Photo Essay

I hope a picture is worth more than a thousand words!  Here is my tribute to New Orleans in pictures!

The French Quarter

City Park

The Superdome

Dear Kendle

http://sachemlibrary.org/pages/bibliography.aspx?deptid=1

Dear Kendle,

I don't think I like you very much.  I don't want to read my book on a screen...I like books. I like to hold them. I like to smell them.  I like to turn the pages. I like a hard cover book.  I want to own it, I don't want to borrow one from the library.  I might want to read it again, and again.  Although I know the outcome, I am still hopeful that it will turn out differently, I guess that makes me a little crazy.  I get excited and nervous, anticipatious (is that a word?) wondering what's gonna happen next.  But I have to turn the page for that! 

As much as I don't like you, I dislike the audio book even more.  I am past the age of needing to be read to and I don't want to 'listen' to a book while riding/driving to Atlanta:  I want to sleep, or talk to my husband or listen to music.  To me, 'hearing' a book makes it boring, it's like reading a song, but that's just me.

So it doesn't matter what the rest of the world is doing, I'm turning pages, anticipating...sometimes reading the last page before I get to it.  I love books, hardcover, though I'll take a paperback, novels, biographies, fables, anthologies...I have to feel it, with  my hands, with my heart, with my head.

Sincerely,

The Jazzy Diva

Random Ranting

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y7/Nicola_466/FrazzledCat.jpg

 

Okay, this is not about coming home, but just some random rants.

One being  phone etiquette.  I guess people think they don't need it, with all the texting and IM'ing.  But at some point you have to pick up the phone and actually speak to someone.  So when you call someone, can you please identify yourself?  Why do you think I know your voice? 

So I just started this temporary job and I feel out of place, unwelcome, unskilled, unknown...just UN.  It is a small office, so now I pretty much know everybody here, but I don't know their voices, sometimes I don't recognize my own family's voices.  Some people think they are really important and that they don't have to identify themselves: Them: "Is Bonquitia there?" Me: "May I ask whose calling?" Them: (long pause, sigh) "This is John" Me: (in my head--Well dang! You really didn't think I knew who you were, did you?) "One moment, I'll connect you" (Foo)

At the other end of the spectrum,  they over-introduce themselves:  If I have been here for two weeks and you are one of two guys in the office and your name is  Frankford and the other guy is Joe, you really don't need to give me your full name.  "Hi, this is Frankford O. Bun, can I speak to..."  I mean really, you are the only Frankford here, for that matter, in the world, so, um can you just say "Hey Donna, this is Frank, can I speak to Pookey?" 

Another thing is, can you let a sister know where you going, who you expecting and general stuff that the first contact (me or I ) might need to know.  It is so embarrassing when someone calls and I don't know where people are and I'm like "um (the first clue a that you don't know what you're talking about), he's at lunch", then they call back within the time THEY think the person should be back (or 2 hours later). So, of course, If they don't tell me they called before, and I say "He's at lunch" and they're like "He's still at lunch?!" and I'm like "Um..."

Or someone comes in to see a person in the office, now Joe is expecting this person, but didn't tell me.  I'm new, I don't know people and they want to walk to the back and I'm like "can I help you?" and they keep walking or look at me stupid like "don't you know who I am?"  "I'm here to see Joe, he knows I'm coming".  So I don't know if this dude is a terrorist, disgruntled former employee bout to shoot Joe, so I don't know how to handle this.  If I try to stop them they get a little put off and so does the office person who may or may not be expecting them.

http://therealcharlie.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/muffin-top.jpg

Okay, enough about office stuff.  The last thing I would like to rant about is the way people are dressing these days.  I just really don't get it.  I see these females with big guts and butts and thighs with large tattoos and everything's hanging out.  And I'm wondering, "doesn't she have any friends?"  Maybe her friends told her that she looks good; maybe her man told her she looks good; maybe she thinks she looks good; maybe she should just look in the mirror!  I mean, if your gut is out and hanging over your pants, and jiggling, that should feel like something...right?  I can see it shaking, can't you FEEL it?  I was at the deli counter the other day and this girl had tight jeans, a rag on her head and a short top.  Of course her gut was hanging out and she tugged on her pants a little, but didn't bother to try to conceal her flopping belly....oh how I wanted to take a picture and post it.  But I think I would have gotten a beat down, so I just ordered my turkey, threw up a little and finished my shopping.

Really lady, you look bad, and you are making the rest of us lose our lunch!

Bonne Terre (Good Earth)

My husband is a landscape contractor and he recently changed the name of his business to 'Bonne Terre' Landscapes, his motto: "Planting Good Seed in Good Soil"... it is a biblical reference.  When you plant a seed, the soil that you plant that seed in is just as important as seed you plant.  If the seed is not planted in good soil, it will not produce good fruit; if the seed is not good, that bad seed will produce bad fruit.

My family and I are the seed and New Orleans is the soil.  What kind of fruit will we produce?  Are we good seed?  Is New Orleans good soil? By seeking God first, honoring our city and it's culture, raising our children to be respectable and respectful adults and doing something for our community, we are planting good seed. 

As Christians, we seek God first and pray for guidance in our decisions.  Moving back to New Orleans was a major decision for us.  It was my husband's idea initially and I know that he prayed about it and received the answer from God.  I'm not saying that I didn't pray about it, but I was much more skeptical about the move and I trust my husband and follow him as he follows God.  So although this journey has been a little rough at times, we know who orders our steps and that the seed of faith that we have planted will produce a great harvest.

One of the things that we love about New Orleans is the culture.  There is no other place like this. There is a rhythm and a language that is not heard or spoken anywhere else.  New Orleans architecture is second to none and we have the friendliest people in the world.  Now you might not get good customer service at the drive through, but something about the flavor of the people here, you don't really mind when they're rude to you.  Well, I do, but I don't want get cussed out, so I keep it movin'!

The next seed is a little more difficult: our children.  You can do all the right things, or truly believe that you're doing the right things, and your children still end up doing the wrong things.  It is usually not your fault, we all have choices and our children are individuals with free will and choices that they have to make for themselves.  But through faith and doing as the Bible says, "train them up in the way that they should go and when they are old they will not depart from it", although they may go astray, they always remember the lessons they learned as children.  It is an awesome responsibility, raising children, raising men.  We pray that the seeds of faith, hope, responsibility, integrity and respect for self and others will produce a mighty fruit.

We must also plant seeds in our community.  We live in a great city with great promise.  It is a part of our responsibility to make our community a nice place to live.  It can be as simple as keeping your lawn nice, not leaving trash outside your home, and so on.  We can also plant businesses in our community and support those businesses. As African Americans, I believe that we have a responsibility to support our own, not to the exclusion of others, however, how can we expect others to support our businesses when we don't support our own?  As planters of those businesses, we also have the charge of giving the best service and quality products.  We must go the extra mile and do what others in our chosen industry are not doing.  It can be something as simple as just sending Christmas, anniversary or birthday cards to  our clients.  A small gesture makes a big impact.  We can impact our community by providing quality services and products.

I am hopeful that my city will be a more beautiful flower on this earth; it is already growing nicely, let's plant good seeds so that the good fruit that we produce will be evident to all who see it.

Coming Home

"What do you think about moving back home?" Those words made my heart race, took my breath away. I wanted to cry. My husband was asking me if I wanted to move back to the city that another woman drove me out of; the city that failed to provide adequate education to my children; the city that in retrospect, I truly loved.

I didn't know how to respond, I was shocked, afraid, sick to my stomach. I lived in New Orleans most of my life, thirty-nine years at that point. Although we lived in Slidell, Louisiana when the storm hit, we still considered ouselves residents of New Orleans.

We evacuated early Sunday morning (like midnight, one a.m.), August 28, 2005, taking enough clothes for 3 days or so. We went home about two weeks later, though we weren't supposed to, to assess the damage to our home that we had only been living in for a year. At that point I knew that our lives would never be the same again. I knew that we would never live in New Orleans again.

I guess I was wrong. It has been five years since the devastation and to be honest, there is no place like home and no place like New Orleans. We lived in Dallas, Texas for a little over a year and Cypress, Texas for more than three years; we thought we were home... it was home, temporarily.

When I lived in New Orleans, I never thought about the great and unique things about the city. The architecture, the people, the food, the culture. Whenever I told someone that I was from New Orleans I felt a strange sense of pride, not really pride like you might think, but like I'm somehow different because I'm from there. We have a different thing going on here, we are just different. Sometimes it's good, sometimes not so good. When me and my husband say "only in New Orleans" it means something different everytime.

I'm gonna end this blog now, but I will be posting more in the future. All about my city....so you can love it too!

Check out my other blog at http://knowitall-donnaanne.blogspot.com/