Community Development....

Within the last two years I have made some changes in my life. I left my vagabond tour of Kinko's nation-wide and am now concentrating on work that I think matters. Art & massage still color my vision of the world. I really believe that one day more folks will embrace body-work and artistic expression as a tools for better living and communication. Until then I have started my professional-life all over again in Economic /Community Development. Bringing vibrancy to a community is something in my veins, it's where I came from and what I believe.

It's a strange world, I've seemed to come full-circle almost twenty-5 years later. I grew up in New Orleans where community development involved programs like the social & pleasure clubs of many neighborhoods and faith-based organizations of parishes across the city. My father still is active working with the Tambourine & Fan as a coach and supervisor at Hunter's Field on Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans. I spent many summers at Marie C. Couvent school in the Tamborine & Fan day camp learning about black history, that was so absent in schools back then (especially the catholic schools). We learned about social activism through protests and marches. Tamborine & Fam was founded by Jerome Smith and other veterans of the civil rights movement so the messages drilled into out heads back then were about self-confidence, social change and keeping up the good fight like saying no to drugs..."dope is poison and death!" We'd protest, chant and spend summers learning about who we were, what was expected of us and where we could go. Many neighborhoods had organizations like that calling themselves Social & Pleasure Clubs (most famous of which is the Zulus) because that's what they were. The worked in the communities and partied like any other New Orleanian....hard and often! Many Tamborine & Fan members belonged to the Mardi Gras Indian tribe the Yellow Pocahontas, led by Big Chief Tootie Montana. I remember getting up on Mardi Gras morning to see the Big Chief around the corner. My daddy was a bucket man for years, strutting his stuff on Mardi Gras, St. Joseph's Day & Super Sunday.

As I got older I worked in my parish church on the committes and issues concerning our parishioners. I volunteered at my parish through elementary and high school. Many of the accomplishments in our small neighborhoods in New Orleans were done grass roots style by these social & pleasure clubs or the many faith-based organizations around.

Thinking back to my childhood influences of Community Development it's no surprise that I now find myself working in this field. I work in very different places than New Orleans. Indian Orchard, Massachusetts and the Quaboag Hills Region are VERY different and it's a challenge for me. New Orleans has been in the back of my mind as a shining example of what can happen when a city puts it's best face foward. Last years' devistation bought on by hurricane Katrina, a faultering economy and a failed government left me silent and wondering what happened to the hey-day of my old city. A city once vibrant with music, art, history and culture. It's still there but there seems to be a thick layer of debris covering it all up. Hopefully soon, I'll get to see the city in vibrancy again.

I've seen it and felt it happen once...it'll happen again.