A Literary Feast

WORDS AND MUSIC

My husband and I went to New Orleans to take part in The Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society’s annual Words and Music—A Literary Feast—and feast it was with great food and even better conversation with authors from all around the United States.  
     But first, the day after Halloween, I had a signing at the charming Octavia Books, which not only survived Hurricane Katrina; it was the first bookstore to reopen.  They had so little damage that even the goldfish in their fountain were alive and anxiously waiting for Tom Lowenburg and his wife’s return.  (That’s because the hurricane didn’t hit New Orleans full on.  The damage was man made.  The levees broke and flooded the city.  The flood waters from those particular levees didn’t reach that part of Octavia Street so those houses and businesses suffered only a little wind damage.)  Rather than post my pictures of the event, I’ll send you to their website http://www.octaviabooks.com/
     The next day Words and Music began with parties and discussions of the impact of Hispanic Cultures on U.S. Life and Literature.  On Friday, I led a panel on Late Bloomers, women who’d had successful careers in other fields and then after forty published best-selling and prize winning novels.  Maria Arana, was and is the editor of The Washington Post Book World.  Her memoir American Chica was a finalist for the National Book Award and her new novel, Cellophane has received rave reviews.  Julia Glass was an accomplished painter before winning the National Book Award for her novel, Three Junes.  Her new novel The Whole World Over, has also received rave review.  Pamela Binnings Ewen—which sounded much too much like Pam Ewing to an old DALLAS writer—was a successful international lawyer before penning Faith on Trial and Walk the Black Cat.  We all agreed that our life experiences gave us insights we never had when we were younger and made our writing so much richer.  I wrote perfectly terrible novel earlier in my career which I threw away after becoming a screenwriter.  Before forty my literary efforts were not ready for prime time.  All my indoor photos all took on a sepia sheen giving them an antique aura.

Here's the picture that goes with the caption below. 

Late Bloomers panel - right to left: Julia Glass, National Book Award winner, Maria Arana, Book World Editor at Washington Post, and novelist and laywer Pamela Binnings Ewen. 

new Halloween in New Orleans 2006

THE CITY THAT CARE AND A LOT OF OTHERS FORGOT

Ok, it’s obvious to me that I’m not cut out for blogging.  I just can’t get the hang of publishing pictures in the right order.  Here’s a second try at describing Halloween in a devastated New Orleans.  The last photo with the bent cross is punch line.  Why is it smaller than the rest?  Another mystery wrapped up in the skeins of the web.

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Talk about living fearlessly, that’s what everyone who lives in New Orleans is doing right now.  The food is wonderful.  The drinks are amazing.  The French Quarter never looked so good.  Everything’s been spruced up and renovated.  Well not everything, but you get the idea.

We arrived in time for the Halloween parade in the French Quarter.  Anyone could put on a costume and join in.  The parade was supposed to start at 5:30, but it actually started a little after 6:30pm.  That’s New Orleans time.  Around midnight masked revelers were still going strong in the Faubourg Marigny, and even at the courtyard restaurant the following weekend.  

But drive out a little way and you’ll see block after block, mile after mile of empty houses.  The schools are trying to come back.  As you can see from the sign, Holy Cross is accepting applications, but the cross on the top of the school is emblematic.  

Halloween in New Orleans 2006 redo

THE CITY THAT CARE AND A LOT OF OTHERS FORGOT

Ok, it’s obvious to me that I’m not cut out for blogging.  I just can’t get the hang of publishing pictures in the right order.  Here’s a second try at describing Halloween in a devastated New Orleans.  The last photo with the bent cross is punch line.  Why is it smaller than the rest?  Another mystery wrapped up in the skeins of the web.

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Talk about living fearlessly, that’s what everyone who lives in New Orleans is doing right now.  The food is wonderful.  The drinks are amazing.  The French Quarter never looked so good.  Everything’s been spruced up and renovated.  Well not everything, but you get the idea.

We arrived in time for the Halloween parade in the French Quarter.  Anyone could put on a costume and join in.  The parade was supposed to start at 5:30, but it actually started a little after 6:30pm.  That’s New Orleans time.  Around midnight masked revelers were still going strong in the Faubourg Marigny, and even at the courtyard restaurant the following weekend.  

But drive out a little way and you’ll see block after block, mile after mile of empty houses.  The schools are trying to come back.  As you can see from the sign, Holy Cross is accepting applications, but the cross on the top of the school is emblematic.  

Halloween In New Orleans calls for parades

The bunny is throwing beads to a small but enthusiatic crowd.
 

There's Always Time for Music

 

Outside the French Quarter the Party's on. 

Amid the devastated neighborhoods the schools are trying to come back. 

Amid devastated neighborhoods the schools are trying to come back. 

What more can I say? 

Correction

CORRECTION

I don’t pretend to be a computer genius.  I stayed up until after midnight trying to figure out how to post photos.  Now I get it, the last post goes on top of the page and sometimes photos you think haven’t loaded are and when you try again you sometimes post them twice.  My bad.

So my latest posting Halloween in New Orleans 2006: THE CITY THAT CARE AND A LOT OF OTHERS FORGOT is backwards.  I meant for you to read the text first, see the photos of all the revelers, and finally view the school sign and see the broken cross.  What can I say, except I’ll know better next time.

But they have a long way to go. 

But they have a long way to go. 

Holy Cross is accepting applications 

There's always music in New Orleans 

On Halloween the party's on. 

On Halloween giant rabbits throw beads 

Halloween is Christmas in New Orleans 

Holy Cross is accepting applications 

The Huffington Post

BECOMING FEARLESS

Check it out.  My article on “The Courage to Live Your Life” is featured today on the Huffington Post on her Becoming Fearless page along with Arianna’s blog, an amusing note from Nora Ephron, If I Could TiVo My Life and much more.

But if you decide to check it out, beware.  

The articles on the First Female Space Tourist and the effect she’s having on women in Iran, Madrid enforcing the skinny model ban, articles by Harry Shearer (the postings change minute to minute) are highly addictive.  You are likely to find yourself addicted, blurry-eyed, surfing the web for hours on end instead of getting on with your life.  

THE COURAGE TO LIVE YOUR LIFE

THE COURAGE TO LIVE YOUR LIFE

“It’s Okay for a woman to know her place.  She just shouldn’t stay there.”  That’s Rule Number 48 Sissy LeBlanc’s SOUTHERN BELLE’S HANDBOOK.  I started every chapter in both my novels with a rule.  Some of them were satirical, some ironic, but this is the one I live by.    

I was a single mom in New Orleans scraping along in a cheap apartment when I decided to pack up my son in my old car and go out to Hollywood to break into show business.  Within two years I was writing for network television.  Within four years I’d written the most watched show in the history of TV (at that time) and had saved up enough to make a down payment on my own house in Malibu.

Was it scary?  You bet.  I knew a couple of people in the business from New Orleans and I thought they’d help me.  They didn’t.  Was it hard?  Did I sometimes think of giving up?  Of course.  But it was exciting, too.  

I didn’t know how to break in, so I did everything.  I’d worked in educational film, and I was able to hustle some free-lance educational film assignments, which allowed me to join an organization called Women In Film as an associate member.  

I made myself useful.  If there was an envelope to stuff, I stuffed it.  If there was a conference or a panel where I could learn, I was there.  I took classes at night and kept on writing.  I wrote three un-produced screenplays.  So when I finally got a break, (and I think that anyone who really puts themselves out there will eventually get a break) I was ready.  

My son cried he was so happy.  I took him skiing to celebrate.  It was our first real vacation since moving to Los Angeles.  Years later, I decided to stop writing TV to follow my new dream of writing novels about women, who think they’re stuck, but manage to take their lives into their own hands.  The heroine of my first novel, THE SCANDALOUS SUMMER OF SISSY LEBLANC is stuck in a bad marriage in a town too small for her.  In the end she learns as I did Rule Number 2: A smart girl can’t just sit on the porch and wait for her life to start.  

The heroine of my new novel, THE BAD BEHAVIOR OF BELLE CANTRELL, comes from an earlier, more repressive era, when women were fettered by the rules of propriety.  It was 1920 when Belle decides:  The most important thing about virtue is to talk as if you’re in favor of it.  (A rule some people in Washington unfortunately follow even today.)  But when she has to overcome her fear and rescue her friends, she screws up her courage and declares:  Sometimes a girl just has got to stop thinking and get going.        

The Mel Gibson Mess

What I fear is some of those good people, who don’t go to movies, but flocked to see The Passion of the Christ are tacitly agreeing with Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic statements, even as he more or less denies them.  I’m afraid they may be glad a big celebrity gave voice to their beliefs.  Because I write Southern novels, I tour the South.  I’ve spoken to groups in beautiful homes, stuffed with antiques, where even at 10:00 AM a miasma of bourbon floated from the thick, silk drapes and Oriental carpets.  When I said I was Jewish a frisson rippled through the well-dressed crowd.  They were invariably polite, but it was clear, I was no longer “their kind.”  I am also afraid some of the not-so-closeted anti-Semites in bars and back-yards not just in the South but across the country are nodding their heads and saying, “You tell it like it is, Mel.”

Women Writers

Hot New Zine for Women Writers

It used to be that Women Writers didn’t get no respect.  Now there’s a Zine, WomenWriters.net devoted to scholarly essays and creative writing by and about women.  WomenWriters.net puts essays, poetry, fiction, and in the current issue book reviews at your fingertips.  You can submit your own work or get advice on writing, publishing, and much more.

Kim Wells, the Editor, and Creator of the site is not only a serious scholar, but blessed with great critical insight.  Okay, I’m biased.  She published a rave review of my latest novel, THE BAD BEHAVIOR OF BELLE CANTRELL by Julie Schoerke who really understood my book.  Obviously, Julie is a woman of deep perspicacity.

Check it out for yourself at: http://www.womenwriters.net/summer06/bellecantrell.html

Oops!  That’s the link to the review of BAD BELLE.  Here’s the Zine’s home page: http://www.womenwriters.net/index.htm

Hope you’re having a great summer.  Let me hear from you at: Loraine@LoraineDespres.com  

Stay cool.

ANN COULTER THE QUEEN OF MEAN

ANN COULTER THE QUEEN OF MEAN

I don’t want my occasional blog to become a political screed, but while the Southern Belle loves wit, she was offended by Ann Coulter’s mean spirited attacks on the women whose husbands died in the 9/11 attacks.  I sent this letter to the WASHINGTON POST.

Howard Kurtz, in his article “The Coulter Conundrum” in the WASHINGTON POST, (June 12, 2006) quotes Ms Coulter as saying, of the widows of 9/11, “These broads are millionaires lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities. . . . I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much. . . .  And by the way, how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies?  Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy."
They say artists always draw themselves, well it seems to me Ms Coulter is talking about herself… a millionaire, lionized on TV and in articles about her, reveling in her status as a celebrity… enjoying (or at least making hay) from the deaths of those who died on 9/11.  Maybe she should take her own advice and hurry up and appear in Playboy or is that what she’s been angling for all along?
Was I too mean spirited?  What do you think?

What a Southern Belle Needs

What a Southern Belle Needs

The other day I got a call from a friend in need.  A beautiful, well-educated, clueless friend from New Jersey.  She said she’d met a great guy, early forties, never been married, and very attractive.  He seemed to like her a lot whenever they got together, but they didn’t get together enough to suit her.  “What should I do?” my Yankee friend asked.
     “Well, if he’s in his early forties and never been married, he’s not likely to be impetuous.”
     “I should let him take his time?”
     “Until you get bored and decide to move on.  It might be OK to invite him to a small party at your house or tell him you have an extra ticket to a baseball game, but you have to actually give a party or buy tickets.”
     “Then I shouldn’t I tell him I need more attention?”  
I was floored by the question.  
I explained that when you tell a man you need something, he hears:  she has a problem and it’s up to me to fix it.  And if he can’t fix it or believes it’s too much of a commitment, he’s out of there.
I made up a new rule on the spot:
Before a man commits, the only need a Southern Belle can safely admit to is help moving a heavy object from one place to another.
     Rule Number 205, The Southern Belle’s Handbook
     Moving a heavy object will give him a chance to flex his muscles and a chance for you to admire them.  Of course, if he’s mechanical you may safely ask him to help you set up an electrical appliance, but not a computer.  That takes real commitment.  
     Agree?  Disagree?  Let me know at loraine@LoraineDespres.com

 

The Southern Belle Sounds Off

The Southern Belle Sounds Off

NEW ORLEANS – City of My Heart

I just returned from New Orleans. No matter where I live, it will always be the home of my heart. And it’s never looked so beautiful or so sad. It’s a city on the edge, both fragile and graceful, eating, drinking, making music, and worried about the next storm.

I stayed with friends in the suburbs where life goes on as usual... more or less. When my hosts ran into people he hadn’t seen in some time the greeting was not how are you doing? Or what’s up? But how’s your house? What have you lost?

My husband and I drove out to Lakeview. Unlike the now famous 9^th Ward, Lakeview was home to middle-class and upper-middle-class families mostly white. These were people who’d made it, who’d bought a home between City Park with its sculpture garden, museum, oak trees, the shores of Lake Pontchartrain and tragically near the 17^th Street Canal, where the Army Corps of Engineers underestimated the weakness of the soil.

For the most part these houses survived Katrina, the earthen levees along the lake held, but not those around the 17^th Street Canal. Now you drive through block after block after block of ghosts. The houses stand. They look OK until you realize they’re empty shells.

In each of these neat, modern homes were families who before the storm worried about what we all worry about-- how to pay the mortgage, why weren’t their children applying themselves in school, how to build their business, or the stupidity of their bosses. Regular things. Now their lives have been changed forever. It’s as if the raised cemeteries spread out to cover over half the city. The freeway underpasses are still burial grounds for hundreds maybe thousands of abandoned cars.

Ed Reams, tv news reporter at WDSU was kind enough to give me a tour of the station and let me shadow him to research my next novel. Seven months after the hurricane, local news is still all about aftermath Katrina. http://www.wdsu.com/index.html The flood maps, new homes projected, and FEMA’s refusal to renegotiate no-bid contracts. Their coverage of local crime is no longer, “if it bleeds it leads,” but about contractor fraud.

And still the music, the cultural life of the city goes on. More next time.

Here's the meeting from outside Denise's fabulous home with the golf course reflected on all windows. 

Here's the meeting from outside Denise's fabulous home with the golf course reflected on all the windows. 

That's me with some of the women of Women In Film.  

Here's the meeting of Women In Film in Denise's fabulous home with the golf course reflected from all windows. 

Here I am with Craig Lawver 

ON THE ROAD

ON THE ROAD – PALM SPRINGS

A lot of authors complain about book tours.  Not me.  So when Leanna Bonamici of Casablanca Studios in Desert Hotsprings, asked me to speak to the Palm Springs Chapter of Women In Film at their monthly breakfast on February 11th, I jumped at the chance.  While the East Coast was covered with snow, I got to spend the weekend in the sun surrounded by one of the world’s most beautiful golf courses.  Unfortunately I don’t play golf, somehow I’ve never been able to connect with little balls, but after the breakfast I spent an hour swimming in the pool.  

I’m only sorry I didn’t get any pictures of Leanna, or my hostess, president of the Palm Springs Chapter of Women In Film, the beautiful Denise DuBerry Hay and her beautiful sisters.  However, here are some pictures of the house and the meeting as well as one with Craig Lawver from Borders of Rancho Mirage who was gracious enough to come out and sell books.  OK, here’s the truth, I’m hoping I can get Picassa to send the pictures.  

The Palm Springs Women in Film Breakfast have come to hear me speak at the home of the beautiful Denise DuBerry Hay. She lives right on the golf course.  

SAVE A LIFE

SAVE A LIFE FOR THE PRICE OF A FEW STAMPS.

Here I am the Southern Belle and I’m supposed to be sounding off on men, how to get them and what to do with them once you’ve got them.  

Instead I’m going to ask you to send letters to save the life of a journalist living in a country you may never see.  But can you resist the chance to save a life, just by writing a few letters?

Last year as a member of PEN USA I took on the job of special “minder” to a Bangladeshi editor and journalist who’d been arrested at the airport in Dhaka on November 29, 2003 on his way to Israel address a conference on the role of the media in bringing about peace in the Middle East.  He was thrown into jail in Bangladesh, not the best place to be, and languished there for 17 months.  Then on May 2005, following appeals from around the world including a focused campaign by PEN USA, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury was released on bail.  And on November 9th Pen USA made him their recipient of the 2005 Freedom to Write Award.

Things were looking up.  In October 2005 he was again allowed to publish his Bangladeshi Weekly Jamjamat and The Weekly Blitz, an English language tabloid.  You can check out the latest edition at http://www.weeklyblitz.net/blitzV21/  You’ll learn about what people in Bangladesh are concerned about and see for yourself that Choudhury is against violence.  He risks his life to write against terrorism.  He even publishes American Richard Benkin’s series on saving the Temple Mount in Israel.    

Although he is out of jail, his life is still in jeopardy.  He goes on trial in the next few days or weeks (we don’t have the date yet) and sadly sedition is a capital offence in Bangladesh.  So his life is in danger.

Here’s what you can do:  Write the Prime Minister (a democratically elected woman,) the Minister of Home Affairs and/or the Bangladeshi Ambassador.  I’ll give you the addresses and phone numbers.  I’ll even give you a letter you can copy.  Here it is:
Your Excellency,
I am writing to you on behalf of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who is currently out on bail after 17 months in prison on unproven charges of “sedition.”  I am concerned that these charges against him have not yet been dropped.  Choudhury was arrested for the peaceful expression of his opinions; a right guaranteed by Article 19 the United Nation’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  His message is that of peace and cooperation between all people and a rejection of violence.
After many hearings and postponements of his court date, Choudhury is again scheduled to appear in the High Court.
Bangladesh is a great democratic nation whose people have the reputation for tolerance.  I respectfully request that you urge your government to drop the sedition charges against Mr. Choudhury.
Sincerely,
That’s it.  All you have to do.  Here’s where you send the letter with 84 cents in stamps:

Begum Khaleda Zia
Honorable Prime Minister Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh
Prime Minister's Office
Old Sangshad Bhaban
Dhaka
Bangladesh

And

Md. Lutfuzzaman Babar
Minister of Home Affairs
Bangladesh Secretariat
Building 4
Dhaka - 1000
Bangladesh

And

Ambassador Shamsher M. Chowdhury, BB
Bangladesh Embassy
3510 International Drive NW
Washington, DC 20008
Telephone : (202) 244 - 0183

You can even Fax him at :(202) 244 - 5366

You don’t have to write them all, but the more letters you send, the better chance he has to walk free.  Please forward a link to this blog to ten friends.  I can’t promise instant riches if you do or bad luck if you don’t, but it’s got to be good for your karma.  





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Books Before Dancing

With enthusiastic readers at the Pulpwood Queens Girlfriends Weekend. 

The Wild and Wonderful Texas Queens

Here I am in the center of some terrific Texas Queens who know how to have fun.