Dangermond.org

The man found floating in the bayou was identified as Anthony – it certainly highlights the “we all die alone” comment – Anthony, rest in peace.

Coroner identifies body pulled from Bayou St. John.

by Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Times-Picayune

Thursday June 25, 2009, 9:02 AM

Eliot Kamenitz / The Times-Picayune

New Orleans police divers and officers pull the body of Anthony K. Joseph, 53, out of Bayou St. John Monday.

The New Orleans coroner’s office Thursday identified the man found floating Monday in Bayou St. John as 53-year-old Anthony K. Joseph.

Chief coroner’s investigator John Gagliano said Joseph died by drowning, but officials are still unsure how he got in the water. Investigators do not suspect foul play, he said.

Joseph was found about 3 p.m. where the bayou ends, near the corner of Moss Street and Lafitte Avenue, New Orleans police said. Divers recovered his body, clad in a khaki pants, tennis shoes and short-sleeved, black T-shirt.

Calvin Hebert was cycling near the area when he discovered the body, then ran across the street to a veterinary clinic and asked someone to call the police.

Police have not said whether the body floated to the end of the bayou from another location.

Hebert and another man who watched the investigation unfold Monday said Joseph’s body looked like that of a man who frequently sat under the tree shade lining North Jefferson Davis Parkway, across the water from Moss Street.

Joseph’s relatives could not immediately be reached.

From NYT headlines and CNN 24/7:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina said Wednesday that he had been having an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina for the last year, ending the mystery surrounding his disappearance over Father’s Day weekend and considerably dampening his prospects for a national political career.

Tag this one “Who cares?”

My mother’s primary care doc has sent her to see about twenty other specialists to all say the same thing to her – but hey, I feel good knowing I’m doing my part to help the doctors in New Orleans put a little more cash in their pocket. None of them are doing any good addressing what is really wrong with my mother. So this is all just a great big exercise in futility.

I went in for a procedure that my insurance company told me I had to do at 50 years of age and the hospital was packed with my doctor handling 18 other procedures like mine. I felt like I was in some retail store, with everyone carrying the same packet, wearing the same scrubs, and smiling retail smiles at me.

Obama wants to change our health care system. It’s an enormous agenda he has mapped out for us – but you know what? It wouldn’t be if anyone in the past 12 years might have addressed just one of the important issues facing the United States.

When my neighbor told me that she had not been to the doctor in three years and that she never brought her kids to the doctor and gave birth at home, I had to believe she is the smart one among us.

Yay! It finally rained here in New Orleans and the plants drank it up so thirstily that they want more. We broke record highs – it was 104 degrees at one point. This is the first rain we’ve had in a while, atypical of our summers, which usually have a crescendo of heat building that breaks mid to late afternoon with a large downpour – they’re fabulous!

The Feast of St. John coincides with the June solstice also referred to as Midsummers. The Christian holy day is fixed at June 24, but, in the old days, festivities were celebrated the night before, on St. John’s Eve.

Or at least that is when Marie Laveau celebrated it, she would attract a large crowd of blacks and whites down to Lake Ponchartrain where she performed her healing ceremony or headwashing. In the same spirit, Sally Ann Glassman, the new reigning Vodou queen, performs the ceremony right here in Faubourg St John on the Magnolia Bridge every June 23rd.

While the original celebration was done to protect the crops, after Katrina the ceremony became more linked to warding off hurricanes as June 1st marks the beginning of hurricane season down here in the Gulf South.

Everyone in the house is having a procedure this week. Wolfie went in to get spayed and got to have her teeth done at the same time, but the good news is that the vet called and said that Wolfie had several large ovarian cysts that were pretty perilous to remove. He said, “She might be acting like a puppy when she heals from this surgery.” Which was great news – Wolfie has had a weird gait and we knew she had arthritis in her right hip, but we’re hoping the removal of these cysts marks a big improvement for her.

My Croatian family uses words like Bravo Rachel! and Super, all which sound creepy when bohemian wantabes use the same words. But it suits them just fine. I’m trying my best to learn some of their words – which about 80% don’t have vowels – tough on the tongue. In the meantime, they’re picking up a few words around here – bangs, perpetual.

My favorite thing is seeing the familiar through their eyes. Like for instance the fact that the 14 year old could walk in a Walgreens and think “THIS IS THE BEST STORE!” all because there is stuff crammed into every shelf. But then I explain to her the adverse side of this – the loss of our beloved K&B, the New Orleans drugstore chain, that was first supplanted by Eckerds, no longer in existence, and then by Walgreens, who was then challenged by CVS and Rite Aid, both which seem like third world country drugstores. WE HAVE TOO MUCH and WE WANT TOO MUCH all of this screams.

Back in EEL-land there is one or two of things, not 20. There is a store that sells socks. Not a million stores that sell 20 different kinds of everything.

Recently, the NYT ran an article about how there are all these ghost big box stores, similar to the Circuit City we passed on Veterans the other day. They just rebuilt the Circuit City store post Katrina and then the entire chain went bankrupt – why? Because there is Best Buy, Target, WalMart and a thousand million websites selling the same thing – too much of it at that.

Is it good to have all these choices? An Italian friend trying to order a coffee one day almost passed out on the floor when offered the choices. She said, “Basta!”

Loca and I walked through the park this morning and it was thick, thick, thick. The summer air in New Orleans is good for this – it slows you waaaaaaaaay down. Somewhere between a crawl and a shuffle, we made our way around the park and watched all the lazy birds hanging out, chilling by the banks of the lagoon.

A guy came running by, whizzing by, couldn’t believe how fast he was running in this thick air and it reminded me of having run a marathon, triathlons, and other uber sports I used to do – now, forgetaboutit. One hour of spinning is enough for me. Where is the girl who thrived on pushing her body to run a marathon, to ride for four hours in the hot sun, to swim in open water with a hundred people trying to climb over me?

Not here.

I wrote out some parameters yesterday for how to proceed – that includes dealing with my mother, breathing through work stress, working towards physical harmony, preparing myself to adopt a child, and learning how to love, again.

The reason I say all this is because the first reaction or action to any of the above is based on 50 years of hard wiring, but the more thoughtful reaction or action could use some tweaking. So I’m learning how to bend, not break, so that my own participation in my own life yields preferred and desired results.

June 23, 2009
Taurus (4/20-5/20)
Learn to be yielding, and that way, you’ll exercise your strength. It sounds contradictory, but it’s not. Many ancient cultures consider water the strongest substance on earth because it acts with gentle persistence rather than brute strength, and in that way manages to shape its circumstances without destroying what lies in its path: learn a lesson from that and apply it to your own life.

NYT: QUOTATION OF THE DAY

“I like what I do. I don’t deny it.”
ROSALIO RETA, in a videotaped confession to committing murders for a drug cartel.