Shakana Santa Shake It

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays Wild Magnolias style, y'all! One of the reasons we love New Orleans.

All We Want for Christmas is......

The Saints in the Superbowl! GEAUX SAINTS ~ it's game day!

Twas the month before Christmas & no sign of snow
but N.O. doesn't care cuz the Saints are 11 & 0!!
Dinkins scored a touchdown, Sharper intercepted a pass,
and the Who Dat Nation cheered when Brady got sacked on his ass.
Sunday the Redskins, to Washington we will go
and when the Black and Gold get finished we'll be 12......& 0!
Go Brees, go Bush, go Harper and Ellis, our team's UNDEFEATED and others are jealous!

WHO DAT BABY!!!

¤WHODATº°¨¨°º¤ø ¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤ø ¸„SAINTSº¤ø ¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤ø¤º°¨¨¨°º¤ø ¸„ø¤WHODATº°¨¨°º¤ø ¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤ø ¸„SAINTSº¤ø ¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤ø¤º°¨¨¨°º¤ø ¸„ø¤WHODATº°¨¨°º¤ø ¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤ø ¸„SAINTSº¤ø ¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤ø¤º°¨¨¨°º¤ø ¸„ø¤WHODATº°¨¨°º¤ø ¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤ø ¸„SAINTSº¤ø ¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤ø¤º°¨¨¨°º¤ø ¸„ø¤WHODATº°¨¨°º¤ø ¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤ø ¸„SAINTSº¤ø ¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤ø¤º°¨¨¨°º¤ø

BLACKANDGOLDSuPERBOWL!!!

Ten and Oh!

Guitar Lightenin' Lee!

is my newest addiction! These pics are from today's Mirliton Fest.



I have to tell y'all, I had a hard time sittin' still when this man and his band were playing. Ok, so I did a little wiggly-woo where I was sitting on the ground - I didn't want to embarrass my friends tooo much!



**Raised in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans over 60 years ago Lightnin' had music all around him. After learning from New Orleans blues great, Boogie Bill Webb, Lightnin went to Chicago to find his inspiration Jimmy Reed. When Jimmy Reed wasn't throwing Lightnin' out of his house and telling Lightnin' to go back to New Orleans he was showing Lightnin' his style of Delta Blues via electrified Chicago.




**After moving back to New Orleans Lightnin' played with and around such New Orleeans legends as Earl King, Fats Domino, Ernie K-Doe, Little Freddie King, and scores of other brilliant New Orleans musicians. Lightnin's ears were wide open to the sound around him and he soaked it up like a sponge. For years he listened, learned, and honed his playing and song writting skills in the best of company.



Not only is Lee an awesome musician and singer, he tells some damn good stories too.


If you like R&B you will LOVE Lightenin' Lee and his band. Go to his website for a listen, then go out and buy his newest CD, Going to Amsterdam ~ I did!

**Text from his website, www.guitarlighteninlee.com

All Hallow's

Artwork photographed in Ms Sallie Ann Glassman's Voodou Temple, New Orleans, May 2009.

(Click to enlarge.)

Being that Halloween is based in the Pagan tradition and All Saint's Day is based in Christianity, I'm not sure if Voodou recognizes either. This piece of art I photographed at Ms Sallie's was instantly my favoite piece there so I just decided this was a good day to share it. More photos of the Temple can be found on this post.

Happy All Hallow's.

Saints Got All Da Balls

Giant killers: Saints crush New York 48-27

Humid Beings For True

So I got home from work today, cracked open the computer to see that Blake's Humid Beings went live while I was out working in my small way toward the improvement of healthcare for New Orleanians. Congrats and it's about time!

Humid Beings promises that:
"The site we have built is equal parts Facebook, Youtube, Yelp, Huffington Post, City Search and NYTimes." and will "collectively create a living archive of the life we live in New Orleans."

The Mermaid likes this.....a lot and is honored to be a featured blog on HB!

Today was actually a low humidity day in New Orleans which I proclaim to be a good omen. However, in honor of Humid Beings (and because New Orleanians are, after all, the truest of humid beings in the physical sense) I am posting a pic of myself and two of my BFF's in all our glorious humidifying sweat at the Red Dress Run this year.

Here's to Humid Beings!

New NoLA Blog & New NoLA Google Group

A while back I started a group blog called NOLAFemmes but, in my busyness, haven’t taken time to “pimp” it. (I really don’t like the term “pimp”, even tho it seems to be the “cool” way of saying “share”.) It’s a group blog of women who live in/around New Orleans that I have read/followed and admired and invited to collaborate on the blog. The intention of the blog is to talk about women’s issues and/or New Orleans issues AND to promote positivity for our city. I really hope my out of town readers will check it out and participate via comments.

Also, I’ve been involved in a new Google Group that was initiated last Friday for those who love New Orleans. You don’t have to live here, you don’t have to be a blogger….you just have to love New Orleans and be interested in what’s happening here. Please join us! Here is the link to join.

8.29.05

I wrote this in 2007 on the approach of the second anniversary of The Federal Flood aka Hurricane Katrina.

On this alter I offer up my sorrow for my city
My guilt for my survival
My frustration for my helplessness
And all the unspeakable emotions
that roil in my belly in the dark secret of night.

Please hear my cries.

On this alter I offer up the cries of the homeless
Of the lost for their lives
Of the forgotten for their disillusionment
Of the scorned for their undeserved shame.

Please hear their cries.

On this alter I offer up the tears of the rescuers
Who see still the desperate eyes of the struggling
And the empty eyes of the dead.

Please hear their cries.

This is the alter of my transformation
This is the alter of our truth

Left Behind: The Story of NoLA's Public Schools

DVDs Now Available of Left Behind: The Story of the New Orleans Public Schools

FINALLY! DVDs of Left Behind: The Story of the New Orleans Public Schools are now on sale! Click here to go to our website to buy the DVD. From there, choose the BUY DVD button that will take you to our storefront. Versions are available for individual and educational use.

What the Film is About

Left Behind is a 90-minute documentary that tells the story of three African-American high school seniors as they navigate through their final year of high school. Their final year in one of the poorest cities in the state; in a state ranked as the poorest in America; in one of the most violent cities, states and countries in the industrialized world.

The film, shot before, during and after Hurricane Katrina, shows how an uneducated impoverished population reacts under the stress. Our never-before-seen Katrina footage highlights our two-year-long documentary. We show reasons for the looting, rape, murder and mayhem -- the effects our man-made environment has on human behavior. We examine the core of our American values, the framework by which we live, and we show how our most vaunted beliefs and government policies have played a role in our nation's shame.

Interviews with Noam Chomsky, Jessie Jackson, Ice T, Congressmen William Jefferson and Maxine Waters, author Michael Eric Dyson, Jim Derleth (US AID Specialist in development and conflict resolution assigned to East and West Africa) and others accent our narrative.

Click here to go to our website to buy the DVD now!

Hail, Zombie

Congratulations to American Zombie, this year's recipient of the Ashley Award at Rising Tide 4.

The Zombie represents the gold standard of citizen journalism and is richly deserving of this award and of the gratitude of every New Orleanian who fights for justice in our city.

HAIL, ZOMBIE.

The Mighty Mississippi

The Mighty Mississippi, originally uploaded by TravelingMermaid.

1. On the Mississippi on a Sunday Eve, 2. the river at the butterfly 008 (2), 3. Across the Mississippi, 4. the river at the butterfly 005 (2), 5. The city from the river, 6. the river at the butterfly 002 (2)

I live about a block away from the Mississippi River and I never tire of taking photos. The River is like a woman....she changes her appearance day to day. Sometimes minute to minute as she ripples and rolls and sings the song of the ages. Her allure never fades.



Another reason to love New Orleans.

Part 3 Belongs to CrescentCityRay

Yesterday was the last installment of “Asylum After The Storm – Katrina’s Silent Disaster” in The Washington Times and the weakest, in my opinion. The focus was on New Orleans Adolescent Hospital (NOAH) and the "split" between Mayor C.Ray Nagin and Governor Bobby Jindal on it's imminent closure September 1 due to cuts in the state budget. A large portion was devoted to the opinions of Alan Levine, Louisiana's Secretary of Health and Hospitals who favors the closure. In the story he is quoted as saying:

"The metal bars and barbed-wire fences associated with older mental institutions like NOAH represent "not a system [but] a failure," said Alan Levine, secretary of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals. "It's a dinosaur, a relic of what mental health systems looked like 20 years ago."

I found this particularly puzzling since I worked on the NOAH campus for several years and I've never noticed "barbed-wire fences" anywhere. The same is true for metal bars.....the only metal bars are the gates at the four entrances. Wrought iron gates are common in New Orleans. I wonder if Mr. Levine has actually toured the campus at all. I'm not saying the buildings are in pristine condition - they certainly are not. But interior painting was going on inside the main building as recently as May.

So, I've read the entire series and viewed the accompanying videos and find, in all, an adequate coverage of the state of mental health facilities here. Honestly, I thought the videos had more impact than the written word and I hope readers took the time to view them.

I had a comment on my first post about this series from Judyb cautioning that the comments on the story were heartless. As I told her, I stopped reading comments in the aftermath of Katrina when so many were so vicious. But, for some reason, today I did read the comments. Yes, they were pretty awful but comment six from CrescentCityRay just broke my heart and it was worth slogging through the previous five comments. I just hope his words and his experience with post-Katrina mental illness shamed those other commenters. But I doubt it.

This post is dedicated to CrescentCityRay. Here is his comment:

I am one of the crazy people from a flooded area in New Orleans. We rebuilt our home - above the Katrina flood line. The kids are back in school and seem ok. Over 60% of our neighbors are back. Things are looking up. Nevertheless, I cry uncontrollably nearly every day. While I have been fortunate (up until recently) to have work since the levee failures, the crying and stuff has made it a lot harder to be productive in my work and I don't think co-workers want to be around people like me. I think of suicide daily too. Yes, I am getting talk therapy as well as medications that make me cry less at the expense of my motivation and attention. Call me names if you must, but I am doing the best I can. Why are we feeling so crazy? There are a number of reasons: 1. People claim our disaster, in New Orleans, was a natural disaster, when in fact our outfall canal floodwalls fell down long before even being overtopped by floodwaters because of stupid engineering mistakes made in the floodwall foundation designs by US Army Corps of Engineers' engineers as reported in all three levee failure investigation reports. But, many people choose to blame us flood victims for these floodwall failures and that really hurts my feelings. 2. People everywhere call us bad names, claim we are responsible for our losses, and do not begin to acknowledge the extent of our destruction (140 square miles of deep urban flooding by salt water that sat for weeks). 3. The Engineers that did this to us are in charge of rebuilding our flood protection and and we fear they are purposely designing unreliable structures again. 4. Most of our local politicians are worthless. Our future does sometimes seem hopeless. 5. Politicians and much of the general public made our disaster nothing more than another partisan issue. The previous and current administrations have made unkept promises. Many of us feel very disillusioned about our governments at every level. 6. The pain is not just mine. While we lost everything we ever had and have suffered and struggled to get home, the same thing happened to my neighbors, relatives and nearly everyone I ever knew. I haven't been able to help relatives as I would like because of my over abundance of problems and lack of resources. I look around at my missing elderly neighbors and get really angry at how our elderly and disabled have been and are being left to die without any help from anyone. 7. Of course, the initial Katrina response was a nightmare, but only a small part of the ongoing pain felt in New Orleans. I wish the evil posters that seem to wish we were dead would stop their hostility. I don't want to be crazy and cry everyday. I am ashamed of my mental illness. Believe me, it is very humiliating. I want to work and support my family and continue to help rebuild my community. My doctors say I must reduce my stress - yea right. Vindication might help.