Dangermond.org

excerpted from the NYT this morning:

An initial disparity, even if known to the employee, might be small, Justice Ginsburg said, leading an employee, particularly a woman or a member of a minority group “trying to succeed in a nontraditional environment” to avoid “making waves.” Justice Ginsburg noted that even a small differential “will expand exponentially over an employee’s working life if raises are set as a percentage of prior pay.”

Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer joined the dissent.

Ms. Ledbetter’s salary was initially the same as that of her male colleagues. But over time, as she received smaller raises, a substantial disparity grew. By the time she brought suit in 1998, her salary fell short by as much as 40 percent; she was making $3,727 a month, while the lowest-paid man was making $4,286.

Work – work – work

Is that all there is?

M told me as Jake and I were pulling out that he had not had a nap and he had been difficult after being home from school all day. I said are you kidding? I have dealt with adults all day that make me want to pull my hair out – Jake is a dreamboat. Cute, funny, and sings Avril Lavigne’s GIRLFRIEND at full blast with me in the car, loves the color red because I do, and now is considering a change of opinion on thunderstorms since I told him how cool they are.

At the Verizon store while I got my cellphone fixed, he sat quietly nibbling on a blueberry muffin and and drinking his hot chocolate. When I went over to check on him, he said, “Ocho, can we go home now?” How cute is that?

The other day I took Jake for a bike ride and to get snowballs on Plum Street. He got Rainbow (a mix of flavors) but quickly usurped my sugar free Spearmint. But we hung out on the bench and I marvelled at how unselfconscious he is and how he will speak to just about anybody and everybody! So while I was cleaning up the mess, he started talking to this woman with short blonde hair. He said, “I know you.” And she said, how do you know me? And he couldn’t figure it out and then it came to him and he blurted out,”YOU PULL TREASURES OUT OF NOSES!” Turns out she is the nurse at his school and unlodged a plastic bead he put up there. There it is. Ever wonder how a three and a half year old spends his day at school.

This evening, we went to the Magic Box to find a present for Rylee, my great niece, who has a birthday on Saturday – where we are all gathering for my nephew, Michael’s, wedding in Atlanta. He told me to get her something with ballerina because girls like that. Then we went to get him a hot chocolate and fix my phone.

He calls me Ocho – and touches my legs and holds my hand – what can I say? – sweet little boys – I’m a push over.

Ray Nagin wins the first annual Dangermond Lack of Leadership award – this Wednesday, May 30, Mayor Nagin will present his first State of the City address since Hurricane Katrina and the flood. The address will begin at 6:30pm at the National D-Day Museum.

Almost two years since Katrina and Rita – Nagin rears his incompetent head and proves that bad leaders happen to good communities.

The theme of Super Sunday was “By Any Means Necessary” – that is what the determined Mardi Gras Indians – greatly diminished post Katrina – said about keeping to their tradition and performing this year. We saw Chris Rose on the bayou, mulling around – another reminder that my “Chris Rose is Dead 2 Me” book is missing since I moved into the LaLa – and G went over to speak to Chris – we have both noticed his absence in the paper lately.

Toda,y he wrote a Times Picayune column about coming to realize New Orleans is home and he can’t leave – he’s been contemplating it. I liken it to what my neighbor put his finger on – the I can’t stand it here either, but I’m not leaving syndrome.

Everyone seems depressed lately – coping – barely treading water – when there are outbursts of joy and sudden flashes of beauty all around us every day. But people think it is New Orleans that is sinking. It’s not – there is a universal malaise right now – Darfur, Iraq, Israel – atrocities and killing and hatred thicken the air and dampen the swells of joy – it’s the old when a butterfly beats its wings in Latin America, China gets a cold – although the butterfly is beating from China these day – and Bush, our feckless leader, is a manifestation of democracy gone wrong, here, and elsewhere in the country – we need a hero – we have no visionaries – no doers – just reactionary buffoons whose fear begets fear.

Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth, Asechylus said, but he hated women, so should we usurp what a misogynist says for our mantras? My tea leaves last night said Feel Great, Act Great, and Be Great. It’s Tuesday, May 29, 2007 from the dispatches of New Orleans – almost two years post-Katrina – and I am, we are still searching for the burning bush.

I went to have dinner with mom who looked tired and is tired from the long hours she’s working in Raceland. Ever since Katrina she feels compelled to be a martyr and work beyond her capacity.

As I was getting the groceries out of the car N, K’s son, called to me from the bayou where they were sitting. I said hi and went about my business – not wanting to go back into that firepit again with K (who is working on the asshole neighbor’s house). But I left the front door open as I put away my stuff and a woman came to the front and asked me where I got the house numbers from. So I gave her my Design within Reach catalog and told her they are Richard Neutra designs. Everyone is so enchanted by these numbers.

J was sitting on the bayou with E&H in their boat – H was talking about how she lost everything in Katrina – all of her grandmother’s and mother’s furniture and heirlooms. “Gone,” she said. “Some people are attached to their things and some aren’t, I was the person who was attached and now I don’t want to replace one single thing.” E is an architect who said, “oh your house is the one that was designed by a California architect.” She said, “You don’t see that kind of stuff here, it’s progressive.” I said actually the house was a California bungalow that we converted to a more traditional New Orleans architecture.

People don’t get that.

She said, “The back, the tower is like nothing else in the city.”

I said, “The back is a mock camelback that you see all over the city. It’s all just reinterpreted – but this is a New Orleans house. Not a California house. Steve is very talented and so it all seems effortless but there is a reason behind everything and it all points back to New Orleans’ vocabulary, not to California. Sometimes an out of towner “sees” New Orleans more than the locals do.”

Later as J and I sat with our chairs pulled close to the water – we saw the mother and father duck and the 12 adolescent ducks glide by. Then we saw a nutria skim by. Then a fish jumped out three times. R – my neighbor – the good one – said the fish jump out of the water because they want to see what we are doing. I told J that I had had a day – a day of recollection and reflection that had left me searching for meaning in my current life form.

The best either of us could get to was to stare out at the water, the lights from the houses glimmering on the glassy surface, the muffled voices of people sitting along the banks, and then J said, “well, look at where you are now.”

Sitting up in my office trying to do some work on this Memorial Day I hear the Vegetable Man going down the street calling out “I have mirlitons. I have tomatoes. I have squash. I have watermelon.” He hasn’t been around in a long while.

I went for a long bike ride yesterday morning and was able to examine then file away several things that have been at the forefront of my mind.

The list:
1) The things that make you a stronger person hurt like hell.
2) Any day that I am not appreciative and grateful for my life is a dark day.
3) People see what they want to see in you – but no one ever knows all the myriad parts that make you who you are.

G and I were going to go to Bacchanal since Monday is a holiday and so I was trying to get some things down around the house – paint that hole I patched, urethane the astragal that was replaced. But J came by to sit on the porch and before I knew it G&T arrived with mimosas in hand, then M stopped in, and S was riding her bike by and stopped for a mimosa, and G walked over and we ended up hanging out till the Mardi Gras Indians started down the bayou – then we walked down there to start their walk down Orleans.

When I lived in Marin, I was speaking to a police man one day telling him how safe I felt in our neighborhood and how I left the backdoor unlocked. He said, do me a favor and don’t do that. He said most every crime is a crime of opportunity – a thief sees an open door or window, a rapist sees a woman alone, a burglar sees a target unaware – and he made me think twice about what I thought was good living.

A friend of mine was raped in the early 80s – she had come home and walked inside at 9AM in the morning and left the door open because it was a beautiful day outside. While she was feeding her cat she was grabbed from behind and tied up and raped and then robbed. She was able to identify her rapist but he was acquitted in a New Orleans court because as happens around here a lot – he was black, she was white, and the jury was 11 black and 1 white. He ended up getting sent up for another charge later on, but all total he had raped 12 women.

She doesn’t like to think there was any lesson to learn there – and I agree – but I can tell you this – he saw an opportunity with her door open. Don’t leave your door open unattended! Lock the doors and windows. People who think that this is a shame to have to live this way are fooling themselves that they live in some utopia. It can happen anywhere – don’t give a perp an opportunity. Be aware of your surroundings as much as you can.