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This is what I have been up to these last few months while teaching art at Esperanza:

Bye, Mabel

From Billy:

Our sweet golden dog Mabel has passed on.

From the streets of the Irish Channel, she had a wild love of people, her old boyfriend Max, her sidekick Ruth-Anne, and, most of all, her savior Nikki who cajoled me into keeping her upon returning home with a tiny puppy following a argument in which I had been in the wrong. I didn’t put up much resistance.

The night Nikki found her, she had been walking the streets with a pack of feral dogs that roamed the Irish Channel terrorizing cats and children. Nikki thought she was a Chihuahua but she was just a baby street dog. We never could sort out her breed but her odd yodels suggested some sort of African bushdog and her staggering speed, a whippet.

Anyone who has ever come to our house has been jumped on and kissed by Mabel in her effort to show a little love, and get a little back in return.

Her health failed very suddenly and out of the blue last evening when she was walking with Nikki and Ruthie through the tony, live oak and mansion lined streets of the Garden District, a handful of blocks from where Nikki had found her.

A good run for a scrappy Irish Channel kid.

We were lucky to have found her. And vice versa.

Good girl, Mabel.

Where I Have Been

...Teaching at Esperanza Charter School, full time. I will be there until the end of June teaching K-8 as much art as possible until I leave. The picture above is one leftover from when the building housed Crossman Elementary, from the old Crossman website.

I eat, sleep, teach, eat, sleep, teach.

I'll be posting more regularly again when summer comes along....

Random Parade on Jackson Avenue

Yay! Random Parade! We were replacing a window pane knocked out by Gustav (a little late in the game, I know) and look what passed on by! I guess it was a parade sponsored by a church down the way and was called a "March for Christ". Most of these were taken from the balcony so please excuse the wires.




And HELLO! The McDonough 35 Marching Band comes along! Note the wee child:

A wee marching child

Pussyfooting in Muses 2009

The Pussyfooters march in the most popular parade every Mardi Gras, the Muses Parade. It is a krewe of women and is my personal favorite. Billy was my "Pussy Handler", making sure that the crowds were back from the route so we could dance on by, and keeping people from touching us. He also watered us as as we made our way along the very long route.

Riding my bike to the beginning of the route at Jefferson and Magazine

Nikki the Pussyfooter and Liz the Camel Toe Lady Stepper,
ignoring the super cold (so, so, cold when you are just in a corset)
night and filling the time during the very long delay of the start of
Muses due to a Chaos parade float losing an axle on the route ahead.

We had to stop at Gallier Hall in order to perform an in-
place hip-hop dance for the judges. I think they liked us....

Finally finished, at the end of the route in the warehouse district.

Some of the near 80 Pussyfooters flock for a photo

Mardi Gras 2009

I finally have gotten around to posting my Mardi Gras pictures! I am pretty freaked out by clowns, so I faced the fear and made clown costumes for Billy and me. The first set of pictures are of friends, the following set is of some of my favorite St. Anne parade costumers.

A French bulldog accessory.

Luke Allen

Abram Himmelstein and his money bone suit

Kristen and Lady Fox-Head

Dave Cash and Kittee Berns in their caterpillar-
themed (with a few horses thrown in) costume

More great costumes:

My favorite: BUNNY HEAD!

Upon close inspection, it became clear that this costume was made
of her rejection letters from literary magazines and other publishers.

A LAdy and Her Chicken Man

Chicken Fight!

Mardi Gras 2009

Creepy me and Kittee on Mardi Gras Day!

photo by Dave Cash

We Second Lined for Ms. Antoinette Today

She was a generous and light-filled soul. She once told me when I was dressed up like a frilly cupcake that I'd make a good Baby Doll and I was deeply honored. I imagine she and Ernie are together right now in some way and that makes me smile. The thought makes today a little less sad.

I didn't take any photos today because I wanted to be fully present for the procession. I think this photo is by N. Sublette.

Empress of the Universe Antoinette K-Doe called home Posted by: Alison Fensterstock in The Gambit, In Memoriam

In the early hours of Mardi Gras Day, Antoinette K-Doe, widow of the legendary Ernie and proprietor of the Mother-in-Law Lounge, passed away. Last Mardi Gras Day, Mrs. K-Doe had entered the hospital for heart failure, but recovered and was quickly back behind the bar. Mrs. K-Doe was a local legend and as proprietor of the Lounge and steward of K-Doe’s memory, an international icon. EDIT: Yesterday, along with dozens of other friends of Ernie and Antoinette, I spent Mardi Gras Day helping to serve beer at the Lounge. The Northside Skull and Bones showed up early to pay tribute to Miss Antoinette. Later, her friend Guitar Lightnin’ Lee played in the garden, and the Black Eagles Mardi Gras Indians sang “Indian Red” to her memory. Antoinette was a friend of mine and a very dear friend of my boyfriend, Lefty Parker. She considered herself his adoptive mother, and she was taking a fairly strong hand in planning our April wedding, which was to be held at the Mother-in-Law. One of the last things she ever told me was that our dog would need a special outfit for the ceremony, and that to offset the wedding’s cost, we should get sponsors. Antoinette used to baby-sit the dog when Lefty was out of town and he adored her, probably because she would feed him whole hamburgers, one after another. Antoinette was motherly to a whole host of downtown artists and musicians, including organist and puppeteer Quintron and Panacea, who she had painted on one wall of the Lounge. She, her cousin Tee-Eva and their friend Jeannie often bartended at Q and P’s underground parties at their home, the Spellcaster Lodge. Recently, she had made them a gift of her old limousine. After the hurricane, Quintron, Lefty, MC Trachiotomy and Generic Art Solutions’ Matt Vis took time out from repairing their own flood-damaged homes to work on the Lounge, until the Hands On organization took over in November ‘06 and finished the job. Just this past weekend, the new mural on the Lounge’s outer walls was finished. Antoinette loved publicity, and I was glad she got to see the mural written up in the Times-Picayune before she passed. After her heart attack last Mardi Gras, we visited her in the hospital a few times. It was frightening to see her looking so frail. The last time we saw her together was about two weeks ago, to discuss the wedding - she showed off her new trim figure and discussed the heart-healthy diet she’d been following. It still seems impossible that she’s gone. I can’t imagine having my wedding there without her, but I can’t imagine having it anywhere else.