View current page
...more recent posts
Shadow Boxing
I started putting the finish coat on the Dumaine exterior today. It's very, uh, teal. I do not like being in charge of color selection. Anyway, it's pretty well prepped and the color won't be offensive to everyone and as a protective coating it will be good and the prep work to repaint at some future date will be miniscule compared to what I had to do, that is assuming the next person to paint it doesn't wait twelve years, like I did. Twelve years is too long to wait between exterior paint jobs.
The guy who came by a couple of weeks ago and vomited three times while talking to me, came by again today. He's on heroin, but pretends to be on something else. He did some shadow boxing (actually very impressively) and said he misses having people to fight with.
Hunter, a kid I have watched grow up in the ghetto over a twelve year period, came by today, first time I've seen him since being back, and he has grown into a very slick looking young man. Said he's working in the oil fields, or offshore, I can't remember. He was as glad to see me as I was to see him and he hugged me both on the greet and the depart. He's got him a nice little car.
Two more decomposed corpses found in vacant New Orleans' homes this week, nine months after the flood and three days before the official start of a new hurricane season. The death toll is now around 1,500.
The levees are in ok shape but not great shape and the best thing for New Orleans would be no Katrina sized storms this year.
The next best thing would be the rounding up and setting on fire of all high level insurance executives. All of you who have instructed your lackey employees to put up hindrance to those who are in need and have paid their premiums year after year, I hope, if you do sleep at night, you dream of being set on fire, because such things, in an imperfect world, do happen.
You Cannot Fail
This is a lot different than those first several months without electricity, sitting here inside Rocheblave with the central air blasting, and I don't know if I can stand it, but I think I can.
Today was my last day of work. I worked in Metarie and in Lakeview, got my last check, and said goodbye to Bossman, with whom I have worked a total of10 years.
In Metairie I finished the painting except for punch out, on a remodel/flood job for a new builder and he pays us 50 cents to a dollar more per square foot than our regular builder and came onto the job occasionally and said stuff like, it doesn't have to be this good, which is gratifying I guess, but I didn't do anything special for him.
In Lakeview, well I don't know what to say about Lakeview, you have to see it for yourself.
Lakeview, being a white middle class to upper middle class neighborhood, for me, ghetto dweller, is a bit shaking to my core, the visualization of how quickly an affluent neighborhood can, in wide swaths, take on the appearance of ghetto. But you know, I love the ghetto, so I guess it's not all bad.
I don't want my nephew and his wife and three young children, rebuilding in Lakeview, to frown too hard at the last paragraph because I think you are doing the right and courageous thing. Sissies have never made it in New Orleans. As you face your future doubts realize you will never be without what you truly need. What? No!, you cannot borrow a dollar.
I had to go get an extension cord on Dumaine this morning so I could spray some shoe molding at the Metairie job before the carpenters (bossman did not trim that job) put it down, and approaching the former kill zone at St. Philip and Dorgenois, I saw one of the chicken/rooster pairs rummaging around a debris pile. I am easily satisfied by free range ghetto poultry.
Three Friday's in a row my garbage bags have been picked up on Rocheblave, and I'm sick of it, this regular garbage pickup has got to stop.
I love New Orleans, but still, I'm leaving.
For those of you staying, embrace your mayor. That other guy with his promises was all wrong. Promises are a comfort to fools.
And if you get frustrated at the pace of recovery, get out and do something, any fucking thing. In New Orleans you cannot fail.
