Rock you like a hurricane

http://www.himandus.net/hofh/chauvin/richard/richard_00_acadian_history.html

I planned on writing a piece today about minority culture, when a casual conversation with my neighbor directed me towards another key issue affecting impoverished Americans that's a tie-in with today's "Hurricane Joachim" conditions, and that is this: flooding. It's no secret to my Acadian, Cajun, and Creole peoples that oppressed minorities who threaten the status quo were (are) pushed into marshlands and swamps (what up, Zydeco fans?), conveniently "resettled" during occupational wars with not-so-hidden agendas. Richly fertile island nations with beautifully exotic women were suspiciously targeted the most often. 

To this day, "white" Canada disparagingly refers to any native person as an "Aboriginal", in a clear attempt to marginalize their First Nation status by wrongly placing them in the same category as the people of Australia, who are seen as less than attractive by the European Penal Colonists sent there without choice. Obviously, each human tribe on Planet Earth has a range of beauty from the ugly to the more comely, but it is no secret (see me in pics) that the Métis figured something out: French (or Scotch/Irish) guy mates with squaw = an "OMIGOD, how do I get my hands on that?!" level of attractiveness that my sweet Norman Barese grandmother from the Abruzzi region of Italy called "Oo la la!" in a loud voice whenever she thought it was wise to remind her family about me and my key "factor", and she was never wrong about anything. Like, ever.

The Canadian government recently officially recognized that the enforced separation, murder, and ethnic cleansing of Acadian Métis was "unfortunate", which is kind of like saying that the Serbian Croatian War was "bad". Yeah, you think? Ripping families apart based on eye color has become such a taboo subject in my culture, that deeply ingrained prejudices about it remain in place to this day. My Québécois/Irish-American college boyfriend from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn told me a few times that he had qualms about my "marriageability" because I have brown eyes (strikingly coal-black eyes are a trademark Métis feature) and he has blue eyes, and, ahem, you know, well, maybe he wanted blue-eyed children. Me, looking like what you know to be true, and he is no supermodel. It was a petty little head game he played with me to parlay my supposed insecurities about my looks into his hands, which...well, you see where I'm at with him today. Nowheresville.

Race continues to define the descendants of a culture that took American ideals at face value when it came to openly assimilating different cultures. French with Africaine? No problem: you Creole now. European with a Native? Okay, we are Métis. Ditto with your Irish, Scottish, British, and Dutch ancestors with us. Now you tribe, too. Twenty-five percent is all you typically need to get in, barring any serious medical conditions like violently anti-social paranoid schizophrenia (which is kind of a "no-no" in any human community), and we just might let you in for life. All we ask is that you accept my brother and my sister, who may or may not share eye color or the exact same skin tone, but we have a wide range. You follow me here? 

The Acadian Deportation (Le Grand Dérangement) is exactly what got you stranded in an area below sea level, ami. Homeboy, you sinkin' in Red Hook right now ("Hoek" in Dutch, New Amsterdam) because they don't like you and your kind, especially if you get along well with your neighbor, who may or may not be the same color as you. Ya dig? You're the "problem" they want gone. "But, who exactly is 'they'"? "Who", indeed. Now you're asking the right questions. See you on the other side, friends. And take swimmin' lessons in the hood, mes Cajuns et Creoles. Hurricane season is officially here.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Katrina_in_New_Orleans 

http://portsidetanker.blogspot.com/2013/02/red-hook-sandy-surge-map.html 

https://umaine.edu/canam/publications/st-croix/acadian-deportation-migration-resettlement/ 

Bunny Ears

Baby Jimmy in Maine, with his dog "Ranger".

My Dad's first job was as a shoeshine boy*, and I knew that because he kept the old wooden box in the back of his closet. I used to take it out to play with the polishes and rags, which made my Dad laugh: "Here. (sticks foot out) You want a shoe to shine? Do mine, and if it's any good, I'll pay you." Acadian papas like do that to kids. You ain't never seen anyone pinch a penny harder than my dad and his people. It's how we survive the hard times, becoming so ingrained as a philosophy as to make it's way into a "Mainerism" (http://www.asmainegoes.com/content/youll-only-hear-these-sayings-maine); these folksy sayings that my Dad likes to see carved into wooden plaques, or stitched onto embroidered pillows. 

It's crafts-y and also really annoying, because almost everything is some saying, but like so much of his parenting, I may not like the feel of it as his kid, but those sayings are the things that stick with me in good times or bad. One of his famous "Mainer's" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mainer) about money is that he can "...pinch a penny so hard, Abraham Lincoln's head yells out loud." Oh (http://webpages.charter.net/lorilady/glossary.html). So, I guess you will now judge my work subpar so as to not pay me for this shoeshine? Yeah. Now go away, kid.

And so it went. His quips learned as a child, the ones so easy any child could understand, quickly became a very young and rather inexperienced fathers' lifelines that he reached for whenever he tried hard to parent, so much so that it hurt me to watch him struggle to do it right. I passed over all the normal checkpoints any smart child would have, including making the move from using his shoe shine as finger-paints to tying my own shoes, a barrier he never jumped over. 

My dad was raised mostly by my grandmother, in a large extended family that was spread out between Rhode Island, Maine, New York, and Canada. At times, he had needed someone to "show him the ropes" besides his working mother, a sharp-tongued Jones girl of hardy British Colonial and early Dutch descent. There wasn't much room for bullshit, and so my dad was often troubled as a boy. He often told me as an excuse that he never had a real father, especially when he screwed up really bad.

I vividly remember one afternoon with him in summertime, as I sat on the top stair of our house in New City. I asked my dad (in desperation) to help me with my shoes, because the front door was open to our yard filled with my yelling, playing brothers and shrieking neighborhood kids. I'd already figured out that he didn't know much about helping me, because he became angrily defensive and impatient like my oft-troubled mother did. 

After they gruelingly purchased a door-to door set of Encyclopedia Britannica's on layaway one year (they only sent the next volume with the next payment received), my mom used it as a constant "out" whenever she could, snapping "Go look it up!" in frustration of our interruption to her much-beloved dish-washing chore. My parents couldn't help us with most of our homework in our highly educated Rockland County public school system.

And so it was with my little kid's shoe. My dad, eager to earn money outside the home with his shoeshine kit, couldn't tie his own shoes very well. He tied my sneakers with the childish "bunny ear" method. When I pointed out that I was learning the harder "bow tie" knot, he sheepishly looked down at my feet, as he so often looks at his shoes with his bottom lip pouting in embarrassment, like a scared child who's been caught stealing candy, and then he looked up at me full in the face (which was rare) from the stair below me, and sheepishly admitted that he never learned how to tie his own shoes properly. 

I asked him about that on his last visit here in Pearl River, in a car ride over to Louie's for Sunday brunch: how had he got around that, with his clients not knowing about it? I was also raised to sweat over each and every dollar, and I wondered how a kid could do it without an adult catching on. Did he not untie them? 

I asked him about it from the backseat of his rental car, his wife in the front seat next to him. He nodded "yes" and said "yeah", inclining his head slightly towards me in the back seat as he read a copy of RISDxyz that I'd given to him to peruse during our wait, as we sat in the parking lot and in the pouring rain, waiting for the doors to the old house to open for business. Of course I already knew that, because I know him so very well, and now I know all about kids, too. I'd become a parent way before my time, just like he had.

This one's for you "Cashflow", on this day that begins your birthday weekend. I figured you were worth at least one good story, after all that money thrown my way. Let's keep this "Midas Touch" thing going that we are so famous for. Bon anniversaire.


* https://www.google.com/search?q=shoeshine&biw=1280&bih=872&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CDwQsARqFQoTCK_RhpnOisYCFdEvjAodTZsCmQ

Love is in the Air

Springtime has long been the traditional time for romance, a time when a young man's fancy turns to love. It's no different for me, except in lieu of an actual man, I bought this heavily discounted Valentine's Day toy from a local drug store chain. Sigh! I love his accent ;) Enjoy the warmer weather today, New Yorkers. It is so on for Spring!

What the...what the heck is that?!

Is that what I think it is?

Oh, yeah! It's the Pepe doll I bought on sale at the drug store. Weird...it's staring right at me. Yeesh. That's kind of jarring, first thing in the morning.

http://www.nonstick.com/sounds/Pepe_Le_Pew/ltlp_001.mp3

Countdown to Spring!

That's A LOT of snow, dude!

Well, folks, it's that time of year when we become totally fucking sick of the snow, like, so over it, you want to punch someone in the face just for not shoveling, like any decent human being would. Yeah, it gets that bad here sometimes. 

That'll melt sometime in April, maybe. Yay...

Luckily for us, we live in the most bitchin' place on earth that is New York, New York City, and the greater tri-state area (including Canada and New Orleans as my territories:), a place so in balance with nature that each season is a beautifully perfect and brilliant three months long*, so just when you want to die from sweat during the hottest, most doggiest days of August, the month of September rolls in like the coolest, sweetest breeze that's ever kissed your face.

 

Just ask any remaining member of the 70s group Earth, Wind, and Fire. They wrote the song about it!

Spring Countdown

(Click on me above)

*http://www.nps.gov/gate/planyourvisit/weather.htm