joel/is/blogging/now

Pop is on his way back from Louisiana to Los Angeles via Amtrak. I guess they sold him a ticket without any ID because he's a hurricane refugee. It's nice to know that there is still some flexibility somewhere in the iron curtain of inefficient bureaucracy and self-defeating fear that I see descending upon the country that I grew up in.

Most of our website functions are normalized now, and we're more or less back to business as usual.

I still have no word on the condition of my property in the French Quarter, although there is cause for hope. And none for worry.

The situation in New Orleans is a toxic soup made from years and decades and centuries of corruption, politics, hubris, poor planning, racism, poverty, educational deprivation, and insolvency at the local, state, and national level.

I've spoken to European friends who have been surprised and puzzled over what a mess we have there, and what it seems to reveal about our people and systems. They say it's the kind of thing they expect to see in the so-called "Third World," but not in the presumably richest, most powerful, and most technolgically advanced society on earth. I tell them that America is a vast country, with many different sections and strata, distracted and drained by a misguided war in Iraq, and with lots of internal divisions and stratifications. Basically, New Orleans is "Third World." To me, that has always been one part of its warped appeal. I always saw it as a handy way to leave the country without leaving the country.

I'm going to nominate my friend Melanie Roy for mayor of New Orleans. If she ends up being president someday, perhaps I'll be remembered as the first person to nudge her into politics.

Tonight, I will be meeting with my friend Kevin Dowling, a music producer, and an arranger to go over some of my songs and talk about production/recording possibilities. I'm very happy to have some artistic wheels in motion, beyond what I'm always doing-- prose writing, the occasional poem, and composing music on my grand piano at home.

I hope you're all doing well. Thanks for all the positive comments about this weblog.

Joel


P.S. My friend Steve Volpin wants to know if he will ever be in my blog. Now he is. He's an excellent CRTP (California Registered Tax Preparer) if you're the kind of person who is used to spending more than $600 on your annual tax return. He is also one of those memorably eccentric Angelinos who make life here more interesting.