Posted on 01/30/2009 10:34:55 PM PST by Lorianne
Kirsten Brydum pedaled away from the Howlin' Wolf club into the darkness of another American city that she didn't know very well. It was 1:30 a.m.
She rode a black cruiser bicycle with a basket on the back, borrowed from friends of friends. In nearly every city she had visited on her 2-month-road trip, it seemed someone was willing to lend her an old bike.
The Rebirth Brass Band was on the bill that night. Brydum, 25, had danced for a while outside the club in her flip-flops. She thought that the bouncer would eventually let her in for free, and that suited her in more ways than one. She believed, passionately, that people would one day reject a basic mechanism of free-market societies: the exchange of goods and services for money.
She arrived in New Orleans in late September with a rail pass, a little red notebook and a head full of ideas about the oppressive forces of capitalism and government, and how they might be replaced with something better. The road trip was partly a rite of passage in the grand tradition of Jack Kerouac -- an adventure to mark her recent graduation from college in San Francisco. But she also hoped to report on the small, scattered outposts where fellow radicals had established alternatives to mainstream culture.
It would all end in New Orleans, four miles from the Howlin' Wolf, in a forlorn and out-of-the-way block in the 9th Ward.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
There's a strong chance she was killed for no reason than someone saw her and realized she would be easy to kill. No robbery. No stealing a bicycle. She was possibly shot because the guy was there, had a gun, and just wanted to target practice. As I read the article, I kept thinking, "clueless." She was like a puppy playing in traffic, utterly unaware of how she was constantly flirting with death.
My wife and daughters are similarly naive about the nature of some people, but are wise enough to avoid coming into contact with them. When we were shopping for a house, we'd look at a cool old two story, and my wife would say, "Oh, it's beautiful. Let's get it." I'd look at the neighborhood clues and tell her "No Way."
I too have always loved New Orleans but we aren’t going back. Our last trip was in the spring before Katrina, of course I didn’t know then it would be our last trip. I hope NO is revived but I am too old to be a part of its revival. Bye buy NO.
I go to Nola frequently for work, was there four times last year, most recently in December. I have two comments:
First, no one who lives there, of any race, would be out cycling at that hour.
Second ironically, there is something that reeks of colonialism and white entitlement in her blithe disregard of reality — she’s saying with her actions “ I don’t have to be aware of objective reality; I can do whatever I want whenever I want and not think of the consequences because my status makes me invulnerable.” From a philosophical perspective, she was imposing her own views on another culture, with no regard for that culture, actively negating the social parameters of that culture.
with all due respect, that's a pretty odd deduction.
the folks who killed her got her killed and her naivete put her in their sights
Why am I reminded of Rachel Corrie?
or that white American girl killed in Soweto some years back there to help the oppressed black man killed by the very folks she was there to help
Another one was titled, "Woman loves Brazil, even though she's only seen 2 1/2 acres of it." This was about a woman who vacationed at a resort, and assumed the amusement park atmosphere was indicative of the rest of Brazil.
It's part of the utter cluelessness of multi-culturalism. The mulit-culturalists assume that everyone is really the same, and that the only difference between the New Orleans street and a college campus is the design of the architecture and the dress of the people.
I first picked this up back in the seventies with Doonesbury. In the strip, Ghetto blacks, Viet Cong and pre-school kids all talked like Ivy League grad students. In one strip a pre-school girl was quoting Simone de Bouviar. I understand it's humor, but in creative works, people unintentionally reveal quite a few things about their belief system. This girl had no clue about how people on the street think.
When I was in Haiti, for example, documenting missionary work, I was cautioned not to photograph people selling meat in the street. They said fish, fruit or sugar cane, go ahead and shoot. They explained to me that beef and pork were practically impossible to buy in these markets, so it was quite likely human, and the sellers would think I was collecting evidence, and I'd be on the menu the next day.
You never petted a missionary's dog, because they did not want the dogs to be friendly to strangers. If a dog trusts people in Haiti, they kill it and eat it. When the daughters of one of the missionaries I visited wanted to swing, we got the swings and chains out of locked boxes and hung them on a frame that was embedded in concrete. We stood and watched them while they were swinging, then immediately took the swings down and locked them back up. Otherwise they would have been stolen in an hour. My first night there, I heard fully automatic weapons fire and helicopters outside my window, and we were in the best part of Port Au Prince. In Haiti, they don't bother to count the bodies.
New Orleans would be the same way if outside agencies weren't constantly trying to enforce some sense of order.
I have a lot of experience in Haiti as does the poster I pinged.
I was there from Manigot, Avril, Namphy, Colonel Paul and so forth and yep...the bodies do tend to lie in the sun for days
Pretty rough stuff.
Sierra Leone propbably earned my top honours for most brutal
But I think for whites that Kingston may be worse crime wise, Haiti is more political though that may have changed
La Guaijira of Colombia was fairly rough too but in a different way
Haiti is the only place I’ve been where I was going, “Lord, if this plane loses power, at least let us get over the ocean.” I figured I had a lot better chance of survival with the sharks than with the citizens of Haiti. At least with the shark it was nothing personal.
I thought the same thing when I read this story.
On a sunny spring day in 1998, a Friday I was getting gas at a station in the Memorial area of Houston and getting ready to drive back to Austin. It was around 2;00 when a clean cut and very well dressed white guy comes up to me and starts talking to me about my car.
We keep talking, I keep pumping gas, as I am about to put nozzle back on to gas pump, he pulls out a 38 and demands my money.
I am surprised and confused but snap back to reality very quickly. I pull $400.00 out of my wallet and pocket and hand it to him. He continues talking asking my name and where I lived, where I was going and what I did for a living. Gun is still on me, I ask if he could put the gun away, he does and hands me $50.00 so I can “get something to eat and pay for the gas.”
He walks back to his Mercedes and drives away.
The people that witnessed the whole thing thought is was a gag but when they noticed that I was very pale and could not talk, they figured out it was for real. One guy got the plate number on the Mercedes.
Within the hour HPD finds him at his house with his wife and kids. He admitted to the whole thing right away and on the way to the police station talked about what a nice guy I was and told the officer to tell me that he wanted to hang out the next time I was in town so we could do dinner.
Turns out guy was an accountant who had lost his job and never told his wife. It was payday, and he was not being paid that day. So, instead, he grabs his kid’s crayons and colors himself a paycheck and deposits it into the ATM and then finds me at gas station.
It seems that guy went a little nuts, which caused him to lose his job which then caused him to go really bonkers. He did time in prison and is out, no one contested his parole.
And I never did get that dinner invite.
Needless to say, it was the last thing I expected there in Memorial. if I had been in East Houston or any place in New Orleans I might have been on my toes but not in that neighborhood.
I walked away from that realizing that I was very lucky and that at any point and any time anyone of us can totally lose our minds and do really stupid things.
the very naivte is a form of colonialism — the refusal to look at Other as it really is, to insist on seeing it as an extension of oneself.
I got it.
concise analysis
reminds me of the Birkie crowd I used to see at the Intercontinental in Managua in the 80s
4L8R
Sounds like an accurate description of the girls thoughts to me.
Did you notice that there was no mention of this girl's father in the entire story?
Looking back at that, I think you are right and I was unduly critical of the reporter.
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