Friday Reads and all that Jazz

Good Morning!

I’ve spent this week getting used to some changes in my schedule and activities while trying to find a way to get all the things paid for above and beyond teaching for what seems like next to nothing any more.  One of the things I learned this week is that some things really never change.

Bourbon Street, New Orleans is pretty much an endless parade of the same kinds of people  in the same groups with the same clothes and looks on their faces.  I’ve never gigged on Bourbon Street until this week even though I’ve gigged around New Orleans and the French Quarter a lot over the 20 years I’ve lived here.  I usually play at upscale restaurants so mostly, I’m very much in the background.

I’m still somewhat in the background but now it’s more like being the music behind the performance.   I’m accompanying a very talented drag performer with an awesome voice and having great fun!  I hope you enjoy the pictures!  I’m going to share a few other stories that are locally relevant and not as happy.  So, this top picture is Miss Jessica Duplantier singing with me checking out her show last week.   You’ll see a lot more of her and Eureka Starfish as the post goes on.

I’ve been thinking once again on how tribal human beings can be and how easily we forget how badly we can treat each other.  I also think we all have convenient short memories and long standing insensitivities to wrong done to others.   I’m getting tired of watching racism parade its ugly head.   I’m also getting extremely tired of people acting willfully ignorant about things that seriously represent injurious historical actions.

I‘m pretty sure we all know about  “pickaninny” culture even though many of us were not raised in the deep south.  It was a staple of Hollywood movies, literature, advertising, and many other aspects of popular culture prior to the civil rights movement.  I’m not going to actually reproduce any of that here on the post but I will point to the links and to this article highlighting the new poster for the North Shore Strawberry Festival.

The 2015 Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival poster was unveiled Tuesday (March 17), and immediately provoked a social media debate, with some calling the image racist.

The poster, created by artist Kalle Siekkinen, depicts two faceless children rendered in dark brown or black paint. One holds a flat of strawberries. The poster made the rounds on various Facebook pages, with some saying the image, done in a folk art style, implied cultural insensitivity. Others wrote that such concerns were misplaced.

Shelley Matherne, public relations director for the Strawberry Festival, said that the annual poster is produced by the Ponchatoula Kiwanis Club and that officials of the festival had not seen the work until Thursday’s unveiling. They became aware of the controversy via social media. Festival organizers are meeting with Kiwanis representatives Thursday (March 19) evening to discuss how to proceed, Matherne said.

The festival put a post about the poster on its Facebook page. The comments under the post — 81 as of 5:15 p.m. Thursday — were no longer public.

I have followed, spoke to and seen most of the social media storm.  I cannot believe that folks do not recognize the “pickaninny” stereotype and what it means to the historical movement to dehumanize and infantilize Black Americans.  You can look at the variety of comments there exclaiming that it’s racist free ‘folk art’ showcasing black children and judge for yourself.  The Festival people are standing by the poster and the poster’s defenders are vociferous.  I’m still appalled and I stand by that.

I’m appalled on many levels by several recent events indicating that the struggle does indeed continue on many fronts.  There were several notable absences in the Selma commemoration including the Congressman that spoke at a White Supremacist gathering on his way to his seat.  He was in a posh resort being wined and dined by the AEI.  That’s obviously much more important than making a symbolic gesture to his constituents many of whose lives were profoundly changed by the civil rights movement.

U.S. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 3 House Republican who has been criticized in the past by civil rights leaders, stayed at a posh Georgia resort with his wife earlier this month rather than attend events in Alabama marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma civil rights march.

A newly filed congressional “post-travel” disclosure dated Wednesday shows Scalise skipped the Selma event to attend a Republican “off-the-record” retreat hosted in Sea Island, Ga. The event was hosted by the American Enterprise Institute from March 5-8.

Not far away from us, Mississipi Trees still bear “strange fruit”. All of this is a haunting reminder that our President may be black, but our American Society still has far to go to achieve the dream of liberty and justice for all.

CLAIBORNE COUNTY, MS (Mississippi News Now) –The FBI and the MBI are investigating a suspicious death in Claiborne County.

A body was found on property located off of Rodney Road.

The Coroner, J.W. Mallett, confirms the man was found hanging from a tree. Officials say the body was hung using bed sheets.

According to the Coroner the body has not yet been identified because the body has apparently been there so long that identification, by visual means, is nearly impossible. The body has been sent to the State Crime Lab for autopsy.

The Claiborne County branch of the NAACP is indicating the man found hanging is Otis Byrd.

The FBI is only saying that he is a “man last seen March 2nd; and his family filed a missing persons report with the Claiborne County Sheriff’s Department on March 8th.”

In a news release, the FBI say the body was found during a ground search by the Claiborne County Sheriff’s Department and the Mississippi Wildlife Fisheries and Parks.

54-year-old Otis James Byrd was last seen when a friend dropped him off at Vicksburg’s Riverwalk Casino earlier this month.

His family and friends hadn’t heard from him since then.

The NAACP has now sent an email requesting the US Department of Justice “join the current investigation of the suspicious hanging death of Mr. Otis Byrd.”

The email goes on to say: “Mr. Otis Byrd’s body was [found] today, Thursday, March 19, 2015. After several days of missing, [he] was found hanged to death.”

The FBI says the body was found “a half mile from his last know residence.”

Some odd things have been happening in the city that relate to a really strange true crime case.  I thought I’d bring up the arrest and extradition of Robert Durst.  It’s one of those stories that makes you wonder how our society can manage to let so many folks rot in jail for very little while a true sociopath can wander about at will.  I guess you shouldn’t wonder too much because the guy is and was rich and can pretty much afford to work the justice system.  It’s a strange story, nonetheless.

Durst was arrested Saturday in New Orleans in connection with the 2000 fatal shooting of Berman at her Benedict Canyon home. He was charged Monday with murder, and the next day transferred to the mental health facility at a state-run prison in Louisiana.

His extradition to California has been delayed as authorities in New Orleans deal with the drugs and weapons allegations.

Meanwhile, New York authorities remain interested in Durst as they continue to investigate what happened to his first wife, Kathleen, who disappeared in 1982.

Kathleen Durst vanished after she expressed the desire for a divorce. To a friend, she had confided worries about what her husband might do.

Following the disappearance, Berman acted as an “informal spokesman” for Durst. The pair had met at UCLA, where they went to school together.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles allege that Durst killed Berman to prevent her from speaking to police about the disappearance of his wife. Durst could face the death penalty for the murder charge with special circumstances.
Less than a year after Berman’s death, Durst turned up in Galveston, Texas, in connection with the killing of an elderly neighbor, Morris Black. Black’s dismembered body, in several plastic bags, was discovered in the waters offshore. A trail of clues led to Durst’s arrest.

Durst didn’t deny dismembering Black, but he said he inadvertently shot him while wrestling a gun from him.

A jury acquitted him in 2003.

Although Durst’s life has seen a series of high-profile brushes with the law, suspicions about him exploded into a national sensation as they played out in a six-part HBO series, “The Jinx.”

The making of the documentary had opened up some new evidence.  Durst’s New Orleans Hotel Room is turning out to be one of those FBI forensic crime scenes from TV dramas mixed with crime psychologists and crime scene scientists.  Check out the picture on this one.  The guy oozes sociopath.

Murder suspect Robert Durst, subject of HBO’s ‘The Jinx,’ had more than $42,000 in cash, a fake ID and a latex mask when authorities arrested him in New Orleans last weekend, newly obtained records show.

Inside Durst’s hotel room at the J.W. Mariott on Canal Street, police say they found $42,631 in cash, mostly in $100 bills packed in small envelopes, according to an affidavit for a warrant to search Durst’s home in Houston, signed by a judge in Harris County, Texas, on Tuesday (March 17).

The new details were made public Wednesday after authorities in Houston searched the real-estate scion’s home at the request of Los Angeles officials, who have charged Durst in the 2000 death of his longtime confidante and spokesperson, Susan Berman.

According to the document, members of the FBI’s Violent Offenders Task Force found Durst on in the lobby of the hotel a little before 7 p.m. Saturday. When FBI Special Agent William Williams approached the 71-year-old man from behind and identified himself, Durst had a small backpack with him but claimed he did not have any type of identification.

When agents searched Durst’s room — he was staying in room 2303 under the name Everette Ward — they found a Texas ID with the same alias, and not his real name, the record states.

“That’s pretty good,” Durst said to the agents when confronted with the fake ID, according to the Texas document.

So, now I suppose I will have to watch the HBO thing.

Well, that’s enough for me today.  I’m going back to sleep for awhile!  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?