I’ll be marching, will you?

Good Evening, Fellow Bloggers!

It is Tuesday evening, and I'd like to share what I've been up to these past three days. I hunted down everything I would need to make 30 placards for marchers to carry this Saturday in Washington for the March To End The War On Iraq. This is a huge undertaking, but I think I've discovered the algorithm.

Having said that, the statements have been inputted and the center lines established. There are two sizes of stencil lettering and the first two placards have been pencilled out. As you may know, the most time-consuming part of such a project is the layout. I think I've got that part figured out. Now it is simply a matter of getting 15 done tomorrow and 15 done Thursday.

Did I mention that this is going to be my first march?

We'll make the eight-hour drive to a Metro-accessible hotel in Alexandria, VA, from our home in the boonies. Doesn't this seem like a huge effort? It is, but I seriously see our Democracy under siege. That is a serious and somewhat frightening charge, especially for one who has watched this Democracy amble along year after year, president after president, election after election.

It is different now. In the past four years, there seems to be an evil pall that has descended on our country. It started with the slick Republican convention. The abundance of balloons; indeed, the abundance of everything. Then the sense of fore-boding as the newly crowned administration climbed the steps of the White House, attache cases in hand, ready to begin business. They seemed so anxious, so determined, so single-minded.

We the people, and the opposing party, seemed not to know what hit.

Looking back, one can see the carefully crafted plan that had been in place for years before the final bloodless coup. And a bloodless coup is exactly what took place. From rigged elections to redistricting, the evil-doers were successful. The pseudo-Republican Party wasted no time. The first order of business was to get the wealth returned to the wealthy. Clinton had foolishly attempted to "take from the rich and give to the poor." A Robin Hood theory is fine for a good fiction tale, but wealthy Americans were not amused. Hence, Clinton had to be neutralized. His behavior while in the White House expedited matters.

And so, folks, we find ourselves in a mess. The coffers are empty, we invaded a sovereign country for its oil, the environment is screaming for help, our institutions are threatened, and there is no appreciative government in place. America is a rudderless ship. It will take decades to recover from this coup.

Ophelia vs Katrina: Dealing with Hurricanes in White America vs Black America

First, let me give you an idea of where we live: in a modest home that is set like a diamond in an extraordinary setting. Our house is situated on a canal that ultimately leads out to the ocean; across the canal is a natural, undeveloped wooded area. To protect from floods, our local building codes insist that the home itself be built up on footings to ensure it is 12’ above sea level. After one of the hurricanes, we had a pump installed under the house to eject flood water and speed drying, which helps reduce moisture and mustiness inside the house. The way the home and its foundation are laid out, and the way the landscape is graded, you can’t tell that the house is on “stilts” at all. We have a 23’ cabin cruiser (which we bought used) that sits on a boat lift off the dock that extends from our back yard. When the canal is deep enough and not overly polluted, the area teems and hums with wildlife, making a delightful cacophony of bird songs, insect chirps, unidentifiable screeches, and throaty belches. Normally, it is an idyllic setting; sometimes, it is downright inebriating. You could easily spend hours just taking it all in with a good pair of binoculars. I know -- I’ve done it.

Having lived here for some 18 years, we’ve had more than a little experience with hurricanes. 99% of the time, our lights go out and our local authorities turn off the water (I think because the keeping the water in the water tower keeps the tower from being blown over by the storm). While all hurricanes suck, hurricane F**k -- oops, I mean “Floyd” -- stands out in my mind as having caused us the most damage. In each case, we’ve been lucky: water has never flooded into our living quarters, and we’ve always been able to have the damage repaired. Usually, this means re-shingling affected patches of roof and replacing dozens of bags of washed-away mulch; Floyd, however, flooded our garage and totaled the car and the drywall. One time, we also had to repair the dock, the boat, and the boat lift. Ouch -- expensive. We have insurance with one of the major carriers. It helps, but they’ve nonetheless managed to figure out how not to pay for everything, so they’ve stuck us with some hefty bills along the line. I hate to think what it would have been like had we ever had to deal with major hurricane damage. I can’t imagine what it must be like for those whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

While the nation was still dealing with the fallout from hurricane Katrina (meaning, of course, that George W. Bush was grinning and partying before he got down to the serious business of lining up fat, taxpayer-funded hand-outs to Halliburton and his other corporate cronies), we found ourselves all too soon trying to prepare for hurricane Ophelia. On the e-mail, I joked to my daughter to look for me on the news in case I ended up on the roof of our home trying to flag down a rescue boat. Humor is the only way I can deflect the dread of hurricane season: I guess I feel particularly vulnerable because, even though I taught my daughters how to swim, I can’t swim myself. Kinda ironic that I ended up living at the water’s edge with a power boat in my backyard ….

As usual, we make our usual preparations: drinking water, batteries for the radio, the whole bit. Ophelia hits. The 23-ft cabin cruiser is on the boat lift, so there is no worry this time. The storm surge has peaked -- no more new water flooding into the canal. The water comes mid-way up the mailbox post and up to the first brick step to the front door. Streets normally distinguishable by winding asphalt roads and rolling green lawns are now obliterated by waves of water gently lapping to the whims of the breezes. If I looked out the windows without knowing any better, I’d think I was on a houseboat. Although I feel safer knowing that the storm surge has peaked, the houseboat sensation is always an uneasy cross between serene and almost intolerably unnerving.

The pump under the house isn’t working, leaving between 4 and 6 inches of water down there. Will have to call the plumber to have that attended.

Had the option to evacuate. Chose not to. Instead, moved the hybrid car to higher ground and hoofed back. The neighborhood is being patrolled regularly, as expected. A neighbor slipped as she was retrieving her mail. An emergency vehicle arrived shortly afterwards. Nice, clean, neat, orderly, sterile. No worries. We let of a sigh of relief -- we got off easy this time. After all, even the lights didn’t go out.

What I just described took place in my neighborhood after hurricane Ophelia. This is probably what it was like for some people in New Orleans. But, not all. Why? Could it be the color of our skin? Is skin color what we are measured by? Looks like there is still great discrepancy in this country, folks. Don’t want to alarm anybody. After all, this is the 21st century. Right?

Could John Edwards have been right all along? Are there two Americas? Hey, wake up, people! There ARE two Americas! The one I am fortunate enough to live in; the other no better than a third-world country.

From Time Magazine: Saving America's Soul Kitchen

This is an essay that was printed in Time Magazine shortly after hurricane Katrina; it’s available online at the link to the left of the title of this post. I’m posting it in its entirety on my blog without permission because it is too good not to share with as many readers as possible. Please use the link and bump up Time Magazine’s hit counter on this one ….

(Here's the URL just in case: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1103569-1,00.html)

Saving America's Soul Kitchen
How to bring this country together? Listen to the message of New Orleans
By WYNTON MARSALIS

Posted Sunday, Sep. 11, 2005

Now the levee breach has been fixed. The people have been evacuated. Army Corps of Engineers magicians will pump the city dry, and the slow (but quicker than we think) job of rebuilding will begin. Then there will be no 24-hour news coverage. The spin doctors' narrative will create a wall of illusion thicker than the new levees. The job of turning our national disaster into sound-bite-size commercials with somber string music will be left to TV. The story will be sanitized as our nation's politicians congratulate themselves on a job well done. Americans of all stripes will demonstrate saintly concern for one another. It's what we do in a crisis.

This tragedy, however, should make us take an account of ourselves. We should not allow the mythic significance of this moment to pass without proper consideration. Let us assess the size of this cataclysm in cultural terms, not in dollars and cents or politics. Americans are far less successful at doing that because we have never understood how our core beliefs are manifest in culture--and how culture should guide political and economic realities. That's what the city of New Orleans can now teach the nation again as we are all forced by circumstance to literally come closer to one another. I say teach us again, because New Orleans is a true American melting pot: the soul of America. A place freer than the rest of the country, where elegance met an indefinable wildness to encourage the flowering of creative intelligence. Whites, Creoles, and Negroes were strained, steamed, and stewed in a thick, sticky, below-sea-level bowl of musky gumbo. These people produced an original cuisine, an original architecture, vibrant communal ceremonies, and an original art form: jazz.

Their music exploded irrepressibly from the forced integration of these castes to sweep the world as the definitive American art form. New Orleans, the Crescent City, the Big Easy--home of Mardi Gras, the second-line parade, the po' boy sandwich, the shotgun house--is so many people's favorite city. But not favorite enough to embrace the integrated superiority of its culture as a national objective. Not favorite enough to digest the gift of supersized soul internationally embodied by the great Louis Armstrong. Over time, New Orleans became known as the national center for frat-party-type decadence and (yeah, boy) great food. The genuine greatness of Armstrong is reduced to his good nature; his artistic triumphs are unknown to all but a handful. So it's time to consider, as we rebuild this great American city, exactly what this bayou metropolis symbolizes for the U.S.

New Orleans has a habit of tweaking the national consciousness at pivotal times. The last foreign invasion on U.S. soil was repelled in the Crescent City in 1815. The Union had an important early victory over the South with the capture of the Big Easy in 1862. Homer Plessy, a black New Orleanian, fought for racial equality in 1896, although it took our Supreme Court 58 years to agree with him and, with Brown v. Board of Education, to declare segregation unequal. Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formally organized in New Orleans in 1957. The problem is that we, all us Americans, have a tendency to rise in that moment of need, but when that moment passes, we fall back again.

The images of a ruined city make it clear that we need to rebuild New Orleans. The images of people stranded, in shock, indicate that we need to rebuild a community. The images of all sorts of Americans aiding these victims speak of the size of our hearts. But this time we need to look a little deeper. Let's use the resurrection of the city to reacquaint the country with the gift of New Orleans: a multicultural community invigorated by the arts. Forget about tolerance. What about embracing? This tragedy implores us to re-examine the soul of America. Our democracy from its very beginnings has been challenged by the shackles of slavery. The parade of black folks across our TV screens asking, as if ghosts, "Have you seen my father, mother, sister, brother?" reconnects us all to the still unfulfilled goals of the Reconstruction era. We always back away from fixing our nation's racial problems. Not fixing the city's levees before Katrina struck will now cost us untold billions. Not resolving the nation's issues of race and class has and will cost us so much more.

Marsalis, the jazz trumpeter and artistic director of New York City's Jazz at Lincoln Center, was born and raised in New Orleans.