in New Orleans

Love, Unfolded

Slow motion paced my awakening with her sating my every sense…with the warmth of her naked body contoured around me, the quiet rhythm of sleep’s respirations, the taste of her kiss and sexuality about my lips and mouth, her mix of faint gardenia and lovemaking too elusive for hungrier lungs, but it was just a petite foot that my vision held.

As the sheers filtered first light into the sun’s awakening in our hotel room overlooking the San Antonio River, my focus eased in, defining her toes, my vision inexplicably drawn to something small and delicate and gold atop the dresser a scant meter away.
Karen’s Japanese-Hawaiian grandmother taught her origami, with Grandmother Y’s arms around a little girl eager to transform small squares of paper into wondrous shapes perfecting a hobby passed on from her forebears.

From an expensive pack of origami paper squares I had given her, Karen had secretly quartered the size of a standard sheet and intricately transformed the tiny square into a tiny crane whose gold foil was now glowing in the light of, both, ubiquitous love and early morn.

I was more lucky than happy, loved unconditionally for the first time, affirmed by it’s envelopment without surrender or struggle, a feeling unknown before in more intimacies with wonderful, kind and caring women than any man’s deserved.

Karen’s daughter and job and my own circumstances could work themselves out into that everlasting love one can’t imagine or dream exists, until the next day when, overcome with internal demons and some selfishness, I crushed that love as completely and surely as if I had put a match to the tiny golden crane, origami delicate as her skin, her love, and her heart, breaking that heart and part of my own heart that still yearns for her and another chance at a love that can never take flight.

Air Scare

An hour into my 2¼ hour flight from Houston to Phoenix, I was squirming in my seat fighting for my breath, and heard a man several rows back coughing through his wheezes.

Despite my 1A seat assignment, I rang for the flight attendant, “Please ask the Captain what the cabin pressurization is,” and she made me repeat the request before contacting the cockpit.

“It’s at eight-one hundred, just like usual; why, are you having trouble breathing?”

I explained that I was, as was the gentleman several rows back to which she replied, “Oh, he’s just coughing,” which I rebutted with the fact that there's a difference in sounds of coughing and coughing while wheezing.

I declined her offer of oxygen but accepted the glass of water, fully knowing my body only reacts this way at 9500-feet above sea level or higher.

Instead of passengers reading or watching the DirectTV, chatting or sipping drinks in the first class cabin as they‘d done earlier, they had all dozed-off except for me and the coughing man, and I felt fear, got goosebumps thinking of Payne Stewart’s death, and suffered the anoxic headache’s reminder long into the night preceding a 14-hour work day.

Shhh! They May Be Sleeping

Yes, I'm in New Orleans, and yes, many of my 6S superheroes are here.
Yes, it's the most fun one can have with one's clothes on.

Yes, the people whose avatars are self-portraits really do look like themselves ten to fifteen years ago.

Yes, Harrah's casino took my money when I wasn't looking... er, rather I guess it's fairer to say I happily surrendered it willingly.

Yes,I really had a great birthday here and don't believe Teresa about the number of prostitutes present I gave myself but the procaine penicillin should stop the needle-laden lava flow from my urethra

And yessest of all, I'll be sad to leave this brilliant, witty, talented bunch of people but can't wait to see the TSA's faces when they excitedly open my bag to see what the bottle-shaped mass is only to discover the near-empty bottle of tequila in my suitcase is wrapped in underwear other than unworn and love and kisses to y'all #30 xoxox JOE, LIVE from HOWNOLA/2010, Doubletree Hotel Room #NotOnYourLifeBucko