Sharon's Eyelid
Shooting in New Orleans, on Orleans, at N. Dorgenois, and at Orleans and N. Rocheblave, on Sunday, during the first authentic and majorly attended second line parade since the hurricanes. The shootings occurred 3 blocks west of M's house on Dumaine and 3 blocks east of my Rocheblave house. 3 wounded. All regret the violence and see it as a bad start, but nobody that's lived in New Orleans for very long could have expected this problem to just go away. For a second line this was a very big one ( a few thousand perhaps in attendance, many driving in from host cities, Memphis, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta) and almost exclusively black and so to some perhaps emblematic of a "black problem" that we can, once it's safely inside the quotation marks, sort of not deal with, cuz we white people. But all of us in NO, black or white, are f-ing up with attitudes which demand anything less than a Draconian or at least innovative response to the absolutely palpable violent crime that has existed in New Orleans year after year.

And Ray's been trippin' a little bit but I'm not trippin' to hard on him.

I'm giving Ray a pass because this is just too big a thing for one mayor to be handling by his lonesome with only a somewhat conniving city council behind him. Should chill on those chocolate references though, I think.

Alas, I am again not in New Orleans, but in Austin TX. now, after a week in Dallas helping to get my mother placed in an assisted living facility in the suburb of Arlington, which is home of the original Six Flags, and the Texas Ranger Baseball stadium known as The BallPark, and soon also new home of Dallas Cowboys football (stadium 2 or 3 years away). And the Hurricane Harbor water park, and the wax museum, and excuse me for leaving anything out. Like a brother and sister in law and another burgeoning Louis clan in the form of great nieces and great nephews.

I'm at Jose's compound off of Cameron Rd, just down the road from the construction project on the grounds of the former Austin airport, which will be the Dell Children's Hospital. And then some mixed-used stuff coming in behind it. Jose's got another nice used truck over here that could be my next truck, a 96 Toyota with 4wheel drive. Even used, not real cheap, but Jose worked his magic again and talked the guy down almost 2 thousand dollars. I think I'm going to run the Mazda a little longer. He may want to give the Toyota to his father in Mexico.

I'm not really in the mood to talk about much. Seems like an awful lot of shit going on these days. Sharon's eyelid?
- jimlouis 1-17-2006 10:16 pm

Email today from M, owner of Dumaine house, still wisely in Eugene, Oregon. Like the Rocheblave neighborhood, her neighborhood at Dumaine and Broad, is not powered up, but when it was powered up in the 12 years prior to Katrina, she didn't even have to leave the front porch to see many many a second line parade, and Anita a friend often on the porch with her--

Subject: unbelievable
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 10:50:56 -0800

this was on nola.com this morning: “2nd-line parade gunfire rare, say experts.“ i called anita immediately and we laughed ourselves into hysterics.
- jimlouis 1-17-2006 10:51 pm [add a comment]


Is Dumaine tarped yet? If I remember right, there was a hole in the roof and some resulting water damage.
- mark 1-18-2006 12:30 am [add a comment]


Still is. And considerable indoor rodent population. Some work to do. Heard from M today. Is considering coming back sooner than later but I've told her that may not be real, she in the unempowered zone too.
- jimlouis 1-18-2006 9:27 am [add a comment]





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