The Strawberry Blog

May 31st, 2005

During my hiatus it seemed likely that my career might have taken a turn. I spent three weeks scraping lead paint from windows, applying fresh latex paint to early 20th century plastered walls, and installing kitchen floors. There is a Zen to the Art of Scraping Paint From Windows. Alas, it was not to be. The ensuing chest congestion made a ninny out of me and I sighed with great relief at the prospect of no more fumes for awhile. Even my cuticles suffered the chafing brutality of house renovation. However, my little house on the corner by the bus stop, observed by excited tourists and inveterate litterbugs, across from the lush, green park of dog lovers, strollers, and winos—looks damned good.

There is little else that eases the stresses of 21st century life so effortlessly than a 19th century live oak.

And there is little else that falls from the sky with such furried grace—disguising its stinging intentions with mammalian appeal—than that land lubbing jellyfish, live oak dwelling buckmoth caterpillar. You have been warned.

Sunday, May 15th, 2005

Here’s a classic bit of car culture arrogance for you. I was waiting at a corner in Hollywood when a Hollywood Hunk type appeared at the intersection in a tiny red sports car that looked like something my brother might have played with as a child. It was shiny. He was shiny. And after waiting for a spell he rolled down his top and, leaning towards me said, “Hey, could you press that WALK button for me?”

Wednesday, May 11th, 2005

There is a car—no, not a car, a Hummer—that sits in Hollywood, California bearing the 
transcendently vain license plate: 7 MPG.

I did a double take the first time my friend whipped around the corner where this monstrosity was parked. Did it really say that? And what did it mean—that its owners were in some perverse way proud that they could afford a suburbanized McMobile, at once reducing the ozone layer and their checking account? Or were they making fun of themselves for being the kind of crass, materialistic morons who would actually succumb to the marketing idea that bigger really is better.

I don’t know. Though I’ve lingered around the lot for some corporeal proof of a driver, mysteriously, none has ever appeared.

And that is all the answer I need.

I have a friend—a gentleman who resides in the French Quarter—who is silver-haired, fit, and handsome. Top Knotch. Industrious. Generous. Spirited. A Class Act, as my father would have said.

He cannot bear the thought of being unshaven by 10 o’clock in the morning. His stomach is troubled by the sight of other men who deem “casual” dress equal to dressing as one might while taking out the garbage. He is one of a fading breed—The Gentleman—usurped, as they have been since the tumult of decades past, by the Great Shaggy Casualites—people who consider “dressing up” as replacing their stained t-shirt with a clean one, complemented by jeans and the ubiquitous tennis shoe. My Gentleman Friend also has a place in the country and admonishes us to “keep it casual” when we visit because after all “it’s the country.” However, keeping it casual does not mean arriving for cocktails in clothes in which one tromped all day in the Mississippi woods. He is not a snob: It just means not fussy. I am always heartened to see my friend in the middle of July in New Orleans looking dapper. Most others are not (it is certainly not my finest hour). Some have always known that linen and cotton are your friends and that loose is best when hair is drooping and rivulets are forming at the base of your spine.

What I’ve been trying to determine is just when Americans Generally Stopped Looking Good. Though not everyone looked like Hollywood Glamour Itself, the Thirties were a fine time to drop hemlines and cut jackets to perfectly suit the feminine form. Despite rationed materials we were downright fabulous in the Forties. And whether waging Cold War or spouting jazzy poetry, the Fifties encouraged hat wearing of all classes. So what happened?

Despite a spate of Baby Boomer books espousing the greatness of Their Era, it is without a doubt the Sixties—yes, Your Beloved Sixties that morphed ever so baggily with the Seventies—which signaled the beginning of a very unfortunate trend. It was the profusion of suburban sprawl, the reliance on the automobile, the convenience of packaged and processed food, the deification of poorly dressed music stars, Made In China…all conspiring to make average Americans less pleasing to the eye. Not to say anything of their manners.

Friday, May 6th, 2005

In an effort to torture my homesick self, in May I read Lafcadio Hearn (specifically, his writings from Frederick Starr’s INVENTING NEW ORLEANS). One could lift entire passages from the 1870s journalist’s observations and plant them in the Times-Picayune today, garnering neither a raised eyebrow nor a whiff of foul play, for things have not changed all that much: the powers that be razed buildings in the old quarter while the powerfully built (or those enabled with powerful weapons) wreaked havoc upon the people of New Orleans. No regard for the life of mortar and brick nor the flesh that dwelt in it.

I strongly recommend reading Hearn, albeit post-hurricane season. It will leave you both heartened and ill.

Just in time for Christmas.