10/05/2015

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.
09/05/2015

Strangely enough, tis a quandary, Gentle Reader(s). The situation is quandrous. Your Humble Narrator is quandrified. I am in a state of quandrification. Why, wherefore, and of which? you might well ask. Well you might. As previously established (see the March 5 posting on this page), YHN is a fan of the Great American Game of Baseball. The team to which my allegiance has been allegied for lo these many years is the Cubs of Chicago. One of the great institutions of this nation, the Cubs are the oldest active American sporting club, established in 1874 and having remained firmly rooted in their namesake town for the entire duration. They are also a storied hard-luck crew. They last appeared in the World Series in 1945 and have not been World Series champions since 1908. That's 107 years of woulda/coulda/shoulda tough breaks, bizarre incidents, self-induced collapses, purported curses and just plain rotten luck.
08/30/2015

Gentle Readers,   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.
08/29/2015

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.
08/28/2015

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.
08/19/2015

La Ciudad Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Assis is not a town that suffers from any lack of fascinating, unusual and talented people. Over the course of the past 180 years or so (give or take a decade) New Mexico at large has earned an enduring reputation as a mecca for creative types and eccentrics of all sorts. The list of painters, sculptors, printmakers, photographers, musicians, artists of the folk, dancers, writers and nut jobs that have called the place home over the years presents an impressive roster indeed. Starting with the likes of John Mix Stanley (circa 1840s) to the Meow Wolf collective (circa present and future), the artists have come to this place, drawn by whatever unique combination of physical, metaphysical and ineffable intangibles are manifest in this place, variations upon which have drawn people to places such as this place for as long as people have been drawn to such places as this. Or words to that effect...
08/06/2015

Ah, Gentle Reader(s), I am returned from an enjoyable and productive visitation to my benighted home town—the Snafu by the Bayou, the Migraine by Lake Ponchartrain, the Muddle on the Big Muddy—New Orleans of Louisiana. The forecast temperatures for this excursion were intimidating—in the mid-90s for the most part—but the humidity was relatively moderate so that life outside of the air conditioned unreality was rather less unbearable than might otherwise have been the case. A bicycle has been recently added to the inventory of the New Orleans digs and it got well used each and every day. I have not had a bicycle at my disposal  in New Orleans since I departed the city with extreme prejudice back in 1979 so it has somewhat revelatory to return to the two wheels. It remains my considered opinion that a) the bicycle is the finest mode of transport ever to be invented (the train being in second place), and b) there is no better way in which to get to know a place than from aboard a bicycle.
07/11/2015

Signs and Wonders, Gentle Reader(s), Signs and Wonders. We live in extraordinary times. Things are happening. Lots of things. The measure of these many things will require significant passage of time in order for the fullness of their significance to become apparent, but some of these things have an immediate effect. Two such things came in the form of rulings handed down by the Supreme Court of this land a couple of weeks ago: A stunning rebuff to the challenges to our president’s health care initiative and an epochal endorsement of the legality of same sex marriage. The former ends a challenge that has been brewing for only a few years but the latter is a landmark decision that has been generations in the making. Despite these setbacks to the regressive/repressive/conservative agenda no one should delude themselves by thinking that the forces of darkness will quietly fold their tents, take down their evil banners and fade back into the gloom from whence they arose. Quite the contrary. Many amongst the defeated will take these reversals of fortune as incentive to redouble their efforts to impose their fearful morality upon the lives of others (and no, I’m not talking about ISIS). Some may decide that the time to resort to more extreme measures is nigh. Celebrate, indeed, but the old adage remains as true as ever: One of the costs of liberty is eternal vigilance.
05/30/2015

That guy in the photograph above—his name is Dave—is someone who I have never met but I spent a portion of my day with him, five nights a week, for about thirty years. He's older than me me by a good bit but in a way we sorta growed up together. It's interesting how much you can come to feel that you know someone that you've never actually met. It seems likely that this notion—a popular one—is a complete fantasy, for how often does one find out that one doesn't even really know the people that one has met, like the people one is related to or romantically involved with? On the other hand, I have long been intrigued with the notion that perhaps one can, in fact, get a more accurate impression of a person through their work than you might be able to obtain through direct contact. Perhaps the public expression of the private person can offer the more precise insight into the nature of the individual than we might expect. Is it possible that listening to the music of John Lennon or studying the paintings of Mark Rothko or reading the works of Thomas Bernhard might give us a more accurate portrait of who they really were than one would be able to get if one actually met the person and their personality got in the way? Or is the opposite more likely to be true? I mean, in the end, who the hell really knows anybody?? Tis an conundrum, Gentle Reader(s), an conundrum indeed.
05/21/2015

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.