An Interactive Sound Map of New Orleans

Created by Monsieur Quintron:

"Open Sound New Orleans."

Also, this:

"New Orleans Responds to BP With Song"

I can vouch that this is so, having heard some of these songs on the ground in NO.

News From Haiti & Elsewheres

Two nights ago Mz called and said M had just called him, and all she needs to do is show the Haitian government a visa, two photos of herself and K, and plane tix, then she and K can go! In fact, she's supposed to get the kid out of Haiti by August 10th, they told her.

D said she was setting Zeffur to good luck purr-spin to cut M some breaks, and it looks as though it worked! Maybe this means they will be back BEFORE we have to be in Maryland. It's been a half year. It's been non-stop activity, action and agitation by so many people to get this far. Many thanks to everyone who has helped with everything from administration and bureaucratic navigation and hassle, to money. Most of all, for caring.

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Other news: MSB has arranged a gig at this place in Baltimore " ... opening for a Bell & Cooper vehicle on Friday October 15. Place is called Joe 2, small club, good food and drink ...."

September and October calendar thus is filled for every weekend, with signings, academic presences, a week in the Dominican Republic, gigs like this one, and the one at Lincoln Center, plus others tba. Argh.

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Writing for season 2 of HBO's Treme begins next week.

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El V informed agent and publisher that The American Slave Coast is going to have both our names on it as writers, thus contracts need to be drawn up to reflect same.

I was /am most unsure about this, but he's determined it be so. I also thought everyone involved would go, oh sure, the bitch's been agitating blahblahblah. But the response was, "About time."

This means resigning from working, mostly, on my own project. But I'll be caught up working on this one, no matter what I resolve or do, because that's how it rolls in this house -- it's not as if I don't have a passionate interest in this history. I've already done a great deal of preparation research that has pointed us in the directions we need to go, the figures we need to look at, and so on. I've done this, on my own -- el V's too busy with the many other projects that are ongoing right now. So, with much trepidation, and much anxiety that I'm making a mistake, I've consented.
 
However, I am the first beta reader and editor. Like most writers I can't edit myself to best effect, so ... now what? Ah well. It shall all work out,  and it will be fun!

Malaria

Our amiga, M, who went back to Haiti to protect her six-year-old daughter that isn't allowed to live here with her and her husband, until uncountable hoops have been leaped through and paid a fee for, each, and every, single, one, substantially, by people who don't have much money to start with.


Well, malaria. She has it.

The dna tests were successfully completed and the conclusion was that M was K's mom could not be ruled out by a factor that just missed 100% by some inthly fraction of a nano. That's how they do.

But now they have to file a 'translated' version of the test, plus fee, with the Haitian authorities.

M has been in Haiti now for 5 months. As someone with a U.S. spouse, with permanent residency granted to her -- if she's out of the country for six months, she loses that, and the process to get M back into the U.S. will have to start all over again too.

Mz's hopeful that she and K will be here by September.

He's planning our annual New Year's Eve rituals and celebrations even now. He says, "K is going to dance for New Year's."

Please, please, please, please.

We will be here, up from C-town, for New Year's with M, no matter what.

Mz wanted to help us celebrate our anniversary last night.  But his heart, o his sore heart, it is in Haiti.

'Tis Our Anniversary Eve!

It is Hot.  Hot. Hot. Did I say, "Hot?"

And humid.

  

Nevertheless, we say the voyage is fairly begun. 

Libraries: The Next Pop Culture Thang!

From the Library Link of the Day:

A local news story skeptically questioning whether libraries are "necessary" set off a response from Vanity Fair, and a later counterpunch by Chicago's Public Library Commissioner won her support from such diverse, non-library-specific outlets as The A.V. Club and Metafilter, and from as far away as The Guardian.

Call it a hunch, but it seems to me that the thing is in the air that happens right before something — families with a million kids, cupcakes, wedding coordinators — suddenly becomes the thing everyone wants to do happy-fuzzy pop-culture stories about. Why?

Libraries get in fights. Everybody likes a scrapper, and between the funding battles they're often found fighting and the body-checking involved in their periodic struggles over sharing information, there's a certain ... pleasantly plucky quality to the current perception of libraries and librarians. Yes, it plays a little ironically against the hyper-stereotypical buttoned-up notion of what a librarian is, but the sense that they're okay with getting mad in public — like Chicago's Public Library Commissioner did — gives library people a spark they might not otherwise have.

Librarians know stuff. You know how the words "geek" and "nerd" have gone from actual insults to words used to lovingly describe enthusiasts? Well, if we haven't gotten past venerating people who don't know anything, we've certainly reduced, I'd argue, the degree to which we stigmatize people for knowing a lot. This alone might not make libraries cool, but it takes away from the sense that they're actively not cool. More specifically, they live in the world of information, and are employed in part to organize and make accessible large quantities of data. If your computer had feet and a spiffy personality, you see.

Libraries are green and local. This is where there's a lot of potential appeal for the same people who like organic produce and reusable grocery bags. You can pretty easily position a library as environmentally friendly (your accumulation of books and magazines you are not reading is fewer trees for the rest of us, you know), not to mention economical (obvious) and part of your local culture. This is the part of the potential appeal that's anti-chain-store, anti-sprawl, anti-anonymity, and so forth.

Libraries will give you things for free. Hi, have you noticed how much hardcover books cost? Not a Netflix person? They will hand you things for free. That's not an especially hard concept to sell.

"Open to the public" means "some days, you really have to wonder about people." This is where you get the spark of an idea for TLC or somebody to do some goofball show called The Stacks, which follows a small local library through funding problems, trying to get book clubs started, whatever. When your building is open to the public, that means open ... to ... the ... public. And you know what's a little unpredictable? The public. This is where you might get your drama. (When I was in college, the information desk used to post the best questions it received, one of which was "How long do you cook spaghetti?" I suspect many libraries have similar stories.)

There seems to be a preposterous level of goodwill. Quite honestly, I feel like you can go on YouTube and act like a complete goof (in the best way), and if it's for libraries, people have that same rush of warmth that they used to get about people who had sextuplets, before ... well, you know. Before.

I don't know whether it's going to come in the form of a more successful movie franchise about librarians than that TV thing Noah Wyle does, or a basic-cable drama about a crime-fighting librarian (kinda like the one in the comic Rex Libris), or that reality show I was or that reality show I was speculating about, but mark my words, once you've got Old Spicy on your side and you can sell a couple of YouTube parodies in a couple of months, you're standing on the edge of your pop-culture moment. Librarians: prepare.

New Orleans Again -- Television! Plus Autumn Capital Bookfest Appearances

SL's production is flying el V down to NO Friday to be interviewed re the BP Crime for If God's Willing and the Creek Don't Rise, SL's HBO sequel to When the Levees Broke. I've been agitating and agitating that el V get a hair cut. Guess he will do it, now. He can also finish the photo shoot for "Kiss You Down South," and give SL a second edition of the Postmamboist t-shirt.

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Capital Bookfest Schedule:

September 18, Capital Bookfest, Harrisburg, Pennsylania, at the State Museum of Pennsylvania:
Appearance/Time: LIT CAFE/Panel: Reading Fiction/Book Signing – 12:50p.m. – 1:30p.m.
Partners: The Writers Wordshop, StateMuseum of PA, Penn Council of the Arts, Penn State, Harrisburg, Messiah College, State Library of PA, Smooth Jazz 92.7, Women Connect Magazine, Harrisburg Magazine, Orison Publishers, UTZ, Honest Tea (more to be announced).
Book Seller: Barnes & Nobles
Media Partners: The Patriot News, Clear Channel Radio Stations, WHTM ABC27, Comcast (more to be announced).

October 2, Capital Bookfest, Largo, Maryland (outside D.C.) at Boulevard at the Capital Centre:
Appearance/Time: LIT CAFÉ: BORDERS BOOKSTORE/ Reading/Talk: Southern Stories/Book Signing
Partners: Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Commission, Prince George's County Parks and Recreation, Washington Post, Chick-fil-A, Radio One, Prince George’s Commission for Women, Washington Gas, UTZ, Honest Tea (more to be announced).
Book Seller: Borders Books
Media Partners: Washington Post, Radio One, NPR Radio, Radio One, WPFW 89.3FM Public Radio (more to be announced).

November 6, Charleston, South Carolina at Marion Square:
Partners: College of Charleston, Charleston County Public Library, The Lowcountry Initiative for the Literary Arts (LILA), Avery Research Center for African American Research and Culture, Barnes & Noble, and Blue Bicycle Books(independent bookstore).
Programming: Five (5) program areas: Mainstage, Lifestyle, Kids, Poetry/lit, Writing Workshops and a Live Music stage .
Media Partners: Post and Courier Newspaper, Charleston Magazine, Channel 4 (ABC affiliate), SC Public Radio, Z 93 Jamz, Apex Broadcasting, (more to be announced).

We're going to take this opportunity to conduct some on the ground research in Charleston at this time.

Recording Studio ChitChat

Incarcerate in the same cell without a single call to their attorneys, no digital devices, no microphones, no reporters:

Camille Paglia, Ann Coulter, Mary Matelin, Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin and Michelle Malkin.

Take odds on whether they play Survivor or activate the cooperation gene -- lots of betting permutations to delight the audience.

Who would you add to the mix?

I still wouldn't pay to watch. Too, too dirty.