One Year and 15 Days Later

The silver fleur-de-lis earrings I bought in January are tarnished. I'm not sure I should polish them yet.

District B Neighborhood Meeting Impression #1: Nagin has charm and Shrub's penchant for acting down-home (though Nagin is infinitely better at it) and he can make you think in person that he means well but I have no more faith or trust in him than I did when he first ran for mayor. His religious adherence to a "market-based approach to recovery" for the city is not only bullshit but dangerous for NO, its recovery and the chocolate of the city he claims to want to keep from melting away. (I'm sure Rob Couhig and Virginia Boulet can help him with that.) The "market-based approach" has brought us inflated contracts, a utility about to squeeze us dry, blighted housing standing for years (because of the sanctity of private property) while the brick buildings of public housing are demonized, and wages and prices and rents rising and falling independently of each other based on greed and "market-based" opportunity and belief in the amorality and fuck-the-future-ness of The Market. Not all things should be run for profit. Not all things have, or should have, a dollar value purely for sale or purchase. The Market does not have to see or manage anything like race, pollution, crumbling public schools, rape, and exploitation. Exploitation is good if it leads to profit, bad only if it doesn't pay. Who cares where the single mothers who do (or did) much of the invisible work in this town end up, as long as those condos keep going up? (I'm still trying to figure out who the fuck is buying all those $200-400K condos.) A "market-based approach" is also a cop-out. Bad results? It's just The Market. Astronomical rents? It's just The Market. Once "supply" gets closer to "demand," prices will go down. (One of Nagin's aides said that--if you were there and remember which one, please remind me.) Why? Because of the purity and inherent wisdom of The Market. Trash not picked up even though you pay for twice weekly pickup with recycling service? It's just The Market and The Market will correct itself as and when it sees fit. The Market is self-controlled, oblivious and indifferent, chaotic, independent, all-knowing, needy and thin-skinned, jealous, correct even when it is wrong, harmless even as it kills, its strength based on the vapor of blind belief. Sounds like a monotheistic god. Nagin's "market-based approach" means he can sit back and be in charge without being responsible/accountable.

I was disappointed by Stacy Head. The impression I got from her two outbursts (the first about getting citizens together to haunt Judge Elloie's courtroom to object, somehow, to his bonds and rulings; the second at a club owner who said the council had imposed a curfew on clubs that was hurting his business--her response was that, like her 4-year-old, he had to follow the rules) is that she has a negatively strident, screeching tendency that appeals to the kind of "neighborhood activists" who want to string up skateboarders and burn crackheads alive in the street. I thought she'd bring rationality to the table. I'm not making final judgment and will wait and see. But usually my first impressions bear out.

If my relationship with NO were a marriage, I'd be ashamed, as a feminist, thinker and general human, of my behavior--hysterical ranting, bitterly cold shoulders, venomous criticism, desperate-yet-regular wild fucking, despair, bemused tolerance, tenderness I feel is mostly one-sided, constant triple-guessing whether to stay or leave yet again or whether I should've come back the last time even though I knew, and everyone told me I knew, better. I would advise myself To Finally Leave. Even though I want to, I can't.