Lovely Louis
Some friends of friends stopped in tonight to say hello. They are young and in town to volunteer, one of the great phenomena of the Great Government Levee Failure Disaster (I still can’t find a name for it and have been refusing the shorthand of Katrina as much as possible). We are the great petri dish for the U.S. and possibly beyond because everything is a blank slate and could begin anew.
Well some things aren’t a blank slate – the crime returned after only a hiccup. But our schools did change and while we may find that charter schools work here, and perhaps they don’t work elsewhere, still we are forging ahead and learning as we go.
I love the fact that young people with progressive minds are coming to New Orleans in droves to learn and help us on our journey. After they left, Tin and I went into the den to watch the ABC video. We moved the TV into the den from the guest bedroom where it was never used by any of the visiting Croatians – an idea that seemed good in theory and had no practical application.
I was beginning to think the other day when the hordes of guys (electricians, audio/visual, carpenter) entered the house to move the TV (what does it take? I hired one guy and literally five guys came in and out), and two guys came to deliver the dresser for Tin’s room that I was having done from two sets of drawers Steve built a million years ago, my neighbor was bringing in my writing table that he had finished and it still needed something done and all this commotion was going on and it was driving me nuts and I thought it must be true Americans are always spending a lot of money to obtain things and then moving them around all the time trying to get to the point where they can enjoy while those Europeans are simply pleasurably enjoying. I wanted to stick pins in my eyes.
My good friend called me earlier and was simply telling me that she is not a depressed psychotic nutball because every time I’ve spoken with her recently she’s been sick or stressed. She confessed she just believes she doesn’t know how to do downtime. Duh! QED – unable to live without a glaring to do list in front of me. When I hung up the phone, another call came in and I was looking out from my new writing table and a bird with a yellowish purplish breast was sucking nectar from the Queen palm that was almost an arm’s length away.
Tonight, after our friends of friends left, leaving me again hopeful that New Orleans stands to gain from all this brain trust we have attracted from adversity, Tin and I were able to snuggle on the newly purchased great find $250 sofa for the first time and watch Louis Armstrong on the now well-placed spot for the TV, and I thought well alrighty then, I have achieved nirvana.
And then the DVD started skipping.
February 10th, 2011 at 12:11 pm
The established NOLA Blogger shorthand is “the Federal Flood”, as in “Katrina and the Federal Flood that followed.”
February 10th, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Got it. Thanks.