I know I haven't blogged here in a while. Call it boredom, disenchantment, or just aloofness. It happens...not that I don't have respect for online friendships, no...more like I'm too busy trying to make a life offline that I do not have time to make one online. Been doing Harry Potter fan art for a year, that was fun; met a lot of people online and some offline I really am glad to have met if only briefly.

I live in a neighborhood of New Orleans now that I've come to love, and I'm seeing its residents being plagued with fear as I am. The fear of having a gun pointed to your face, the fear of losing your life to young punks who don't even know what they're doing with a loaded gun in their hand. We are victims of thugs, and yet this neighborhood has so much to offer. I am surrounded by friends I work with who are very good people, but we are constantly under fear of getting robbed or killed by some teen with a gun. I work 5 blocks away from my apartment, and I am a single female living alone there. I am constantly afraid of riding my bike home (an awesome Schwinn) every night because I get off at 11:00 pm five days a week. I try to get rides home from my coworkers and they are happy to do it, but what kind of life is this? High rent (about 60% of my monthly income), thugs running around all night killing people left and right around my neighborhood? Just last week a guy was shot in the head and dumped into a garbage bin 3 blocks from where I live. 2 days later 3 guys and 2 girls were shot 2 blocks away on the street. What kind of society is this? I am a hard working single female barely making ends meet and I have to deal with this fear every night I go home. 

I hope this hurricane season will be kind. There is so much to this community in New Orleans though. We are surrounded by musical and visual talents, we have good people living through it all and willing to help, we know our neighbors, which is a raity in the US. We have open minded people to make our lives a little happier, and best of all, we have awesome food :D (that was in jest but still true :)

One more thing about my life I feel like I should share. One of my friends was ordained junior priest at the local voodoo temple. He's going to bless my place and put a protection spell on me, a very complicated ordeal but you know what? I've seen what he can do and so far I can say IT WORKS.

Who knows who is going to read this. I have no internet connection right now so this is out of the blue.

Cheers and to the next time I decide to blog a little.

Brad Pitt Commissions Designs for New Orleans

Thom Mayne of Morphosis in Los Angeles designed a house that would float if the city floods. James Timberlake of KieranTimberlake Associates in Philadelphia created a house with native vines climbing up the side walls to provide shade and coolness. Steven B. Bingler of Concordia in New Orleans envisioned a house with wide front steps ideal for a traditional crawfish boil.

Those are three of the designs by 13 architecture firms commissioned by the actor Brad Pitt to help rebuild New Orleans’s impoverished Lower Ninth Ward, one of the neighborhoods hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The project, called Make It Right, calls for building 150 affordable, environmentally sound houses over the next two years. In a telephone interview from New Orleans, where he plans to present the designs today, Mr. Pitt said the residents of the neighborhood had been homeless long enough. “They’re coming up on their third Christmas,” he said.

Mr. Pitt said he had been attached to New Orleans for more than a decade. “I’ve always had a fondness for this place — it’s like no other,” he said. “Seeing the frustration firsthand made me want to return the kindness this city has shown me.”

Rather than bemoan the slow pace of redevelopment in the Ninth Ward, Mr. Pitt said he decided to address the problem directly by teaming with William McDonough, the green design expert; Graft, a Los Angeles architecture firm; and Cherokee, an investment firm based in Raleigh, N.C., that specializes in sustainable redevelopment. John Williams of New Orleans is the executive architect for the project.

“If you have this blank slate and this great technology out there, what better test than low-income housing?” Mr. Pitt said. “It’s got to work at all levels to really be viable.”

>>The rest of the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/arts/design/03pitt.html

And the Make It Right website: http://makeitrightnola.org/

Back in January we celebrated Burns Night with the Caledonian Society of New Orleans. Our friend Kathleen took this photo of our party. From left to right is, CuldeeDeacon, my beautiful wife Catherine, Semiomniscient and his lovely intended, Emily.

We've been back in New Orleans since October 14, 2005.  It's been nearly a year and we're still not home ... which is to say back in our Katrina ransacked home.  I'd like to say life is better ... to some extent it is, but not enough to soothe the ragged edges of our despair.  This blog is to help purge the disappointment and bitterness from my broken heart.

Six weeks ago, I moved back to the city locals call "Katrinaville".  I live in a neighborhood called "the Bywater", east of the Marigny/French Quarter area and I work uptown, by the riverbend.

With the hurricane season kicking into high gear and the first year anniversary of the tragedy of Katrina, I feel this is the right time to start the New Orleans blog again.  I will update this blog as often as I can, but our cable connection is sketchy ( Katrinaville is where nothing should be expected...), so please don't be offended if I suddenly disappear (which could happen if we have to evacuate this year).