Not surprisingly, the arc of media fascination with New Orleans and all things Katrina-related has surged, peaked and quickly faded. The storm made landfall on the Gulf Coast on the 29th of August, 2005, conveniently providing the entire month for build-up to the tenth anniversary of the cataclysm. Media outlets around the country and around the world weighed in with reportage, retrospectives, editorials, polls, photo essays and then/now updates to assess the near-death experience of one of the world's great cities and a decade's worth of efforts to rebuild, renew and protect the City That Forgot to Care. The conclusions to be drawn present a decidedly mixed bag.

Gentle Reader(s),   I am back in my customary spot on Magazine Street in the Rue de la Course coffeehouse, amongst the tattooed, the pierced, the dreadlocked, and the tragically hip. I feel right at home. THESE are my people. I shall never sleep again. I shall never move from this spot. [Much to YHN's dismay, the Rue de la Course closed down for renovations a few years later and never reopened on Magazine Street. Their new location is Uptown at Carrollton and Oak but I haven't been in yet.]   So, after my report yesterday I hooked up with the folks back on St. Charles and went out to a classical music recital at Tulane. It was the first post-Difficulties event presented by the Friends of Music, postponed from the original starting date of the series in October of last year. The Enemies of Music are having a thing tonight but I'm going out to dinner with the Commodore instead—those EoM events tend to be a bit confrontational. The Acquaintances of Music opened their season last week but I understand it was rather a lukewarm affair.

Coming to you from a coffee house on Magazine where all the young hipster/slacker/yuppie-types (plus the occasional old fart like myself) hang out and surf the internet on the free wifi. One thing I'll say for the City That Forgot to Care, it still has its share of fabulous babes. I see more attractive women in this place in any given hour than I do in Santa Fe in an entire week. But then I don't get out much. Makes me pine for the olde dump—this dump, that is—a bit.   Yesterday was the day that your intrepid reporter girded his loins, loaded his Polaroid SX-70, grabbed his brand new Casio digital, and set forth upon the Grand Tour. The expedition was led by the Commodore his own self with the invaluable aid and moral support of Brother Danny Dog. I had dinner with Brother D and Nona and the kids on Saturday night—the Commodore was supposed to be in attendance but was suffering from a severe case of alcohol poisoning from the exertions of the two previous evenings and was unable to muster much more than a groan down the beleaguered phone lines from Jefferson Parish. Down for the count.

Gentle Reader(s), as many (?) of you are certainly aware, this Saturday, August the 29th, marks the 10th anniversary of a very dark episode in the history of this country and of Your Humble Narrator's benighted hometown in particular. The events that led up to and followed the landfall of Hurricane Katrina have been examined and agonized over in excruciating detail ever since. What really did and did not happen; what could have, should have and did not happen to prepare the city for the calamity; who was to blame for the critical lapses that resulted in the loss of the lives of over 1,800 citizens; the nature of the victims and the varied nature of their victimhood—all of it remains in heated debate to this day. The same is also true of the recovery from this unprecedented disaster. How real is the recovery and who has benefitted from the billions of dollars of aid money that have poured into the city since 2005?   Debate aside, one real thing that I can offer to you is a firsthand account of the city and its environs reported during mid-January, 2006, when the situation in New Orleans appeared to have stabilized sufficiently to make visitation reasonably viable. Mayor Ray Nagin had given his (in)famous Chocolate City speech on MLK Day, just a few days prior to YHN's arrival. The Chocolate City Report was written over the course of a week in the form of three extended emails sent out to fellow native New Orleanians, Brother LowRent and Brother JB, living in far-flung locales. The Chocolate City Report is here offered in its three original installments with additional commentary and updates where deemed appropriate and/or necessary.

Gentle Reader(s), up until this point in the game InkyInkInc.com has been exclusively a one-man show. It's been both challenging and fulfilling to keep the ideas and the playlists flowing for the past year and a half, but I am more than thrilled to present to you InkyInkInc's first guest blogger—my friend and fellow Matador DJ (No Pants), Lily Jones.   PUNKER, TABLE OF ONE: One Girl’s Ramblings on an Evening of Dichotomies   ​Before last Thursday, my knowledge of Pussy Riot was limited. Neon dresses, balaclavas, and prison came to mind. Limited may be an overstatement. However, when I heard that Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (Nadya) and Maria Alyokhina (Masha) were going to be in my little niche in the desert, and a friend of mine wanted to fund my ticket to see them speak, I got educated. What struck me more than anything was their adoption of true intersectional feminism. Instead of confining their activism to Russian women or just women in general, they wanted to and were continuing to, fight for everyone.   ​These are the women who visited New York in December during the onslaught of police brutality towards the black population and responded with their first music video in English. “I Can’t Breathe” is a song that acts in memoriam of Eric Garner. Nadya and Masha wrote a song about the dual nature of the phrase “I Can’t Breathe” as both the literal statement and the metaphorical ideal of living within this climate of police brutality. The chorus repeats “It’s getting dark in New York City/I need to catch my breath” and concludes with Richard Hell repeating Garner’s plea to be left alone and allowed to breathe. Where others would see wage, color, and nationality gaps, Masha and Nadya see commonality. When these women say that you can be Pussy Riot, they are also extending a fist towards your oppressor. Through their influence in multiple spheres, including their NGO Zona Prava, their news service MediaZona, and their work to free imprisoned activists these women will fight with those who are greatly marginalized with a camaraderie that states your success is our victory as well.

In the movie, the murder takes place at the corner of Bush and Stockton and Miles Archer falls through a wooden railing and down a steep rocky slope after he is shot. The book specifies that the fatal shot was fired in Burritt Alley, just down the block from the intersection of Bush and Stockton. There is no longer a rocky slope for the body of a murdered private detective to tumble down—the terrain of Burritt Alley has changed in the 85 years since the book was published and an eight-story building housing a mini-mart, Taqueria Mana and the Boba Guys now stands between the alley and Stockton Street below. The southern end of the Stockton Street Tunnel, from where Sam Spade first observed the scene of his partner’s murder, is across the street from the alley. Dashiell Hammett Street is just to the west, between Pine and Bush. The book and the film are both The Maltese Falcon and the city is, of course, San Francisco.

This past Tuesday, April 7, was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Billie Holiday. In 1939 Lady Day recorded her epochal version of Abel Meeropol's Strange Fruit. Considered too controversial a topic by her producers at Columbia Records, Holiday ended up recording the song for the smaller Commodore label and it turned into a best seller despite a total lack of radio support. It became one of Holiday's signature songs and a staple of her repertoire for the remaining twenty years of her life.   Seventy-six years later there's strange fruit demanding our attention again, but this time it's not hanging from southern trees. It can be found lying on the streets of cities all across this country. Variations of the scenario have been repeated again and again from Oakland (Oscar Grant), to Staten Island (Eric Garner), to Ferguson, MO (Michael Brown), to Cleveland (Tamir Rice), to Sanford, FL (Trayvon Martin). And now, North Charleston, South Carolina.