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Home to Saints, Writers, Musicians and Sinners - Prelude to The French Quarter's Halloween

By Patricia H. Kushlis

"They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at — Elysian Fields!" Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize winning  play A Street Car Named Desire, 1947.

The disaster named Katrina struck New Orleans more than five years ago when the levies broke and the floods that followed destroyed whole sections of the city, leaving thousands homeless and families and loved-ones among the dead. But the city’s main attraction, the French Quarter (Vieux Carré) stayed put: its Spanish colonial architecture and French cathedral did not wash away.

(Photo left of St. Louis Cathedral-Basilica and Andrew Jackson Statue in front by PHKushlis, 10-14-10)

Trolleys operate along Canal Street where the streets change names between the French Quarter and the city’s North. The Quarter’s statues of Andrew Jackson and Jean d’Arc are so bright and shiny that they look as if Katrina and her devastating wake had never even touched them. (Photo of Canal St. Trolley by PHKushlis 10-18-10)

Many businesses have long since reopened, and the free-wheeling pulse of the Quarter thrives perhaps in memory of its earliest settlers – the prostitutes, thieves and other derelicts sent by the French government to populate the new city. Or perhaps in honor of those hardworking German immigrants recruited thereafter to lend stability to this strategic port near the mouth of the mighty Mississippi.

The "Big Easy" Lives On

New Orleans is a friendly, anything goes kind of place. It didn’t get the nickname “The Big Easy” for no reason. Street musicians – in groups and solo - set up in the middle of intersections closed to traffic. They also perform in Jackson Square and on the Moonwalk - the riverside walk along the Mississippi’s embankment. Sounds of the saxophone, the sousaphone, the violin, the cello, the drum, the trumpet and far more exotic folk instruments permeate the air even mid-day. Sidewalk artists hawk their wares. Art galleries and antique shops along Royal Street are more circumspect. Horse drawn carriages show tourists places the automobile cannot go.  (Photo of street musicians  on Royal Street with horse and carriage in background by PHKushlis 10-18-10)

Even Free and Easy Has Its Limits

But the police tell vagrants and ne’er-do-wells to get a move on – smoking joints seated on the pavement near an art gallery on Royal Street at noon is an excellent way to hasten one’s departure to somewhere else. Free and easy has its limits – even here.

The French designed Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis King of France is the Quarter's focal point. Its rare 15 stripe American flag as well as the flags of the countries – France, Spain, and Britain that preceded US rule - hang above the central aisle on the right side of the cathedral’s nave and beneath a fresco of the four evangelists and ten apostles (minus Peter and Judas). The cathedral is flanked by two identical French buildings – the Calbildo and the Presbytère – now housing collections of the Louisiana State Museum. (Photo of flags in St. Louis Cathedral by PHKushlis, 10-14-10)

City of Saints, Writers, Musicians and Sinners

William Faulkner wrote his first novel, Soldiers Pay, in the house at 624 Pirates Alley in 1925, a townhouse built in 1840 on a walking street on the cathedral’s north side. The townhouse now contains the Faulkner Book Store. Later, Tennessee Williams began A Street Car Named Desire when he lived at 632 St. Peter Street just minutes away.

Bourbon Street is its raucous self and dresses up for the Quarter’s all night Halloween party with noise and gusto. The Quarter’s ornate second story balconies provide excellent places to hang ghoulish banners, bizarre ornaments and strange signs to attract the attention of pedestrians and revelers below. Voodoo figures prominently in the decor and the celebrations. (Photo left of Plaque on Faulkner House and right of Bourbon Street bar decorating for Halloween by PHKushlis 10-14-10)

Halloween may not equal Mardi Gras, but a street party’s a party after all.

Restaurants and bars of all types, qualities and prices abound in and around the French Quarter many with Creole or Cajun fare.  There’s Antoine’s, of course, the restaurant that figures in “The Big Easy” but there are many other lesser known including Lüke on Perdido,  the Palace Café on Canal Street and Napoleon’s with its interior courtyard on Chartres (pronounced Charter), that are well worth the visit. (Photo of lights in a mirror at the Palace Café by PHKushlis 10-16-10)

The French Market – which now sells lots of cheap, imported goods many from China including voodoo dolls – also has a food stall overflowing with bright orange pumpkins presumably homegrown in Louisiana. One pumpkin sports the “Who Dat” logo of this city of Saints and Sinners. (Photo left of bright orange pumpkins by PHKushlis 10-14-10)

Beignets, powdered sugar and coffee

The crowded open air Café du Monde that begins the French Market and abuts Jackson Square only serves beignets (the local square donut sans hole and doused in powdered sugar) and coffee as it has for nearly 150 years. A Dixieland band in green and white complete with sousaphonist lustily performs on the sidewalk just outside and there’s no  charge for listening. A lone saxophonist has set up store on the Moonwalk – performing and hawking his CDs. (Photo of sax player T.S. Lark by PHKushlis 10-14-10).

Rebuilding Lives

New Orleans natives continue to return as the city gets back on its feet: Some only to visit relatives, others to return for work. Nevertheless, the 2008 global financial melt-down slowed the recovery and the city's population may never be as large again.

One man we met who had lost everything and survived the storm in the Louisiana Superdome was offered a hotel job – if, that is, he would move to Michigan. He did. He told us he still works for the same hotel that offered him employment when he was destitute and that this was his first time back in New Orleans since his move to visit relatives who had remained.

A young woman – who had been working in Canada when Katrina hit - said matter of factly that her only sister had drowned in the flood, her mother had just died of cancer and she had recently returned to be with her father and brother. The three of them were restoring their battered house – bit by bit.

Tourists – including Canadians, Europeans and Asians – bring in dollars that help rebuild the city. Even so the sidewalks are uneven, the pavement chipped and dilapidated districts are found not far from the French Quarter. The freeway acts as a dividing line. These quarters represent a sadder side to this city’s life.

A refuge from restrictions at home

Nevertheless, this multi-ethnic city with its waterfront casinos, convention center on the river, downtown sports arena, universities, museums, aquarium and Preservation Hall where jazz greats performed and perform is unique to America as well as the South. It’s no wonder that Southern writers, artists and musicians have congregated here over the centuries seeking refuge from the restrictions of home. It’s pretty clear, they still do.

 

(Photo left: French Quarter balcony and photo right: Bridge over the Mississippi by PHKushlis 10-14-10)

Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence – A Book Review Essay

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Orhan Pamuk’s latest novel, The Museum of Innocence, tells the tale of an attractive and wealthy thirty year old man’s obsession with an eighteen year old shop girl who was also his distant cousin. The story is set in 1970s Istanbul, a different and far poorer city than today. In this book, Pamuk sprints, then almost painstakingly strolls, through the separate but interconnected lives of the westernized elite, the idiosyncratic Turkish film world and that of a lower-middle class family all set against an outside world of the country's ongoing political turbulence and economic stress.

Political murders were commonplace during those years, nightly killings transpired on the city’s streets between left and right and Pamuk hints that perhaps Turkish security forces themselves played murky roles in the carnage. The military coup of 1980 ended the escalating urban violence and ushered in a more stable era. But Pamuk leaves an important question unanswered: whether and by how much the Turkish “dark state” was involved itself in underwriting the unrest. A question that still echoes today.

1970s Istanbul

Istanbul of the late 1970s was a difficult place to reside or even visit. I well remember visiting friends there in January 1979: the petrol lines were long. The Turkish lira was nonconvertible and inflation was high. Imports were almost non-existent but the markets were filled with fresh produce from the countryside and fish from the seas and the Bosphorus - even in winter. Internal migration was rampant and the city’s public services were overwhelmed by the influx of peasants from Anatolia - but Islamists did not figure prominently in Pamuk’s world of the time.

Candidates for an Underground Railroad: Afghan Women

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Little by little U.S. policy makers are beginning to realize that a war with the Taliban can’t be won.  Why not?  Because it’s almost impossible to extricate or isolate “the Taliban” from the rest of Afghan society. 

Here, for instance, is a less than exhaustive list of how and why Afghan menfolk get involved with the Taliban:  Theology.  Ethnic loyalty.  Yearning for justice and order.  Traditional mores.  Excitement and adventure.  Disgust with corruption in Kabul.  Money. Self-protection.  Anti-American, anti-foreigner sentiments.  Fear, threats or duress. 

Unfortunately for American (or NATO) aspirations, no one incentive can counter or neutralize  each and all of these motivations.  As far as theology is concerned, there is a civil war going on within Sunni Islam.  Since this is not our battle, we can’t win it.  What's more, our influence is negligible—or worse: by confronting the Taliban, we create sympathy for beleaguered fellow Muslims even among those who actually loathe the Taliban.  The U.S. has also been unable to mitigate corruption within a central government functioning under a Constitution imposed by foreigners, whose fingerprints taint it beyond redemption, corrupt incumbents or not.  Traditional Afghans ask:  wouldn’t Sharia or simple Paktunwali be preferable?  Fear is more elemental.  Fear goes away when the Americans patrol, though relief is usually tinged with the shame of depending on non-Afghans for security. When the Americans move on to the next village, district or province, however, the guys with the guns are Taliban again.  Time to grow the beard back.

So it’s not surprising that a new Washington consensus is emerging: bring the Taliban in from the cold.  Get them to buy into the system.  More wishful thinking! If the Taliban leadership (or even lower level types) were sincerely amenable to joining in a government according to the present rules, why have they been fighting all these years?  Who honestly believes the Taliban, even in partial power, will respect women’s rights (defined according to Western standards) even if they promise to do so? Isn’t this the likely scenario: they’ll persuade their non-Taliban male colleagues to limit women’s opportunities, little by little, until it’s back into the box, ladies. 

The Taliban may take a while to regain the unchallenged upper hand in much of Afghanistan, and that’s the bright side for American forces.  With a little luck, the Yanks will be gone, the war lords will regroup and the re-Talibanization can be blamed on U.S.-favored Afghans who refused to use a proven model effectively. Whew!

Georgy A. Arbatov (1923-2010), End of an Era

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Georgy A. Arbatov, the founder of the Soviet Academy of Sciences USA-Canada Institute died on October 1, 2010 at the age of 87. The cause of death was cancer.

The obligatory press obituaries have now appeared. Most read as if they stepped out of the pages of Arbatov’s biography on Wikipedia. These include a longer and more comprehensive one in The New York Times and an amazingly abbreviated one for a man of Arbatov’s stature in The Washington Post.

I thought, in contrast, that I’d approach Arbatov’s life and impact on US-Soviet and now US-Russian relations from a somewhat different perspective. Georgy Arbatov was a controversial, enigmatic, complex and sometimes enervating individual for American diplomats who dealt with him over the many years. Yet, his importance in US-Soviet relations was undeniable because of his close ties to and influence on Brezhnev, Andropov, and Gorbachev as well as his advisors.

But was Arbatov simply a protagonist and propagandist for the Soviet Union and the successive leaders or did he play a far more complex role in the Soviet Union’s relationship with its chief adversary beginning at least in 1967 with the founding of the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Institute for US and Canadian Studies – the Institute he was chosen to head until his retirement in 1995?

Here is what Yale Richmond, Soviet specialist and former Counselor for Press and Culture at the US Embassy in Moscow and who regularly dealt with Arbatov then, wrote in response to Arbatov’s Obituary in The Washington Post on October 2:

Georgy Arbatov (Obits, Oct. 2) was an enigmatic figure in U.S.-Soviet relations. Some of the many influential Americans he knew saw him as a very effective propagandist and apologist for a series of Soviet leaders starting with Brezhnev, whose protégé Arbatov was. Other Americans, however, saw Arbatov’s Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies as a place where visiting Americans could get an accurate reading of Soviet policies, and where visitors could also be assured that their views would be transmitted by the Institute to Soviet leaders.

The Institute’s work was classified but its researchers had carte blanche for things Western. They could read things other Soviets could not. They were the first in the Soviet Union to have Xerox machines, and they could call long distance when other Soviets had to book overseas calls 24 hours in advance. Arbatov’s staffers also had most favored status in selection for the many grants for study in the United States under various exchange programs. As a result, the Institute became a place where seeds were planted for the glasnost and perestroika that emerged during the Gorbachev years. And for that we have to thank Arbatov.

Arbatov was also known for his clever one-liners. In December 1967, when he was named to head the new Institute, I asked him if he had ever visited the United States. With a knowing smile he replied that he had never visited the United States, that he was neutral on the subject, and that was why he was chosen to head the new Institute. Alas, it fell to me, as the American Embassy officer with contact to Arbatov, to inform him that his first visit to the United States, planned for September 1968, would not be appropriate [because it came so soon after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia].

The record shows that Arbatov did ultimately travel to the U.S. 25 times over the years, that he did help to explain America to a Soviet leadership that had had little or no experience with the West and that he and his Institute staff did indeed meet often with numerous high level American officials and private citizens in Moscow and the US and did have access to information – western books, periodicals, newspapers and Xerox machines – denied to other Soviet citizens. It should then come as no surprise that years later, researchers from this institute also formed part of the nucleus of reformers under Gorbachev who sought to modernize this huge country that for political reasons had fallen further and further behind the West.

For additional firsthand information on Georgy Arbatov see Yale Richmond’s Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003) pp. 81-92.

The Un-Chile: That Unfortunate Hole in Manhattan’s Heart

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Iran’s President Ahmedinejad is busy trying to make the world believe that an American government cabal brought about the destruction of New York’s World Trade towers.  This vicious charge wasn’t his idea.  It’s a home grown conspiracy theory, and those who believe it continue to propagate it among their fellow Americans.  Sadly, this is not the only bit of superfluous nastiness that clings to the tragic events of 9/11.   

Meanwhile, like millions around the world, I found tears welling in my eyes more than a few times as the saga of the trapped miners in Chile played out.  Some residual superstition held me back from jubilation until the last man was back on the surface.  Throughout, however, I felt awe and admiration for everyone involved.

First, the miners themselves.  They had maintained a functional society in the dark.  Day after day they had shared their food supplies fairly and sparingly.  When contact was established, they were ready to respond constructively.  And when they emerged from the rescue capsule, they were—well!—themselves: decent guys glad to be on the surface of the earth again.   Maybe they had some rocky times.  Maybe they had some arguments.  There must have been some moments of unsaintliness.   And maybe a few of the miners will go for the gold in tasteless, self-aggrandizing ways, trashing the band of brothers.  No matter. These men were a credit to the human race when it counted. 

Next, the technical people.  They were called in from around the world.  Chileans, of course.  Plus mining experts from South Africa and, from the U.S.,  NASA space flight specialists as well as drillers.   And so on.  Arriving with their own ways of doing things, these strangers had to coalesce into an egoless cooperative concentrated on getting the job done as soon and as safely as possible.  Seven weeks from start to picture perfect finish is pretty impressive.  Another kudo for the human race.

Chilean officialdom.  They didn’t squabble (in public anyway), though governor, ministers and president certainly weren’t hurting from the pix and publicity. Still, they didn’t vie for attantion in an obviously unsavory way.  Maybe they were self-abnegating.  Maybe they were savvy.  Grandstanding at Camp Hope wouldn't have been a future vote-getter.  Whatever their motives, then, they did the right thing.  That was good to see. 

Generosity and good management.  No one asked how much the rescue was going to cost.  Putting solid, rapid results before penny-pinching, the government drafted assistance globally and funded three drilling teams simultaneously.  Businesses donated food and clothing.  Miners, families and even newsmen were fed, gratis.  This well-managed outpouring of governmental and private support was key to the rapid success of the operation and to the maintenance of high morale above and below ground. 

Now the whole world basks in the knowledge of a remarkable rescue operation.  This remote Chilean desert site will never be a place of sorrow, a mass grave site, a necropolis watered forever with tears, which reminds me of a place in New York that is dishonored by a neurotic fixation on the term "ground zero."

Smoking Gun Or Whitewash - the Continuing State Department Human Resources Saga

By Patricia H. Kushlis

See November 17, 2010 Update below

Last March, the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General (the Department is still without an Inspector General since Cookie Krongard left the building under a cloud during the Bush administration) signed off on the results of its investigation of the “integrity and fairness” of the Foreign Service Selection Board Process between 2004 and 2008. This OIG investigation began in July 2009, and ended in October 2009.

The original task - as assigned to the OIG by the Under Secretary for Management – was to investigate the integrity of the process from top to bottom. The OIG, nevertheless, managed to get the job whittled down to an investigation of the system as it applies primarily to Class One Officers and the Senior Foreign Service with a few paragraphs dealing with Foreign Service Specialist complaints and implications of Foreign Service expansion thrown in.

On the surface, the report begins as a total white wash. Its first key judgment concludes that “the processes by which annual Selection Boards promote, low-rank, and award Foreign Service personnel are fundamentally fair and trustworthy.” If you stop reading there, you’ll undoubtedly conclude that all’s right in Foggy Bottom’s Human Resources world whether the bottom is visible through all the murk obfuscating the system’s operations - or not.

Well, read on.

In the report, the OIG points out that the process by which the Office of Human Resources handled the promotion system was largely contained in the heads of the staff who worked there. No manual or set of instructions existed that established in writing the complex tasks undertaken, no records were kept of Selection Board deliberations, and no procedures existed for handling the operation of Reconstituted Boards. Since less is likely known about reconstituted boards - a part of the grievance process - I’ll begin with them. Pay special attention to the sentences I’ve highlighted below.

Columbus Day White Sale

The Path Mistaken: A Semi-Coward's Venture into the Santa Fe National Forest

 
By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The plan was this: follow the off-loop as it swooped down, down, down through aspen-covered slopes.  Eventually, according to a very sketchy map, the track would climb up, up, up to the main trail, which would circle me back to my car.  Unfortunately the lesser track led to an unmapped rocky outcropping.  Picturesque, but a dead end.  Unless, as I hoped, the track resumed on the other side.  Naturally, I investigated.  Stupidly, I got lost.

Picture this:  Skinny pale-trunked aspen trees surrounding me like a palisade.  Aspens marching one behind the other as far as I could see into the forest.  Aspen clones laughing This way! This way! This way! while I racked my brains.  Which way? Which way?

Going for the Gold

Wednesday was a work day.  I had electronic errands to accomplish.  I had a WV post to write. But it’s Aspen Season in Santa Fe.  The sky is azure. The mountains are turning gold. Facing my computer monitor, I was also facing a window, and that’s what I saw.

How could I stay inside?  I couldn’t, which doesn’t make me uniquely sensitive to the season.  Throngs of locals and tourists have their eyes on the gold at this time of year.  They drive to the ski basin, hop on the Aspen Express aka a ski lift, hop out at 11,500 feet, survey 360 degrees of gold- glinting slopes, capture all digitally, then plop into another chair for the ride downhill.   Some people saunter back via a service road.  Others beeline down a steep, stony and still snowless piste.

I’ve gone the ski lift route, but Wednesday I was in the mood for something resembling wilderness, the question being: Which trail?  I could have been ambitious and headed toward the saddle before the final ascent of Santa Fe Baldy.  I could have trudged up a six mile jeep road leading to the top of Tesuque peak.  For that matter,  I could have settled for a stroll along the Santa Fe river, where cottonwoods lag the aspen only slightly in the golding process.  I opted for the Nordic trail, a gentle track that winds up and down for 2 ½ miles.  Elevation 1080 feet. It’s basically a hugely convoluted loop,  with lots of less-trod crossovers for those seeking shorter excursions.  My plan was to complete the loop in one direction, then double back.  An afternoon in the glorious crisp air of early autumn. 

Things didn’t start well.  Five minutes up the trail, my throat was dry.   I’d left my water bottle in the car. It had to be retrieved. If I was thirsty already, I’d be miserable after a mile or so. 

Bears and Cougars

Oh, yes!  Although the Nordic trail is very easy on the legs, I also took one hiking pole along.  It was a weekday.  There were only three other cars in the parking area, which meant I’d be meeting other human beings at the rate of one party per mile.  In short, I’d be alone on the trail, which, from most points of view, is a pleasure.  However, when solitary in the woods, I feel better if I have something to brandish at bears, which are relatively harmless, and at the less harmless cougars, which are sighted, albeit rarely, even in the city of Santa Fe itself, where they snack on cats and little dogs.  Not that I’ve ever seen a cougar.  Not that I believe this feather light carbon shaft would make a full-out pounce less lethal.  I just feel better with my magic stick.

Also a little silly, as on Wednesday.  Toward the trail’s halfway point I met a couple coming counterclockwise toward me. “For mountain lions?” the guy chuckled.  “Absolutely,” I grinned, to show it was all a game. Really!  Ha. Ha.

The Nordic track is a well defined, narrow path of soft humus, wonderfully soft to walk on, bordered by tallish grasses and wild-flowers.  Every so often the trail is punctuated by stones or roots, and there are fallen trees everywhere, mostly aspen, which grow thickly here, pale matchstick trunks, some thicker than others, but otherwise pretty much alike.  The cross-over trails are harder to see and follow: tromped down plant matter with a tendency to prefer the vertical. But even the main trail is invisible from ten feet into the scrub.