OUR LADY OF THE DRIVEWAY - I REMEMBER KATRINA

Thanks to Athenae at First Draft for the photo and the title. She took this picture when she was in New Orleans at the end of March, when a group of us led by FD bloggers, Athenae and Scout Prime, gathered to gut a house, view the destruction, and squeeze in a little fun.

The statue of the Virgin Mary stood in a driveway with the head broken off, lying on the ground, but a kind person put the head back in place. The photo and the title struck me with such force when I first saw it that I have never forgotten it. The image of the statue of Mary in the driveway - "Mary, full of grace" as Athenae calls her - was the symbol of my destroyed and broken home town, my abandoned city, my beloved New Orleans - always full of grace to me.

Our Lady Of The Driveway

O Mary of the Driveway,
Broken like your city,
Your head lies on the ground.
A sorry sight, a sign,
A sign of devastation
Wrought by wind and water,
Angry blow and raging flow.

A passer-by, one of tender heart,
Sees and stops and mourns your head
Lying there apart,
And gently, gently takes it
And replaces it.
There. Our Lady's whole again.
Or so it seems. Or is it so?

(June Butler - 5-13-07)

I posted the picture, the commentary, and the poem first on May 13, 2007 and then again on the anniversary of Katrina in the years that followed. Until I change my mind, I will post the picture and the poem every year on the anniversary of Katrina and THE FEDERAL FLOOD, which, in New Orleans, was not a natural disaster but an ENGINEERING DISASTER. I remember the 1500 people who died in New Orleans and all those who loved them. I remember the 275,000 who lost their homes. I remember those who survived, but suffered through horrendous conditions in the days after Katrina. I remember those who have not returned to their home towns, and who want to, but can't find affordable housing. I remember those in Louisiana and Mississippi still struggling to recover and rebuild their homes and their lives.

Katrina - August 29, 2005

UPDATE ON LITTLE JAMES

Little James came through his eight hour heart surgery but is now on a ventilator as he can't breathe on his own. The word is that he will stay on it another two days and then they will try to wean him off.

Thank you all for your concern and good thoughts and prayers.

I will update you when I know more.

Blessings,
Ellie

Details on James here.

FOR CAMINANTE - ISLE OF SKYE

From the comments:

Caminante said...
Take a picture of the Isle of Skye as my mother's family is from there. Pretty picture.

Not one, not two, but three pictures, Caminante. I hope you think they're pretty.

 

 

 

A MAGICAL MOMENT

 

A beauty, yes? While we were on the Isle of Skye, Cathy stopped our car to photograph sheep in the field. It seems that my friend can't get enough of photographing sheep. Sharing the field with the sheep was the beautiful horse pictured above. When we approached the fence, she (I believe) came to us.

 

That's Cathy's arm and hand in the picture above. Beauty (my name for her) seemed eager for our touch. We both patted and stroked her, and she seemed to revel in the affection.

 

Beauty was eating the grass over on my side of the fence, and I pulled the grass and began to feed her. Very gently, she took the grass from me with her velvety lips and ate. Well, I suppose it doesn't take much for me to find magic, because surely having Beauty eat from my hand was a magical moment on the Isle of Skye.

The top and bottom pictures are Cathy's, and the middle photo is mine.

POPE BENEDICT AND FRIEND

Lapin strikes again.

UPDATE LAGNIAPPE:



Pope Benedict's brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger

UPDATE 2:

From Colm Tóibín in the London Review of Books:

When I listed the reasons homosexuals might be attracted to the Church and might want to become priests, I did not mention the most obvious one: you get to wear funny bright clothes; you get to dress up all the time in what are essentially women’s clothes. As part of the training to be an altar boy I had to learn, and still remember, what a priest puts on to say Mass: the amice, the alb, the girdle, the stole, the maniple and the chasuble. Watching them robing themselves was like watching Mary Queen of Scots getting ready for her execution.

Priests prance around in elaborately fashioned costumes. Bishops and cardinals have even more colourful vestments. This ‘overt behaviour’ on their part has to be examined carefully. Since it is part of the rule of the Church, part of the norm, it has to be emphasised that many of them do not dress up as a matter of choice. Indeed, the vestments in all their glory might make some of them wince. But others seem to enjoy it. Among those who seem to enjoy it is Ratzinger. Quattrocchi draws our attention to the amount of care, since his election, Ratzinger has taken with his accessories, wearing designer sunglasses, for example, or gold cufflinks, and different sorts of funny hats and a pair of red shoes from Prada that would take the eyes out of you. He has also been having fun with his robes. On Ash Wednesday 2006, for example, he wore a robe of ‘Valentino red’ – called after the fashion designer – with ‘showy gold embroidery’ and soon afterwards changed into a blue associated with another fashion designer, Renato Balestra. In March 2007, for a visit to the juvenile prison at Casal del Marno, he wore an extraordinary tea-rose-coloured costume.

Thanks to Ann V. for the link.

SINCE GRANDPÈRE IS THE CHIEF COOK...

...I bought the sign for him in a shop in Scotland.

Yes, I know that the wallpaper is dreadfully outdated, as is the rest of the kitchen. I'm just not ready to bear with the turmoil that having the kitchen redone would involve. Sorry.

DEAD BIRD ISLAND - TERREBONNE PARISH, LOUISIANA

Aug. 19, 2010 - On a journey to take soil samples from the BP Spill we came across an island full of dead birds in various stages of decay. For more information or to support our ongoing efforts please visit http://www.lmrk.org/

From the website of the Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper:

In "Julia," the Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper Boston Whaler and a local fishing vessel we made our way south from Pointe Au Chien across Lake Chien and Lake Felicity to Modoto Island. What we encountered there stunned us all. The ground was littered with dead birds. So many dead birds that we aren't sure how many were out there, many dozens of dead birds just in the small area which we surveyed on the island. The dead appeared to included mostly seagulls and terns though some were badly decayed and identification was difficult. It was clear to me by the various states of decay, from scattered bones to a tern that couldn't have been dead for more than a day and everything in between, that this is an ongoing situation.

We also saw a juvenile gull that was in distress. It could hardly walk and was very unsteady when it took a step it also had very little energy. By the time we finished our sampling and were ready to leave the island the bird had died. I asked Kurt if he had seen anything like the dead birds and he said that he had been visiting this island his entire life and he has never seen dead birds in the numbers we were seeing. It is clear to me that these birds are somehow being poisoned by the BP event.

I'm hearing that oil can no longer be found in the Gulf of Mexico and on the Gulf Coast. Note the date of the video. It seems the birds are better than humans at finding the oil which threatens their lives.

Terrebonne Parish lies south of Thibodaux, where I live.




Thanks to Pat B. for the link to the video.

STORY OF THE DAY - REMINDER

I don't think about sex as much as I
used to, I said. But all it takes is a little
reminder. Like what? she said. You
name it, I said & I knew instantly I had
lost all credibility.

From StoryPeople.

DRUNK ON SOUL MUSIC?

Is it possible to get drunk on music? As we rolled through Scotland in MadChauffeur's wheels, along with the chills and thrills of riding fast on one lane roads with two way traffic and "Oooh!" and "Aaah!" scenery around every curve, we had SOUL in spades. I love soul music and have done so since my teens, however, I have never listened to soul music for such a sustained period of time in my whole life. By the end of 8 days of hours of listening to the music, I was a-groovin' and a-tappin' away in the car. If there had been room, I'd have been a-dancin'. I felt drunk on SOUL.

Here's a top-100 list and more of the greatest of soul and R&B recordings. I know we heard a good many of the artists and some of the songs, but as I said, I was drunk, and one tends to lose one's sense of accurate recall when enebriated, so I can't say for sure.

Cathy brought along opera and classical music CDs which did not get played until MadChauffeur abandoned us at the Glenuig Inn, and we hired our car for Cathy's turn at driving. Since I also love opera and classical music, I was quite happy with the change in sound, but without the total immersion in the music for hours on end, I did not get drunk.

And speaking of drunk (Did I really say that?!!!), I developed a taste for single malt (Bruce and Caminante alert!) under the influence of the wicked Cathy. Now I'd tasted the drink before and never liked it, but this time around, I acquired a taste for it, and I blame Cathy. She made me do it.

I posted the following comment at MadChauffeur's blog using Cathy's Notebook with the tiny keyboard, and thus was born Mimo, my evil Doppelgänger.

Hi everyone. Mimi here from Newcastle.

Johnathan has a sweet side that he doesn't reveal very often. He was quite kind an patient with me when we went shopping for the prop0er shoew for me for trekking in Scotland. He picked ouu thick socks for me qnd even noticed when the clerk at checkout was charging me too much for my shoes. He's a lovely man, you know even if he's shy aqbout letting that part of himself shop.

Mimo

Do you see? My Doppelgänger took over my comment, and she can neither spell nor type. Just so you'll know, I deny responsibility for anything that Mimo says.

Below is a picture of the boots, which are quite comfortable and were just the thing for the oftentimes wet terrain in Scotland, having good grips on the soles along with ankle support.



The boots were half-price, and the clerk at checkout was charging me full price until MadChauffeur noticed the mistake. My only caveat about the purchase is the shoelaces, which do not stay tied even with a double knot and are also too long and sometimes trail on the ground. Plus, already the tip of one lace came off, which would make it impossible to thread should the shoelaces come out. So it's new shoelaces for the boots, which, all things considered, still makes them a wise purchase. I had no room in my luggage for the boots, so the only way I could get them home without having to carry another bag was to wear them.

Oh dear! I hope that my future posts on the trip will not stray so far into stream-of-consciousness mode. Once I have my 500-plus pictures uploaded and culled, I hope to be a bit more settled in my writing.

À bientôt!

THE PHILOSOPHY OF AMBIGUITY

FOR THOSE WHO LOVE THE PHILOSOPHY OF AMBIGUITY, AS WELL AS THE IDIOSYNCRASIES OF ENGLISH:


ONE TEQUILA, TWO TEQUILA, THREE TEQUILA, FLOOR.

ATHEISM IS A NON-PROPHET ORGANIZATION.

THE MAIN REASON THAT SANTA IS SO JOLLY IS BECAUSE HE KNOWS WHERE ALL THE BAD GIRLS LIVE.

I WENT TO A BOOKSTORE AND ASKED THE SALESWOMAN, "WHERE'S THE SELF- HELP SECTION?" SHE SAID IF SHE TOLD ME, IT WOULD DEFEAT THE PURPOSE.

WHAT IF THERE WERE NO HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS?

IF A DEAF CHILD SIGNS SWEAR WORDS, DOES HIS MOTHER WASH HIS HANDS WITH SOAP?

IF SOMEONE WITH MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES THREATENS TO KILL HIMSELF, IS IT CONSIDERED A HOSTAGE SITUATION?

IS THERE ANOTHER WORD FOR SYNONYM?

WHERE DO FOREST RANGERS GO TO "GET AWAY FROM IT ALL?"

IF A PARSLEY FARMER IS SUED, CAN THEY GARNISH HIS WAGES?

WOULD A FLY WITHOUT WINGS BE CALLED A WALK?

WHAT WAS THE BEST THING BEFORE SLICED BREAD?

DOES THE LITTLE MERMAID WEAR AN ALGEBRA?

DO INFANTS ENJOY INFANCY AS MUCH AS ADULTS ENJOY ADULTERY?

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A CIVIL WAR?

IF YOU ATE BOTH PASTA AND ANTIPASTO, WOULD YOU STILL BE HUNGRY?

IF YOU TRY TO FAIL, AND SUCCEED, WHICH HAVE YOU DONE?

WHOSE CRUEL IDEA WAS IT FOR THE WORD 'LISP' TO HAVE 'S' IN IT?

WHY IS IT CALLED TOURIST SEASON IF WE CAN'T SHOOT AT THEM?

WHY IS THERE AN EXPIRATION DATE ON SOUR CREAM?

IF YOU SPIN AN ORIENTAL PERSON IN A CIRCLE THREE TIMES, DOES HE BECOME DISORIENTED?

CAN AN ATHEIST GET INSURANCE AGAINST ACTS OF GOD?

Don't blame me. Blame the irrepressible Doug.