They have low contributor levels ($1 and $5 backers get updates and swag!) and every little bit will help — maybe they’ll even be able to provide lunch to their crew on shooting days. Even if you can’t contribute, you’ll help them out enormously if you watch Season 1, talk about it and share the Kickstarter page with your friends. There’s also a Kickstarter Campaign Wrap Party this Sunday, at Banks St. Bar (4401 Banks Street), from 7 to 9. The suggested $5 donation gets you a screening of Season 1, music from ROARSHARK and some improv.

It should be noted that Least Favorite Love Songs has some strong adult themes, is very funny and includes partial nudity. Season 2 is likely to be funnier and perhaps even nuder. Nudier? How do you express that there may be more nudity? Well, how about you check out the short, funny, almost nude video for the campaign?

Congratulations to King Elect Garren Mims

BigShot Elect–Kreig Perkins
WitchDoctor Elect–Derek Rabb
AmbassadorElect-Joseph Aldor
MayorElect–Lawrence Westley
ProvincePrince–Melvin Labat
GovernorElect–Eric LaRose
BigStuffElect–Kevin McKnight

May you all have a wonderful reign!

First, it brought Sun and I even closer together sharing the project of checking to see if books have come into or gone out of the LFL and working to replenish our stock. We’ve spent hours together walking the neighborhood handing out flyers. She’s been asking when we’ll be doing that again. I think we’ll be sending out a summer newsletter just as an excuse to do it again soon!

Second, it brought me closer to my neighbors. I’ve yet to hear anything negative about the project. Turns out, folks like free things and appreciate the sense of caring that a steward emits by the very act of stewarding. Even wizened neighbors I’d have thought would have scratched their heads at us young hippies have embraced us and our library. I’ve met neighbors that have lived doors down from me for over a decade that I never knew. It’s that nice feeling we New Orleanians get after a storm passes and we are all sitting on our porches with no electricity to pull us indoors. Humans connecting over a common bond. In this case, that common bond is books. The Marthas and Wendys and Dollys that you meet every other summer after a particularly bad storm. Except now we meet weekly, if not more often. We get thank you notes left in the LFL. My favorite was written by a young boy thanking us for the Star Wars book.  We also get notes of encouragement to keep up the good work. I keep every note. And we get offers of donations. Oh, the donations! I need an extra room for all the books we’ve amassed in under six months!

Third, I am a reading machine now. The quality (and quantity) of books being donated to this LFL is nothing short of astounding. Here’s a link to my Librarything account showing the LFL tag I’ve created for the books I’d not have read but for my LFL. And that’s just of the books I’ve read so far. I have just as many in my to-read pile.

Our LFL has its own Facebook page, its own bookcrossing account, a personalized embossed seal to mark the books, and, most importantly, its own heart. When I was away from home for a week, a neighbor did the stewarding for us. Because truly, it’s hers too. It belongs to this neighborhood. And we all know it. We are proud of this little box–what it means to ourselves, our children, our community. And we are grateful for the wonder it has renewed in us that we didn’t know we could so easily attain.

Although this movie wasn’t filmed here or set here, New Orleans is mentioned in Sally Tomato’s weather report which is good enough to qualify it for my loosely based Happy #NOLA Friday feature. This party could most definitely have been in New Orleans just last night – we do love to costume and drink, don’t we? This is  one of my favorite scenes in a movie, ever, and  if it doesn’t make you laugh, well, “I’m gonna march you over to the zoo and feed you to the yak!” (Or did she say “Yat”? hmmmmm)

Happy #NOLA Friday!

Benefit at Tipitina’s uptown featuring Donald Harrison, Jr. & The Congo Square Nation, Hot 8 Brass Band, Bonerama, Stooges Brass Band, and More!

100% of Proceeds to Benefit the Victims of the May 12th Shooting.

The mission of The 19 Fund is to help victims of violent crime heal physically, financially and emotionally.
Co-Sponsored by Tipitina’s Foundation, United Way and Silence is Violence

Leah Chase & Charlotte at Dooky Chase ~ Photo by Anita Mital

Last Holy Thursday I met up with a great group of friends (and met some new ones! ) at Dooky Chase for some delicious fried chicken and the traditional Gumbo Z’Herbs. It was a great time and the powdered sugar on the beignet was meeting Ms Leah, something I’d always wanted to do. What a gracious lady she is and one of New Orleans irreplaceable treasures!

Twelve various and sundry flags have flown over our beautiful city for a variety of reasons including governmental and social. The last two weeks have added yet another, prayer flags welcoming His Holiness The Dalai Lama to New Orleans May 16-18.

Public talks by His Holiness have long been sold out but you can still enjoy the Tibetan culture by visiting the Tibetan Bazaar at the Morial Convention Center through Friday. The bazaar will feature a closing procession of the sand mandala that is currently being assembled by the Drepung Loseling Monks.

You may also listen to the Dalai Lama’s public talks listed below via live stream here.

• Friday, May 17, 1:30pm – 4:00pm
  Strength Through Compassion
• Saturday, May 18, 1:00pm – 4:00pm
  Strength Through Connection

Community viewing locations include the following:

• Zeitgeist Theatre
  1618 Oretha Castle Haley
• New Orleans Healing Center
  2372 St Claud Ave
• Swan River Yoga
  2940 Canal St
• Wild Lotus Yoga
  4842 Perrier St
• Silk Road Collections
  2109 Magazine St

Friday Talk Only:

• Ashe Cultural Arts Center
  1712 Oretha Castle Haley

The above photos courtesy of Christopher Lorenzen.
For more photos of local homes flying Prayer Flags, visit The New Orleans Healing Center’s FaceBook Page.

The fundraising for Jeremy’s family was held only a few blocks from my home, sponsored by members of the community and by Young Men of Olympia Social & Pleasure Club, who had sponsored the parade on the day that the boy was caught in the crossfire. The city was in an uproar over this latest victim of gun violence here, and the finger-pointing at the parade as a cause of the violence was happening in too much earnest. Casting blame on the second-line was far too easy to do at the time, but the bands were out in force, and people were driving by the Goodwork Network to give funding to the Galmon family and to deliver the message that second-lining was not a cause, but strove to be a solution in a number of ways. It was there that I met Deborah Cotton for the first time, working right alongside the organizers, enjoying the Baby Boyz Brass Band, the Roots of Music in one of its earliest incarnations, and assisting with style and grace.

I knew the name from her book Notes From New Orleans, which was one of the first post-8/29/2005 chronicles I’d read – I feel to this day that it is still unjustly overlooked as a smart, occasionally sassy, and heartfelt window into that time. I then found that she was contributing to Nola.com under the name Big Red Cotton via a blog there entitled Notes On New Orleans (I wonder where that title came from?), where her amazing voice and perspective jumped off the web browser and stood out among all that hot mess. She’d made it a point to immerse herself in the second line culture and invited me out to do so sometime.

I’ll tell everyone a secret: for quite a while, I wanted to write like Deb. Her frankness about how many people were on some sort of antidepressant to deal with the aftermath of the levee breaches helped make me bolder about admitting that I was on them and will most likely be on them for the rest of my life. There’s one post of mine that’s directly inspired by her examples: a multimedia account of a visit to another fundraiser, the Dinerral Shavers Educational Fund, filled with brass bands, love, laughter, and even some “Halftime,” anticipating the Saints’ Super Bowl win later that same month. I was happy to see her posting at the Gambit’s Blog of New Orleans, and touted her extensive online archive of second line YouTubes when I could.

Life gets crazy, and 2010 flew by, then 2011, 2012. I saw Deb again at a Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities program, then at Rising Tide 6, but I wasn’t able to take advantage of that opportunity to dance with her as she took in another of the second lines she so loved. Once I heard she was among the 19 shot by someone lying in wait for the procession to come by this past Sunday, my heart was in my throat. She’d worked so hard for so many years to show that this was a welcoming part of New Orleans culture, and one kid with a gun had struck that down, taking her with it…

She and a few others are still recovering from their injuries. The suspect(s) in the shooting is(are) still at large. And, for whatever reason, I find myself thinking about James.

James is no one specific. In Notes From New Orleans, Deb wrote about wanting a James to come along, and referred to him in one of her most recent tweets. James isn’t someone who can come and take her away from it all completely, but he can certainly make it all bearable for quite a while. James will know just what makes Deb tick, and will respond to her in all the right ways when she’s low, bringing her out of whatever doldrums she’s in. James is a supportive, seductive dream of a black man who hasn’t arrived in her life…but I wonder…

New Orleans may not have been perfect, and it may have lashed out at her, but it has sustained her all these years. She’s believed in it for so long, worked so hard for it, that I couldn’t help but think that one of the greatest tributes to her toils was Ronal Serpas making the point that the second line was not to blame for the shootings – and most everyone agreeing with that assessment. Jeffrey the yaller blogger is correct in saying “no one has done more to cover and celebrate this generation of NOLA street culture.” Deb treated it so well that if it were a person, I’m sure it would be a James.

It’s now time for us all to do what a James would do – support Deb and those others hurt in the shootings.

The Gambit is working with the Tipitina’s Foundation on a fundraiser for them all. Go here and stay alert for further details.

Deb kick-started New Orleans Good Good shortly before Sunday’s parade. Sign up for updates on her condition and details on fundraising. It would also be great, if you are in a position to do so, to sponsor some advertising on the site and keep her work going.

A blood drive effort for shooting victims is being scheduled for May 22, from 2-7 PM. At least 25 donors are needed for the blood drive. Contact meglousteau@gmail.com for further details and to volunteer.

Liprap

Cross-posted at Humid City

March On City Hall, January 2007

It appears no day – not even Mother’s Day – is exempt from the senseless violent crime that continues to plague our city.  Sunday afternoon shots were fired into the crowd at the annual Mother’s Day Second Line in the Seventh Ward leaving 19 people, including two 10 year olds, wounded and bleeding. It’s been 6 years, 4 months and 1 day since the March on City Hall on January 11, 2007 which was spawned by the outrage over the murders of Helen Hill and Dinneral Shavers and here we are, still mired in violent crime all these years later. We have a different mayor, a different city council and a different police chief but nothing has changed in the lives of New Orleanians where gun violence is concerned.

Fortunately, as of now, there were no fatalities in this incident but there easily could have been multiple deaths. So far in 2013 there have been 60 deaths by murder in our city. In a city where murders and shootings are a weekly occurrence I’m afraid we’ve  become desensitized to the horror. Where is our outrage today?