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.
Author Loraine Despres will give you short takes on love, life's little ironies, and the world as she moves through it, with detours including how to attract men and keep them happy. That's easy. Writing, that's harder. The writer's life, that one is the hardest of all.
Monday, November 13, 2006
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
Friday, November 10, 2006
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.
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.
Monday, September 18, 2006
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
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.
“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.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
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.”
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