Dangermond.org

Maybe 52 is a good age to get rid of everything. Five to six contractor bags of clothes gone, five to six contractor bags of purses, scarves, belts, sweaters, and shoes gone. Medicine from years ago trashed. A baseball glove from the brother of my first husband that I must have been carrying around for what – 27 years? – are you kidding me? We have been going through this house and purging, purging and purging. We are about to allow people into our house and everyone cautions us that what if they take something? Really? If they need to steal from us, they need it more than we do.

We are lightening our load, and let me tell you it feels so good that I could spit!

Last night a good friend was having a throw down birthday party and the neighborhood was having its annual event at the Pitot House (Voodoo on the Bayou) and we could not find a babysitter to save our life because every teenager in this city has a Halloween commitment or is at Voodoo Fest, so we opted for the friend’s party that started early and to bring Tin.

Well whatyougonnado? When I tell you that my friends had put up a stage, got a DJ spinning records near and dear to my heart, and had food, people, and ambience galore, and I was chomping at the bit to be out there dancing free, but instead was entertaining Tin in the camper, in the drum room, in all the places I didn’t want to be but I took solace in this glaring fact – I have in my 52 years danced, I have partied, I have mingled, I have had cocktails, I have had party food, and now I have a toddler.

It is what it is, and we are loving where we are even if we have the these moments where we want to let our hair down and be carefree.

My neighbor who is having an elementary school reunion (think about that) put up his annual fall decoration on the bayou.

The autumn sunrises on the bayou are almost as amazing as the summer sunrises.

The lone recession pumpkin got carved for Halloween.

Everyone is overwhelmed, well at least in New Orleans they are because no one can really understand what it is like when the “season starts” like it has in this city, there are overlapping galas, overlapping events, overlapping engagements and I’m telling you all this as Voodoo Music Experience has gotten ramped up and sounds like they are broadcasting from my backyard. Whoa, whatyagonnado?

So today when I was bulleting the things in my life in order:

1) leaving old job and finishing up work there

2) starting new company and working with first client

3) overseeing first gala for Re-Bridge, my community work

4) calling silent auction donors for Waldorf, Tin’s school’s gala

5) fielding inquiries on the renting the LaLa

6) prepping the house to move to the back for renting the LaLa

7) and raising a 2.5 year old

Someone said to me there is a Russian saying that goes like this, there was a woman who was doing just fine, then she bought a pig… .

I was walking the spice aisle of Rouse’s looking for asafetida and couldn’t find it, go figure, then the clerk putting up the pickle relish asked me what I was looking for and I mumbled, “just an Indian spice but I don’t see it,” – what’s it called? he asked and so I said, Asafetida and his eyes got real big and he said, “Hasta la vista to you too, lady.”

We belly laughed for a good five minutes.

All of us have blistered lips from Tin’s hand, foot and mouth disease – who said it was only for children?

Nobody.

I was plugged into my computer for nearly the whole day, working on the past and working on the future and not spending a lot of time in the present. So at 6PM I ran downstairs, showered and got the whole family rallied to go hear Gal Holiday at the Ogden After Hours and it turned out to be a lot of fun. We saw friends, we listened to music, and afterwards we stopped at Meaux Bar where some of our friends had never even met Tin so it was a big delight for everyone to see how grown up he is and how the whole family looks together.

When I told Tin that we were going to move to the back of the house at times, so that we could go to the beach, he sang out, “We are family!” Already he knows how to rally.

The history of Blacks and Jews goes back a long, long way and actually only in modern times did the cultures clash. So it with ignorance that this woman has posted this YouTube video saying that all Zionist Jews that run the Federal Reserve should be run out of this country. Someone needs to sit her down and give her a history lesson or help her with diversity training like substitute Jew for black and have someone say, “I think all blacks should be run out of this country.” Here she is after getting fired because she says Jews and Communist are the same word (my partner will love this one).

Andy Warhol said everyone would have their 15 minutes and Patricia MacCallister is having hers. If you read the comments below each of her video you will probably realize that she is not the only ignorant person in this country. “Jews have been run out of 109 countries and we need to run them out of this one.”

Bless their heart and thank god she is not teaching my child.

A friend writes to me today that she is concerned about the strong anti-Semitic tone the Occupy Wall Street conversation is taking. And I for one say, when in doubt, blame the Jews. In the world of WWJD, it would be rape and pillage right? I am not talking about that Jew now am I? No I meant What Would Jews Do? So there is some report issued in 1999 that said 50% of Wall Street is controlled by Jews; which falls in the same line as Hollywood is controlled by Jews, and since we’re grouping all of my peeps together, I bet you there are a lot of other industries you might want to blame the Jews on – music? Well you could blame blacks and Jews for music good and bad, literature, again, Jewish publishers, authors, poets, but in modern times a lot of blacks and Indians. How about art? Do you think there is a preponderance of Jewish artists?

The only thing you truly cannot blame on the Jews is your sports team’s score because really have you ever seen the list of Jewish athletes – it’s too spare to even repost.

Now back to Occupy Wall Street, as someone who has worked in the industry for 16 years I could say with reasonable assurance that I have encountered a majority of non-Jews in the financial industry. And I’ve noticed the same avarice in a the eyes of a young shiksa as I have in a boy who wear kipas.

I questioned the source of the anti-semtimism that is brewing around Occupy Wall Street and sure enough, Fox News came front and center as perhaps stirring the pot on this discussion, that even now seems so five minutes ago.

Occupy Wall Street is part of the CEO and Corporate Spring that Marc Benioff announced at Dreamforce in San Francisco – he’s a Jew, he’s corporate, and he says it’s about time. So please, if you want to know what is at the heart of corporate greed it is a lack of compassion and Jews don’t have a monopoly on lack of compassion. And it is hard to teach compassion to a hungry child, to a woman who is the victim of domestic abuse, to a young black man who can’t find a good job and to all of the youths out there protesting that we sold their tomorrows.

So if you think blaming the Jews is a thoughtful response to what you are seeing on TV, I venture to believe you belong to the 1%.

Today and yesterday and the day before have been those kinds of crazy lunatic days where so much is happening that when I get in bed my mind’s eye feels like an iPhone going frame to frame with a slush. Seriously, I need a break.

The good news is that I’m working on all the things I love but the bad news is that my loving cup runneth over.

I ordered an iPhone to ensure that I can get my unlimited data grandfathered after I give up the enterprise software, but getting it up and running proved to be challenging to Apple, HostMonster, and Verizon, until the final call, the fourth call, to HostMonster yielded an Android using man who knew it all. He not only fixed my phone, he fixed my computer – go figure! And he did what hours with others couldn’t do.

I got the 64 gig iPhone 4S but let me tell you this is a weighty phone, I mean heavy. I haven’t gotten to the cool factor because I was so busy making sure my email accounts would run through it that I didn’t have time to play with it.

The truth is that I’m busy as a bee but I’ve never been happier. I feel like the weight of the world that I was carrying around for the past several years as I was waiting and waiting and waiting to see what was going to happen just went POOF. So despite the fact that I missed the gym because I was going from one thing to another, I was whistling while I worked, which I haven’t done in a long long time.

Yay.