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Breakfast With Petula Dvorak
I was at the diner just now having breakfast near the mayor and that family that is always in there, and their little girl is just cute as can be, if you don't have over the top standards regarding cute. That crusty old wizened woman, who rules her small universe with an antiquated lack of charm and cash donations to various local organizations, came in to talk to the mayor, but he was just getting ready to leave, didn't have much time for her because he was going home to take a nap. Then I overheard a conversation about how it might be possible to get that sulfur smell out of the water at the bighouse without an expensive filtration system. I will have to talk to the waitress tomorrow because I didn't want it widely known inside the diner that I am an eavesdropper.
I perused the Washington Post between bites of scrambled egg and who shows up writing crime reports for the Post but my old friend who used to write crime for the Times Picayune, Petula Dvorak. She's not really an old friend, it just felt that way, seeing her name. I can imagine that some old school journalists might have found Ms. Dvorak a little too poetic for crime writing, but I always found her word wrangling appropriate to the subject matter, and occasionally, outrightly stupendous.
Somebody is offering me a possible ticket to Mark Knopfler in DC tonight, might drive in for that.
Ok, back to work on the cottage. Have cut all those giant bushes down, painting now.
I'd Forgotten About Juan
From 61706 Times Picayune Online:
Five teens killed in N.O.
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer
In the bloodiest slaughter to unfold on the streets of New Orleans in more than a decade, five teen-agers were shot and killed before dawn Saturday when one or more gunmen pumped a barrage of bullets into their sport utility vehicle as they rode through a sparsely occupied neighborhood in Central City.
Police had no suspects late Saturday, but based on “the sheer carnage” of the crime, investigators believe the massacre was rooted in an altercation over drugs or was carried out in retaliation for an earlier dispute, New Orleans Police Department Capt. John Bryson said.
“Somebody wanted them dead, obviously,” Bryson said. “They intended these five people to be dead.”
Despite escalating violence as residents have returned to the ravaged city since Hurricane Katrina, police seemed shocked Saturday, both by the age of the victims — three were 19, and the others were 16 and 17 — and the brazen nature of the killing spree, which erupted around 4 a.m. near the intersection of Josephine and Danneel streets.
“This is almost beyond explaining,” Bryson said.
The victims, all from New Orleans, were Arsenio Hunter, 16; Warren Simoen, 17; Iruan Taylor, 19; Reggie Dantzler, 19; and Marquis Hunter, 19, said John Gagliano, the chief investigator for Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard.
Bryson said he could not immediately remember another atrocity with so many victims, though he said Saturday’s killings called to mind a 1996 shooting that left three dead at a Louisiana Pizza Kitchen restaurant in the French Quarter and a 2004 armed robbery at a Treme restaurant and bar in which four people were killed.
Indeed, five people have not died in a single violent episode since March 1, 1995, when Juan Smith, then 20, sprayed bullets through a North Roman Street house, a crime for which he was sent to prison for life.
Later, Smith was sentenced to die by lethal injection for a triple murder on Feb. 4, 1995, at a home on Morrison Avenue in which he shot a 3-year-old nine times, along with the toddler’s mother and her fiance.
The latest assault brings to 52 the number of people murdered in New Orleans this year, with Saturday’s incident boosting the total by more than 10 percent over the previous tally. The city’s homicide rate since April has been more than twice as high as for the first three months of 2006, when just 17 killings were recorded.
Officers patrolling in Central City and neighbors reported hearing “multiple, multiple rounds” fired from a semiautomatic weapon Saturday morning, Bryson said.
Police believe one or more shooters approached the victims’ blue Ford Explorer as it was heading downtown on Danneel Street and fired into it from the driver’s side. The bodies of Arsenio Hunter, Simoen and Taylor were found inside the SUV, which came to rest against a utility pole.
Their bodies were riddled with multiple gunshot wounds, Bryson said.
All three were pronounced dead at the scene, Gagliano said.
Dantzler and Marquis Hunter, who police suspect also had been in the SUV, were found not far away, Bryson said. Dantzler, who was pronounced dead by emergency workers, was found on a nearby sidewalk with a bullet wound to the head.
Marquis Hunter, who is thought to be the brother or cousin of Arsenio Hunter, was discovered with multiple gunshot wounds to the head and body in the 2000 block of Danneel, about a quarter of a block from the SUV, Bryson said. He died at 8 a.m. at Charity Hospital’s trauma unit at Elmwood Medical Center after he was taken from the scene of the shootings in critical condition, Gagliano said.
Bryson said no weapons or drugs were immediately visible in the SUV, although he added that thieves commonly pick crime scenes clean of such items before authorities arrive. Investigators will conduct a thorough search of the vehicle in coming days, he said.
Almost eight hours after the grisly attack Saturday, as a hot midday sun beat down on Central City, a pair of laborers working at a Josephine Street home that was damaged by Hurricane Katrina shifted their efforts outdoors, shoveling debris away from the cleared crime scene.
Up and down nearby streets, where most houses still bear the tell-tale spray-painted Xs left by rescue workers after the Aug. 29 storm, neighbors gathered on porches and discussed the gruesome crime and the recklessness of adults who, they said, should have been minding the victims.
“How could you let a 16-year-old go out at that time of the morning?” asked James Williams, 26, a New Orleanian who moved to Jackson, Miss., shortly before Katrina. “And for (the perpetrators) to do something like this to the children is a shame.”
One woman, who requested anonymity, said she was at her home just a few yards from the crime scene when she heard shots ring out. She said the shooting went on for two or three minutes.
“There were so many gunshots that you couldn’t even count them,” she said.
Sitting on a stoop across Danneel Street from the spot where the SUV slid to a halt, Clarence Joseph peered at a patch of bloodstained asphalt and evoked religious prophecy to describe the early morning carnage.
“The Bible said that if you don’t teach them at home, the world is going to get them,” he said. “And that’s what happening.”
At 73 years old, Joseph said he has seen his share of bloodshed. But none of it, he said, compares with what happened Saturday. “This is the worst I’ve seen yet,” he said. “The worst I’ve seen yet.”
Even Bryson, a veteran officer with 26 years in the NOPD, choked back emotion as he detailed the crime for reporters at a late morning news conference.
“I’m a father, and I couldn’t imagine getting this news today, the day before Father’s Day,” Bryson said.
Bryson also implored residents to help the police fight the criminal activity that has seeped back into the city since it was emptied by Katrina. He stressed that although officers are trained to handle the city’s worst criminals, they also contend with the personal effects of crime in their communities.
“People forget: police officers are people, too,” Bryson said. “We have families. We’re recovering from Katrina, too.”
Police are asking anyone with information to contact Crimestoppers at 822-1111 or toll-free at (877) 903-7867. Callers do not have to give their names or testify and can earn up to $2,500 for tips that lead to an indictment.
Staff writers Gwen Filosa and Bob Ussery contributed to this report.
Michelle Krupa can be reached at mkrupa@timespicayune.com or (504)826-3312.
Letter To Clifford, 15
Dear Mom, 9/28/05
I haven't written to you in a while and so you may be wondering did I break my arm or a finger or a fingernail or maybe I moved away to a country with no typewriters or pencils or stamps. But none of those things has happened.
A month ago today a hurricane named Katrina hit New Orleans, which is where I lived before coming here to Virginia, and I suffered for a time worrying about people I know there and wondering if they were all right. The hurricane and subsequent failures of the New Orleans levies had almost the whole town flooded under four to fifteen feet of water. My former girlfriend, M, had not evacuated as is commonly recommended, and ended up having to be boat-lifted from her front porch. On the boat ride from her house there were people and animals who hadn't survived, floating in the street. Her house (which used to be our house) sits higher on the street than many of her neighbors, most of whom are too poor to evacuate when hurricanes come. So for a week, with no power and no phone and no way to communicate to the outside world, she and 30 others she had taken in from the street waited out the flood waters while armed looters terrorized small portions of town and the federal government fumbled around with appropriate response and assistance. For awhile, in the media, president George Bush was criticized for being a failure (because of his poor response to the crisis), which I'm sure comes as no surprise to you. M had stock-piled plenty of water and food and so everybody was ok. Your grandson, RL, and his wife, J, and your three great-grandchildren, G, and the boy/girl twins A and I, also lived in New Orleans but they evacuated before the storm and are staying with your son and my brother, DL, in Arlington. R and J's New Orleans house, according to pictures taken by satellite and published in various places, was pretty much completely under water after the storm.
The city of New Orleans is now just sparsely populated and there will be a rebuilding of the city on a scale unprecedented in modern America. So I will be going back to New Orleans to be a part of that because I have a house there too, which I had rented out when I left, and it took in some water I think, and I will have to renovate it myself. I don't know if I will end up staying in New Orleans permanently, but that I will be there for a good many months, working, is a certainty. Many people probably won't come back to the city, so it will be interesting to see what happens, what the new New Orleans will be like.
There is a party at your house in October and I will be coming in town for that. Sounds like a bunch of hullabaloo to me but maybe we'll have some fun. I am looking forward to seeing you. Hope you are high and dry and doing fine.
Hardhead Without A Hardhat
I was this morning on a ladder tweaking the front of the Dumaine house while the roofers stripped off the hard asbestos shingles, discarding into the side yard of Esnard Villa. It is debatable whether or not working on the outside of a house while it is being de-shingled is good practice. I would generally speaking, advise against it.
An errant broken shingle, and thus jagged of edge, and apparently with my name on it, came flying over the front side and onto the top of my head. Ouch, I said.
I wasn't even going to say anything but a two count after the impact and blood is poring down the front of my face. I did not first pause and consider, oh my dear God, I must look like Carrie at the prom. I yelled out, Hey, Heads Up, which is supposed to be what THEY say, but it was errant, I think, an accident, I think, so they had no real reason to say--Heads Up. This is another crew of congenial, hard-working Mexicans doing another roof in New Orleans. I mean most of them seem congenial. You know, the lead guy is actually sort of a surly son-of-a-bitch. Naw, it was probably an accident.
The guys all stopped and apologized when, leaning over the front of the house, they saw my blood dripping down the front of my head and onto the sidewalk. I went inside to look at myself in a mirror, see what I could see, which was nothing, except blood running down over my eyelids, so I grabbed a t-shirt and draped it over the top of my head, bid my worker friends adieu, and headed over here to Rocheblave.
The Sculptor has gotten so disgusted by lack of local worker response on her house, that she has enlisted friends from New York to do some work for her. They drove down last week
and have been working every day since. When I drove up I saw the man getting tools out of his truck. He waved, apparently not one to judge by appearances (so what if that scruffy looking, long-haired bean pole across the street is wearing an irregularly red polka-dotted t-shirt on top of his head.) I'm pretty sure I don't have any hydrogen peroxide inside the house so I called out and asked him if he did.
When I got closer he said, oh, what happened, with appropriate but not exaggerated concern. Pretty obviously, he has seen Carrie too, and I wasn't really it.
His wife, who has experience doctoring skinny impoverished people in Africa, came out with a chair and made me sit my skinny ass down and asked me was I feeling dizzy or faint, and I said, not really. She poured a river of hydrogen peroxide onto my cut and dabbed at it with cotton balls and then squirted some Neosporin onto my head and put a gauze pad on it and then wrapped it with that really cool stuff you use to wrap horse ankles. What? Oh, purple of course.
I took two Tylenols, got some sushi delivered by my friend Laureen, and I feel well enough to go back to work, except that I'm afraid to because the Mexicans will laugh at me with my purple Aunt Jemima head. And they laugh in Spanish, which I don't fully understand.
Play In Reflection
As the sun sets on a New Orleans Sunday, I scrape windows and watch the Dumaine Street Play in reflecton, winding down on the Dumaine job.
Al gut/pilfers his former residence. Cadillac Shelton holds court with a busty woman while Fermin holds down one of the stoops across the street. Mario gets a ride to the gas station. Two teenage girl newcomers ask me what the deal is? Renting? How many rooms? Another teenage girl bums a cigarette, Bebe parks and crosses to Phillis' house.
Joe lays low.
Two young dudes work on a Mustang.
Al has moved on to recycle a severely rusted flood bike, on the sidewalk, in front of Esnard Villa.
Cars rapping stop, Cadillac Shelton offers a few what up brahs.
I'll holler at ya.
Glynn long ago disappeared in a shiny SUV, leaving his Grand Prix parked in the street front and center on the job site.
Roofers coming tomorrow.
House looks better.
I'm winding way down.
10 Million Hydrogen Bombs
I had a little moment last night where I was consumed with math as I tried to figure how many of the biggest ever detonated hydrogen bombs (Russia takes credit for biggest ever detonated) would it take to equal the destructive force of the space rock that landed in the Yucatan 65 million years ago, which ostensibly led to the demise of all the planet's dinosaurs. The figure I came up with was 2 million (hydrogen bombs). So, would the space rock that landed in Antarctica 250 million years ago, creating a crater 5 times larger, mean that the earth survived the impact of the equivalent of 10 million hydrogen bombs? And if so, just how fuckin tough is this planet?
One math moment led to another and I considered the current murder rate in New Orleans.
First let me say that it feels so much calmer here, so less edgier and threatening on a day to day basis.
But the numbers are this--estimated population 160,000 (one third of pre-K pop.), murder count equals 44. 44 times three equals 132 and 132 times 2 equals a potential yearly total of 264. Which is about the mean yearly murder rate in New Orleans over the last thirty years, and by itself has the city leading the nation in murders many years, while perhaps seeming small compared to ocassional spikes of 300--400 murders in a year.
So the deal is, while it feels calmer here, it is in fact, on one level, not calmer.
Can I fix it? Well, when in an earlier post I said you cannot fail in New Orleans, I did not mean that as exhortation. I meant that, in so many areas there are problems so big that haven't ever been effectively addressed--like crime and educaton--that any effort you put forth towards improvement, even if you fail in the traditional sense, really, you are not failing, because it is highly unlikely that things you try to improve will be worse off by way of your effort. So the pressure is off. You cannot fail in New Orleans. Try anything.
And with that said, today, by myself, I am going to attempt to put a stop to all this murderous madness.
To each of you, my beloved brothers and sisters, I do now put forth an exhortation I hope you will take into your hearts.
Quit fucking killing each other. Quit it. Don't make me drop 10 million hydrogen bombs on your ass. Peace out.
No, Really, I Am Working
What do you mean what am I doing posting in the middle of the day, when the clock's ticking. I KNOW the clock's ticking.
Those aren't your work clothes. I KNOW that. I had to run for materials this morning. (Be advised--they don't have the 36" window glass at Lowe's on Elysian Fields today, or glazier's points.)
I changed out of my non-work T-shirt into one of my thrift store button downs (I know that doesn't narrow it down very much) and walked over to Betsy's for lunch. Betsy had seen that T-shirt yesterday. I KNOW that blue on her interior walls is not that different from the blue on the Dumaine house, OK?, I don't know how it happened, it just happened that way.
What do you mean if I'm going to dick around all morning why didn't I also just stop by the Asia "Health Club" next to Betsy's, for a little "rub down." Please, don't insult me. You can't just walk into the Asian "Health Club." It is by appointment only.
There are four or five intersections between here and Lowe's with the stop lights not working again. Cool thing is, people here don't even freak over that, just accept what it is and from much previous experience over the last nine month's, just four way stop it.
Lowe's Elysian Fields store is bi-lingual now and the Benjamin Moore on Earhart is too, just to show you how we are embracing our new Latino workers here. I'm sure there are some exceptions but the Latino workers are very polite, and on a number of occasions at the Galvez Spur I've had the door held open for me. It is little things like that which warm the cockles of even the crustiest heart.
The weather? Warmish. Muggy as hell. That shirt I got out of the closet?, it was on a hanger but I suspect before it made it to the hanger it may have for awhile been wadded into a ball in the corner of the closet, and was quite wrinkly when I put it on. By the time I walked the block and a half to Betsy's though, it was wrinkle free. You know those little portable steam shooting de-wrinklers you see advertised on TV? You don't need those here in the summer. What? Oh yeah, it's still spring.
The Rally's on Broad, next to the Chevron, is rubble. Building and substantial concrete foundation, all but gone. Forward movement.
It appears the new film studio/teaching center may actually be happening, in that unused strip of land next to the Lafitte projects. Sort of exciting.
I have to go out and find glazier points now, either on Bourbon Street or Uptown, on Magazine.
Dumaine Street has been bustling with workers this week. House gutters, roofers, clean up crews, painters, trim carpenters, plumbers, electricians, yard workers. I just need a little break from all that ambitious behavior. What? Right, right, glazier points, and that 36" window glass for the front.
Is That The Color?
Whoever recently lost their upper respiratory congestion in the newly and ill-formed Louisville area, please contact me for immediate return. No ID required, but please bring your own phlegm bucket.
Was up at six yesterday and over to Dumaine to clandestinely run a cord from the temporary pole on the right side of Esnard Villa so I could power up my little spray rig. It will run off the small generator I have but not without over-am ping it. I sprayed the trim woodwork high and low and was done by seven so I retired to Betsy's for breakfast while the paint dried in the morning sun.
I had the special but done ala carte fashion because it being a holiday, they were not offering the special per se. It was about three dollars more expensive that way, which is not a complaint, just a report. I had ice-tea instead of hot coffee.
By eight I was back to Dumaine to start brushing the front weatherboards.
A crew of Mexicans had the previous day emptied the contents of the former Mama D's house onto the sidewalk in the neatest damn constructed debris pile I have ever seen.
This day the front man for the debris removal team working Memorial day at time and a half (26 dollars per hour) called out to me, while surveying the neat pile his crew would soon de-construct, remove all electronic devices, and then re-pile across the street. He called out to me--you painting that by yourself? I said yes, not giving Fermin any credit for the few days he helped me or for that matter those three New Yorkers and that solitary Californian, who spot-primed the front.
You a real painter, he said, in a tone that would easily accept the word painter being replaced by, man. Well, jiminy-fuckin'-shucks if that wasn't enough to make my already substantial-sized ego bloat to weather-balloon size and float high above Dumaine.
I crossed the street, and from the shade, sitting on the steps closest to the dumpster, admired my own damn work and conversed with a fellow worker man, about the ways of the world.
Later, BeBe came by to borrow a tape measure, and said, that the color? I said yes, is it all right, do you hate it? She said no she didn't hate it, it was nice, it gonna be real cute.
In the afternoon, Joe came by, which I had sort of been dreading, because I had a month ago let him pick some colors from a chart, and I did not end up using those colors but at the time had enthusiastically said I would. I changed my mind about his selected color scheme and was ready for his--hey man, that's not the color I chose harangue. However, when he came by he said, that the color? and I said yes and he said, that's good man, that's the color I like, (even though it is not even remotely similar to the colors he picked.)
Even later in the afternoon and the shade is my blessing on the porch. I'm up on the eight foot step ladder painting the porch ceiling and Phillis calls from across the street, hey Jim, that the color? I said yes and she said, ohh, I like that, that gonna look real nice. Which is all good, because its she and Joe and BeBe that are going to be looking at it everyday.
It is similar but a bit more electric than the color it is replacing, of the blue/teal family, and I wanted it to be a sort of recognizable color memorial to all the boys that grew up there, under M's guidance. I want them to be able to pass by with pride, say, I planned my first felony up in there, or really, in many cases--that place was part of my saving. I would have been much worse off without that place.
In those days gone by, wrapped up thick in the middle of it, I never answered in the affirmative when asked--do yall think you are doing any good there? It was all so yet to be seen. But with the affording of a little distance and the re-acquainting with some of the boys recently, I can say that at least a few of the literally 100+ children who passed through that house, benefitted from the passing through. And there is something good about that, perhaps almost equal to being called a real painter/man.
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.