Louisiana: Departure Day: Don't Do What I Did

Pathetic. Just pathetic.

When I moved out of my Opelousas apartment, I broke all of the rules of efficient, effective, low-stress packing up and leaving.

Well, most of the rules.

Here's what I got right

• As per my lease language, I gave my landlord my 30-day notice of leaving in writing. In this notice, I gave my landlord a time range of two or three hours for when he could inspect my apartment.
• As a CYA in the event an issue cropped up with the return of my security deposit, I took photos of my apartment after I'd emptied and cleaned it, prior to the inspection, including the insides of the oven, refrigerator, tub, etc. (I had also taken photos when I moved in.)
• I sold my bulky stuff a few weeks before move-out day. I priced my stuff in accordance with my priority to sell quickly, out of respect for the time and stress I was willing to invest in the process.
• I delivered various items to second-hand stores in the days before my move. 
• I tried to weigh these variables in deciding what to pack or not: Replacement cost versus amount of space the item takes up in my car.

Here's what I got wrong

Complacency - the enemy of efficiency and effectiveness!

When I sold my beloved - but wildly bulky - chairbed, I had a fairy-tale calculation of how much extra space its absence freed up in my car, with this cascade effect: 

1. I miscalculated how much stuff I could take with me to the next home base;
2. I kept more stuff than I would have otherwise;
3. Didn't give as much thought to careful organization and packing as I might have otherwise;
4. I ended up with more stuff than could fit into available space; and
5. Had to ditch some things at the worst possible time - in the midst of packing my car for departure. 

In my la-la thinking mode in the last couple of weeks, I spent time with last dance and other hurrahs instead of the dull mundanity of packing the little things in advance. Boring tasks such as organizing office supplies and papers and such, corraling them into tidy spaces, ready to be put in their right places into the car. Consequently, I found myself - on the moving day! - of stashing this shit every which place I could because the other thing I did wrong was:

Somehow forget just how long it takes to pack stuff. The process of sorting and packing stacks minutes into quarter-hours into half- hours into hours of tedium. My self-congratulatory glow over selling the big things quickly and early was so bright, it obscured the necessity to knuckle down in the days before the move.

Fortunately, a buddy came over and helped me out a bit, and I sure appreciate that.

Other than that blessing, my move-out day was fraught with frustration, stress, anxiety, and moments of despair. Every tiny bit of it a result of my own poor planning and execution. Damn it.

Once I was on the road, I had to work hard to give myself a break and let it go. Had to remind myself that, hell, I accomplished my mission, not as neatly and expertly as I would have liked, but I accomplished it. Put the damn experience in perspective and enjoy the day on the road.

Just ... don't do what I did.

Mississippi: The Baptists Not There

Mississippi Baptist Beginnings, Highway 61, Mississippi. February 2016.

Right before I left South Louisiana, I read the memoir by Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi. This woman was bold. Bold in life and bold in her writing. 

She's the 23 year-old woman in this iconic photo from the soda fountain counter here:

From right to left at counter: Anne Moody, Joan Trumpauer, and John Salter. 1963 at Woolworth's in Jackson, Mississippi. Credit: Fred Blackwell.

Ms. Moody grew up in Centreville and Woodville, Mississippi. I routed my departure from Louisiana through Mississippi's Highway 61 so I could pass close by these towns of her youth.

What I really would have liked to have done was find her and meet her. But Anne Moody died in February 2015. She was afflicted with dementia in her last years. Her younger sister, Ms. Adline, oversaw her care. When I read this, about her sister caring for her, I thought, holy damn, after what Ms. Moody was wont to write about her younger siblings back in the day, well, I wonder if the sisters had to walk on some prickly paths to get to a good place. In an excerpt from one of Ms. Moody's obituaries:

Adline Moody said Saturday that she admired the courage of her sister, who was two years her senior.

"We came from a very poor family, and when she joined the movement, she did it because it was something that needed to be done. She wasn't out there just to be there," Adline Moody said. "I'm very proud of her for what she did. She made it better for me."

So.

On this day, I was driving on Highway 61, having left my Louisiana nest behind, and I saw signage indicating a historical site on my right as I flashed by. Oh. Did I want to stop? I'd have to turn around and go back, if yes. ... Probably something boring, but you never know, maybe it had something tangential to what I read in Ms. Moody's book. So I turned around and went back.

Right away I was impressed. The very first sign told me that the Baptist church has been in Mississippi since 1791. Wow, that long? 

Being raised a Roman Catholic, I don't know that much about Baptists except they generally feel confident that my kind of people are on the fast track to Hell, not being born again and all. I had thought Baptists came relatively late to the Christian buffet.

The Mississippi Baptist Beginnings historic site is a series of large signs arranged along a semi-circle turnabout, so it's very easy to take in the info while in your car.  When I entered the circle drive, I noticed a car parked up toward one end of the far bend. A woman inside, maybe having a picnic meal or just contemplating life. It's a pretty place.

I moseyed by each sign with my car, taking in about as much history as my brain allows in one sitting. When I got to the end, I thought, wait, something's missing. Did I overlook it? Let me go through it again. So I swung around for another turn through the exhibits.

I glanced over to the woman in the car. Opened my passenger seat window.

"Excuse me. Ma'am?" I asked.

"Yes?" she said, an African-American woman in her 30s or so.

"Is it my imagination or is there an important part of the Baptist history missing here?"

The woman looked at me without expression and without hesitation, and in a matter-of-fact voice, replied: "Yes, ma'am, there is."

In a location so close to where a woman of courage grew up, in the year 2016, was a monument to a history in which it would appear that only white people were Baptists, and only they who effected change in the society.

This is unfortunate. Not just because it fails to acknowledge the African-American contributions to Baptist history in Mississippi, but because it reinforces the stereotype of Mississippi as a backward stanchion of white rule. The historic memorial's blindness to the fuller history would seem to reflect the despair of Ms. Moody's closing passage in her 1960s Civil Rights memoir:

"I sat there listening to 'We Shall Overcome,' looking out of the window at the passing Mississippi landscape. Images of all that had happened kept crossing my mind: the Taplin burning, the Birmingham church bombing, Medgar Evers' murder, the blood gushing out of McKinley's head, and all the other murders. ...I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes.

"'Moody...'" it was little Gene again interrupting his singing.

"'Moody, we're gonna git things straight in Washington, huh?'" 

I didn't answer him. I knew I didn't have to. He looked as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. 

"'I wonder. I wonder.'" ...

South Louisiana: A Woman's Experience

Woman with no name of her own. Abbeville, Louisiana.

The sparkle

In South Louisiana, there's always this .... I don't know .... electrostatic charge in the air, gravitational waves, sub-atomic magnetic field, whatever .... that plays between men and women. The daily language itself is intimate, even among strangers, at check-out counters, at the auto repair shop, on the street, wherever, what with both genders infusing statements with warm "sha's" and "baby's" and for women, the amiable, comfortable "girl," said in the same way you'd say it to your sister.

There's an acknowledgement of each other as sensual human beings that is frank and natural.

I like it. As a young dancer said to me at the Feed 'n Seed one night, "Let's put a little sparkle in this waltz."

There's a sparkle in South Louisiana.

But there's a yang to every yin, and in South Louisiana, there is an historical timeline of cultural pathology against women, still burbling its oily toxin today, like an uncapped oil leak in the beautiful land of the bayous.

I've got my theories on why this is, but I'll save that for another post.

In the meantime, below are a couple of my less-sparkly experiences as a woman in South Louisiana.


The sludge

I was physically accosted twice while in South Louisiana, in both cases:

• By men with whom I'd talked and danced a number of times;
• With whom I'd been clear about my lack of romantic interest; and
• In public.

With the first man, I had seen some red flags that spoke to a damaged character, but I thought the boundaries I'd set were well-defined, and I believed I could manage the situation. 

With the second man - I never saw it coming.

In the first incident, the man apparently held the belief that some women want a man to be the aggressor, like in a bodice-ripper novel. I use the word "aggressor" deliberately because this is the exact word he used to me, stating that "obviously" he was going to have to be the aggressor. In other words, this is what he told himself that I wanted him to do. The word "aggressor" is quite different from the word "initiator." One word is about force. The other is neutral - merely the idea of who will start an action. He's a smart guy. He knew exactly what he meant when he chose "aggressor."

In the second incident, I have no idea what the man was thinking. I'd been bamboozled by his self-narrative, that he was a non-drinking, non-drugging man who lived by a strong code of personal and business ethics, and who was devoted to a well-regarded profession that allowed him to serve others.

Later, I learned second-hand that the same man had allegedly sexually assaulted another woman in a far more serious way than he had me. When I say "second-hand," I mean that the other woman reported the assault to the person who told me about it.

I also learned after the fact that the first man was notorious in some circles for troubling behavior with women, details of which are still unclear to me.

The assaults I experienced were sexual assaults, make no mistake. But they joined the legions of unreported incidents because they didn't rise up to the level of what one would report to the police with any realistic expectation of ... what? And there's not a clear path on what to say - or to whom - to alert other women that these two men are unsafe. It's quite possible these two men are serial offenders against ... how many women? A handful? Dozens? Scores? A hundred?


Louisiana's track record on violence against women

In 2010, Louisiana ranked 4th highest for femicide (murders of girls or women). Source: Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence. 

Now, I've got to tell you, I think there is an ick factor that the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence's youtube channel has exactly three videos, all of which feature men speaking out about domestic violence against women. Yes, I get that it's a man-to-man kinda thing to try and achieve a cultural change where men are on board about this. But my first reaction was that it smacks of a husband or brother or son doing the talking for "his" woman. Like a woman's voice doesn't have enough heft to deliver the message. Not to mention the political juice that the state office-holders got from being in the videos. Show me the funding money for LCADV, gentlemen.

In 2012, Louisiana ranked 14th highest for (reported) rape. Source: CNN.

Flashback: Harar, Ethiopia, March 2011

On March 16, 2011, I wrote Hyenas, Fresh Goat, and a Crispy Roach in Harar, Ethiopia, Day 6.

Damn, I loved that crazy place!

A repost below:

Ethiopia: Hyenas, Fresh Goat, and a Crispy Roach in Harar, Day 6, Wednesday

Credit: Marcus Baynes-Rock at Hyenas in Harar

Woke up still feeling a little queasy, but far better than yesterday. I popped another Cipro then went upstairs to see Irish Edith off for her return to Addis. The thought of coffee didn't send the right signals to my stomach, so I skipped that and had cold water with bread and "marmalade," the ubiquitous orange-transparent gelatin that passes nationwide in Ethiopia for something nothing like marmalade.

I had work to do online, so after a pleasant breakfast chat with Edith, I walked up to the internet cafe. By the time I finished there, it was time for lunch. This was a great day to check out that hotel/restaurant, more or less across the street from the Ras Hotel, that had caught my attention the first day I arrived in Harar.

It sat high behind a wall amidst flowering trees and shrubs. The adobe building looked immense, and was tropically pretty in its "fascist yellow" facade.

How odd, a military guardhouse at the gate. Came to find out it was a hotel owned by the Department of Defense. After checking out the bathroom, I selected a seat at one of the outside tables. No menu. I just ordered a coffee, which was very good. And for heaven's sake - only 2 birr (about 12 cents US)!

Decided to lunch instead at the reliable Fresh Touch down the street. Ordered the vegetarian pizza. When it arrived, I dressed it with their wonderfully spicy chili sauce. Oh. Wait. I did order the vegetarian pizza, right? So what's with the crispy-curled roach sitting so perkily atop a pepper? Waiter!

Just as I was waving down the waiter, in walked New York Ed and a pretty girl with an easy smile. She turned out to be Imti, from Germany via Sudan by birth.

I substituted an indifferent pasta-with-vegetables dish for the pizza. (Gonder is definitely the champion of an excellent "macaroni" with vegetables.)

After Ed, Imti, and I finished our lunches and enjoyed two delicious cups of coffee each, Ed pushed off to the internet cafe, and Imti and I continued our conversation. Interesting! She's an engineering student just finishing up an internship in Ethiopia, related to these cobblestone projects I've seen in Harar, Nazret, and Awassa. It's a German-Ethiopia partnership designed to provide jobs, training, and beautification of Ethiopian streets. Imti and her friend are in Harar doing some in-country tourist travel before she returns to Germany.

Tonight was hyena night for me, and unlike Atlanta Tom, who casually walked outside the wall over to check out the hyena man on his own, I knew I'd want a guide in the scary, hyena-riddled night. [A video about dogs and hyenas in Harar below]

I knew also that Aziz, who was to have escorted me last night (until I got sick), would probably be unavailable tonight, as his Spanish girlfriend was in town. My plan was to walk over to the cafe in the main Jugal square and locate a Plan B guide on the fly. At the same time, I had it in my mind to hire Abdellah, the guy I'd met the other day at said cafe, who is deaf. This turned out to be exactly what I did. Abdellah appeared happy as hell to be hired and we negotiated the price with the help of another local man.

Abdellah is one of those charismatic individuals who radiate good vibes and who attract goodwill in return. It was clear this local gentleman was fond of Abdellah; he made sure I really meant to hire Abdellah as my guide in the event Aziz didn't pan out.

Abdellah and I agreed to meet at the cafe at 6:30, and he dashed off while I hung out over a coffee and people-watched. A guide popped up, and joined me at my table. Did I need a guide? I explained that I was waiting for Aziz, but if he didn't show up, Abdellah was my back up guide. The guide said he doubted Aziz would be by, as his Spanish girlfriend was in town. (Harar is a typical small town - everybody knows everyone's business - heck, even the tourists know!)

Though late, Abdellah arrived, and off we went. I realized right quick that it wasn't going to work for Abdellah to get ahead of me, as he couldn't hear me if I called out to him. I tucked my arm into his so we stayed connected. It was nice. Just about everyone knew Abdellah - and liked him - as evidenced by the constant friendly, smiley greetings between him and other passersby. We emerged through a gate I hadn't visited before. It was already dark and the hyena man was already engaged with the hyenas.

Unbelievably, I fed the hyenas three times: I held out an 18" skinny stick with a strip of meat dangling on its end and handed it right to the hyenas' mouths. Yikes! At one point, I felt a nudge at the back of my knee. I whirled around, saw that it was Abdellah, and I slapped him hard in the chest in mock outrage. Everyone laughed.

Some idiot dad (an Ethiopian tourist) had this little toddler daughter feeding the hyenas. Put me in mind of idiot American counterparts who have their young'ns feed bears by dumpsters.

Credit: Hyenas in Harar

About the hyenas, it surprised me how beautiful they are! Their faces, heads, and ears! Lovely!

Credit: Hyenas in Harar

The beautiful illusion splintered as soon as I saw them move. Their walk evoked all of these negative anthropomorphic prejudices: "tail between its legs," "slinking around," "skulking," "craven."



I never saw the beauty for the presumed ugliness of the hyenas' posture.


Abdellah escorted me to my hotel, as agreed upon. We smilingly parted, and I saw him affectionately grab the head of a nearby youngster, and the two walked away with their arms around each other's shoulders.

I walked upstairs to the restaurant, where the waiter encouraged me to order the goat, as it was very fresh. I did, and it was.

While I thoughtfully chewed the tender meat, I wondered if it came from the pretty brown and white goat I saw from my balcony window earlier today, bleating sweetly at a woman retreating from the spot where he was newly tethered.

I thanked him for his sacrifice.


Marcus Baynes-Rock, a PhD candidate, studied hyenas for some time in Harar. You can check out his two interesting blogs on his research here (for 2009 through March 2010), then here for period til April 2011. 

Mississippi: Coon 4 Sale

Coon for sale, Port Gibson, Mississippi. February 2016.

So I was driving up to Missouri on the last day of February, having left South Louisiana behind.

Just north of Port Gibson, Mississippi, I saw the sign on my left: COON 4 SALE.

Wasn't the first time I saw such a handwritten sign along the road that day, but this time I pulled in to see what was what.

A gentleman had a lot of raccoon meat ready to go in his cooler.

Coon for sale, Port Gibson, Mississippi. February 2016.

You get your dressed raccoon with organs intact at 5 bucks apiece.

Dressed with organs already removed at 10 bucks apiece.

Interestingly, the man gets most of his coons from Missouri trappers.

Henderson, Louisiana: McGee's Landing, Terroir, and Joy

Atchafalaya Swamp from McGee's Landing, Henderson, Louisiana. February 2016.

I first heard the word "terroir" in its usual context, the description of a wine. Terroir is the character -  the overall sensory experience of a wine - contributed to by "the specificity of [birth]place, which has come to include not only the soil in a region, but also the climate, the weather, the aspect of the vineyards and anything else that can possibly differentiate one piece of land from another."

Atchafalaya Swamp from McGee's Landing, Henderson, Louisiana. February 2016.

Some South Louisianans like to say their DNA is in the dirt here. The music here - the creole, cajun, zydeco, and heck, yes, even the swamp pop - has its DNA in the dirt as well, and in the swamps and the bayous.

To be in a local place, listening to and dancing to local music, looking out the door onto the Atchafalaya Basin, in this day's example, or out onto sugar cane field in another day's example, or onto a bayou-fed pond on another day, it is to experience the terroir of this music.

It is a joyous thing.

Here is the talented Steve Adams Trio at McGee's Landing:

Lafayette: African American History Parade

Princes and princesses at the 2016 African American History Parade in Lafayette, Louisiana.

The African American History Parade in Lafayette was one of my last hurrahs in South Louisiana.

Gosh darn, I do love a parade. Especially when it has marching bands. Well, truth be told, the marching bands are the best part of a parade. Marching bands trump thrown candy and beads any day of the week. Especially the drums. A parade made up solely of marching bands with strong drum corps, that would be a destination parade. OK, I guess you'd have to insert some floats or whatever between the bands just to create a space for the different songs performed by the bands.

Here's the Ocean of Soul Marching Band from Texas Southern University:

And here's the St Martinville High School band:

Before the parade, a couple of band members from a school got into a bit of trouble, resulting in the need to drop for some push ups. I believe the two boys were gawking at some pretty girls instead of paying attention to the band director.

2016 African American History Parade in Lafayette, Louisiana.

There were many charmers on floats, such as this shy, smiley princess:

2016 African American History Parade in Lafayette, Louisiana.

There were paeans to local history makers:

2016 African American History Parade in Lafayette, Louisiana.

And sworded knights on horseback:

2016 African American History Parade in Lafayette, Louisiana.

A slide show below:

#30

Opelousas: The Long Reach of Racism: Pensions

A pretty house on South Street, Opelousas, Louisiana.

I went looking for a historic spot in Opelousas awhile back, and I couldn't find it, even though I had an exact street address from the biography of Cat Doucet (doo'-say), a long-time sheriff of St. Landry Parish (often referenced by James Lee Burke in his Dave Robicheaux series). 

I pulled into the parking lot of a business that, in theory, would be next door to said historic spot. I went inside, greeted the man and woman I saw within, and said, "Uh, I've got a crazy question to ask you." And I told them about the Doucet biography, the name of the illustrious owner of the business site I sought, and the exact address as per the book. Whereupon the woman explained that it was likely that street numbering had changed between the time of the book's publication and now, and she didn't know the location of the historic site.

But we started talking, and the business woman - a Creole woman in her 70s, perhaps - told me some of her story. To avoid having to refer to the business woman only as "she" and "her," I'll call her Ms. Theresa.

When Ms. Theresa was a child in Opelousas, people of color could only enter a store by way of a back or side door, not the front door. Ms. Theresa and some of her friends refused to subject themselves to this. They had a fair-complected friend of Creole heritage; Ms. Theresa's friend could enter such stores through the front door, so Ms. Theresa and her other friends gave her money to go in and buy their desired items.

Ms. Theresa attended college and obtained a teaching degree. When it came time to seek a teaching position in St. Landry Parish, she discovered she was expected to give money to certain official(s) in order to get a teaching job. This she refused to do, so she moved to another part of Louisiana to teach for a number of years. For a time in Louisiana, she taught at an integrated school, where she encountered the daily situation in which her white students were encouraged by their parents not to pay the respect to her they paid to her white colleagues at the school, such as standing up for her when she entered the classroom, as did students in that era.

Eventually, Ms. Theresa made her way to Georgia to teach, where her salary was significantly higher than in Louisiana. This is where she spent most of her teaching career.

After retirement, Ms. Theresa decided to return to Opelousas, where she'd grown up. An observation she made: Her retirement pension exceeded, by far, that of her contemporaries who'd remained in Louisiana. My impression from Ms. Theresa was that this difference had a direct impact on their respective economic quality of lives today.

Which brings me to the title of my post: The Long Reach of Racism.

Ms. Theresa's observation made me wonder: Did retirement institutions in the US, particularly in the South, adjust their pension calculations to address earlier years of discriminatory wages? To date, I haven't been able to find any answers to this.

If retirement institutions have not made such an adjustment, then there are hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions? - of black retirees who receive a lower pension than their white counterparts, based on past systemic discrimination in:

• Wages;
• Promotional opportunities (and therefore, higher income); and 
• Professional development, e.g. tuition reimbursement (and therefore, higher income).

Most pension plans include these variables in their pension calculations:

• Years of service;
• Average payment for a certain number of years; and 
• Some sort of percentage multiplier. 

The Louisiana teacher retirement pension plan appears to be an example of this.


Let's say I'm a 70 year-old woman of color who taught in the Louisiana public schools, now retired, but who taught between the ages of 25 and 60. I:

• Was born in 1946
• Began teaching in 1971
• Retired in 2006

And let's say I began my teaching career at the same time as a white counterpart, "Ms. Marie." When we began teaching in 1971, she received $10,250 per year, and I received $10,000. ... a $250 annual wage disparity.

Every 10 years, we received a 10% increase in salary. Therefore, in: 

• 1981: Ms. Marie earned $11,275; I earned $11,000 --> $275 disparity
• 1991: Ms. Marie earned $12,403; I earned $12,100 --> $303 disparity
• 2001: Ms. Marie earned $13643; I earned $13,310 --> $333 disparity

If I use the Louisiana retirement plan calculation, my understanding is that I'd: Multiply years of service x average of final three years of compensation x 2% or 2.5%.

Assuming 2%, I calculate our pensions as follows:

• Ms. Marie: 35 years x $13,643 ($477,505 lifetime earnings) x 2% = $9550 pension per year
• Me: 35 years x $13,310 ($465,850 lifetime earnings) x 2% = $9317 pension per year

My retirement pension is $233 less per year than Ms. Marie's, or $19 per month.


References

Teacher Salaries in Black and White: Pay Discrimination in the Southern Classroom (1890-1954)

From Encyclopedia of Louisiana, Jim Crow's Demise, article by Nikki Brown:
"In 1965, only five Louisiana parishes submitted plans for integration. By 1967, thirty parishes still had made no arrangements to desegregate. In 1970, forty-five parishes were ordered to come up with a legitimate plan or risk the loss of federal funding; full integration of Louisiana’s public schools did not come until the mid-1970s. Similarly, Louisiana was ordered—on at least ten occasions between 1965 and 1998—to integrated segregated universities and professional schools or compensate the state’s historically black colleges and universities for generations of neglect."


Related post

Opelousas: Death in Black and White

Stuff: 10 Tips for Downsizing Your Money Life

Art and money at an ATM in Yerevan, Armenia.

Recently, Lifehacker published an article, Go On a Regular Purge to Downsize Your Life and Save Money.

I like the take on this article, which is more about purging expenses than stuff. The author references an article in a website new to me, MoneyNing, titled How to Downsize Your Lifestyle.

Both articles are frustratingly fluffy, but there's enough yeast in them to get one thinking.

Here are my own tips

1. Get into the right frame of mind.

Set concrete financial goals:

• "I want to have x dollars in the bank by x month and year."
• "I want to be debt-free by x month and year." 

Your desired future guides your financial goals. You don't need to have it all figured out today, but do you have a rough idea of what you want your life to be like in the next five, 10, 20, 40, 60 years?

Accept that different phases of your life cost more than others. Depending on your age, family status, and so on, there is an ebb and flow of income outflows, such as student loans, setting up a home, daycare for young children, extra-curricular activities for school-aged children, etc. Think over the long haul (the roughed-in vision of your future), but always with an eye on living within your means today so you can achieve the goals for the future.

2. Challenge what you think you know.

Question common "truths."

For example, do you HAVE to take on student loans to get an undergraduate degree? Hell, no. But to avoid this, you will have to buck the crowd mentality. For example, maybe you'll take six years to graduate instead of four, so you can work your way through school. Maybe you'll get a relatively inexpensive associate's degree at your local community college and then go to a four-year university as a junior so you can get your bachelor's there. None of your friends are doing this? Who gives a fuck? You'll graduate without a student loan that will chain you down for 10+ years. ...

The same strategy works for other rites of passage. Does it make economic sense for everyone to buy a house? No, it doesn't. The common wisdom about a house being a better financial investment than renting isn't always correct.

3. Do follow some rules of thumb

Set aside a fixed percentage of all income for short-term and long-term savings. ANYTHING is better than nothing. The point is to make it a life-long habit to pay into your future with every paycheck or windfall.

Set these two financial goals regardless of your vision of a desired future:

• A fund for sudden expenses, such as a car repair, appliance/equipment replacement, doctor's bill. 
• Six to nine months of replacement income in case you lose your income stream. 

4. The road to hell: "just 10 bucks a month"

If I can get something I want for just 10 bucks a month, that sounds good to me. Unfortunately, there are lots of things that are only 10 bucks a month, and if I add them up, I'm suddenly at 100 bucks a month and, damn, how did that happen?

Go through your list of small monthly expenses. Purge the ones you use only occasionally. Peer closely at the ones you use frequently - can you get the same or similar service or product another way, for free or at a lower cost?

5. The other road to hell: Bundling and Friends

Bundling our services is seductive, as is joining a service that our friends and family members belong to, because we can (we're told) save money.

But these can suck your money in cunning ways:

• You include an unnecessary service into the mix because it's "only" 10 bucks a month or because you "need" to add this service to get the bundling benefit of a reduced cost on a service you do want or need.
• You voluntarily chain yourself to the bundle because you agree to a contract that will cost you a penalty if you leave before the end of the contract period. 
• You voluntarily chain yourself to the bundle because it's such a hassle to un-bundle if you want to try one service that another provider offers, while keeping the other services in your bundle. 

It's almost always best for me in the long run to keep a diversified portfolio when it comes to phone, internet, and cable services. Therefore, I do not bundle. (Nor do I ever use an email account that is tied to an internet service provider because that is just another chain that keeps me tied to a particular vendor.)

If you bundle, look at your contract's expiration date. Research no-contract phone services. Check the numbers on your family plan to see if you can do better by each person using a stand-alone, pay-as-you-go plan. Do you still need cable or satellite TV? Do you still need a land line? Come up with a bundling exit strategy.

6. Beware of automatic withdrawals

On one hand, using automatic withdrawals for paying our bills is liberating. No more paper! No more forgetting to pay the bill! No more late due notices! Better credit rating!

On the other hand, we continue to pay for goods and services we no longer want or need because:

• We signed up for automatic renewal of a subscription and - DAMN! - we missed the deadline to cancel and now we're stuck with another year of something we don't want, don't need, or can't afford. I have done this myself.
• It's a pain in the ass to contact the company to stop the automatic withdrawal, so we just tell ourselves we'll get around to it next month. (Oh, and some companies are notoriously slow at stopping the automatic withdrawals.) Ch-ching. 

Pore over your credit card bills and checking account balances for forgotten or neglected automatic withdrawals. Calendar renewal dates so you can cancel timely.

Dave Ramsey is a popular financial adviser who I admire for what he says about managing our money. (Note: This does not mean I endorse his political, faith, or other personal views.)

Dave Ramsey's tag line is brilliant:

“Live like no one else now so later you can live like no one else.”

Grand Coteau, Louisiana: Among the Dead

Jesus of the Pasture. St. Charles Cemetery, Grand Coteau, Louisiana. February 2016.

A Grand Coteau friend took me on a walk in her village. Her people are from here, and she pointed out spots where ancestors lived and worked.

As a person with with no strong geographical roots, it is a remarkable thing to live in a place such as South Louisiana, where so many people live in the same area where their families have lived for centuries. 

We paid our respects to villagers past at the St. Charles Cemetery.

A slide show:

Meanwhile, Back on the Ranch ....

Temporarily, there's a lot of nothing visible going on here in the blog as I work on some projects, get caught up with posts that are in various forms of undress, and process the experiences that have been coming my way.

In the meantime, I've been uploading videos or slide shows over on my youtube channel. I invite you to take a look.

Rootless Relocation: Sold My Stuff - Again

My red chair bed, now with a new family.

With my departure from Lousiana imminent, it became time again to shuck off stuff that I won't take with me when I leave. When I left New Mexico, I left with a very full car. I wanted to do things differently this time, taking only the barest quantity of durable goods. 

Yesterday I sold all of the furniture I didn't want to take with me, in one fell swoop.

I put the lot onto craigslist for one price. Within two hours of my posting, my buyers contacted me, came to look at it, and took it away.

My red chair bed, now with a new family.

My beautiful red chair bed; you were in the lot. I will miss you. Such a rich, dark red. Your nubby fabric. The spare elegance of your lines.

My red chair bed, now with a new family.

I will miss the adventures of pushing you in and then pulling you of my car in the last three years. Of rolling you up and down staircases. Of dragging you over sidewalks on a tarp. Well, no, I won't miss any of those adventures. But I will miss your classy good looks.

My red chair bed, now with a new family.

Another sentimental sale in the lot was my poster from the Yukon, which I bought when my daughter and I took that road trip to Alaska so many years ago.

A poster from road trip to Alaska, now in a new home.

But I can come visit these pretties online any time I want.
  

Goodbye Louisiana: Letting Go of the Beads

Mardi Gras beads. Louisiana.

At my year-end intermission from Louisiana in 2014/2015, I turned in most of my beads to the local library for recycling. I knew it wouldn't be long before I'd recoup the same quantity or more when I returned in 2015.

And so it went.

Now I'm turning in my beads again to the local library, but this time it's for good.

Good-bye, my little pretties.

Mardi Gras beads. Louisiana.

Learning to Dance, Part 6: It Takes a Village

Cowboy Symposium, Ruidoso, New Mexico.

Lessons are good and even practicing steps in front of a mirror are good. But it takes a village to teach a dancer.

A sampling of native, transplant, and visiting villagers in South Louisiana who have helped me learn how to dance:

Agnes C.
Bailey
Barbara
Bev
Brian M.
Charles R.
Dale N.
Dennis W.
Dick
Dolan
Doug from the Blue Moon
Doug Mc
Francois
Frank S.
Geoff R. 
Hannah B.
Harold ("Fred")
Jay M. ("and then there was a beautiful breeze")
Jeff B.
Jim
Joe
John D.
John R.
Kathleen Mc
Kay W.
Jacques ("shall we do the same ol' shit again?")
Leon
Moriba
Mike H.
Paul S. ("1, 2, 3, 4. ...1, 2, 3, 4")
Ray H.
Sonny
Ted C.
The Other Ted, the one who dances with that other woman from Missouri
Theresa I.
T.J. L.
Tony L.
Wayne
Wilfred K. 



Thank you.


Related posts:

Learning to Dance, Part 1: Solving for X
Learning to Dance, Part 2: The Tao of Following
Learning to Dance, Part 3: The Pause
Learning to Dance, Part 4: Signals
Learning to Dance, Part 5: Anticipation

Elton, Louisiana: Ceaser's Mardi Gras Chicken Run

Ceaser's Mardi Gras Chicken Run 2016. Elton, Louisiana.

Saturday was the annual Ceaser's Mardi Gras Chicken Run in Elton, Louisiana. This particular run is a junior offshoot of a Ceaser's run that an elder generation puts on. That one takes place in or near a town called Soileau, if my trailer companions were correct.

Ceaser's Mardi Gras Chicken Run 2016. Elton, Louisiana.

Friends and I arrived at the Elton-based run about 10 or so Saturday morning. Inside the stable, there was a wood fire blazing within a drum. Two men, an uncle and his nephew, tended big pots of neonatal gumbo. It would be ready for eating by the time the trail riders returned to base in mid-afternoon. 

Ceaser's Mardi Gras Chicken Run 2016. Elton, Louisiana.

Flatbed trailers with folding chairs were parked in the pasture and alongside the road. Horseback riders began to arrive, either riding over from nearby homes, or via horse trailers and pickups. A family event, trailer and horse riders included children, adolescents, and adults.

Ceaser's Mardi Gras Chicken Run 2016. Elton, Louisiana.

Albeit tiny, Elton attracts me because it is a cultural intersection of Coushatta Indians, Creoles, and Cajuns. Once our ride got underway, with trailers leading and horses following, we wound our way through the village.

In front of a Baptist Church, the retinue stopped for drink replenishment, to use the port-a-john, sing, and dance. Was there irony in our stopping in front of the Baptist Church, a bastion of teetotalism? Or does a Baptist Church in South Louisiana take on some of the laissez-fairedness of the Catholic Church in some matters?

I held the reins of a man's horse while he used the port-a-john. The port-a-john rattled and shook from the jostling of its attached trailer bed, enhanced by the nearby rocking sound of speakers that accompanied our street merriment.

Presently, we pulled ourselves together and reloaded, after which we proceeded to an open field. There, the hosts facilitated some chicken runs ... um ... let's call them chicken tosses, into the air, with children ready to run them to ground.

Ceaser's Mardi Gras Chicken Run 2016. Elton, Louisiana.

(Just so's you know, there were four chickens to start with. One escaped into a residential area after an exciting chase by the kids. The other three ended back in their shared cage, having survived several chases. The chicken in the gumbo we enjoyed when we got back to the home base was not so fortunate, but we had not been introduced to her previously.)

Ceaser's Mardi Gras Chicken Run poster 2016.

In the video below, one of the men led a traditional Mardi Gras song in French:

And then more dancing, of course!

Eventually, we returned to our trailers and horses, and made our way back to base. The gumbo was ready - so welcome on this chilly afternoon.

A slide show of the day below:

A fine day.

Passport Ritual and the Beginning of Good-Bye

Moving house, Louisiana.

 
Today I sent in my passport renewal application.

Today is the first day of my last month in South Louisiana.

It is a good day to remember what Temperance "Bones" Brennan once said about what her future held:

"I await my own surprise."

Flashback to December 2010: Guatemala May Be in My Future

On December 22, 2010, I wrote this post: Guatemala May Be in My Future:

Guatemala May Be in My Future

This apartment rents for $700 per month at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. Perfect for a vacation, especially with a roomie or two

I wonder if there's a language school in the area. Will have to check.  

As nice as the above is, apparently one can find hotel rooms (private bath + wireless) for less than $200 per month.

On today, December 22, 2015 --> Stay tuned.

South Louisiana: Buggy Mayhem

Within days of making South Louisiana my temporary home - back in November 2013 - I noticed two things:

1. Parking lots strewn with shopping carts (aka "buggies"), abandoned willy-nilly by departed customers, taking up valuable parking lot spaces, even handicap spaces; and 
2. That maddening phenomenon in which an individual squats like a fat spider in a parking lane, waiting for her target parking spot to free up, when the customer hasn't even quite arrived at his vehicle yet, much less unloaded his purchases or got into his car, thereby said spider jamming up traffic for everyone else. 

Dear South Louisianans, I love you, and I'd like you to know that the above behaviors are NOT universal. In most communities, inhabitants actually park their carts in the corrals designed precisely for such a purpose. As for the squatting, I see this happen in other regions, but usually it's restricted to prime holiday-shopping times.

I mentioned the buggy abandonment to a native South Louisianan recently. She looked startled for a moment, then said, "Oh, I do that all the time! I never even thought about it. I don't know why I do it."

Sometimes, when looking out upon the field of scattered buggies, I consider theories of how this custom might have originated: 

1. Someone Else Theory: "It's someone else's job to put the buggies away, not mine." (Or you could substitute "someone else" with Mom.) 
2. Job Protection Theory: "If we put away our own carts, someone might lose their job." 
3. I'll Be Damned Theory: "I work hard all week and I'll be damned if I'm going to put away the buggy. Let the store do it, by God, they take enough money from me as it is."  
4. Everyone Else Does It Theory: "Everybody else does it. If I put away my buggy, I'll look stupid / weak." 

Is the buggy-abandonment tradition tied to the sad litter problem in South Louisiana?  I don't know, but it seems possible. On the other hand, New Mexico also has a litter problem, but based on my anecdotal observations, New Mexicans put their carts away. (According to this article, Louisiana is one of the 11 most littered states in the country.)

I met a woman once who makes a practice of herding abandoned carts into the proper corrals. She does it as a way to give anonymous service to others, which helps her in her personal growth. Frankly, this would never have occurred to me as something to do, but ever since she told me of her practice, I follow it on occasion, too.

Oh, and here is The Parking Lot Jesus:

When I encounter a habit that appears irrational on the surface, I remember a story.

Some years back, in a village in South Africa, the elders dug a well in the middle of town. There was much gladness for the well because girls and women no longer had to walk a long way to the nearest stream to gather water. The close-by well saved time and energy that could be devoted to other pursuits.

But shortly after the well was dug, vandals broke the mechanism designed to draw the water up. The village made repairs, but again, vandals broke the mechanism. Why someone would do harm to such a wonderful amenity was inexplicable! This happened one or two more times before the vandals were caught.

The culprits were adolescent boys. Why did they do it? Hahahaha - they did it because the well had closed off their opportunity to flirt with the girls when they walked down to the stream to get water. What had appeared irrational on the surface now made sense.

So I'm guessing there is - or was, at one time - some rationale for buggy abandonment in South Louisiana.

Opelousas: Death in Black and White

 

Myrtle Grove Cemetery, Opelousas, Louisiana.

There's a good chance that if you're brown and you live in Opelousas, you'll die 15 years sooner than your white neighbors.

How do I know this?

Soon after I moved to Opelousas, a couple of events got me looking at local obituaries.
I looked at the obituaries of two local funeral homes: Sibille and Williams. The first thing I noticed is that Sibille is the funeral home for white folks and Williams is the funeral home for those of color.

Over time, as I periodically visited the obituary listings, it seemed that the ages of death over on the Williams obituary page were notably younger than those at over at the Sibille page. This was odd.

To test this perception, I looked at all of the obituaries at Sibille and Williams for the people who died in October and November 2015: 

• White: average age of death = 79.36 years
• Brown: average age of death = 63.67 years
• 79.36 minus 63.67 = 15.69 average difference in age

OK, what about outliers? Brown people who died extraordinarily young and white people who lived well into their 90s? They skewed the average for these two months, yes?

I crunched the numbers again, this time tossing out the oldest white decedent and the youngest brown decedent. Results:

• White: average age of death = 78.24 years
• Brown: average of death = 65.0 years
• 78.24 minus 65.0 = 13.24

In this adjustment, Opelousas residents of color died THIRTEEN years younger than their white neighbors, still shocking.  

Now I needed a control group, so I looked at deaths in central Missouri, whence I came, using two funeral homes there: Millard Family Funeral Chapels and May Funeral Home. Unlike Sibille and Williams in Opelousas, there is some integration of services at Millard and May, but there is still a strong bias in the clientele served. Generally, Millard's clients are white. Generally, May's clients are brown.

Results for October and November 2015 in mid-Missouri: 

• White: average age of death (served by Millard) = 72.85 years, after excluding the oldest and youngest decedents
• African-American: average age of death (served by both Millard and May) = 60.17 years after excluding the oldest and youngest decedents 
• 72.85 minus 60.17 = 12.68 years average difference in age upon death

So from a slice of mid-Missouri, African-American decedents died an average of TWELVE AND HALF YEARS younger than their white neighbors.

Note: In the Missouri sample, there was what seemed to be an aberrational number of infants who died (at least I hope it was aberrational), both white and black. So for the Missouri comparison, I excluded the oldest individual and the youngest individual in both white and African-American groups. 

Side note: Jesus. Why are mid-Missourians, generally, dying so young? And it's astounding to compare the average age of African-American deaths in mid-Missouri to average age of white deaths in the Opelousas area - almost TWENTY years difference!


Centuries of institutional racism have a long, long reach.


But maybe you think that I happened to choose two months in a particular year that were non-representational of the facts. Wonderful! By all means, please dig deeper. Please do.  

Learning to Dance, Part 5: Anticipation

Lincoln University dance recital, April 2010. Jefferson City, Missouri.

When it comes to ketchup and romantic trysts, anticipation is a good thing. It's not so good in the context of dance.

When I "anticipate" in dance, it means that I take a dance step that I think will correspond to what my dance lead will do in the next moment.

Anticipation is a well-meaning attempt of a new dancer to:

1. Avoid making a mistake; and
2. Paradoxically, follow well. 

Notwithstanding the good intentions, anticipation is a bad habit. Anticipation is an attempt to control the unknown. It's about living in the future and not in the moment. It's about making assumptions about your partner, which may not be true. It's about trying to get into the head of another person and, in the process, losing touch with one's own thoughts and feelings, the flow of the music, and the physicality that's happening in the now.

When I refrain from anticipation, I sharpen my dance skills because I am forced to pay closer attention to signals from my partner. Because I let go of my illusion of control, I am freer to get inside the music and to feel the physical interplay between me, my partner, and the music. I accept that I will make mistakes.



Related posts: 

Learning to Dance, Part 1: Solving for X
Learning to Dance, Part 2: The Tao of Following
Learning to Dance, Part 3: The Pause
Learning to Dance, Part 4: Signals