Got this email-message from @lunanola. It came from the NOPD. To wit,

This message from NOPD 8th District Quality of Life Officer Roger J.
Jones, Jr. is being forwarded as a community service:

Greetings All,

I am writing to inform you all regarding the NOPD 8th District’s 2010
Mardi Gras Street Closures (to affect vehicles without access passes),
which will occur as follows:

Sunday, February 7, 2010: Street closure from 5:00 PM – 4:00 AM AM in
the area of Canal Street to Dumaine Street and N. Rampart Street to
Decatur Street.

Friday, February 12, 2010: Street closure from 5:00 PM -4:00 AM in the
areas of Canal Street to Dumaine Street and N. Rampart Street to
Decatur Street.

Saturday, February 13, 2010 from 5:00 PM through Wednesday, February
17, 2010 @ 4:00 AM: 24 HOUR-STREET CLOSURE OF AFORE-LISTED AREA.

***NOTE*** Please have your vehicle access passes in plain view on
your vehicle’s dashboard upon approach to any entry point at these
junctures.

On behalf of myself, Major Edwin Hosli and the rest of the Officers of
the NOPD 8th District, we wish you all a very safe and Happy Mardi
Gras 2010.

GEAUX SUPER BOWL SAINTS!!!

Best to you all,

Officer Roger J. Jones Jr.
NOPD 8th District Quality of Life

In six days, we will have been in New Orleans for a year. We are only half joking when we say that it was our mid-life crisis. Some people buy expensive cars or take lovers. We cashed in everything to move to a city we loved.

I’m not going to lie. It’s been a hard year. For a while it seemed like one kick in the head after another. And I wish I could say my attitude was always positive, but I’m prone to fear and catastrophizing, and I second-guessed the decision more times than I want to admit here.

It was a risky move. Irresponsible, even. We had some money, but neither of us had a job yet last August first when we rolled into town. It was up and down in lots of ways I don’t want to go into here, but suffice it to say that I’m here again, nearing the first of August, one year later, and again I don’t have a job.

And I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. He kept having to repeat the same day over and over until he got it right.

So if this is my do-over year, I intend for this year to rock.

Since I’m looking for a job right now, I took my laptop one day last week to the CC’s at Royal and St. Philip to get a little work done. Sitting near me was a man who appeared to be trying to get some work done himself, so I struck up a conversation with him.

That conversation led to a much more lengthy one out of his home, where he works. Nothing too unusual about that. The conversation ended with a job offer that, frankly, was too good to be true. I went home to think it over and discuss it with my husband, and the more I thought about it, the less real the job seemed.

There were some shady things about this man and his associates, the most interesting of which included vampire role play and leading his wife around Bourbon Street on a leash. But although these things sound spectacular, they’re really not all that unusual in the French Quarter. The more important red flags I got about this man were, naturally, about money. He claimed to have millions, but I paid for the pizza for our lunch. ~and he knew i was unemployed~ There were other things as well.

So I asked around about him, and got negative reports about his reputation. I went to him with these observations, in an attempt to be fair and give him a chance to explain himself. ~and half hoping he would be able to, since the job was so attractive~

Instead, he lost it and started yelling. ~he called me a quarter rat, which is hilarious because i’m extremely normal, especially for the quarter~ So I’m glad I found out sooner than later. I don’t know what the man had to gain from me, but I didn’t want to stick around and find out.

Maybe I should have known this guy was full of it from the start, but I’m finding that there are just as many vampires, bullshit artists and freaks out on the “legitimate” job search sites. I’ve had more spam emails in response to resumes I’ve sent out than I care to count. I’ve been asked to download files to my computer and install them as a “test” of my computer skills, fill out online offers, and even wire money from my bank account. And I’m not just talking craigslist here, but careerbuilder too.

There’s not as much difference as one might think between the vampires in the Quarter and the online bloodsuckers, it turns out. ~which is why i’m glad i found worknola.com, which has more quality listings from real local businesses, vetted by real local people~

I only just learned this morning that Disney is releasing a film, The Princess and the Frog, in December that is set in the French Quarter. ~insert obligatory pot shot at nagin here~ This makes me oh so happy. I know that it’s been fashionable at times to disparage Disney, but I could never feel the passion of it. I’m to much of a kid. I still have ~and occasionally play with~ dolls, and I have almost every Pixar film ever made.

I love kid games, and I love kid movies. And I’m especially excited about this one. This neighborhood has inspired so many stories. You can feel them begging to be told when you walk down the street. I want to hear them all.

It’s high time that the lineup of Disney princesses includes a beautiful American with caramel skin. So many of the stories from New Orleans involve black people, and I couldn’t be more proud that Disney’s first black princess comes from New Orleans.

The movie is a re-telling of the classic tale by the same name, but apparently instead of the kiss turning the frog back to a prince, his frogliness is contagious and she becomes a frog instead. I’m guessing fun ensues, at the end of which the girl becomes beautiful again and they live happily ever after.

The artwork that has been released is lovely (see below), and just the trailer (also below) makes me excited to see St. Louis Cathedral and the streetcars used in a popular story. I’ve had the opportunity to take some teenagers from the poorer areas of New Orleans to the French Quarter and when I told them we were going to Jackson Square several of them asked me, “What is Jackson Square?” I kid you not.

John Goodman ~with whom every third person you meet has had a drink in the quarter~ and Oprah Winfrey are in the film, which will be released on December 11. I, for one, will be there with bells on.

These are just my favorites of the lovely images that have been released from this film:

I took this picture of the view outside our bedroom window on the first day we arrived here. That day we left at 2 in the morning from Greenville and drove all day — hubby in the U-Haul and I in the Saturn. When we arrived in New Orleans, we’d been driving forever, the cat was drugged, all the carefully arranged crap in both vehicles had been thrown around, and many empty bottles of coke & fast-food wrappers had been added to the mess.

And it was raining buckets. It was impossible to see at all, really, and driving through New Orleans traffic in a U-Haul trying to keep up with one another was nerve wracking. We were dropping the U-Haul off at a friend’s house so we wouldn’t have to park it overnight in the French Quarter.

So we ended up sleeping on a bare mattress & towling off with a single hand-towel we had in the car because when it came time to get our overnight stuff we’d so carefully placed in the back of the U-Haul, it was still raining, things had shifted, and well…. we were frustrated. We forgot many things.

But we remembered the camera and took this picture.

I’ve tried many times to take a better night picture of our view, but none have really been any better than this one. Either it’s my camera or my skills. But our view is beautiful, and this picture just doesn’t do it justice.

Alva is the heroine of a Tennessee Williams play called “This Property is Condemned.” There’s a movie by the same name starring Natalie Wood, who was a beautiful woman. ~the credits include many other notables the details of which I won’t bore you with here~

I first saw Natalie play Alva on the Three O’Clock Million Dollar Movie when I was a kid. Alva is a typical Tennessee Williams heroine. Pathetic in many ways, but endearing and unforgettable. There’s some melodramatic ridiculousness, which is fitting for a daytime movie, but Natalie did Alva well.

My parents used to ask me to “do” Alva. Especially the scene where she tries to convince her sister that one of her fantasies had come true. Willie ~that’s her sister’s name because willie was expected to be a boy, but she wasn’t. they already had alva~ I knew every line, and was routinely humiliated in front of company with this.

Alva’s pretty good at fantasies. She had it whipped up in her head that her tryst behind the house in the back seat of a car was a romantic evening at a swanky hotel.

And she had Willie, and me, going for a minute there.

Alva moves to New Orleans about halfway through the film. New Orleans had been one of her fantasy places, and she finally made the 247 railroad miles, and moved here. Her enthrallment with the city was one of the things that got me started loving New Orleans when I was very young.

Since I live in what is arguably the most famous neighborhood in America, ~and without question the absolute coolest one~ I’m at a loss to explain why I haven’t written about it since November. I still have no idea what I plan to say, but I’m giving myself fifteen minutes to make a post on this blog. It’s 7:02 p.m. on July 9, 2009. I’m at Molly’s on the Market on Decatur Street.

Fifteen minutes — GO!

We moved here almost a year ago. People are always asking me why we moved to New Orleans. Usually they ask this like we’re nuts for doing so. I’ve become used to this. Here’s the short version:

We both lived in Baton Rouge for 13 years. I moved to South Carolina with my oppressively controlling ex-husband. Then I divorced him. Then my current husband, who is the love of my life, came to be with me there, in the heart of the Bible Belt, where there were two religious universities within 10 miles of our house which went by the names of BJU and FU. ~bob jones university and furman university, respectively~

We didn’t belong there. We knew that. We wanted to move. Then came Hurricane Katrina. We were hurt for the city. It’s hard to go into that here on a summer evening.

I looked for, and was offered a job here in May of 2006, but as best we could determine there was a long waiting list for places to live and the change was too sudden. Little did we know it would take two more years to make it here after that.

Eventually my friend Dawn ~the only redeeming thing to come out of bju, as far as i can tell~ told me, “Moving is always going to be difficult. The sooner you do it, the sooner it will be over.” So we did it.

We cashed in retirement and spent everything we had to move here. At first, some friends told us to move to Metairie. I said no way. I said, “If I’m moving to New Orleans, I’m living in the French Quarter.”

And we do.

The transition has been rougher than I could possibly have imagined.

But we’re here. Living in the French Quarter has been a dream of mine since middle school.

It’s a silly dream, the dream of a school-girl. But it’s true nonetheless.

Sometimes those who’ve been here forever and can trace their family history deep into the city seem to have contempt for us newcomers. So be it. We’re here to stay.

We’ve cast our lot with New Orleans.

~finished with one minute to spare for spell checking. shew!~

It has rained this whole weekend so far. The rain was one of the things I missed the most about South Louisiana when I lived in South Carolina.

I really do love this.

Once, on my screened-in porch in Greenville, I watched everyone run like mad from one of the 2 or 3 rainstorms we had that summer. They put grocery bags & boxes over their heads.

I went out into the street.

There’s nothing weird about that. It felt like home.

The mules that pull the wagons in the French Quarter talk to me.

I can always tell what they’re thinking when I look at their faces.

This one hates the silly flowers on his head.

He told me so.

My friends and I saw this woman in the Quarter one day when we were coming out of the Gumbo Shoppe. Her name is Big Mama Sunshine, and she reminds me of my grandmother. When we saw her she was playing an electric piano and singing to a donkey. That lace she’s wearing is a curtain.

I don’t think my grandmother ever did something like that, but if she had lived in the French Quarter she would have.