Cutting Loose

As I wrote last week, I heard readings from her latest novel, The Cutting Season, by award winning author Attica Locke, and immediately bought the book and had it autographed. 

The book more than lived up to the promise of the excerpts the author read. The genre is that of a murder mystery, and I love murder mysteries, but the book reads more like a novel in which the mystery, while well written and satisfactorily solved, serves as a plot device to develop the characters and themes. 

The main character is a Louisiana woman, Caren Gray, the descendant of slaves who has come to work as the manager of a plantation where her ancestors worked both as slaves and as free paid workers. The plantation, Belle Vie, passed into the hands of the Clancy family after the Civil War and at the time the book opens, has been run as a historical site and venue for weddings and parties for two generations.

Caren herself grew up on the plantation because her mother worked there as a cook. We learn as the book develops why Caren left the plantation, why she argued with her mother and was estranged from her at her death, and why she came back to live and work as the plantations’s manager. Caren’s fractured relationship with her mother is one, in my eyes the main one, of several relationships at the heart of the book. 

First and most important are the personal relationships. In addition to Caren’s relationship with her late mother, revealed in flashbacks, there is Caren’s relationship with her own daughter, which, as we learn in the first scene with the two of them together, is beginning to experience some strain. Morgan wants to attend her father’s upcoming wedding, and Caren has put off buying her a plane ticket. Eventually this leads to us learning about both Caren’s and Morgan’s relationship with Morgan’s father. Finally, there is Caren’s childhood relationship with the younger son of the Clancy family, Bobby, which ends when they both reach puberty.

There are also the wider relationships: Caren’s relationship with her employer and with the employees she manages. Her employees, as it turns out, view her as something of an outsider and protect her from information about what is going on at the plantation, even when that information involves her own daughter. Her employer, the older Clancy son Raymond, hints from time to time that he views her as a charity case who owes something to his family. 

Both Caren’s friendship with Bobby and professional relationship with Raymond are part of the book's treatment of the relationship between the white members of society and the black ones.  But there is a new racial conflict brewing between the black workers and the new migrant workers coming in from Mexico and Central America to work the jobs in the fields for lower wages.

Finally there are the geographical relationships. Both Caren and the Clancy brothers view Belle Vie as home, but the differences in the way they do so further develops the treatment of the relationship between races as well as explaining more about Caren’s relationship with both her mother and daughter. Additionally, there is the relationship between the plantation and the cane fields beyond.

When Caren finds the body of a dead migrant worker on the plantation grounds, all these relationships come into play. Caren has reason to believe her daughter knows something about the murder, and calls the child’s father, who takes it on himself to come down to Louisiana from Washington, DC to see for himself what is going on.  An even older mystery, about the disappearance of one of Caren’s ancestor’s known as Jason, becomes significant in looking at the recent one. An unsatisfactory employee whom Caren had been about to fire becomes a suspect in the murder investigation. The secrets the plantation workers are keeping finally come to light and with information obtained by a journalist who is writing a story on the labor practices of the company that owns the cane fields, eventually lead to the killer.

The real resolution to the story, however, in my mind at least, takes place in Caren’s evolving relationships with her daughter, her daughter’s father, and the Clancy family. The book has not so much a happy ending as a hopeful one, as Caren is able to let go of some of the guilt over her estrangement from her mother and some of the control she keeps over her daughter, and to cut loose from Belle Vie and consider moving away from Louisiana. Yet for those who are fans of pure whodunits, this book works well, too, with the solution being enough of a surprise to keep the reader puzzled but not so much of one as to seem like something that would only happen in a book.

So thank you, Attica Locke, for such a wonderful addition to my library and I hope to the libraries of my readers as well.

Undecided

Apparently, I am not the only one having a hard time making up her mind in the Louisiana House District 65 special election. Another flyer from Candidate Sumac brags that he has pulled into the lead over Candidate Woodrow. The numbers he gave showed around a third, plus or minus, for each of the candidates, with Sumac leading, and over 30% still undecided. In addition, LABI (The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry) has declined to endorse either candidate through its PAC. Whether that means it finds them both equally satisfactory or equally unsatisfactory it is hard to say. 

Other interesting news: Sumac raised no money this month, but is paying his campaign expenses from the $50,000 of his own money he has donated to his campaign. I guess that is a good sign that he will not be beholden to special interests. On the other hand, if nobody is willing to donate to his campaign, that says something about how his fellow Republicans and business owners see him as a potential legislator.

Woodrow has raised “$30,400 in donations from 43 contributions, with an average donation of about $700. Among his largest donors are the Louisiana Realtors PAC and Louisiana Restaurant Association, which each gave more than $1,000 to his campaign.” I’m not sure what the significance of his popularity among realtors and restaurant owners is. It doesn’t sound like a bad thing.

This morning there was a special city council meeting to discuss whether our police chief  should be dismissed, as the mayor wants. I had hoped to go attend the meeting to see Woodrow in action. Unfortunately, I had a dentist appointment to fill a small cavity before it became a large cavity, right at the same time as the meeting.

As much as I hate to break my record of voting in all local elections, I may sit this one out. It sounds like a lot of other folks may, too.

Rained Out

Tomorrow is Mardi Gras. It is early this year, like Easter, not surprisingly since the date for Mardi Gras is tied to Easter.

For the past two years we have gone to New Orleans for Mardi Gras with the Foundation for Historical Louisiana, but this year we decided to drive ourselves, and my friend D, to Lafayette instead. Mardi Gras in Lafayette is less fancy than in New Orleans, but it is also less crowded, so you can park closer to the action.

Now it is raining. The rains are moving in from the west, which means that it will still be raining in Lafayette tomorrow morning, with the possibility of thunderstorms. We have decided to call the trip off. Given that we aren’t buried in three feet of snow, like my poor beleaguered family up north, I shouldn’t complain. (At least they have power this time.) We did go to the Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade Saturday, so we caught beads (and Moon Pies) and had fun.

Wednesday starts Lent. When I first started attending a Methodist church at the age of 8, Methodists didn’t give things up for Lent. You could, if you wanted to, but it wasn’t a requirement and I got the impression it was kind of frowned on, smacking as it did of “justification by works”, which ranks somewhere just south of serial murder in Methodist land.* Now Methodists not only give things up for Lent, but do the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday. I am not sure how this fits with Matthew 6:16, but I am sure they have found some way to tippy tap dance around that verse. Even some Baptists (okay, one) are suggesting giving up something for Lent.

I’m thinking of giving up soft drinks, though, since they are bad for me anyway, and Lent is a perfect time for breaking bad habits, since most folks I know are giving things up and I’ll have company. Forty days of iced tea is hardly a big sacrifice. If I really wanted to mortify the flesh I’d give up shrimp, which is on the Lenten menu of every restaurant in a hundred mile radius of here, at least. I could have a lot of fun with that, too. When the waiter starts reading off the Lenten specials, I could say, “Oh, that sounds so good, but I gave up shrimp for Lent. Just bring me the steak instead.”

It might almost make up for getting rained out.

*Yes, I’m joking.

Tweedledum and Tweedledummer

It’s been two weeks since I sent my email to “Dred Woodrow” and I haven’t received an answer, so I don’t think I ever will. Not that I expected the candidate himself to respond, but I did suspect a volunteer minion had been tasked with responding to questions by matching up the appropriate campaign boilerplate to each question in a way that might pass a Turing test.

This is the email I sent:

Dear Mr. Woodrow,

I have recently received some of your literature regarding your campaign for state representative, district 65.  I have some questions regarding issues and positions that I hope you can answer.
First of all, I see you voted against the new CATS bus tax. I understand that you want to prevent public money from being wasted, and I certainly respect that position. On the other hand, I worry about the ability of people who do not have their own transportation to be able to access jobs and medical care. I know you will not be facing this issue in the state legislature, since you probably agree with me that public transportation is best addressed at the municipal level, but can you explain why you voted against the tax, and what strategies you had for getting people without transportation to jobs and health care (or perhaps getting jobs and health care to those people?) Knowing your thinking on this matter will help me assess you as a candidate.
Secondly, I see you are pro-life. As you are probably aware, Louisiana has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country. Those are 2006 numbers, but the numbers haven’t changed much. I think this is a problem that can and should be addressed at the state level, and would like to know how you see yourself doing so.
Thank you for your time.

Perhaps my attempt to be polite and fair minded didn’t come across that way, I don’t know. I’m not impressed by not having received any kind of response.

The other candidate, as I mentioned in my last post, doesn’t even have an email address for his campaign. He has, however, reached out in his own way, with a newsletter styled mail-out with a big headline stating Conservative Choice. The newsletter is 8 pages long with nine articles about the campaign, his family and marriage, his business experience, plans, and why he is running. There are even mock ads, which are more statements from “Hussein Sumac” and his wife. It’s a slick idea, and it gives a lot of information.

All of it dreadful. Okay, most of it dreadful. For one thing, one headline reads “[Hussein Sumac]to Lead Big Fight Against Gun Control in State Legislature”. Of course, there is no gun control legislation being proposed in our state legislature. The legislation he is talking about is proposed Federal legislation, and he can’t do anything about that. He’s just grandstanding. At least, I hope he’s just grandstanding, because I’d hate to think he doesn’t really know the difference between the state and Federal government.

Another article is headlined, How My Experience as a Job-Creator Will Pay Off.  Here I have to say something good about Mr. Sumac. He has built a business that employs 200 employees and he is only in his early 30’s*. That is a decent accomplishment. I do take issue with his statement, “I have learned to create jobs - real, high-paying jobs in the private sector - not government jobs.” First of all, that job he is trying to get himself elected to, I don’t know how to break it to him, is a government job! It’s not a good idea to be condescending about a job you are applying for in what amounts to a job interview. It’s especially puzzling to see him dismiss government jobs as not real jobs and then turn around and say that he is running for office because “life is partly about giving back to the community.” (That was actually another headline.) Yes, we know, all those people holding government jobs feel like they are serving the community, too.

But our Mr. Sumac has some positive proposals to make. One of them is extending Hooper Road “across [the] Amite River to  Watson without imposition of tolls”.  Hooper Road is in the northern portion of East Baton Rouge Parish. Watson is in nearby Livingston Parish. (Parishes are our equivalent of counties.) The only ways to extend the road across parish lines is to 1) convince Livingston Parish to extend the road on their dime or 2) make it a state road. The state highway department is limited by law to the number of miles of road it can hold in each district. In order to add a state road, they have to demote an equivalent amount of roadway to a parish road or even private road. It can be done, but getting it done requires a lot of pull in the legislature, according to my source, who worked for DOTD for 30 years and loves to lecture me on obscure laws, usually when I’m trying to read. But maybe our boy has connections. Nope, here’s another headline: “Not Part of Good Ole Boy Network”. Good luck with that road.

What’s even more puzzling is his insistence on not using a toll to pay for the road. Supposedly Mr. Sumac is for balanced budgets and no new taxes. The state is already facing a shortfall. How do we pay for this new road? No headlines there.

And of course you have no doubt thought of my last point by now: building roads is a [dreaded] government job. Even though private contractors will be employed, government at either the state or parish level will be responsible for obtaining the land, awarding the contracts, inspecting the work and oh, yeah, paying for it.

I still don’t know who to vote for. I just wish I had a better choice than Tweedledum or Tweedledummer.

*His business has been described as supplying janitorial services to nuclear power plants. I suspect “janitorial services” in this context does not mean dusting and mopping. The picture he uses to illustrate his business article is a picture of a nuclear power plant. I can’t resist. “You didn’t build that!”

As the Cricket Chirps

I ran into a snag in writing to the two candidates for state house district 65 as proposed in my post, The Opposition. “Dred Woodrow’s” website gives an email address where he can be contacted, but “Hussein Sumac’s” does not. 

“No problem,” I thought, “I’ll write to him snail mail.” It turns out his website does not offer a street address either, nor even a post office box. This makes sense if he is running his campaign out of his house, or more likely, the office of his overworked personal assistant at his business.

I did find a news story about a joint appearance the two candidates made at a local Chamber of Commerce meeting right after they announced their candidacies. A few pertinent paragraphs are below, and, as usual, snarky comments of mine follow in italics.

At a luncheon hosted by the Chamber of Commerce of East Baton Rouge Parish the two candidates, District 4 councilman Scott Wilson and Central small business owner Barry Ivey, said they'll be banking on their experiences as businessmen to help win over constituents concerned about crumbling infrastructure, an uptick in traffic congestion, schools and a ballooning state budget facing a $963 million shortfall. 

http://www.nola.com/news/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2012/11/two_candidates_emerge_in_race.html

So far it sounds promising. So what are they planning to do about the crumbling infrastructure, [and] an uptick in traffic congestion?

Audience member Elizabeth Dent said Richardson [the legislator whose seat they are competing for] took a stand against the CATS tax.
Baton Rouge and Baker voters approved a $15.3 million property tax increase in April for the Capital Area Transit System, or CATS, which operates the bus system.
Dent wanted to know if Wilson and Ivey would be as brave as Richardson.
Ivey said he is not afraid to be the only dissenter.
He said positive things follow when people do things for the right reasons.
Wilson said he opposed the CATS tax and showed through his service on the Metro Council that he is willing to stand up.
http://theadvocate.com/home/4528666-125/2-vying-for-state-legislators

They are proposing to fight traffic congestion by not supporting public transportation. I see.

Wilson, who recently won reelection after running unopposed in November, said his experience as a city council member and his tenure as a small trucking business owner make him a qualified candidate for the seat. He drew on his conservative voting record, saying he's consistently stood up for ideals that weren't universally popular.
"I think you need someone who's been there as far as fiscal responsibility, as far as looking after your tax dollars," he said.

If by “weren’t universally popular”, you mean across the nation, that’s probably true. If you mean in his district, he was running unopposed.

Ivey said he strives to be transparent.

He said he intends to be an overcommunicator and use technology to his advantage.

This is the candidate who does not have an email or snail mail address listed on his website. That communication thing is supposed to run both ways.

I like the way they both claim to be willing to stand up for unpopular ideas while feeding the chamber members exactly what they wanted to hear. 

Hey, guys, you know what would be unpopular? It would be for one of you to say, “As the pro-life candidate, I’m going to push the governor to accept federal Medicaid money and expand Medicaid services as one step in reducing Louisiana’s truly disgraceful infant mortality rate, one of the worst in the nation.”

Overcommunicate that.

Award Night

Since my husband and I are members of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, we get invited to the annual Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence ceremony. 

There are two ways to give to the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. The first is that you can endow a fund of some sort for them to manage. Although it is probably obvious to a regular reader of my blog that my husband and I are not hurting for money, we are not at the “endow a fund” level of wealth. The other way to support BRAF is by donating an annual amount of $100 and up, to be used toward their operating expenses, and that’s what we do. People who donate in this way are considered members.

The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence was conceived at another sort of BRAF event several years ago, when Mr. Gaines gave a reading from his work Mozart and Leadbelly. The award is intended to honor Ernest Gaines by selecting a promising African-American author as recipient. This year’s recipient is Stephanie Powell Watts for her book of short stories, We Are Taking Only What We Need. Watts, we are told, “worked as a Jehovah’s Witness minister, a shoe-string factory worker, and a food service and office worker” before receiving her PhD from the University of Missouri-Columbia. “She now teaches at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania”. In addition to the honor of the award and a trophy, she was given $10,000. Honor is nice, but money pays the bills.

As part of the ceremony, recipients read from their work. Ms. Watts read a short selection from the first short story in her book, shorter than the amount that recipients usually read, but she stopped at just the point to leave you wondering what happened next. I’m not sure whether it was purely her decision to read a shorter than average bit, or whether it was to leave time for the Master of Ceremonies, Irvin Mayfield, to lead an improvised sestet in several jazz compositions, including selections from Mayfield’s recent composition: Dirt, Dust and Trees: A Jazz Tribute to Ernest Gaines. The sestet finished their set with a second-line style medley of gospel tunes, including I’ll Fly Away and When the Saints Go Marching In. 

After the ceremony, there is always a buffet, compliments of  a locally owned and quite elegant restaurant. I would hate to say that the buffet is my husband’s only reason for attending this cultural event so regularly, but he has memorized the exact location of the shrimp-filled pirogue, and heads to it with the determination of a spawning salmon.

The tiny bread plates that accompany the spread are no doubt meant to be a reminder that this isn’t supposed to be dinner, but we’re good at carrying multiple plates. We are also good at snagging a table in the room with the shrimp boat (less congested than the one with the dessert table and martini bar), which means we have seats to give away. Usually we literally give them away; while we hope to attract other folks to talk with, our spare chairs usually get carried off to other tables where people in large groups need extras. This year other people asked if they could sit with us and of course we agreed. They then preceded to carry on their own conversation as if we weren’t there. I eavesdropped shamelessly as one woman, originally from New York by her account before moving to Washington and then here to Baton Rouge, raved about the musicians. By her account, the only place to hear jazz like that in Washington any more is at the Kennedy Center, which she thinks has driven the smaller jazz clubs out of business. Tickets for events at the Kennedy are expensive, so they could only go to one event a year. Culture in Baton Rouge, she continues, is so accessible. 

I haven’t really thought of it that way, but there are numerous events at the Shaw Center (where the Gaines award is given) throughout the year. There are small jazz clubs in town with reasonable cover charges, and of course, the Little Theater events we go to, as well as a symphony orchestra. There are three outdoor music festivals each summer. LSU has begun hosting a multi-act country music concert each year, and there are concerts that come through at the River Center. One of our local charitable agencies (about which there was a big scandal several years later) even hosted a concert by Luciano Pavarotti back in the 1990’s. People came from surrounding states for that (and Pavarotti, not the charity, got most of the money.) I still have the program.

Not to mention, that my husband and I take for granted being able to see and hear Ernest Gaines himself each year at this time, as well as guest MC’s that have included, in addition to Mr. Mayfield, actors Courtney Vance and last year, Cicely Tyson.

So yes, say what you will about our small city (and lord knows I say a lot of it), but it has at its heart a group of leaders determined to see that the needs of its citizens are met, and it has ready access to the arts.

Thank you, Miss-Snob-Pretending-the-Original-Occupant-of-the-Table-Wasn’t-There, for reminding me of it.  

The Opposition

Hussein Sumac’s opponent in the upcoming special election is also a Republican, a current city council member whom I will refer to as Dred Woodrow. The same day that Mr. Sumac knocked at my door, campaign mail from Mr. Woodrow arrived. I see by his flyer that Mr. Woodrow is “for pro-life, limited government”. I think these folks get their campaign slogans from Oxymorons R Us, or perhaps an abbreviation thereof.

Although both candidates list themselves as pro-life and pro-gun conservatives, there is a huge difference between them. Mr. Woodrow is a Catholic, while Mr. Sumac is a a member of a church that does not give a denominational affiliation, but describes itself as believing that the whole of Christianity can be found within God’s word (IOW, not-Catholic).  

Mr. Woodrow also brags that he was “against the new CATS bus tax”. I don’t hold that against him, because there was a legitimate concern that the new plan was not going to work and would just mean throwing good money after bad. I would, however, like to know what his plan was for getting people without transportation to jobs or jobs to people without transportation. 

He also was “against wasteful spending on the downtown library”. There again, he may have been in the right. The downtown library is part of a downtown meeting/entertainment venue and is not convenient to many residential areas, and there was reason to think that dressing it up was putting lipstick on a pig. My husband, for one, thinks the remodel is a big boondoggle.

The tell, to me, is that Mr. Woodrow is for “parents’ rights to consolidate their school districts.”  If that sounds like gobbledygook to you, there’s a reason for that. What Mr. Woodrow was for is splitting out a portion of Baton Rouge that lies to the south and east and making it a separate school district from the rest of the city. This area does not have a particular geographical separation from the rest. It doesn’t have a name. It does have a few gated, multi-million dollar subdivisions and a whole lot of white folks. (The vote to allow this split failed.)

So when you take his position on CATS, and the downtown library, and the school district split, there seems to be a common thread, but I can’t quite  . . .

My plan is to see whether there are any upcoming debates or candidates nights involving these two men that I can attend. I also am composing an e-mail to be sent to each of them, asking what their plans are for addressing infant mortality (since they are both pro-life),  and how they feel transportation barriers to getting jobs should be addressed. If I get replies, I’ll post them.

A Knock at the Door

Actually, it was a ring at the doorbell, but “A knock at the door” sounds more portentous, somehow. Saturday morning I was messing around on the computer when I heard someone at the front door. It being Saturday, UPS was out, so I suspected the Jehovah’s Witnesses or maybe some teenage Baptists wanting to tell me how I could predict whether I’m going to hell.

I was close. The man who appeared at my door is a candidate in the upcoming special election for state representative, district 65. For the purposes of this post, we’ll call him Hussein Sumac. Obviously that’s not his real name, but it’s close, at least the way my brain figures close. 

Mr. Sumac informed me that the special election is being held due to the incumbent having to resign over ill health. The two people running are Mr. Sumac and another Republican. Mr. Sumac preceded to make his case, as outlined below. My thoughts, none of which I was unkind enough to voice out loud, follow in italics.

First of all, he’s a conservative.

Me: I’m not. (That was actually out loud.)

He’s a businessman.

Me: So you actually have no prior experience in government.

He built his business himself, but most of his business is out of state, so there is no conflict of interest with him running for election.

Does “by himself” include a loan from the SBA? Actually, I’m impressed he thought to bring up conflict of interest. Most Louisiana politicians seem to think it’s a myth, like global warming.

Unlike his opponent, he has no ties to the political establishment.

So not only do you have no experience in government, but none of your friends and associates do, either.

He has decided to run for office because he’s tired of seeing so many politicians who seem really dumb.

Dr. Dunning, meet Dr. Kruger.

He is funding his own campaign.

So no Republican funding sources think enough of your chances to donate to your campaign.

He has always lived in this area, and has attended the same church since he was five.

So you aren’t big on exposing yourself to new and possibly contradictory ideas.

He is honest. His wife can vouch for his honesty, because no one knows you like your spouse.

No one knows me like my spouse, either, but if I were running for office, there would be a limit on what he could reveal about me and live.

After he leaves, I look at his literature and read that he is “Pro-Life, Pro-Family, Pro-Gun, and Anti-Tax”. I wish I had read that before I let him get away, because I have some questions. He is running for a political office that will provide him with a salary and benefits. How does he propose the state pay him without taxes? 

And he’s pro-life? I should have asked him what his plans are to bring down Louisiana’s appalling infant mortality rate, which has us ranked 49th out of 50 states in the nation, and not in a good way. I should have asked him his pro-life plans to do something about Louisiana’s gun death rate, the worst in the nation. Oh, wait, he’s pro-gun. Well, guns don’t kill people, Louisianans kill people.

I need to research his opponent, who does at least have government experience as a member of the city council. I may wind up voting for Hussein Sumac after all. 

One time many years ago, I lamented to my dad about the two hopeless choices I had in a statewide election. “Just don’t vote,” he advised. 

“Dad, one of them is going to win. If I don’t vote, I’m just letting someone else choose for me.” 

That’s just as true today as it was then.

I Don't Think That's Going to Solve the Problem

As a result of the big Saturday night fight at our local mall, one of our city councilors has reintroduced measures to toughen up teen curfews. Louisiana already has a curfew of sorts, in that driver’s licenses for teens are not valid for a portion of the night hours (later on weekends), unless they are traveling to or from a job. This driving restriction was what allowed my son to Neal call me five minutes before curfew every weekend and say, “Can I stay over at my friend’s? I can come home, but it means I’ll be driving after curfew.” 

I wonder what is going on in the council’s collective minds. The fight at the mall took place some time around 6 PM.  Four year olds aren’t even in bed at 6 PM. Are they planning to confine all teens in their homes from 5 PM Friday night until time to leave for school on Monday? Because if so, they are going to have a lot of pissed off parents to deal with.

Of course, I can understand them feeling the need to do something. The fight did not cause any significant injuries or property damage, but it could have. This is a concealed carry state. All it would have taken is one self-identified “good guy with a gun”, and this event could have turned into a tragedy. A curfew, no matter how irrelevant to the situation, is a better solution than arming all the teens in town.

It’s just that, is it a solution? It was 6 freakin’ PM, guys!

Our council members seem like geniuses, however, compared to the people who are behind this amazing idea:

Birthers Suggest Impeaching John Roberts 

So the sequence of events would be:

1) Chief Justice Roberts swears in Obama on the 20th, per the Constitution.

2) Birthers, in turn, will call for the impeachment of Chief Justice Roberts. If they are successful, 

3) Newly sworn-in President Obama selects the new Chief Justice.

I think I may have left out the two additional steps:

4) ?????

5) Profit!

Okay, to be fair, columnist Craig McMillan did not really demand Roberts’ immediate impeachment. What Mc Millan said was 

Your own oath of office, sworn before God and the American people, requires you to uphold the Constitution. (If not you, then who?) If you now administer the oath of office for the presidency to a man who by his own admission fails to meet the natural born citizen requirement imposed by that Constitution, you have violated your own oath of office and are rightly subject to impeachment by any House of Representatives, at any time, now or in the future.

It sounds more likely that he is envisioning a scenario in which Tea Party members take over the House and the Senate in  2014, and not only impeach and convict Justice Roberts, but also investigate President Obama and declare his birth certificate to be a fraud, and then impeach both him and Vice-President Biden, who of course colluded in the deception. Then, in accordance with the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the then Speaker of the House (no doubt a re-elected Alan West) would become president, and fill the vacancy created by Roberts’ impeachment.

That’s not the sort of idea to mock anybody for, really.

Nottaway

This year was the first time in a long time we haven’t had an invitation to M’s house for Thanksgiving. M had for years been holding Thanksgiving for her extended family plus friends like us who did not have family nearby and the occasional stranded student. I’m not sure if this year she decided to cut back, if some younger relative has now taken over the big family feast, or whether she just got tired of our faces, but I am grateful for all the past years’ hospitality.

So after weighing the pros and cons of cooking at home versus eating out we decided to drive down the river to Nottaway Plantation in Plaquemine Parish and have Thanksgiving dinner there. Back when my late mother-in-law Eloise lived in Baton Rouge, we would take her there for Thanksgiving dinner.

The reason that we chose Nottaway is that in those days they had menu service (a limited fixed price menu) rather than a buffet, and Eloise did not do well with buffets, as big, bustling spaces made her dizzy. The grounds were pretty, as was the drive there. Nottaway is on the west bank of the Mississippi River, about 45 minutes from Baton Rouge. Every year we would remind Eloise that the restaurant is a 45 minute drive away. Every year as soon as we crossed the river she would ask John if he was sure he knew where he was going. We adopted that cheerful air of false patience that one does with elderly annoying relatives. “She’s getting older,” I counseled myself, “Naturally she is forgetful.”

It wasn’t until several years later that  realized I may have been making a big mistake. By that time, a retirement home was not sufficient for Eloise and she moved to an assisted living facility near her daughter in Tennessee. We visited at Christmas, and all of us picked up Eloise to take her to church with us. As we got outside, she turned to my brother-in-law and asked, “Do you want me to drive?”

The look on my sister-in-law’s face was priceless. She muttered something under her breath about her mother thinking she could drive. I thought to myself, “You mean you really think she is serious? She’s joking, for Pete’s sake.”

And then I flashed back to all those trips to Nottaway, when my MIL asked every year if we were lost. Maybe I was the clueless one. Maybe she was joking, for Pete’s sake. Okay, maybe not the best of jokes and maybe a little repetitive, but why did I ever take it so seriously?

It is a shame the way we stereotype the elderly. It is easy to forget that aging bodies contain the same variety of personality that younger ones do. I have a dry sense of humor myself, and frequently find myself thinking, “How could you think I was serious about that?” So why didn’t I recognize the same thing in Eloise?

And now I am getting old myself, so maybe the joke will be on me.

Meanwhile, as we drove south along Highway 1 approaching the city of Plaquemine, my husband asked, “Are you sure we didn’t pass it? Have you seen a sign?”

“It’s on the other side of Plaquemine,” I reassured him, but reached for a map just to be sure. Just then, we drove by a sign that said “Nottaway Plantation, 9 miles ahead.”

“See that? Nine more miles. Check your odometer,” I advised, as I refolded the map. “Oh, and you are definitely your mother’s child.”

Green

Several months ago, a reader left a comment on my post about the Louisiana Orphan Train Museum in Opelousas informing me of another point of interest in St. Landry Parish:

The next time you're in the Opelousas area, please visit us at the St. Landry Parish Visitor Information Center, exit 23 on I-49. We're the only "green" visitors center in Louisiana and one of the few in the United States.

Keep up the good work,
Herman Fuselier
St. Landry Parish Tourist Commission

I’ve been meaning to visit, and a recent spell of cool fall weather combined with my husband being out of town for a few days on his new job, made the perfect opportunity for my friend D, who grew up in Opelousas, and I to make a day of it. First a visit to the Visitor Information Center, followed by lunch at Back in Time, the restaurant with the Italian Iced Tea I have written about, and then another trip to the Orphan Train Museum and Le Petite Village, which D had never seen before sounded like the perfect way for two retired ladies to spend a fall day.

The Visitor Information Center was quite easy to find, with both the exit and the road to it being well marked. It is a modern looking building, but it nestles quite well into the landscape. People don’t think of Louisiana as a prairie state, but a good chunk of it is called the Cajun Prairie, and the prairie like character is most obvious in the fall, when the grasses by  the side of the road are tall and golden, sprigged with late autumn flowers in blues and golds. The grounds around the building, planted with native Louisiana plants, are watered by rainwater collected in a cistern and collected by rainchains off the porch.

If you click on the picture, you can read it better.

The cistern. D saw it and said, "My grandmother had one of those." Our guide added, "My mother had one of those."

Inside we were greeted by an enthusiastic staff member who was delighted to show off the building’s features, starting with the beautiful longleaf pine floor salvaged from nearby Washington, Louisiana. You don’t get floor boards that wide any more, probably because our ancestors cut them down with a little too much enthusiasm, but all the more reason to find and reuse them when possible. The floor showed up very well in the natural light streaming through the floor to ceiling windows, reducing the need for electric lighting in the daytime.

More recycling can be found in the artwork: collages and sculptures made from bits and pieces of leftover construction material.

We also got a peek at the insulation materials left visible through a section of the wall: 85% of it is recycled material, including newspaper.

The most obvious green feature as you drive up is the wind turbine on the roof. Alas, there wasn’t a wind when we were there, but power from the turbine is stored in batteries and runs the little kitchenette that serves the meeting room used mostly by the staff but available to the community.

Storing power from the turbine

Naturally, since it is a Visitor Information Center, the staff also let us know all that is going on in the region. It is a busy little parish. There is a Pork Cracklin’ Festival coming up in Port Barre in November, for instance, and we just missed a canoe event on the Bayou Teche. Once I mentioned that my husband loves little country festivals, I found myself with more brochures and flyers than I knew what to do with. The center gets around 300 visitors a month, more in tourist season, and does programs for schools and community groups.

I know that for most of my readers, Louisiana is not exactly a hop, skip and a jump away and even the lure of the Pork Cracklin’ Festival may not be enough to bring you up I-49. But suppose you like music, say blues and jazz music. The New Orleans Jazz Festival runs from the last weekend in April through the first weekend in May. There is also the Festival International de Louisiane in Lafayette that last weekend in April, and it’s free. So if you were to plan a trip to Louisiana that took in both music events, you would have a few days free that week between when you could slip up I-49 to Opelousas, where there is a racetrack and casino, and the Visitor’s Center is just one more exit north. What could be a better way to pass a good time, cher?

It's Not a Bad Little Coffee Mug, Really

I know I am supposed to be writing accounts of my travels, but I have been busy since I got home. Earlier this week, for instance, I attended a conference of the Retired State Employees Association, as a guest of my husband, who is a retired state employee. The conference was held here in town, but they did keep us busy, not to mention well fed. Besides, there were door prizes.

Monday afternoon we started off by attending a workshop on genealogy. I was not aware of this, but our parish public library system has a genealogy department, with  free access to their ancestors.com subscription, classes, and even librarians to assist you in your research. Alas, this would not be of too much help to me, because my grandparents immigrated here from Italy, and the ancestors.com data bases do not reach that far. Not only that, but when my dad did try to trace some of the relatives when he was in Italy during WWII, he discovered that several of them had migrated to Argentina. Still, it might be fun to track down just when my various grandparents arrived, and maybe to see if I could learn more about my Grandma D’s mysterious first husband.

After a buffet style jambalaya dinner, we played bingo. It is impossible to have a gathering in southeast Louisiana without jambalaya and bingo. They’re the unmentioned eight and ninth sacraments. The bingo games were funny. Each game had five winners. The first person to reach bingo in each game got a ten dollar  Walmart gift certificate. Then we kept playing without clearing the boards until there were four more winners (more in case of ties), who each got RSEA coffee mugs. Once five people had won, we started a new game. I won a mug. It’s not a bad little coffee mug, really.

Tuesday, we had our keynote speaker, former Louisiana governor and recent Federal parolee Edwin Edwards. You have no idea how much I enjoy writing lines like that. He might seem like an odd choice as keynote speaker, but it was under Governor Edwards that the Louisiana state constitution was rewritten in the 1970’s and included strong protections for the job rights of state employees, much to the chagrin of our latest governor. Whatever you think of Edwards as a person, he is a charming and humorous speaker. He began by talking about his first federal job, carrying water to workers on a government project for nine cents an hour. Many years later, he got his second Federal job as a prison librarian, for 22 cents an hour, so that was a bit of a pay raise there. 

John and I did well during the door prizes. He won a gift certificate for a local restaurant and I won an autumn wreath.

I’m glad the conference didn’t last longer than it did. All our meals were included, in addition to the jambalaya dinner: a continental breakfast, a full plate lunch with salad and dessert, full dinner at a dinner dance, and a plate breakfast the next morning. I’m surprised I didn’t have to roll out the door.

But now that that’s over with, I’m back to my usual schedule of sloth and ease, and will, I promise, write up my adventures in England.

Making God Laugh

There’s a saying that goes, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” My plans were modest enough, I thought. I wanted to fly to Denver for a friend’s wedding. I knew this friend through an e-mail list for women weight lifters. This particular list is down to five people, two of whom I have met in real life, the bride and another woman who lives in Colorado.

We have been together long enough to have heard all the details of the bride’s courtship, engagement, and wedding worries, and the other four of us all planned to be there. I was looking forward to meeting the two women I had not yet met. 

Whenever my husband and I fly anywhere, we tend to fly from New Orleans, because flights from Baton Rouge can be complicated. To go to Denver on United, we would have to fly Baton Rouge to Charlotte, NC to Chicago to Denver. To fly from New Orleans to Denver on United, we would take one plane, from New Orleans to Denver. It was even cheaper. So I made us reservations on the 8:27 AM flight out of New Orleans on Thursday, August 30th.

On Monday I got an email saying my flight could not be confirmed and to call the travel agency. The flight had been cancelled due to the storm, but we had been booked on a later flight, leaving at 3:07. By then Isaac should have blown out of town, leaving us good to go.

It would have worked, too, if it weren’t for the high pressure system to the north that held Isaac in place so it could drop almost 8 inches of rain on New Orleans on Wednesday alone, flooding out I-10 at LaPlace and causing problems with Louis Armstrong International Airport:

KENNER, La. - New Orleans International Airport and its 250 flights a day remain shut down and without power Thursday, even as the effects of Hurricane Isaac subside.
Airport Director Iftikhar Ahmad said the terminal sustained roof damage, with leaks "all over the place.”
Entergy-Louisiana is working to get power back, said Entergy’s Charles Rice. He said they have to fix downed power poles on Airline Highway, then fix damaged equipment at the airport and then work their way back into the surrounding city of Kenner.
But even if the power is restored quickly, the airport still has problems because the airport approach lights, which rise 7-10 feet in the air along the runways, are under 3 feet of water, Ahmad said. The inundated portion of the approach lights contain key electrical equipment that may be damaged, Ahmad said.

We had to cancel our trip. Even if we could have changed our trip to leave out of Baton Rouge, the earliest we could have left would have been Friday, for the Saturday wedding, and it would have meant all day traveling from city to city to city.

The bride has been very gracious about it.

I don’t know why God needs a good laugh so much that he has to mess with my modest travel plans. Can’t he just watch the Colbert Show or even Everybody Loves Raymond reruns like the rest of us?

A New Wrinkle

Isaac has now strengthened into a hurricane and instead of moving inland, weakening back to a tropical storm, and moving out of my life has decided to linger on the coast.

The problem is a high pressure system running through Oklahoma that has Isaac pinned in place. Thanks, Oklahoma, that sort of behavior is why you have droughts, you know that? Seriously, though, what looked liked a manageable tropical storm is becoming a serious problem for the Louisiana coastal communities, because the longer it hangs around, the more rain it drops. Rain on top of the storm surge means flooding. 

Hurricane Isaac has also finally developed an eye wall, which means that when it finally does pass us to our west, we will be on the dreaded northeast side for hours. I am not looking forward to this.

At least our power is still on, although we’ve been getting some ominous flickers, so that might not last too much longer. The laundry is done, I got a hot shower this morning, and made extra coffee and tea to heat up on our gas stove when the power goes out. I washed the dishes by hand since we might not be able to use the dishwasher for a while. First world problems.

I’d better post this while there is still time. If you read this today, send good wishes, and I’m hoping whatever storms you face in your own life pass quickly.

Hurry Up and Wait

People who live in the-parts-of-Louisiana-that-are-not-New-Orleans are used to being overlooked. I suppose it’s possible that the reality TV show Swamp People has led to the realization that the Cajun population of Louisiana does not live on Bourbon Street, but I would hate to have to swear to it in a court of law. Most of the time I find popular misconceptions about Louisiana amusing (and a reminder that I no doubt have my own misconceptions about other states).

During hurricane season, however, it is frustrating to listen to weather reporting that divides Louisiana-bound storms into two categories: those that will hit New Orleans and those that won’t. Once it has been established that a storm won’t hit New Orleans, it might as well have evaporated into thin air. It would actually be nice if those non-New Orleans bound storms did, in fact, evaporate into thin air, but no, they wreak their damage on those other parts of Louisiana, the ones that are not-New-Orleans.

Hurricane Gustav was one such storm. Gustav was the second worst hurricane of 2008, although much of the damage it caused was out in the Caribbean. It appeared to be heading right to New Orleans, still reeling from Katrina in 2005. The state and city government did a remarkable job of evacuating New Orleans ahead of the storm.

Then Gustav bypassed New Orleans and came through Baton Rouge. Here is how Wikipedia describes the storm:

In Baton Rouge, wind damage from Gustav was the worst of any storm in memory. The damage was severe enough to effectively shut the city down for over a week. While most residents chose not to evacuate further inland due to the miniscule threat of major flooding, large numbers of people fled the city after the storm due to the crippled power system in the city. Because most storms dissipate to below tropical-storm levels by the time they reach Baton Rouge, many trees that survived weaker storms in the past fell onto homes, cars, and power lines. In many of the more heavily wooded sections of Baton Rouge, large trees and fallen power lines blocked streets, causing relief to come slowly to those living in residential areas. Nearly all businesses remained closed through September 5, five days after landfall. Power lines along Baton Rouge's tree-lined streets were easily brought down as thousands of trees were uprooted and snapped in half by Gustav's fierce winds. Entire sections of the city were cut off by the mountains of debris. Few homes escaped roof damage as the storm passed over the capital city. Most schools were closed for at least one week, and many for two or three while power was restored to the area around the school. Many signs were blown down, including a large portion of the Interstate 10 Highland Road/Nicholson Drive exit sign, which blew off of the Bridge and into the Mississippi River. It would be three weeks before power was restored to all residents. Debris cleanup was still ongoing at the end of 2008, four months after the storm had passed. 

After the storm had passed and we had phone usage again, I called my family to assure them I was all right. “Why wouldn’t you be?” my sister asked. 

“Hurricane Gustav, you may have heard of it?”

“But that was in New Orleans. You said you don’t live that close to New Orleans,” my still puzzled sister responded. I had to explain that the center of the hurricane that missed New Orleans had hit us. When the power was finally turned back on and I had access to news again, I realized why my sister had been so clueless. The fact that the worst storm in its memory had hit the capital of the state of Louisiana was not the big news that the same storm sparing New Orleans had been.

I only bring that up because I am trying to figure out, from the maps on The Weather Channel and the National Hurricane Center website how badly we are going to be affected by the storm. The NHC 5 Day Forecast map is too small to give much detail.  TWC is busily promising that Isaac is going to turn into a hurricane any minute now to mention Baton Rouge. Local forecasters are dependent on the same models the big boys are.

As close as Isaac has come to shallow waters without becoming a hurricane, it looks like we won’t get anything worse than a tropical storm here. One map I saw showed Isaac coming up the west side of the Mississippi, putting both NO and Baton Rouge on the east side of the storm. Normally, that is not where you want to be, but Isaac has been funny in that regard, having a hard time forming an eye wall. I have taken to thinking of it as Isaac, the ADHD storm, due to its difficulty concentrating.

Meanwhile, we are taking precautions, watching what news we can get, and waiting.

ETA: As of 11:20 Am, Isaac has been upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane.

Tree next to the neighbor's house, uprooted during Hurricane Gustav

Our fence after Hurricane Gustav

Around the corner from our house, a tree from one yard fell on a neighboring house.

At Target, the day after the storm, there were no fresh or frozen foods.
They all had to be thrown out.