Two Exciting Announcements!

#1. I have a fabulous new baby niece. I'm going to love her forever and ever. And, she is already stylish AND feminist. I can tell by the complex nuance of her facial expressions. Check her out here.

#2. The Lovely and Talented Coya Paz (that's me) will be performing at the Garfield Park Conservatory next Thursday, from 6-8. The event is part of their Niki Nights series, and features Proyecto Latina regulars Silvia Rivera, Diana Pando, Irasema Salinas, Yolanda Cardenas, and Coya Paz, plus music from the Luna Blues Machine. I think it will be a beautiful event and... get ready... it is FREE! (Although I'm sure they would be very happy if you made a suggested donation of $5). For more information, visit www.chicagoparkdistrict.com

I just got back from New Orleans and am not quite sure what to make of my trip. Conferences are exhausting and this one felt particularly so, but New Orleans itself is extraordinary. I don't know how to talk about it without sounding totally hokey, but it felt full of ghosts and ghostings. Not in a scary way, just in a lived way. I loved so much of it - the streets, the architecture, the temperature, the food. I ate a french fry po'boy and a fried pickle po'boy - they are both exactly what they sound like. Sandwiches with french fries or fried pickles as filling, plus condiments. I was all for it. but did - no surprise- come back three pounds heavier than when I left. Abita beer and beignets probably had something to do with that as well. What I did not find, not ever, was a salad. Not that I looked. But neither did one magically appear on a menu.

The remains of the flood are everywhere - abandoned houses, wrecked houses, piles of debris. And house after house, including the one we were staying in, had spray painted markings on the front - codes that recorded whether a house had been searched, by whom, and how many bodies were found in it. Many had a zero in that spot, but every now and then I would see one with a one, a two, a three and just think...oh. I was struck by how little had been done to rebuild - so many places still seemed so wrecked - but a local friend gently pointed out that in fact much had been done to rebuild, I just didn't realize the true extent of the damage. Another oh.

In related news, New Orleans is also full of my LEAST favourite critter.. the cockroach. I won't recount the tears I shed when encountering one that was particularly close to my purse, but the good news is I wrote a new poem about it all. I'll debut it at the Conservatory - it is the closest thing I have to a poem about nature.