"Every survival kit should include a sense of humor" - Unknown

 Someone, please pinch me already.

I know that tomorrow morning I may not have even a residue of gratitude I am experiencing at this moment, but someone has to write about the good stuff. The lighter side of life, for goodness sake. I am sick of only hearing about the dark, deep, greedy secrets and power gesturing of the so-called movers and shakers of the world. The top six percent of the world’s population controlling something like 80% of the wealth. Huh? What about folks like me, who live in middle-class non-celebrity, moving metaphorical mountains and making some noise? The good kind. The kind of noise that resonates, and contributes something positive. Even if I am just another white chick transplant. Stackman, a local alto sax player I met at the Candlelight Lounge in the Treme, says that his people call us “culture vultures”. Took me awhile before the light went on. I laughed out loud. That’s a good one.

According to my friend Joe’s neighbor, Coach, an old local who told Joe with a shit-eating grin: I gotta say Joe, that maybe the best thang that evah happen to New Orleans is you white people movin on in aftah The Storm. The city has changed since then with the arrivals of, yes, all us white people. Joe, a retired white guy from Detroit, who moved here almost 2 years ago, lives in the infamous Seventh Ward just next to the Treme. Murders and crack houses and AWESOME musicians live there. Joe is one of them (musicians I mean, tenor sax to be exact). I stayed in the Seventh Ward for 10 days before finding my flat here in the trees in Uptown. Two days before I arrived, a kid got murdered right in front of my flat. Four days after I left, my neighbor got shot twice in the leg. He said it was a drive by. Random. Probably a gang initiation shooting. People say these words very steadily. Very calmly. I just learned that the Times-Picayune used to print the homocide numbers and stats at the upper right hand corner of the front page. Right next to the weather forcast.

I live in the Garden District of New Orleans. One block away it is dangerous, crack-pipe scary. Half a block in the other direction just at St Charles Avenue, it is tree-lined and expensive. Plantation sized houses with small perfect gardens, and old slave quarters out back turned into thousand-dollar-a-month studios with granite counter tops and stainless steel gas burning stoves. I walk and walk and walk around the streets. I meet people as I walk, talk to them for a long, long time. I never know what time it is. I meet dogs as I stroll slowly in “feels like” heat of 110, and they tell me all sorts of great stories about their happy lives here in this dog-friendly town. I want a dog. A Katrina Canine who is older and way cool.

It is said that people live outside here. I am starting to understand how connected that makes people feel as front-stoop conversations unite the unspoken knowing of hard times. And of celebrations. Always have a reason to celebrate something, people say. Cheers to that. Joe tells me that most people here are poor, so nobody really pays much attention to the recession anyway. Makes sense. If you got nothin, then nothin is just fine. As long as you can dance and celebrate and live in gratitude for what you got, everythings gonna be alright. Hmm.

I just submitted a proposal to the company I am consulting at, a small business with a method to their madness. I am re-designing their entire business, starting with a retail space makeover, and a special event celebrating the fact that the company has survived thirty years of hurricanes, floods, two recessions, two heart attacks, and a divorce. And a partridge in a pear tree. They had been making plans to do their 25^th Anniversary party in August of 2005 when Katrina and Rita hit. They were lucky. Their building is on St Louis and Decatur down in the French Quarter where they got only 3 feet of water. But many of their staff didn’t return. And they are still here, now thriving and ready to grow. Indeed a reason to celebrate. Their story is in abundance here. Sad and yet uplifiting.

The lack of complaining here is humbling. Resilience is a word used by all who have witnessed the miracle called New Orleans Rising. Yes, Katrina and Rita are still felt almost five years later, but in many parts of town, their talons of mud and chaos are not even a whisper. I am in awe. I have much to learn from these traditional, loose-tongued, politically incorrect locals. It is a pity that Bill Maher called the hard-working people down here kinda dumb. I think Bill Maher, who I actually agree with most of the time, really got it wrong here. I would like him to come with me the next time I go out and see the BEST musicians play their hearts out for close to nothing. I am talking really great music, a good vibe. For only a dollar or two in the tip jar and a three-dollar beer, the dancing, sweating, swaying bar would lift him up to the magic that is New Orleans. I would also take him to Crepe Nanou, a local French bistro with the best filet mignon on this planet… and the most elegant service. Might change his mind.

My friend Joe told me that either you get the magic or you don’t. I guess Mr Maher will never get it. Took me a few weeks, while getting through some of the PTSD lingering from my first 10 days in the Seventh Ward. And then one day, standing on Prytania and Washington at the Lafayette Cemetary Number One, I saw fern moss growing out of a brick wall. The beauty and resilience of this plant, living on a wall built in 1833, shook me. The tree moss, the white brick, the moist air, the diffused-yellow light. It was my moment of magic.

Even with the murders, the mafia, the gangs, the drunken tourists, the pot holes, the crack heads, the corrupt bureaucrats, the hurricanes, the overt racists (black, white, and brown), the Spill, and even with the 14% sales and Louisiana tax on just about everything, I do think I have found my version of Heaven on Earth. Yep, I get it. I have finally exhaled. After almost seven years of living on the edge in North American hell, I have survived. Next thing you know I’ll be looking at condos and settling down.

I wonder when the SPCA opens in the morning?