that's it, that's the message

 

Change is change is

So much is in flux at the moment, and I don't just mean the big bad world.
Preparing for big changes out on the coast, letting go of a treasured object because the object is failing and because if I don't, there will never be room for improvement.
And...I'm moving in a few weeks. Two rent increases over the past two years of 30% are kicking me out the door. I found a new spot, it's smaller but in a more vibrant, arty area, so I'm trying to be okay with it.
I've been cleaning out my closets, donating clothes and shoes to Goodwill, recycling and composting and leaving treasures in the laundry room downstairs.
Among the old mortgage documents and receipts and mementoes from past travels, I discovered documents from a painful time in my family's history--documents I'd forgotten I ever even had.
Words from the past, excuses and evasions.
I found my mother's wooden jewelry box and opened it. I touched a watch and a pair of earrings and her perfume wafted out and I breathed in deeply.
Then I closed the box up tightly, not wanting that familiar smell to fade away.

#sbpamelia

Back from some travels and I'm tired and happy. I visited some family in the Florida panhandle, then spent a week helping renovate a house in New Orleans. St Bernard Project is close to my heart, helping families 10 years post-Katrina to get back home. A buddy went with me and we shared an Airbnb shotgun house, complete with an early-morning wakeup call from the rooster next door. We installed drywall and cement board, painted and spackled and mudded, cut baseboards and learned to use a nail gun. Green Corps students came in twice, upping the energy and noise levels. The SBP site supervisors, serving through Americorps, were bright, funny and skillful twenty-somethings. Most days there was some impromptu dancing and a long line of running jokes by the end of the week.  And always, we kept in mind the goal of returning the Hendersons home by the end of October.
Evenings, my buddy and dined like royalty and listened to stellar jazz, on the outdoor courtyard at Bacchanal, then on Frenchmen Street at Maison, dba, 3 Muses, and Vaso. We drank Sazeracs and Abita beer and sobered up with street pizza and beignets and groceries from the Mardi Gras Zone Supermarket.
I don't quite know how to wrap up my thoughts quite yet.
There's more to come.

swapsies

Here's a gif for you, America. You fucking earned it this week: pic.twitter.com/OrfVsJauxe

— Ben Rosen (@Rosen) June 26, 2015

the weirdest

Shows two nights in a row this week. At the Crocodile, Rust on the Rails made me a fan, with two barefoot, lumbersexuals on violin, guitar and didgeridoo, another beardy guy singing, just a soulful, rhythmic sound. Then Tango Alpha Tango blew it up. Spotted down front, Ayron Jones, hanging out with a tall brunette. The next night, Eldridge Gravy and the Court Supreme, fronted by a tight, energetic super-mariachi band Banda Vagos. En route to the show, our bus was diverted onto a pre-emptive May Day re-route, so we abandoned ship and walked up 12th Avenue, helicopters crackling and hovering overhead, and came around the corner by the SPD precinct, suddenly confronted with an alcove stuffed with riot cops.
*
Pictured, graffiti from the ladies at the Five Point.

stay woke

The news from Ferguson last night was not good.
Listening to the radio at my kitchen table reminded me of waiting for the OJ verdict twenty years ago, in a co-worker's car en route to a meeting, both of us holding our breaths, the jaw-dropping surprise us white knuckleheads felt when we heard "not guilty."
Last night as I listened to the prosecutor run down a painfully long list of defenses, it seemed clear that there would be no indictment.
My social media blew up. Speaking of knuckleheads, several of my Midwestern family members posted some pretty offensive shit. Mostly, among my friends, I saw disappointment, anger, not much disbelief, moms worried for their kids' safety, pissed off activists, plain-old-bewildered people.
I still feel sad and mostly helpless. The system is working as it's designed to, someone said today, and I realized she's right.
DailyKos had some good analysis:
--the questions no one asked
--prosecutor as defense attorney
I'm reading the documents released on the Washington Post.
And bits of this essay stick in my head:
--I'm deeply and profoundly disappointed and honestly lack the words to explain my emotions right now. It's a frustration in which a man doesn't feel much like writing. It's an exhaustion in which one has hoped just one too many times for justice, only for it to escape in the fleeting fashion that is sadly familiar in cases of young black men killed by police officers all over this country.
--I had hoped officers would be found guilty when they were found beating Rodney King senseless. It was on video. We all saw it. They were acquitted.
--I had hoped officers would be found guilty when they fired 41 shots at an unarmed Amadou Diallo standing in his doorstep. They were acquitted.
--I had hoped the officers who fired 50 shots into Sean Bell's car as he left his bachelor party would be found guilty. They were acquitted.
--I had hoped the officers who shot and killed football star Kendrec McDade—after they lied about him shooting at them first—would at least go to court, but the grand jury said they were justified.
--I had hoped the officers who chased Ramarley Graham into his home and killed him would at least be tried, but they weren't
--I had hoped the officers who shot and killed John Crawford in Wal-Mart would be cited somehow, but the grand jury found they were justified.
--Now, here we are, with a young man who ran over half a football field away, after a confrontation with Officer Darren Wilson, only to be shot over and over again.
--I had hoped Wilson would at least face these charges in an open court of law, but it will not happen.
Change is gonna come, another friend posted, with a link to Sam Cooke.
I hope she's right.