As advertised... timely content, provocative questions, differing answers, New Orleans still a work in progress.
September 14, 2013
10 a.m.
Panel: Creating Community for Writers of Color: MelaNated Writers Collective
Moderator: Jarvis Q. DeBerry Pulitzer Prize recipient,editorial writer and columnist, has written for The Times-Picayune since 1997.
Panelists: Jewel Bush, founder of the MelaNated Writers Collective; Thaddeus Baker, a media coordinator and journalist; Kelly Harris, poet and founder of Poems & Pink Ribbons; Gian Smith, writer, actor, and video producer, spoken word poet.
Writers are writers. The color of their skin doesn't preclude having common issues. Is my writing good, does it make sense, do I have the authority to say this, what do I gain or lose by working in solitary vs. in collaboration are questions writers of any color think about and the panel considered. The writers on this panel appear to be in their late twenties, early thirties.
Cross cultural content and context: barriers to an audience
Kelly Harris, one of the young black writers is vexed that white audiences don't make an effort to dig into her work. Once in a college poetry class in Cambridge, MA, Kelly Harris, the only black writer in her class, said that fellow writers didn't know who Mahalia Jackson was, said if they didn't get it, other readers would not either. Their teacher agreed. Kelly, the only black writer in the group says,
"Why can't a white audience cross over to a black writer by doing some research, taking time to learn something about our culture? Black authors have always had to cross over to a white audience." Kelly says. She did not remove the reference. "How much do I have to explain?" she asks.
Harris reads a 1926 essay by Langston Hughes, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." It urges black people to represent themselves and their experiences honestly and without fear, worry less about how white audiences receive it.
Under-representation
"We're underrepresented," Gian Smith says. "One of my favorite movies was 'Love Jones,' a heartfelt, layered depiction of life about the relationship between two young black artists. I haven't seen another movie like this since it was produced in 1997," he says.
"Tons of people will take in "The Hangover". Is there no audience for a well done film depicting black life," he wonders.
Voice, point of view
Jewel Bush, from Chicago, wondered if she could write authoritatively about New Orleans. Over time, as she became adjusted to New Orleans culture, she writes now with a sense of place.
Kelly Harris says she "still get pissed off with New Orleans and has to call it out."
Advice to non-black writers
Do your research. You may not be a day laborer but you can talk with them, write about them but be sure you're writing from your own perspective. And be honest with what you don't know.
Katrina
Is not an obligatory subject. Thad Baker has only written twice about it. Jewel Bush has many unpublished poems and a novella about it. A consensus agrees that Katrina may have given writers the opportunity to tell the world about New Orleans but the storm doesn't have to be a required subject. New Orleans being New Orleans, there are plenty of things to write about besides the storm, shootings, or second line parades.
IMHO Rising Tide conferences in the future would be well served to have one "melanated" panel every year to touch on subjects from a race-based point of view.
Education stil a hot button topic.
Nikki Napolean, parent advocate
Marta Jewson, freelance journalist covering charter schools
Aesha Rasheed, board member of Morris Jeff Community School and founder of New Orleans Parent Organizing Network
Jaimmé Collins, attorney at Adams & Reese, which represents some charter schools
Steve Beatty, editor of The Lens
Urban schools are a mixed bag everywhere and in post Katrina New Orleans the bag is soggy paper one. The panelists, a parent, a journalist, a former reporter now parent advocate, an attorney whose clients are mostly charter schools, and the editor of The Lens, focus most of their attention on accountability, access, and transparency of Charter School boards that have multiplied in NOLA since 2005. Public education in New Orleans presently involves the Recovery School District, the Orleans Parish School Board and five different types of charter schools, says Attorney Jaimme Collins.
In general, panelists say that Charter Schools have improved the education system in NOLA but, as one says, "not better enough" and with no apparent sense of urgency. They also agree the charter schools can do much better. There are more than 40 charter school boards in New Orleans and not much uniformity between them. For example, there is no universal application form to attend a charter school. School board meetings are often a problem. Some boards do not comply with public meeting and public records laws which makes it difficult to get information and assess quality. (Ex cited by Steve Beatty - some agendas say "Old Business," "New Business," "Adjourn" -- there's no indication what will be discussed,)
Community engagement: communication between the school and parents is often sketchy, meeting agendas sent out by email 24 hours in advance, much too short a lead time. Parent attendance is inconsistent. Transportation and sufficient advance notice are cited as two examples.
Charter schools vary in their level of infrastructure and organization, some cannot readily Information regarding past meetings and decisions. Panelists agree that important decisions are made at committee levels and rubber stamped at the board meetings. Parents have virtually no way to know about committee meetings and therefore lack input into school policy at that level.
Some boards seem clueless, meeting in a closed circle, talking to each other, hardly audible to anyone in attendance and defeats a constitutional right to observe an open meeting.
Most panelists agree that when a school is failing, it is a leadership problem.(Personally, I don't think it's that simple. What about whether the school is required to take all applicants, have a lottery system, or can pick the most promising students and refuse students with cognitive disabilities?)
It appears insulting, exclusionary, or inexcusably insensitive that some boards persist in holding meetings in the middle of the day like the Orleans Parish School Board used to do. Parents who work can't attend, nor can parents who live a distance away, don't own cars and have to rely on time-consuming connections via public transportation.
Levers for change: a school gets around $5000 per student, if a parent is not satisfied, move the student to another better performing school.
Closing observation: The Lens and other organizations "are exhausted," says Lens editor Steve Beatty. He suggests creating a Charter School Reporting Corps to cover the meetings of the 40 plus charter school boards.They can't affect change on their own. Right now there isn't sufficient broad-based, public demand that will drive charter schools to become more responsive.
The overriding question for charter schools is the children in them being better educated. The results are uneven and data is disputed.
http://credo.stanford.edu/documents/la_report_2013_7_26_2013_final.pdf
http://crazycrawfish.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/credo-is-not-credible-and-never-has-been/
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2011/03/study_finds_most_new_orleans_c.html
The discussion of education in New Orleans could take days: poverty, crime, class issues affect how a kid learns but data for these conditions are not immediately measurable. Nevertheless, charter schools are a good beginning.
Sidebar: Diane Ravitch, former Assistant Secretary of Education and supporter of Charter Schools, has just published a book rebuking the Charter School movement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/books/review/reign-of-error-by-diane-ravitch.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/27/225748846/diane-ravitch-rebukes-education-activists-reign-of-error
Lt General Russel L. Honoré (Retired)
Lt General Russel L. Honoré (Retired)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conten is on you ist/article/2005/09/11/AR2005091101484.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv5m4hTMuWU
http://www.kepplerspeakers.com/speakers/?speaker=General+Russel+L.+Honore
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/russel_honore.html
http://www.generalhonore.com/
CNN called him "the John Wayne dude". If there is one man who can transform the presently toxic relationship between the oil industry and the state of Louisiana it is Lieut. Gen. Russel L. Honoré. Three minutes after being introduced, the general steps away from the podium, walks a few steps down off the stage. For the next 50 minutes, he stands at floor level, paces back and forth, addressing the audience with a battle plan. At 6'2" with the rugged frame of a man descended from Creole farmers, the man has a commanding presence. He needs no microphone. We read him loud and clear.
Layered between his back story and anecdotes is his message: stand up to big oil, stand up for ourselves as Louisiana citizens and protect our state resources and our health from being damaged further by the oil and gas industry's practices.
An accomplished speaker and motivator, General Honoré has his talking points in order. He's not afraid to make them to farmers, fishermen,politicians, or voters.
"The challenge is to keep our economy going and make the state a safer place, we can do better."
He talks about three leadership points.
First point, the ability to inspire others to willingly follow you - put the accent on willingly.
"We need to look at environmental justice, and everyone has a stake in it, farmers, duck hunters, oil workers, and chefs. 35% of America's seafood comes from the Gulf of Mexico. When I was flying over the gulf, I asked the helicopter pilot 'What are those streams of oil?' The pilot tells me they are orphan wells that have been abandoned, that oil seeping from them is degrading the aquifer. The farmers in Crowley where they produce the world's best rice in the world need to know that arsenic is leeching into the aquifer and will ruin their crop and their reputation. Same with duck hunters and local chefs. Some day the chefs will be importing shrimp from China if we don't act."
2 Have a cause and a purpose
3 Have leadership
He talks about General George Washington. Where was he when he crossed the Delaware with his decimated army, most of his farmer/soldiers having gone home? In the front of the boat. We didn't have a navy, he says, so where did he get the boats? He uses what we call TOPS in Louisiana , "Take Other People's Stuff" he says, to laughter from the crowd.
"This is about environmental justice, it is a war is a war we can win," he says."It is a war for equity and we are on the right side of what is right."
"The mission is to have safe air and safe water," he shouts, "and our time is now!" The audience cheers.
"What are we up against?" he asks rhetorically. "They give us playgrounds and college buildings but they despoil our environment."
He throws in personal backstory and homespun wisdom: "When I was a boy my teacher told me three things. You're not the sharpest knife in the basket so learn these lessons," she said.
1 Learn to do routine things well...homework, brush your teeth, respect your elders
2 Don't be afraid to take on the impossible.
3 Don’t be afraid to act if you’ll be criticized for doing it.
"Why are we the poorest state in America? Oil is bleeding us," he says.
“We cant mess with oil! ” people say to him when he brings up the subject. (Heck, I
even wondered about that when I talked during lunch with Kellan Lyman of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade.)
"Have standards," he says, "You break it, you fix it. When it comes to oil, we need to call out BP for messing up the Gulf. We need a cultural shift. In a democracy, you can turn a situation around," Honoré says. "Change is going to have to come through the legislature. They won't pass a law requiring companies clean up their mess until the people make it miserable for them. Self-regulation is not an option."
"Eight governors haven’t changed oil policy. Orphan wells, 12,000 of them, are still not properly capped. Abandoned wells, those A-frame structures in the water, we let them get away with it . In Plaquemine two men fishing crashed into a partially submerged A-frame, one man died."
"People pass by oil buildings on the coast and point to all the new trucks in the lot. Look at the license plates, most are from Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, not Louisiana. The crews have one female, one African American male and most are from out of state."
The general is winding up. "You need to tell the legislature to regulate and if they don't, you have to make it miserable for them. This is our time. This is our battle. This is our time!" he exhorts.
"The oil executives created a problem they don't have to live with, they live in Texas. You have to have a voice, you have to live in harmony with the oil industry, they've done it in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia."
General Honoré challenges every one of us in the room and listening online.
"You are social media, bring ten people into the mix. This is for the environment and for social justice and for poor people. Be vocal. Tell politicians that if you run for office you cant take money from oil and gas companies, it corrupts. Get media involved, show that democracy cannot be co-opted, can't be bought. Tell the rice farmers about the arsenic leeching into aquifer and the consequences, tell the NOLA chefs. I hesitate to use the words but - community organize."
"This is our generation's war. We have to get young people involved the way they were involved protesting the Vietnam War or pushing the right to vote.Civil disobedience is an option if it will cause change."
Earlier in his remarks, Lt. General Russel Honoré said, "Every generation's got something to do that is big, that will change this nation, that will change this world."
Social media, new media, all of us in the room, have work to do, big work.
Beyond Tourism, Beyond Recovery: a divide between the promoters and citizens?
Moderator Charles Maldonado, The Lens
Panelists:
Brice Miller
http://iambricemiller.com
Kevin Fox Gotham
Meg Lousteau
Robin Keegan
Mark Romig
BEYOND TOURISM BEYOND ECONOMY
http://thelensnola.org/2013/09/27/as-vaughns-loses-kermit-pondering-the-fragility-of-an-economy-built-on-culture/
Brian Boyles poses the central question..."At Kermit’s finale at Vaughan’s, I marveled at all the lives dependent on that long-running gig, how the bar was now world famous, and how any tourism official could point to it as a paradigm: authentic New Orleans embraced by free-spending outsiders for the benefit of hard-working locals.
“They have a point,” I thought. “Perhaps this is the future.”
In an important sense I was mistaken, of course. That particular factory disappeared with a statement on Facebook. But the model remains and expands, translating local culture into tourist dollars. We wrestle over culture because ours is invaluable and makes us love living here, but we need to examine the money that culture generates and how it’s distributed, the stability of those incomes, and how much we should depend on tourists to pay our rents and mortgages."
The panel on tourism and recovery is starting now. The moderator is Charles Maldonado of The Lens, and the panelists are music educator Brice Miller, professor and author Kevin Gotham, Meg Lousteau of VCPORA (Vieux Carré Property Owners, Residents, and Associates), planner Robin Keegan and NOTMC (New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation) president Mark Romig.
THE TAKEAWAY
Tourism and the tourism industry is not going to save New Orleans from underemployment, poverty, educational disparity, and crime. New Orleans has a poverty rate of 29 percent, nearly double the national average, according to the latest Greater New Orleans Community Data Center report. It is estimated that 13 million tourists visit New Orleans annually presently.
Bourbon Street, in the midst of the French Quarter, is a destination many tourists extrapolate as being the soul of New Orleans. In recent years it has become a caricature of itself. Meg Lousteau says most tourists have no interest in the culture or architecture surrounding the Quarter. The "let the good times roll" lightheartedness of past years often descends into public hurdy-gurdy ugliness and bachelor parties renting floats to carouse through the French Quarter.
The unanswered question is how much is tourism changing or degrading New Orleans unique flavor. Even with an infusion of tourists, there is no trickle-down effect on the fortunes of the musicians, entertainers, hotel workers, cooks service workers on whose back the economy is based. Unemployment among black men in New Orleans in 2011 was 52%.
New Orleans schools will not have prepared them with the education to take advantage of the businesses the New Orleans Business Alliance is attempting to attract. The average salary of someone employed in the service industry is $26,000, barely enough for a single person to survive on let alone someone with a family. Increasing wages, providing a living wage, was struck down by the state legislature. If the city is going to invest in tourism, it needs to ensure that the people who work in it can afford to live here.
The New Orleans Business Alliance has issued a five-year plan, "prosperity Nola," to promote business investment and increased tourism economy.
One of its goals is to expand tourist interest in areas outside the French Quarter, to spread the tourist money around. Not everyone agrees. Brice Miller says that there hasn't been enough connection with the people in those communities to see if they want their neighborhoods to be marketed as tourist attractions. Miller says that before Katrina there were 18 clubs in Tremé, now there's one. Neighborhood people frequented the clubs, but new regulations make it difficult for clubs to re-open. He suggests the city open an office to engage cultural communities like Tremé, the way they open offices for the tourist economy. In the battle between money for the tourist dollar and residents and workers, it appears that money is winning.
The Olivia Book Store table during a break in the conference; pt and Development Director at The Lens Anne Mueller
People tweeted and blogged continually during the conference.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
Elmore Leonard: RIP For A Modern Master Of Crime Fiction
Elmore Leonard said he wanted to keep himself invisible while writing a book. He succeeded by creating rough-around-the-edges characters who lived in the seamy shadows, a comfortable distance from polite, law abiding society. Elmore died on August 20. I needed to say goodbye.
My favorite crime fiction writer of all time left the building on August 20, 2013. I couldn't say exactly why I kept stocking up on Elmore Leonard's books at yard sales and book fairs but I knew he understood that every word counted and he had a keen ear for dialogue. Once I read "Pagan Babies" I was hooked.
He began writing in the 1950s, had over forty books and countless short stories for magazines to his credit. His books inspired several Hollywood films. When I read "Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing," I understood why he was the measuring stick by which I rated other authors. He practiced what he preached.
Leonard's indelibly etched characters came to life through dialogue, not sparkly or predictable, but talk that telegraphed who they were and how they got that way. Leonard's stories were set where he felt his characters belonged: Miami Beach (Pronto); Kentucky coal country (Raylan: A Novel); Oklahoma (The Hot Kid); South Florida/Atlantic City (Glitz); Rwanda/Detroit (Pagan Babies). He populated his stories with characters who illuminated the edgy culture around them. You'd never catch Elmore telling you something, but for page after page of dialogue and just the right amount of detail, he'd show you.
The New York Times sent me to the dictionary with this sentence in its obituary. "Elmore Leonard, the prolific crime novelist whose louche characters, deadpan dialogue and immaculate prose style in novels like “Get Shorty,” “Freaky Deaky” and “Glitz” established him as a modern master of American genre writing, died on Tuesday at his home in Bloomfield Township, Mich."
Leonard wouldn't be caught dead using the word, but louche (disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way) describes some of my favorite characters: Jack Foley (Road Dogs); Raylan Givens (Raylan: A Novel); Terry Dunn (Pagan Babies) were indeed louche.
Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News once said, "The only thing better than reading Elmore Leonard is re-reading him." Leonard fans would agree.
A few of my favorites
The Hot Kid set inTulsa and Okmulgee,Oklahoma; Kansas City, KS
Raylan: A Novel set in Kentucky coal mine territory
When The Women Come Out To Dance (short stories)
Glitz set in South Florida, Atlantic City
Pronto set in Miami Beach
Pagan Babies set in Rwanda/Detroit Terry Dunn
Gunsights set in 1880s Arizona territory
Road Dogs set in Venice Beach, CA
A trio of obituaries:
http://lynchfuneraldirectors.com/death_notice.aspx?Operation=preview¬iceid=3446
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/20/showbiz/elmore-leonard-obit
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/20/elmore-leonard
A brief clip proving there was a bit of the louche character in Leonard himself.
Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing
Editor's note: Elmore Leonard gave the Detroit Free Press permission to post his rules for writing on November 6, 2010.
These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.
1. Never open a book with weather.
If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.
2. Avoid prologues.
They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's "Sweet Thursday," but it's O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: "I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story."
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated," and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" . . .
. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances "full of rape and adverbs."
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use "suddenly" tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories "Close Range."
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" what do the "American and the girl with him" look like? "She had taken off her hat and put it on the table." That's the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.
And finally:
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)
If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character -- the one whose view best brings the scene to life -- I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight.
What Steinbeck did in "Sweet Thursday" was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. "Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts" is one, "Lousy Wednesday" another. The third chapter is titled "Hooptedoodle 1" and the 38th chapter "Hooptedoodle 2" as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: "Here's where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want."
"Sweet Thursday" came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I've never forgotten that prologue.
Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.
Detroit Free Press
September 05, 2013 in Books, Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (8)
Tags: Elmore Leonard