Looking Down the Barrel of History

Guest Post
by Steve Beisner

In 1965, when I was nineteen, Louisiana was at war with itself, as some of its citizens marched for the right to just be, while others struggled with their consciences in a messy reaction to the civil rights movement. Ultimately, I'm proud to say, Louisiana's citizens, black and white, chose the right side of history.

            In the middle of that summer, I sat with three friends, and guitars, a banjo, and harmonica on Doctor Loupe's front porch in the town of New Roads in Pointe Coupee Parish. We were buoyed by changing times, adolescent optimism, and our home-made music.

Our songs were anthems to better days ahead. Our talk was of recent confrontations that had roiled the town. We were singing an old Lead Belly tune when a raggedy pickup truck turned onto the street, slowed, and stopped at the curb, twenty feet from where we sat. Two men, the driver, a local loud-mouth, and his passenger and partner in poor choices, peered at us.

The passenger eased the long barrel of an ancient double barreled shotgun through the truck's side window, resting it there, pointed in our direction.

            "Y'all wouldn't be none of those northern agitators, would ya?"

            There was a long silence. No one moved. Then Joe stood up, still grasping the neck of his guitar, and walked to the edge of the porch.  "What the hell you boys talkin' about? Any fool can see we're just sittin' here by the river, tryin' to catch us a catfish dinner." Of course there was no river and no catfish!

            I don't know if the men were completely confused by Joe's words, or just embarrassed, but the driver hit the gas, the tires squealed, the truck fishtailed down the street and disappeared around the corner.

            I knew some Louisianans who mourned the passing of officially approved racism. Some are alive today. To a person they have embraced a new champion, one who shouts euphemisms about making America great again.  But it's the same old hate, same old fear.

            Last year as the good people of the United States contemplated a racist running for the highest office, I sat with three friends in a cafe in Santa Barbara, reputedly one of the land's more enlightened enclaves. We sipped coffee and talked, trying to ease our shared election trauma. The talk was consoling, not bitter nor angry, just sad.

            At the next table, a red-faced man with a voice loud enough to ensure that everyone at surrounding tables could hear, growled, "Damned pseudo-intellectual liberals... worthless, just living off the fat of the land."

            Everyone laughed.

            The only things missing were the truck and the shotgun.

            Sometimes hatred falls by its own ridiculous weight.

about the author

Steve Beisner

South Louisiana native Steve Beisner is a writer, musician, and computer scientist. He has published short stories and poems, and has been recognized for his short fiction by the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and by Country Roads Magazine. Steve was editor of Ink Byte, the online magazine for writers. He is now working on MetaWrite, an evolution of the word processor into a more effective tool for the writer to compose, construct, and analyze long form manuscripts.  Steve lives in New Orleans, LA. and Santa Barbara, CA.

The New Old New Orleans: Los Po-Boy-Citos

Guest Post by Steve Beisner

Katrina was a man-made, not a natural disaster. If that statement doesn’t fit your comfortable idea of the catastrophe , then I direct you to the many articles on the subject, like this one written on the storm’s fifth anniversary by Time Magazine.

In New Orleans we love to complain about Katrina and the incompetent authorities that make the storm such a disaster, also, bad politics, pot-holed streets, infrastructure that comes and goes as unpredictably as the weather, and national media who almost always get their New Orleans stories wrong. Recently we’ve taken to complaining about gentrification and the flood of newcomers — just the ones who don’t get that living here means tolerating loud music at the bar in your neighborhood, strange and eccentric people who make some others uncomfortable, and the general disfunction — but it’s all part of what makes New Orleans so dear to the people who love her.

Fortunately the city usually manages to change the attitudes of the clueless among the newcomers rather than allowing the well meaning but misguided to ruin the city with poorly aimed “improvements”.

In the fine old tradition of New Orleans, the changes in the wake of Katrina have been both positive and negative.  One of the changes that New Orleanians have embraced is the influx of new Latino culture, especially its invigorating influence on New Orleans cuisine and New Orleans Music.  Last week, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s  After Hours program featured Los Po-Boy-Citos, a New Orleans group that embodies some of the best in new Latin influenced New Orleans music.

They have an energetic Latin sound, but feature brass that recalls the traditional New Orleans brass bands you might hear at a jazz funeral or second line.  The music is unique, humorous, and totally New Orleans.  You can hear their rendition of Oye Mamacita here on YouTube.  They began in 2006, combining old school boogaloo songs with New Orleans R&B hits.  They were named Best Latin Band three years in a row at the Big Easy Awards.

By the way, the intriguing painting on the wall of the Ogden Museum’s lobby is Carpet Track by artist, Robert Warrens.  Here’s a closer look:

New Orleans loves being itself, and New Orleanians love to show off their city and their culture to visitors. Come see us and enjoy the food, the art, the music, the literature, and the people — like nowhere else.

South Louisiana native Steve Beisner is a writer, musician, and computer scientist. He has published short stories and poems, and has been recognized for his short fiction by the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. His short story "Matchbox" won an award form Country Roads Magazine. Steve is an editor at Ink Byte Press and CafeLunaReview.com.  Steve's  long involvement as a writer, developer and teacher of technology has led to a quest to make technology more accessible to writers and artists.  Steve lives in Santa Barbara, CA, and in New Orleans, LA.   You can contact him at beisner@alum.mit.edu.

Window of Isolation: Louisiana's Leprosarium

Carville: Amid Moss and Resurrection Fern
Poems by Gina Ferrara

Poet Gina Ferrara's new chapbook, Carville Amid Moss and Resurrection Fern

(Finishing Line Press 2014) delivers a new way of looking at leprosy, now known as Hansen's disease. The beauty of these poems is arresting and surprising, given the once taboo subject of leprosy. The leprosarium at Carville operated for over a hundred years.

As a child in catholic school in New Orleans, Ferrara grew up hearing about lepers. Four years ago, when she visited the colony in Carville, Louisiana, she learned more about the lives of the patients. Carville is located off River Road, near Baton Rouge. However, it is essentially in the middle of nowhere. Ferrara captures that sense of isolation in her Carville Poems. The title references the fact that moss and resurrection fern can be found in the oak trees at Carville. Ferrara was taken by the physical beauty of the landscape at Carville and how the beauty of the land was intertwined and connected to the personal experiences of the patients. From "A Perfect Terrain": 'Drenched in moss and resurrection fern, the oaks stayed stoic--/a perfect terrain for the ostriches, swift-footed and flightless/that would never arrive.'

In writing these poems, Ferrara never lost sight of the loneliness experienced by Carville residents. "I wanted to convey how people who had the disease became isolated--very removed from the lives they had lived and previously known, " she said. "They no longer saw their families or loved ones. They had to establish a new and different way of living."

Residents at Carville may have been isolated, but they lived life to the fullest, put on dances and Mardi Gras balls, and published a newspaper with a circulation of over 250, 000. The poem, "Tea Hour on Point Clair Road," shows how the ladies would take their tea, 'The fingerless/Even the unmarred waited for the sips and stains of tea hours,/ Something miraculous as a cure/under a sun no longer at apex.'

Gina first began writing the poems in the spring of 2010 and finished the book over a period of two years. She approached Finishing Line Press because they had published her first poetry chapbook, The Size of Sparrows, in 2006. She met one of  the patients, Pete from Trinidad, who was about ten years old when he arrived and is now in his eighties. He is one of the last patients to live there, rides around on his bicycle, and is eager to talk to visitors. The lyrical poems, along with photographs by Elizabeth Garcia, offer a window into life at Carville, Louisiana.

Gina Ferrara

Carville in the Spring

Gina Ferrara

Sugar surrounds this sanctuary

far from ordinary or Galapagos.

The road ends each time

I check my appendages

for open wounds, red splotches in tandem.

I remember the last pliant hand I held.

Would the constellated sky feel like a hand?

Each finger with its own unblemished identity—

supple and tapering to a square tip,

the bony range of knuckles

buckling only to brush inside my palm.

I squint and scan for semblances of past lives.

Who is the gypsy? Who is the physicist?

I have my suspicions.

Today a woman arrived.

She strolls through the covered corridors

with memories of her identity and scepter,

helpless and unable to reign over the bacilli

waiting to uprise in time as unwanted suns.

--from Carville Amid Moss and Resurrection Fern

Gina Ferrara's work has previously been featured on La Bloga. Her latest full-length poetry book, Amber Porch Light was also recently reviewed by Frank Mundo in the Examiner.