The Superdome

The Superdome
Central Business District
11:00 p.m.
New Orleans, La.

Dear Family and Friends,

I met a girl the other day. Told me she watched a man fall from an upper-deck seat to the field in the Superdome.

"I can tell you so many stories," she says of her time in the Superdome during Katrina and her aftermath.

She's 21. After meeting her, I know that what people say is true: Age really is just a number.
Most 21-year-olds I know are happy to waltz into bars and pubs joking about the days-gone-away when they had to sneak inside.

Not many of my friends have ever seen a man die.

Her 44-year-old boyfriend kicked her out five days ago. She's sleeping down the road from the Superdome. You can't really call it sleeping, she says. If you sleep she says, as a woman, you're vulnerable.

"I try to keep standing, walking," she says. "But, I doze off sometimes." It's how she was at the Superdome, she says. The micro-society inside the dome didn't form protection fast enough. In there, often it was every woman for herself.

Tonight, all is calm in the Poydras St. moonlight. I have a copy of Chris Rose's 1 Dead in Attic in the backpocket of my linen pants. My linen shirt breathes. I wear no socks.

Damn New Orleans' heat.

If you haven't heard of Chris Rose, google him. He's made a name for himself as the post-Katrina voice. He is a satirical and real, laugh-inducing and tear-jerking local newspaper columnist.

As I sit on some granite with the Saint's Fleur de Lis logo etched in it, I open Rose. I've been reading it on and off for two weeks and knew there had to be a story about the Saints Monday night football game last September. A Night to Remember, he called his column.

I'd like to share with you excerpts from what I read in solitude under a dim streetlight outside the place that means more now socially, politically, economically--any ly than it did before Katrina.

A Night to Remember
9/27/2006

...Now of course there were naysayers out there in the Great Elsewhere. All that money, they said, that could have been used to fix people's houses. All that effort that could have gone somewhere else. All this fuss--about a game?

The simple answer is that, for the city's economy to survive, the Convention Center and the Dome had to be fixed-first and fast-because they are the bread and the butter.

A more nuanced answer is this: Better a Saints game to rechristen the building than a boat show or a gun show, for the irony of that would have been simply too much, even here in the city whose chief export in the post-Katrina age is, in fact, irony. By the ton...

This building, this monument to our shame, our disgrace, and our sorrow, will always be so, but it always has been and always will be more than that. Neither Katrina nor Tom Benson has been able to make the Superdome go away.

Its durability is our durability...

The game. When they blocked the punt and scored the first touchdown, something inside me that I didn't know was there broke loose. I let out a yell so loud that my throat still hurts today.

I fell into a human scrum that consisted of a tall skinny guy, a short woman, a cop, and a beer vendor. Every layer of authority and sociology was stripped away. We literally fell on top of each other. I have never experienced a flash point of sudden emotion unloosed so fast...

It is superficial and meaningless and a total loss of perspective, but I stand before you and I declare: It is good to feel like a winner...

Ah, but let us live it, just for today, because who around here hasn't felt as though we've had a big L stamped on our foreheads for the past year and I, for one, am ready to wipe it off...

Only a game you say?

Like hell it was.

Thanks, Chris.

Now, Reggie, Deuce and Drew are the patron saints of New Orleans' spirit. They hold services every Sunday.

Michael, Mary and Joseph have some stiff competition.

Best,

Robert



To purchase 1 Dead in Attic
go to www.chrisrosebooks.com

To Read A Night to Remember in full, cut and paste the thread below:
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-6/1159337420130960.xml&coll=1

Normal in New Orleans?

Audubon Park,
Uptown
September 9, 2007
New Orleans, La.

Dear Family and Friends,

In K-Ville, nothing is easy.

Post-Katrina normal has returned since the two-year water mark came 12 days ago.

During that week, Senators and Congressman, Presidents and Prime Ministers flew to New Orleans to deliver messages of hope.

Senator Barack Obama said, “I can promise you this: I will be a president who wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night with the future of this city on my mind."

President Bush said, “This town’s coming back. This town is better today than it was yesterday and it’s going to be better tomorrow than it is today.”

Senator Hilary Clinton said, “Rebuilding New Orleans is not a local obligation, it is an American obligation. And we must finally begin to fulfill it.”

John Edwards said, “America is better than this. We need a national effort to end poverty in America, and we need every American to take action in our fight to build One America. And we need to make sure another Katrina never happens again, in New Orleans or anywhere in America."

Mike Hukabee, the Republican presidential candidate and current Governor of Arkansas said the country needed to put “people first, paperwork next in a disaster the size of Katrina.”

The fingertips of the Newsweek writers and the voices of the CNN reporters came too. They switched interchangeably from New Orleans to the Big Easy and the Crescent City.

New Orleans, the word, started to sound redundant. The amount of material published was massive. For two days, the Big Easy was on everyone’s mind.

Then it was over.

Back in Ohio or Oregon or California, you picked up the kids and snuck in a round of afternoon golf--everyday American life.

That life isn't lost and gone forever in New Orleans.

Last week, your alarm clock still wasn’t a welcome sound.

Same here.

Last week, you sat in traffic on your way to work.

Same here.

Last week, you bought your coffee at Starbucks.

Same here.

The Anderson family has cruisers. Their bikes are stylish and hip. The youngest daughter even has the ribbons on her handle bars.

The ones that stream when the open trail warrants straight-away biking. Jasmine, the mother, says the only thing normal these days is her daughters’ school. Their eighth-grader went to four different schools during the chaotic months after Katrina.

Her husband Eugene owns a furniture refinishing company and has “more work than he can handle.”

They, like hundreds of others, are playing in Audubon Park. A highly-rated golf course is kept in immaculate shape. People run, jog and play Frisbee and football.

People also barbeque at the “levee.”

In K-Ville, nothing is easy; the school and health care systems are starting from scratch. Thousands are still in trailers. Everyone here knows the length of the "K-to-do-list."

Even in K-Ville though, there are still days at the park.

Best,

Robert.

Murder in New Orleans

Murder in New Orleans
April 30^th, 2007
Canal St.
New Orleans, La.

The lights flashed, my throat closed, heart fell.

The NOPD had pulled me over. “You all have a cell phone law down here, huh?” I asked.

“No, we have a red-light law,” the officer said.

Ouch. I had no clue I’d passed through the intersection prematurely. Luckily, this veteran NOPD officer will be retiring to Nebraska in four years.

He saw my Nebraska license and immediately wanted to know everything about the state.

"You ever heard of Broken Bow?" the officer asked.

"No way, my brother's wife had family there,” I said.

Crazy good karma.

Knowing Broken Bow, population 3,700, is a shot in a million. Somehow using it to get out of a ticket in New Orleans has to be a shot in a billion.

I should write Reynold "Mac" McMeen, Broken Bow's mayor. In some strange way, he saved me 150 bucks.

We spoke for 30 minutes. I finished the Midwestern-chatter with my indelible memory of the last West-Central Nebraska sunset I'd seen.

We transitioned into the officers' perceptions of New Orleans' crime and murder scene.

I think everyone should know what he and his partner said.

And I'll trust anyone moving to Broken Bow. Come on, it has to be the center of America's moral compass. At least compared to the Big Easy.

As I moved here word spread amongst family and friends. By the time my two-day journey to New Orleans ended, I checked my email. Several people had written me with concern.

“Robert,

News reports this past week indicate NO is not the safest city in which to live right now. Robert please be careful…Good luck.”

And another.

“Robert,

It’s great to hear that your moving to New Orleans. But I saw Anderson Cooper the other day on CNN. He says the murder rate in New Orleans is sky-rocketing. Be careful… Talk to you soon.”

I decided to ask my new NOPD friends about the emailed concerns.

“My family is worried about the murder rate here,” I said to the one moving to Nebraska.

“Robert, listen,” he said. “The only thing that might happen to you is you might get a gun pulled on you and you’ll lose your wallet.”

As long as you're not a drug dealer."

Oh. That’s good.

I thought about it more, and put it in context with the anxiety and fear of family and friends. The officers’ perspective actually shed positive light about the situation.

Aside from the slaying of New Orleans filmmaker Helen Hill in early 2007, almost all murders in NOLA are not random they said.

The officers, each with over a decade on the force, told me about New Orleans’ murder scene.

“It’s a drug thing, it’s always been a drug thing,” one officer said.

But Post-KATRINA, they said, territories and unwritten maps of “turf” decades-old are now gone. When you have arch-rivals living on the same block, competition for a new drug market, and the prestige that comes with it ensures brutal violence.

Part of the game they say. These modern-day conquistadors are redefining this "turf"--and changing many lives as well as the world's perspective of New Orleans for the worse.

I can’t help but think of what a friend I met on the banks of the Mississippi said,

“Drugs have ruined so many brothers down here, bro.”

Friends, worrying about traveling here or loved ones living here should not be a major concern.

My friends and I always try to walk in groups. We tell each other plans and destinations. And at the end of the day, we know it could happen to us anywhere.

Best,

Robert

Memories of Grandma Vivian's House

April 6, 2007
3010 Pauger St., 7th Ward
New Orleans, La.

Family and Friends--

First, a little back-story. The AmeriCorps and Tulane University have put me up in Tulane's Medical Center dorms for the year. My roommate, Jules, is a fellow AmeriCorps member and native New Orleanian. We have hit it off since day one.

He was journalism major, I was journalism major. He uses "word" to end every sentence. I use "bro."

Jules had to evacuate for Hurricane Katrina. He spent a year and half in Houston. You see, Jules wanted to come back right away. But his mom, a diabetic coupled with seizure and aneurysm issues couldn't trust the uncertain medical care in New Orleans.

He set her up, joined the AmeriCorps and returned home.

On Good Friday, Jules and I went to a barbecue at his boss' place.

The barbecue was close to his grandma's house he said. So we went. Jules had told me about this house. How it flooded. How his grandma hadn't seen it yet, 19 months after the storm. Grandma Vivian currently lives in Dallas.

We drove by his high school, St. Augustine. A private, all-boys prep school. St. Augs as it’s called down here, boasts the best brass band training ground in the City. At St. Augs, it's harder to make the band than the basketball team. Last week I went to a show at one of the Crescent City's best jazz clubs that featured three 17-year-old St. Augians.

About two blocks away from Jules' school is Pauger St. We take a left. The dilapidated houses squeeze us in on both sides.

Six or so houses up, stands what used to be a comfy single- family yellow home.

3010 Pauger St: Grandma's house.

A note left by one of Jules' family members reads something like this, "This house is due to be gutted on or about September, 2006."

The note is true.

It's crazy to see a house down to its planks the first time. Now, my eyes see it is as pseudo-normalcy. At least in New Orleans.

As Jules walks around the house and looks in Grandma’s windows and her backyard, you can tell he is reminiscing.

Finally, he comes out with some stories.

"Remember that room your relatives have that they never want you to go in?" he says.

"Oh, yeah," I say. He points through the window into a no-walled room.

"One time, my sister and I snuck in there," he says. "We broke the head of an owl made out of sea shells.”

He says they put the head back on and bolted out.

"My grandma never said a word about," he says with a smile that shows about 15 years of relief from the day they broke the statue.

Jules would come over to Grandma's house when his father, Jules Raymond Sr. was going through chemo. Grandma took care of her son while he battled cancer.

Jules hadn't hit double-digit age yet. His two sisters were even younger.

Jules was 10 when Jules Sr. passed.

Today, Jules' sister, Lauren, is a 2004 Harvard graduate. Rachel, the youngest, is a senior at Howard University in Washington, DC.

Jules Jr. graduated from NYU.

The Goins family obviously handles adversity well.

It makes me proud to be in New Orleans and see Jules here today. He works 70 hours a week helping New Orleans' neighborhoods get back on the feet at the Neighborhoods Partnership Network.

Since I work at City Hall, only 300 yards from our apartment, I usually joke with him about having the place all to myself.

He needs a break. But I doubt he'll take one. It isn't like him.

Best to everyone,

Robert

To donate to the Jules’ organization, the Neighborhoods Partnership Network contact him @ jules@npnnola.com or visit their website, npnnola.com.

New Orleans City Park Golf Course: Once a TOUR Stop, Always a TOUR Stop?

New Orleans City Park
Week of March 15, 2007
New Orleans, La.

Family and Friends--

The New Orleans City Park, massive and pre-KATRINA wonderful, is one of "America's Great Parks."

Post-KATRINA, people frisbee, dogs walk, and the solitude of a sunset is still an experience that hundreds of New Orleans' residents experience daily.

But you won't find golfers, anymore. Well, I take that back. A rinky-dink driving range still operates.

But what used to be in City Park? Three championship-length golf courses. One, with a world-class pedigree and former host of the PGA TOUR stop in New Orleans from 1939-1962.

Also, the golf courses were the City Park's largest revenue generator.

Today, on the roof of the Bayou Oaks columned clubhouse, a blue tarp covers much of the structure's left side. The green front door swings open.

I go in. I have a sand wedge in my hand--for the rats.

The clubhouse is massive. When a structure is gutted to its planks, you can really get a feel for square-footage, for the true size of it.

It looks like the Bayou Oaks clubhouse had several rooms: a proshop, male and female locker rooms, a bar and restaurant, and possibly a bag room/caddy shack.

The only sense of organization around this place is actually outside. It's a Xerox machine. One of the big ones that once was capable a major collations, copies and faxes. The glass underneath the lid is cracked badly, wires and chips obviously flooded.

As I walk out the back door down the path that Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer used to take to the Championship Course's first tee.

I have to step around the cracked concrete and into the unkempt bush. The course is totally overgrown now. Crabgrass. Weeds. Dandelions. You name it, it's there. I walked out to the blue 200 yard line painted on the first hole cart place. I could see what this place used to look like.

What Palmer and Hogan used to see. What thousands of amateurs had seen before August, 2005.

The first tee waiting table and starter booth still stand. All the signs remain. I wonder where the starters, typically old retired military or school teachers, have gone. I'm sure many of them evacuated hoping their golf salvation would be the same when they came back.

As it turns out, several thousand people have not been able to return to New Orleans. Going off of evacuee statistics, many people who love this place more than I can know haven't seen what I'm seeing.
And that's sad.

The marble first tee marker is cracked in half. The 150-yard marker in what looks like the 18th fairway is being overcome by grass.

Hardly the same walk Hogan or Palmer made up the old-18th.

I'm sure people walk through and say, "This used to be the Bayou Oaks golf course."

Soon I hope, it will be a course again. Then someone could check it off as another "used to be" revitalized from the post-KATRINA rebuild list. It'd sure be nice to see people out here again.

At least the sunset is beautiful tonight. And somewhere on these grounds a frisbee game is finishing and a woman walks her dog. A man reads his book.

It's a start.

Best to you,

Robert

To donate to the rebuilding of the 1,300 acre New Orleans City Park, visit: http://neworleanscitypark.com/

Reflections on the Lower Ninth Ward

Family and Friends--

Report from the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans, La.
March, 31 2007

I am not a New Orleans expert.
I’ve only been here 24 days.

Sometimes I wonder what Iraq looks like. But after today, I know what a war zone is. There weren’t many bullets flying in the lower 9th ward in and after the storm, but certainly, Hurricane Katrina destructed the City and lower 9th ward like bullets, mortar, and bombs have done in Iraq.

Houses have no windows. Houses have no doors. Houses have no roofs. Concrete foundations sit isolated and open, almost waiting for a DJ so they too can serve a purpose again. Only this time, these foundations can only become makeshift dance floors.

But there isn’t much celebrating going on in this neighborhood. Really, there isn’t much of anything going on.

On one block, David Williams and two other neighbors are the only ones who have returned. Williams, the father of four, says it’s odd sometimes being all alone in the lower 9th ward.

Why?

Because it’s the home of Fats Domino. The lower 9th ward’s narrow streets and family homes used to host barbeques, parties and concerts.
Now they host piles of rubble, broken glass and downed power lines.

It’s been 19 months since Katrina came. And I’m no New Orleans expert.
But it doesn’t take a specialist to see something is wrong here.

New Orleans' leadership unveiled a plan on Thursday to rebuild the 9th and other areas. On paper it looks good. I hope it is.

I invite you to forward the message to all who you think may view over 150 more pictures from only about 4-5 blocks of the Lower 9th ward on Snapfish.com

Please go to Snapfish.com

Username: jacksonst2007@yahoo.com
Password: neworleans

Best to you all,

Robert