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Cameron Family News |
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Oct 3 2006 I Am Annalis requested that I take her poem down. Apparently she is not ready for publication!! So be it. It is down. |
Sep 27 2006Nina and Friends Here is Nina with her friends at school. From L to R: Nina, Rosey, Nece and Charlotte. Pink and purple are big this year! Nina loves school and is having a great time with her friends. |
Sep 8 2006Fooooooood This child is a monster eater. Nothing comes between Lola and her food. And boy, can she pack it away. One tooth broke through yesterday and the other will be here tomorrow by the looks of it and by the crying that ensued today. Two teeth on the bottom front. Our little pyrona... ain't she cute? |
Sep 7 2006Casa de Chickens The chickens are here! The chickens are here! Holy Guacamole, the chickens are here!. We got the call at 7:55 this morning. I did not have to answer because I knew what it was. Nan and I drove over and picked up the peeping box of feathers. All 26 chicks made it. Healthy and hungry, we got them home and they are chilling out under the heat lamp. Nina gets home from school at noon. I can't wait for her to see them. I keep telling her, "the chickens will be here soon!", but it only illicits mild interest. I really don't know if she has the reference material to fully grasp the concept. Pictures to follow! -t |
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Aug 28 2006 Anna I was hoping to spend the next day or two in a self absorbed melancholic stupor waxing romantic over my lost city but all of that has been eclipsed by the news that my grandmother passed away this morning. We are off to New Jersey to lay her to rest next to my grandfather and to help my mother navigate this difficult time. We are told her heart gave out and she passed quickly in her apartment early this morning. She was 95. |
Aug 19 2006Life on the Farm Life is about to get interesting. Tonight I ordered 24 little chicks. They should be arriving after Labor Day. Yes, indeed, I am going to try my hand as a chicken farmer! Donnie is doubtful. To him it translates to more poop to manage. This is true. I cannot deny it. But just think of the benefits! Schlogging out to the barn when it is 10 below zero to see if the foxes got into the hen house during the cold winter night. Shoveling the poop to make mulch for the garden. Rescuing chickens from wherever they get themselves stuck... Oh, and there is the fresh eggs too! What a treat. Fun for the whole family. If things go awry, we can always just eat alot of chicken this winter. -t |
Aug 10 2006Great Grandma is 95! This is Lola with her Great Grandmother. Anna turned 95 years old on the 6th of August. I am not certain but I believe this is the 2nd year we have celebrated her 95th. Last year I think we miscalculated but the error was picked up by cousin Steph and we righted ourselves before the cake was decorated. Good job Steph! Happy Birthday Grandma! |
Jul 30 2006A Little Late, But For The Record Finally, Little Lo has her first official web page. Basically it holds her incoming stats and first images. Click here to see her in all her freshness. |
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Jul 8 2006 Lifted from Judy, written by Chris Rose I've been fine lately. Really, I feel fine. We are living in this beautiful town in Western Mass. It is healthy, clean and well educated here. Cars stop for you when you cross the street. Friends stop by, we make dinner, we chat. The kids play in the back and there is no worry something or someone will harm them. Doors are left unlocked here and toys and tools are safe on the front porch. It's idealic really. Yet, still, I am homesick. There is still a void. I still cry when I hear John Mooney ro the Subdudes or when I watch some report of the current conditions of New Orleans by Anderson Cooper. I just read this article on my friends blog and thought I would post it here. It is something, like Chris says, to just let roll around with everything else. --- A jazz funeral during Jazzfest celebrates the life of yet another soul lost in the storm In this space last Friday, I made the case that New Orleanians should take their out-of-town visitors this week -- or any week, for that matter -- on a Misery Tour so they would better understand what happened here. I followed my own advice Saturday morning and brought two friends from California and my brother from Maryland -- along with my three kids -- to Gentilly and the Lower 9 for a look around before heading out to Jazzfest. They'd already seen Lakeview and Mid-City the day before. More than anything else, the emptiness of it all is what stirs the soul. That's what tells this story. Eight months later, the question still hammers home: Where the hell is everybody? While we were tooling around the 8th Ward, we turned up St. Roch Avenue and got stalled behind a gathering in the street and, unaware of what was going on, I backed up and took a circuitous route around St. Roch Cemetery and then ended up in front of the crowd. It was a funeral. A jazz funeral, of all things. It was small. A hearse, one limo and maybe 40 people following. Several men with matching T-shirts followed close behind the hearse, with their hands on the back of it and their heads bowed. A ragtag band played a slow dirge. Unlike the big and brassy processions that follow the passings of famous musicians around here, this one was off the radar. It was just some family and friends and none of the attendant video and camera crews that can turn these intimate gatherings into culture vulture documentaries rather than unique spiritual reckonings. The St. Roch area is still so blown out and desolate that this pocket of humanity and color lent a haunting quality to the landscape. It looked like an apparition in the hushed grayness. "Is this for real?" my guests asked me and I told them yes, this is what happens here. I felt intrusive -- pulling over and opening the car doors for my guests -- but how could you not stop and watch? I took off my hat, my one pathetic gesture of respect for those gathered, most of whom took no notice of us as they passed by. As they turned a corner, the band shifted from mournful to mirthful -- to that "Oh! Didn't He Ramble" sort of street jig they play when a jazz funeral turns its party switch on. And we watched from behind as the men cut, shuffled and buck-jumped and took their brother home sweet home glory hallelujah. "It's like a movie," someone in our group said and that is indeed what it felt like. But real movies make events like these look so contrived and clownish that I suspect most people outside of New Orleans don't think there really are such things as jazz funerals but here it was, in its lonesome, wistful reality. This spectacle told my guests so much more than my words ever could, so I turned on WWOZ and headed for the Fair Grounds and we set about the business of celebrating the life and survival -- albeit somewhat tenuous -- of this profoundly soulful city and its culture. And then this week, in a moment of downtime, I rifled through some old papers stacked in my living room and found a death notice from last week announcing that a "Celebration of Life" would be held for Derrick Arthur Brown at Our Lady Star of the Sea Church on St. Roch Avenue last Saturday morning. And that's what we witnessed: a celebration of life. I read more of the death notice and found out that Derrick Arthur Brown had graduated from McDonogh 35 and played football at Jackson State and used to mask with the Cherokee Hunters Mardi Gras Indian tribe and was once employed by a place called B-Neat Cleaners. He was 47, with two daughters and three grandkids, when he died. And it said this: "Derrick Arthur Brown passed away on or about Aug. 29, 2005." Eight months later, to the date, he was sent to his final home and the measure of this information leaves me stupefied. What to say? We're still burying them. Still burying us. I don't have the words to comment on this, to lend any clarity or perspective. It just sits in your head with everything else. Where was he all this time? It fails to shock or stun because the bar on shock value around here has been raised so high. It just is what it is. And if nothing else, we find in a back-of-town street on a cloudy Saturday morning a small act of celebration, defiance and closure for one more death in our family. . . . . . . . Columnist Chris Rose can be reached at chris.rose@timespicayune.com; or at (504) 352-2535 or (504) 826-3309. |
Jun 1 2006Sleeping Beauties We have finally moved up into the 2nd floor of the purple house. The gas was turned on and the downstairs sprayed for mold and cleaned out. The sheetrock is finally going up. We are leaving here next friday for NJ for a week and then back to Massachusettes for the summer. |
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