Tag: Margaret Orr

Dark Lady

The fortune queen of New Orleans, stroking her cat in her black limousine…

Ah, Cher’s 1970’s musical career. This one was always a big hit at Tea Dance at both Cafe Lafitte in Exile and the Pub on Sundays; there’s really nothing like a gay sing-along, is there?

I suppose being a fan of Cher as a child was kind of a sign? What is it about performers like Cher and Bette Midler and Liza Minnelli that draws young boys into their fandom who are going to wind up gay? Why was I drawn to actresses like Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Katherine Hepburn, and Doris Day before I knew I was gay? It’s something I’ve often wondered about–what is it about those women that draw us in like Formosan termites to a lit chandelier on a Monday night after Mother’s Day?

Ah, Formosan termites. That brings me around to today’s blatant self-promotional post for Mississippi River Mischief.

Isn’t this a cool, spooky looking shot? I took this out one of my kitchen windows one Sunday afternoon during a mighty New Orleans-style thunderstorm, and love how spectral and haunted-looking it turned out.

I still can’t believe that it took me this long to write about the swarming termites.

No one warned Paul and I about them, for the record. We had no idea that first May we lived here on Camp Street that the city was infested with swarming Formosan termites whose breeding season was the few weeks past Mother’s Day every May, and they are a scourge. We were swarmed, and had no idea what to do with them or how to handle the situation, or anything. We were running around the apartment spraying Raid everywhere, swinging at them with brooms, and they were everywhere. When the swarm finally passed, the apartment was filled with wings and corpses. It was horrible. We talked to the property manager, who apologized for forgetting to warn us–and the primary problem with the apartment on Camp Street (which was where Chanse also lived) was we had a very bright security light mounted on the front corner of the building–which drew them, and our apartment was right there. We learned to turn off everything that gave off light–including the television–when the first scout flew into the apartment, the mad dash around turning off everything, and then sitting there in the dark with maybe a couple of candles lit, waiting for the fury of the swarms to die down.

But that damned outside security light…ugh.

They are quite literally like one of the Biblical plagues of Egypt, and you see why the Egyptians constantly cried to Pharaoh to let the Israelites go.

But now that we live in the back of the house, we’ve been pretty insulated from dealing with them. Sometimes when I walk the garbage out in May, I can see a small swarm around one of the street lamps, but all the lights in the front of the house are off. We usually turn everything off if and when a scout flies into the television screen and immediately light candles and sit in the dark until we feel the coast is clear.

So when I started writing Mississippi River Mischief, I thought the best way to open the book was with the line It was the Monday after Mother’s Day and the termites were swarming. I posted this on Twitter, and local meteorological icon Margaret Orr replied “what a great opening line!” which kind of made my week (I am a big Margaret Orr fanboy) and helped me realize I was on the right track in writing something about New Orleans that rarely makes it into fiction. (Author’s note: That isn’t the opening line anymore; I added Scotty asking the guys a question about the renovation, and then after he talks, that’s where the line is. I just couldn’t get the prose to work with that as the first sentence; it read awkwardly, so I moved Scotty speaking up.)

Nature, and the natural world, is all around us here in New Orleans; the occasional alligator will sometimes lumber into the city limits; snakes and nutria and squirrels are all over the place, and of course there are the insects–the flying cockroaches (aka palmetto bugs), the swarming Formosan termites, the stinging caterpillars–peculiar to here. The tropical climate makes everything over-bloom and grow and expand and try to reclaim the natural balance of the region before it was settled. This is NOT the place for you if you have pollen allergies or have sinuses sensitive to the air pressure (I do); and I swear by Claritin-D for allergy and/or sinus relief (not the over-the -counter kind, but the kind you have to ask for at the pharmacy because you can make meth with it). OH–and the gecko lizards, always darting around and running up the side of buildings or fences or trees.

So, yes, since Scotty had finally bought the building he’s lived in all these years, I thought it was time to talk about termite swarms, as they would be an enormous headache for a property owner, and what better way to start a book where Scotty is now a landowner than with swarming termites?

And I remembered the buy link! Maybe I’m getting better at this.

All I Want for Christmas Is You

Well, yesterday was a bit dramatic.

As I believe I mentioned, we were in a severe weather alert for most of the day, with everyone in the meteorology game saying conditions would seriously deteriorate in the mid-to-late afternoon. We started getting emails from upper management and operations in the mid-morning letting us know they were monitoring the weather as the afternoon drew nearer. (I had not really been aware of the bad storms that had passed by the north of us the day before, either.) The decision was made around three to close the building and send everyone home for their safety. I texted Paul to make sure he left his office (fortunately, he was working at home) and hurried home myself. It started raining by the time I got home, and settled in. Maybe about an hour or so later the warning alert on my phone went off, so I quickly tuned into the local meteorology maven Margaret Orr on WDSU (I love her, it’s going to be such a loss when she finally retires) as the storm was drawing nearer and it looked like it was going to form a tornado on the West Bank, just like that horrible storm back in March that also produced one. The maps they use on television aren’t the greatest, especially when they are pulled back as far, so it looked like my neighborhood was in the direct path for awhile. That was a bit nerve-wracking, especially as they were also giving times of arrival–“this storm will be in the lower Garden District in five minutes”–so we just braced ourselves and waited. But fortunately for us (but not for others) this storm followed almost the exact same path as the one in March–following the river and jumping across at Arabi and the lower 9th ward. But we did have some major rain and wind rattling the house. Fortunately, I had Scooter sleeping in my lap, which is always calming, and then it was past and over.

The Entergy power map seems to indicate the office has power, so operations will resume today, one would assume.

It’a also colder today–right now it’s in the fifties–which could account for me not wanting to get up this morning; it’s always so comfortable and comforting when you’re under a pile of blankets when it’s chilly. I feel like I slept through the night for the most part. I think I woke up once? But I feel more rested this morning than I have all week, which is a good thing. This is my last day in the office this week, with tomorrow being a work-at-home day. I made it through another week, but man, time is flying. I spent most of the evening reading parts of When Women Ruled the World on my Kindle or randomly opening The Prime Time Closet to read bits and pieces. When Women Ruled the World is about the sixteenth century; a period I’ve mentioned before because more women held power that century than any century before or since, and I’ve always wanted to write about those women in a book called The Monstrous Regiment of Women, taking its title from John Knox’ horrifically misogynistic text; but whereas I would want to merely overview the women who have been written about extensively already (Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, etc.) while paying more attention to the ones not as famous (infamous?) in today’s popular culture, like Margaret of Austria, Mary of Hungary, Marie de Guise, Catherine de Medici, Queen Margot, etc. (It was also the same century that produced Elizabeth Bathory…) I should have read more of Algren’s A Walk on the Wild Side, but after the adrenaline rush and emotional distress about being in the potential path of a tornado, my mind was too fried to focus on fiction. I did work on the book some, but my mind was just not in the right place for that sort of work. Hopefully, tonight and tomorrow progress will be made and I can get this under control.

And of course, Christmas is next weekend. Next weekend? Yikes!

Something awful happened to me yesterday on social media that I am still processing, so I am not really quite ready to talk about it here. It ties into a blog entry I’ve been toying with for quite some time now; but it’s not really something I can write when I am waking up and swilling coffee; it’s too personal and too complex to trust to a tired brain that isn’t as awake as it should be to tackle such a subject. I mean, it’s bad enough when you see people you know being openly homophobic or transphobic on social media, it’s even worse when it’s directed specifically at you. By someone you’ve known for years, and maybe didn’t quite consider a friend, but was definitely an acquaintance with whom you were friendly. Well, that ship has sailed–and it’s really interesting to me to see how many people who claim to be allies draw the line when it comes to my transgender siblings. But make no mistake about it: you come for the T you’re coming for me as well. When the right wing comes for the trans community and/or drag queens (which are often not the same thing), make no mistake about it, they are coming for all of us. Just as they used to vilify gay men and lesbians until most decent human beings saw how repugnant it was, they think drag queens and transpeople are an easier way to get to legalize the discrimination against all of us that they want. The language they are using is the same as the ones Anita Bryant used in the 1970’s, and the bigots who have come along in her wake have picked up the banner and use the same coded language she did. “Protect the children!” has always been their battlecry, but who are they to decide how parents should raise their children? What children should be exposed to? Your complaints about “the children” stop at your own. You do not have the right to tell other parents how to raise their children or what they can or cannot be exposed to; and the entire concept of “exposing young children to drag queens is sexualizing them!” is complete fucking bullshit on its face–and you fucking straight people have nerve saying that to queer people while keeping your fucking mouths about toddler beauty pageants. Where are the fucking Proud Boys with their AK-47’s at those events, where they paints the faces of children and dress them provocatively to the point most of them look like incredibly cheap streetwalkers? And don’t you fucking dare ever tell me that Drag Queen Story Hours are inappropriate for children because basically you are fucking saying no queer people should be around children.

Go straight to fucking hell, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

And don’t you ever dare speak to me again.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines.

Say You Love Me

I am up amazingly early for a Sunday morning, but that’s okay. I have a lot of things to do today; I didn’t get as much done yesterday as I could have, but I am not allowing the things that derailed me from my productivity. I did get things done yesterday–laundry needs folding this morning, and there are dishes to put away and so forth–and I also was able to get some writing done yesterday, which was marvelous and lovely. The Scotty book is still kind of a sloppy mess, and I am not really sure what to do with Chapter Three quite yet–or how to write it–but I am going to try the old “start writing and see what happens” trick with it today. I also went over another project I am working on, and realized that it was much easier to fix than I had originally thought, quite frankly. So, once I get my coffee swilled down this morning and this posted, I am going to get cleaned up and dive into the writing. I think spending the entire morning writing should help get some things crossed off the list and should move me ahead somewhat.

I just checked Margaret Orr’s Twitter for updates on storms. One of the systems in the Atlantic has increased its possibility of getting organized, but most likely not until it’s north of the Bahamas, which has me thinking it’ll keep moving north in the ocean. The one in the Caribbean Sea also has increased its percentage of forming, but it’s most likely going to stay in the south and menace Mexico and the Yucatán. No word thus far on the other system in the Atlantic, but I only saw one tweet before reporting back. Oops, my bad; I misread her tweet and didn’t take as good a look at the map she shared before I came back here. The other system is the one north of the Bahamas with a low degree of development possibility; the one with a 70% likelihood of anything happening looks like it’s heading for Puerto Rice and/or Florida, and thus into the Gulf of Mexico.

Oh, and embiggening the map, there’s another system forming off the Cape Verde Islands. So, there will be a lot of storm tracking in the coming weeks. Our favorite September past-time in New Orleans. Hopefully, we won’t have to evacuate at any time in the coming weeks…and come to think of it, the freezer is a little on the full side, so maybe I should try working on getting that emptied out over the next few weeks–cooking things that are in there, at the very least, without refilling it until times are a little more settled. I’d hate to have to throw everything in there away again. That would completely suck.

Today marks seventeen year since that frantic morning we tried to be organized in our panic to leave while we still could; that day is etched in my memory even if the details are sketchy in my head. (To be fair, the memories and details were already difficult to remember in the days immediately thereafter, as I watched out lives wash away.) It looks like it may be a sunny day today without rain, at least it’s clear out there this morning. I also feel like I slept very well this morning, so we’ll see how the rest of it goes. I am going to have to make a to-do list, of course, and then make sure that everything that needs to be on it is, in fact, on it.

Last night, after we finished our work for the day, Paul and I settled in and binged W. Kamau Bell’s docuseries We Need to Talk About Cosby on HBO MAX. It was interesting, maybe one of the most interesting “artist vs. the art” conversations I’ve ever seen illustrated out in this manner. It’s certainly one of the most complex, and we as a society have had a lot of these discussions over the past decade…but it’s very easy to dismiss Roman Polanski’s art (I make the distinction of “art before the child rape” and “art after the child rape” with him, which clears both Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown for me, and I know it’s probably a deeply problematic differentiation) and contributions than it is to write off Bill Cosby’s and the cultural and societal change his career had on the country as a whole, not to mention, as the documentary pointed out, how The Cosby Show was dedicated to showing, every week, Black excellence on our television screens in a way that was rarely ever seen before–if at all. (We’ve been bingeing documentary series lately like they are going out of style, probably because they’re easier to follow for my exhausted and overheating brain at the end of the day than a series.)

Obviously, my heart goes out to his victims, but while my sympathies lie with them entirely, the question of the art–which meant so much to the Black community–does remain. I don’t know the answer to that question–whether it’s Cosby or Polanski or any of the other abusers who created great art. I see the points on both sides of the discussion/argument/debate. But if the point of a documentary is to get the viewer to reflect on the questions raised, Bell’s docuseries certainly succeeded. Highly recommended.

And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines for now. Have a lovely Sunday, everyone, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Your Wonderful, Sweet Sweet Love

Well, last night was a bit intense there for a while.

Yes, we had really horrific weather events down here last evening. I was sitting in my easy chair, relaxing and watching episodes of Young Justice when my phone started blaring the emergency alert. I knew there was a chance of tornadoes because we were having high winds all day (another emergency alert) and thunderstorms would be moving in during the early night. Sure enough, the wind was howling and the rain was coming down in torrents and lightning was flashing–and then my phone emergency alert started going off. I immediately paused the show and switched over to Margaret Orr on WDSU (since Nash Roberts retired, Ms. Orr has been my go-to local weatherperson, and saw that the “tornadic” (a new word to me) storm was on the West Bank–and there was another, separate one entirely, on the North Shore. The location of this tornadic storm placed it pretty much directly across the river from my neighborhood–needless to say, a bit terrifying knowing it was literally that close–but the path the storm was following indicated it would probably jump the river just below the French Quarter, into either the Marigny, Bywater or lower 9th ward neighborhoods. (Even more scary–I know a lot of people in those neighborhoods, so of course I was scrolling through social media rapidly making sure my friends were all okay and worrying.) Then came the visual confirmation there was actually a tornado on the ground over there–and yes, know and love people over on the West Bank as well–and then it jumped the river into the lower 9th.

I grew up with tornadoes–they weren’t common but did happen in Chicago; but of course, five years in Kansas. My first thought was great there are no basements in southeastern Louisiana and second was fuck there’s really not even an interior place for me to huddle in this apartment if it comes here and third was acceptance: oh well, if it comes this way hope for the best.

Seriously, y’all. Major major yikes.

I know at least one person died in St. Bernard Parish (Chalmette/Arabi), and I’m not seeing any estimates on damage yet (haven’t done a deep dive) but I do remember I drove through the East on a trip out of town after the tornado there a few years ago and being horrified by what I was seeing (not on the level of the ‘disaster drives’ I took around the city when I returned after Katrina, but still pretty fucking horrible; Katrina’s a very high bar, after all). I know thousands are still without power this morning, and I’m not sure how this is going to affect my work day–I don’t know if there’s power at the building, for example, but I think I would have heard something by now–but I wouldn’t be surprised if my appointments have a rather high percentage of no-shows today.

The new book’s cover reveal was graciously hosted by none other than Dru Ann Love this morning; you can find it right here! I love this cover–the look on the cat’s face, based on Scooter, is absolutely perfect–and I am very excited about the new book. I am hopeful it will become a series–it was a one-book only deal, so hopefully it will continue. Huzzah!

I did manage to get quite a bit done yesterday, and was tired a bit when I got home last night so wasn’t able to get any reading or much else of anything done other than watching Live Justice and the second episode of Minx (I have some thoughts on this show, which I am enjoying but not sure if I should be, if that makes sense? But I will discuss that more at another time, and feel like I need to give the show a few more episodes before making up my mind one way or another; I will say that the thing I found problematic in the first episode was that the main character–whom I liked–was very much a 70’s feminist stereotype: humorless, strident, angry–not that they didn’t have every right to be, mind you, but I often find that this lazy stereotype inevitably leads to lazy character development: let’s watch as the uptight opinionated humorless feminist learns how to relax and shed the systemic misogyny training she received as a woman growing up when she did, and of course, being around a porn publisher and porn models…you see what I mean? I like the positive representation of porn and the people who work in it, but…maybe I am making more of this than I should. I don’t know) before of course the tornado alarm went off on my phone, which shifted everything for the rest of the evening.

Paul’s moving into the hotel today so I will also be home alone for until Sunday night or Monday morning. Sigh, Festival widowhood staring me in the face again.

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines. Have a lovely and safe day, Constant Reader!

Only a Moment Ago

And just like that, it’s Friday again.

Of course, the emergence of a potentially major storm heading for the Gulf and our coastline–and how quickly it has happened–has certainly sucked a lot of the energy out of the room. The fact it will come ashore on the 16th anniversary of Katrina (Sunday) hasn’t triggered a lot of PTSD for me, strangely; although I was remembering it all last night as I sat in my easy chair watching Margaret Orr on local television (and checking her Twitter feed). The weather outside my condensation-covered windows this morning doesn’t look that great, to be honest–we’ve had rain all day yesterday off and on–but I don’t know if we are going to need to leave yet or not. It’s not looking good for us right now; at the very least we’re going to probably be without power for a few days (yay). But at least if we do end up leaving (probably tomorrow morning, if we go) at least I have a relatively new car, and I believe I already have a tank of gas. I have some errands to run today–I am getting my teeth cleaned later this morning, and I need to get the mail. I had planned on doing some grocery shopping today but am not sure if it’s wise to get anything perishable, so am probably just going to let that sit until afterwards.

I’m also having dinner with a friend tonight–scheduled to come in for Bouchercon, she decided to keep her trip since her daughter goes to school here anyway–which should be a good time; social contact outside of my office has remained low, so it will be sort of nice to get out of the house and spend the evening with someone whose company I enjoy…especially with a hurricane looming. If it stays on center track, it’ll pass us to the west–putting New Orleans on the bad side of the storm. I’m kind of surprised I am not having flashbacks triggered by any or all of this, to be honest. I only remember the anniversary now when I am reminded–I’d not even given it a thought until the other day when this system developed below Cuba–although I am also now remembering there have been issues with I storms in the past–Ike and Isaac, for example; one of them sat on the city for like three days and we were without power for nearly a week. The other was our last evacuation and it, too, was around this same time. Late August, after my birthday and before Labor Day–never a good combination for an I-named storm in the Gulf, apparently.

I rewatched an old Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie last night while I was waiting for Paul to come home (working late because of grant deadlines and potential hurricane; potential loss of power means everyone has to get things done earlier than they’d thought). I had wanted to rewatch Pillow Talk, which was the best of the their three films together, but couldn’t find it streaming anywhere, so settled for the follow-up, Lover Come Back, which, while not as good as the first, was still quite entertaining–if problematic. The message of the Day/Hudson movies–at least the first three; they played a married couple in their third pairing–was always that Day was an uptight and repressed career woman with no interest in men or marriage–who really just needed a good fuck. The irony that the good fuck she needed was being delivered on-screen by a gay man escaped audiences of the time, who made the films huge hits and made Doris Day the biggest money-making star in the country. It’s great, though, that she was shown as a highly successful, talented, and driven career woman; unfortunate that the screenwriters seemed to think that went along with an empty life without love or a man. Given how beautiful and sexy Day was, it’s kind of hard to believe that she wouldn’t have men hanging off her–but she’s kind of portrayed as an ice princess, who needs a man to thaw her out. The games Hudson plays with Day–mimicked in both films–where he pretends to be a shy, inexperienced (read: almost gay) man whose sweetness she falls for doesn’t really play today for a sex comedy; such a movie would never be made today.

I did manage to get some things done yesterday. I worked on the manuscript, and have maybe a third of it left to go. I’ve already edited out almost ten thousand words, making it leaner and cleaner, but it’s still such a horrible mess I cannot believe I turned it in to my long-suffering editor. But it’s getting better, and the primary issue is that there were so many different versions over the years of working on it that I missed things when merging all the versions together to get a final one–the great irony being the problem with the manuscript not ever being what I thought it was, so all those different drafts were relatively pointless; it’s terrible when you are writing a book and you aren’t really completely sure what it’s about consciously. I’ve always said this book was about rape culture, but it’s actually not–although that’s a part of it; what it’s actually about is toxic masculinity from the point of view of someone trapped inside of it who desperately wants out and doesn’t know how to get out. I didn’t completely understand that–and something else–until this final editing run; glad I figured this out before it went to press, right?

So I am going to try to get some things done around here this morning before leaving for the dentist, then I am coming home to work on the manuscript. I’d like to get this pass finished today–not an easy task, since its taking me hours to get through small sections, longer than I’d thought it would, honestly–so it can sit for a day or two; if we lose power and I have to stop working on it, I am hoping I’ll be able to at least get it sent off somehow–if I need t make my phone a hotspot and send it from my laptop or something, I should be able to get it done and in on time. I was going to try to make it to the gym today, but think I’ll just push that off until tomorrow and focus on getting the manuscript finished today. Once I finish and post this, I am going to clean out my inbox (or try to) before having to get ready for the teeth cleaning expedition (not looking forward to this either, I might add). I had wanted to spend some time getting organized–but the need to get this manuscript out of the way in case of power loss, at least getting this pass finished, at any rate, has overcome any desire to work on the other things that need to be worked on around here; I can go to the gym tomorrow and clean/organize then (if we aren’t in the car, that is).

And on that note, tis time to head back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader.