A Lenten Spring
Yours Truly in a Swamp
by
Leonard Earl Johnson
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Reprinted from Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans
***
Carnival lifted its joyous mantle, leaving Lent's ashen smudge in its place. Lent is the strangest holiday in all the Christian calendar. Also the longest.
Lenten fasting repairs Winter's damage and prepares the believer for Spring's rebirth. Alas, we learned in Catholic School that Pope Gregory's Christian calendar is out of whack with the Universe, causing long Lent to poke its cold bony head far into opulent Spring.
Spring arrived March 22; yet weather cold as compassionate conservatism continued to delight Entergy's bagman. Did that early Christian know something about 2001?
Morning papers speak of great things like Florida Power & Colonization not buying New Orleans extortion rights from Entergy. Gee, Entergy really wants us after all? Maybe, but the paper says Florida might simply be afraid of us.
Sometimes we do frighten other states. What if Florida Power & Colonization awoke one morning to learn the Louisiana Supreme Court had decided the point of public utilities is to serve the public (a shockingly evil and unlikely idea).
However, we sliced micro thin constitutional differences between "Gaming" and "Gambling" didn't we? And found un-findable teacher's pay by halving Harrah's nun-gambling taxes. And these awesome things were done with half our brain spinning over the sainted Saints need for a new temple. And we did it all while observing Lenten fasting hunched over bowls of steaming gumbo.
Let's see ballot miss-counting Floridians out do that!
What if our electric power company ends up belonging to California? L.A. Norma says that would be fine with her since she'd then only have one bill to pay. I told her I didn't think it worked that way. She said, "You don't think it works this way either." She's right, I don't.
The other day I took the Airline bus out to the airport with Norma. She was going to Los Angeles to visit her son with a box of her mother's china on her lap.
In the waiting area, we glared at a man in a business suit talking loudly into his cell phone. Norma flipped open her Times-Picayune and commenced reading the shipping log out loud. A woman in a red suit beside the cell-phone man looked up and smiled. She had been silently reading the April issue of Vanity Fair and now started doing so out loud, "It was Johnny Roselli for God's sake, Gully said. He was the head of the Hollywood underworld, Sam Giancana's man. Roselli was hiding in the grassy knoll. Giancana was angry at JFK …"
Cell-phone man sheepishly flipped his phone shut and calm fell over the outbound waiting room.
Great sunny mornings and a warm place in the kitchen to read the papers and sip coffee. Live oaks outside my dormer windows are Baby Dome green. They don't dump their leaves till Spring's new buds arrive. Then they change from old dark green farts to young soft green poots almost overnight. Today soft green rules the Great Swamp City and old alligators lie on the banks in whatever sun they can find.
I rode my bike to the Louisiana Superdome to have gumbo in the Dome Café and see again that massive structure we were all so proud of that now does the Saints such dishonor. It is as if we don't love the team enough to make a city they can be proud of.
Why not let Harrah's and Saints-incorporated set up their own taxing district, like the Downtown Development District? If they used the same boundaries as the DDD, they would be taxing each other and Entergy to boot - a perfect full circle.
In the meantime, a few fitting links: