Dear reader, after the demise of the SLH, (Santa’s Little Helper) we feel compelled to provide you with this thoughtful account of mortality, and how it is practised in the Deep South. Congratulations to our DSPENOC, (Deep South Paris End New Orleans Correspondent), G.T (Gran Tourismo) Beauregard. We have edited this dispatch to ensure that only the most poignant fragments are offered to furnish your intellectual and spritual sustenance. These fragments, (as the date would indicate) are from his personal diaries, which we promise will be published in full, in due course.
Old, New Orleans. Heroic Statue Of Beauregard winner of Manassas and loser, (among others) of the Civil War. Note; Significant Entry feature, palms, up to date street lighting and themed streetcar ‘Desiree’. The envy of Australian residential developments.
14/8/15 The New Orleans Advocate of August 14 2015 is a journal of 28 pages. It is printed in that half-width broadsheet format so convenient for the use of commuters – of which there are none in New Orleans, for all here who do have work travel by automobile. Public transport in the crescent city exists only in such trifling and unreliable amount as to persuade the populace of the benefits of car ownership and remind those without four wheels of the physical inconvenience which necessarily attends their moral failure to hoist themselves into the American dream. This mighty organ of the fourth estate includes 11 pages of news, 4 pages of classifieds, 6 pages of sports and half a page of weather. The remainder – and it is substantial – consists of death notices.
The brave journalists of the Advocate inform us this day that the police department’s admission test may be biased in favour of recruits having the twin characteristics of maleness and white skin, that grocery store numbers have recovered to levels not seen since the great storm of 2005, that the state governor (and Republican presidential candidate) is building a home in a master planned community in Baton Rouge and that debate continues over the possible removal of monuments to the slave-owners’ temporary reverses of the civil war. What otherwise passes for news comes from the wire services.
Our correspondent G.T, at work on finishing touches to his new public art piece, ” Black Lives”. ‘A stunningly confronting piece’, Robert Hughes, (also deceased).
There is a two-page spread of pictures of vehicles for sale. The remainder of the advertising space consists of perhaps a dozen line ads sprinkled in jest amongst exhortations to take advantage of the paper’s advertising reach and effectiveness. The indexes to advertisements front and back page outweigh the advertising content by a factor of about 17 to 1. Of the 79 reports of the departed of 14 August 2015 a small number died, one peacefully. Others variously entered into eternal rest, passed away, passed on to eternal life, passed away peacefully, peacefully entered into eternal rest, went to be with (or to join) the Lord – the more fortunate of these to be “at home” with same – began a new life, passed on to eternal life, passed peacefully, departed this earthly realm, departed this life, entered (peacefully) into heaven or reached the final chapter in his (or her) earthly life. One is reported to have been taken away by angels. And one, whose earthly achievements merited a full half page of familial effusion, seems simply to have disappeared. The proof – if not the time – of his demise is to be given at viewings from 3-7 pm this coming Saturday and 10 am Sunday. The service is to follow on Sunday afternoon. None too soon. The New Orleans summer is oppressively warm, and refrigeration uncertain.
The lives of our deceased will be remembered for such achievements as being loved by all and – remarkably – never having met a stranger, raising Chihuahuas (or butterflies), qualification as a certified wheelchair and medical equipment technician, reminiscing throughout her life that her father’s friend, Frank Sinatra, sang Happy Birthday to her, agreeing to become a founding member of the Committee to Develop a National Policy to Increase Survival from Active Shooter and Intentional Mass Casualty Events, being “armed with his golf bag and his brother Joe” – some grand, some humble, all gone.
The lengthy catalogues of achievement of some speak not with near the same dignity as the tale of Joycelyn Mae Thomas, who at an early age was baptised at Israelite Baptist Church, “received all her formal education in New Orleans” and “pursued her career in the hospitality industry” working for “great companies such as” the Ritz Carlton and Caesar’s Entertainment. From which we glean that she was black, devout, hardworking, uncomplaining and poor. A loving and kind person, “viewed by many as one who was very easy to talk to and confide in”, she also had a taste for playing cards and “the slots”. Did she, as her obituarist maintains, begin a new life on August 7 2015 “as her soul winged its flight from this world of sin, sorrow and pain, to that eternal mansion that God has prepared for his children”? One hopes so, that there is a next world more kind to her than this.
The pleasure gardens of heaven awaiting Jocelyn Mae Thomas. ‘Long may she rest in peace’. RRP.$129.99 pe night, or $685.25 weekly. (No pensioner discount on standard off peak rates)