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Red Beans and Ricely Yours

By Mona Lisa Saloy

 

 

 

Visited Home on Monday

Conversation After the Flood

With Jerry Ward, Miriam  Mona Lisa

 

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 16:01:31 EDT

Dear Mona Lisa & Jerry,

Today I talked with Karen Green, a Dillard professor who knows you, and she told me that Dillard is paying its faculty.

Apparently, her sister, who is in Houston, has direct deposit and received her salary, but Karen doesn't have dd. She had to call the following number--1 (877) 888-0100--to give them her address.  She also gave me the e-mail address of the provost (?), which is bparker Smith@yahoo.com.  She said there's a space in the middle of the name, but that doesn't look right to me.

Karen is in Natchez with her parents.

I hope that you are doing better this week than last.

Take care,

Miriam

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Tue, 20 Sep 2005 19:05:11 -0500

Dear Miriam and Mona Lisa,

Since I had direct deposit, Dillard did put my final August check in the bank; I'll have to go online to see if there was a September 15 deposit.  Dillard now has a new websit:  www.dillard.edu which contains updated news and other information.  When I talked with Dean Taylor last week, there was a strong possibility that Dillard would offer classes in January from the Morris Brown campus. That would be an historically noteworthy happening.

I have an apartment in Vicksburg and am doing some volunteer teaching at Tougaloo College as my alumni gift.  Working with students also prevents my falling into self-pity about what I may have lost in New Orleans. Doing a two-week seminar at Grinnell College (24 Oct-4 Nov) will also help.  I am working on various entries about the disaster and my oddly convoluted states of mind and my brain walking a tightrope to somewhere under the title "THE KATRINA PAPERS." Let us pray we do not have to add a "RITA CODA."

Mona Lisa, it would be good if John Lowe and the LSU English Department could sponsor a Red Beans & Ricely Yours party for you next month or in November.  I am sure those of us who are in driving distance would come for the celebration.

Love,

Jerry

*   *   *   *   *

Visited Home on Monday

Wednesday, September 21, 2005 2:40 PM

Hey now Jerry and Miriam,

If you don't know, I've accepted a Visiting Assoc. Prof. position at the University of Washington for the year.  They begin school next Wednesday; I need the job so I can keep my property. 

Y'all, I visited New Orleans on Monday. Ishmael Reed's words are more than on target.  My beloved New Orleans is a ghost town, like the abandoned towns of the old west, empty, dead, no grass, nothing growing, no one there.  Jerry, can you imagine Dillard with all dead grass?  That's what's there, deadness, and the surrounding homes were flooded like mine.  I salvaged a few clothes, some research, my soggy Kaufman books since I'd like to finish that work and get it to a publisher.  Everything is ruined, my library, even my clothes--the smell is unimaginable; already, I've washed them again and again, hoping to at least recover my jeans and some shirts.  Some fine things are in the dry cleaner, and because everything floated around, I couldn't get to my winter coat.  All my shoes are gone, my beautiful kitchen and new bedroom; I had just renovated last year.  How can we all rebuild at once?  At least, in my neighborhood, our old shotgun homes are still standing.  In the East, it is more of a war zone with massive damage to most every home and more extensive flooding. It was horrible.  Even if Dillard opens in January, who will be there, who will come into this?

I'm exhausted, and trying to get everything in order before flying out on Friday, the 23rd of Sept. 

I'll get together, with my sister Barbara too, who lives in Seattle as well, one great reason to  pick that place.  I have so much to be thankful for since daily I see so many without jobs or a place to go.  God help us all.

Please keep in touch.  Hugs to you both.

Red Beans and Ricely Thankful and Hopeful,
Mona Lisa

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Wednesday, September 21, 2005 4:55 PM

Rudy, Mona Lisa was one of the first persons whom I contacted, and I knew that you were worried about her.  This is so sad, and it's like so many of the stories that are coming out of New Orleans:  everything lost, in shambles, moldy and mildewed.  How can a person go back to that?  Maybe M. L. can because (I think) she's young and will have the energy to undertake the monumental job of rebuilding, but what about the aged and sick and disheartened and clinically depressed? -- Miriam

 

 
 

Mona Lisa Saloy is associate professor of English and Director of creative writing at Dillard University (before Katrina). She won the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for this collection. She has also won fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from the United Negro College Fund/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her poems have appeared in anthologies, magazines, journals, and film. She received her PhD in English and MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University and her MA in creative writing and English from San Francisco State University. Displaced by hurricane Katrina, Saloy is a visiting associate professor of English and creative writing at the University of Washington for the 2005/2006 academic year.  Mona Lisa Saloy Bio  Red Beans and Ricely Yours

 

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