In the comments following the previous post you might have noticed John-Ward Leighton's comment, and our subsequent discussion of his recent posts. In case you didn't, I wanted to point out that today he posted a wonderful original poem with a focus on New Orleans, as well as his previous post about a special report by Carl Wilkinson from Sunday's Guardian entitled "Crawling from the Wreckage". Its subtitle reads: "A year after Hurricane Katrina, half the population has yet to return to New Orleans. But in the mouldering decay, musicians are still trying to keep the city's cultural heart beating." The multi-media article includes an Audio Slideshow.
The author visited the city for Satchmo Summerfest and the article features a number of New Orleanians, including clarinetist and scholar, Dr. Michael White, interviewed in his flooded Gentilly home. Without glossing over the overwhelming losses, there is an underlying tone of hope and optimism, and Wilkinson writes:
Following the storm it would be hard to say that music is in rude health, even in its rawest form, but look hard enough and the spirit of what everyone here calls 'the real New Orleans' is still intact. 'I defy you to spend a day in this city without hearing live music,' says Ben Jaffe, whose parents founded the French Quarter jazz venue Preservation Hall in 1961. He now plays bass with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. 'You can't walk down the street without hearing live music.' He's right. Even with 50 per cent of the population absent, much of the city a ghost town where even the 24-hour diners close at lunchtime because they've run out of food or staff and neighbourhoods are mouldering and decaying, music is everywhere, be it hip hop, bounce, brass bands or traditional jazz.
It's long, but well worth the time. Thanks so much for the heads up, JWL! That one was a real jewel!
For those of you (naughty girls) who have been recently coming here looking for handsome young men pics, I apologize for disappointing you with this post. Do not despair, for there are plenty down below. You may not have noticed, because you have to scroll really far down the gutter, but I've added Flickr (finally). I hesitated to put pictures of my boys online, but realized how silly that was, given that they each have pages in both MySpace and FaceBook that are a whole lot more incriminating than anything I'm going to have here (or so I would assume). All of the usual suspects are featured, including lots of cute boys!
Finally, a word about work. Here at the KnockingShitDownCo, that's what we mainly do: knock shit down. That's kind of interesting, but every now and again we get to do something really cool, and a couple of weeks ago, for the first time, rather than knock something down, we blew it up. I, being impatient by nature (well, not really, but in some things), after not being able to figure out how to post the YouTube version of our imploding the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport FAA Tower (okay, we subbed it out, but still...) here in Blog-City, I posted it over at the other DotCalm (on Blogger).
It seems I have gotten away with posting from work. Cool. Thanks again, JWL. Great find.
Peace, out, ya'll.
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