A trip to the land of the United Houma Nation sheds light on a Native American people and a culture on the brink.

Published by GAMBIT WEEKLY, September 23, 2008 (Excerpt from article)

...Isle de Jean Charles is a one-road village looking out over miles of disappearing wetland. It is virtually undefended, open to the Gulf of Mexico's storm surges. The homes are beaten and torn open. Many have been gutted by the storms or by returning families. After a storm, it is amazing how quickly the earth reclaims human imprints...

Chief Robichaux and her husband, former state Sen. Dr. Mike Robichaux, drive me ... where Houma Indians have lived and worked for hundreds of years. The post-hurricane air feels different. Love bugs fly awkwardly, mating and almost biting anything they come in contact with. Dead sea gulls and dogs litter the shoulders of the highway...

I take pictures while the Robichauxs drive on to check a friend's house. Everything is silent save the wind, which blows hard across the wetlands, stirring panels of broken metal siding.

Dusk falls and I find myself in the middle of an abandoned village, lightless and without cellular service. I cannot reach the Robichauxs. The mosquitoes come in a swarm as nightfall descends. I scratch and pull at my skin. Rushing along, I must find shelter and people.

A dog trapped in a fragmented house barks loudly, then wails louder as I approach. It sounds fearsome. Further on, the drone of a lone generator echoes over the countryside. I round a hill and the generator's pump and slam get closer. I see a house light.

As I approach the house, headlights come down the road. A truck pulls up next to me and stops. It is not Mike Robichaux. A man inside the truck says he is a Houma Indian who has lived at Isle de Jean Charles all his life. "Only Indians live out here — and I mean no offense to you — but white people don't give a shit about Indians."

Feature Article published by WWW.NEWSPLINK.COM on July 15th, 2009

Eugene Hicks, 65, leans on the front counter of his Clarksdale, Miss. restaurant, and his elbows thud on the wooden countertop. Hicks is a large man, and his establishment, Hicks’ Hot Tamales and Barbeque Banquet Hall, is a local institution. With one meaty finger he scratches his chin and moustache, thinking. The scratching sounds like sandpaper on wood.

“I don’t rightly know, but I suppose the hot tamale came up to us in the Mississippi Delta from Mexico. At least that is how I heard it.”

When? During the Mexican-American War? Brought by returning soldiers or captured Mexicans? Migrant laborers?

Hicks raises his eyebrows. He doesn’t know. Like everyone I talked to in the area, he is not certain how the hot tamale—traditionally a south of the border food staple—traveled to the Mississippi Delta. Neither guidebooks nor history books have an answer. Not even an Internet search was able to crack this enduring mystery.

(My semi-fictionalized memoir Sex and Homeland recently won semi-finalist honors at the Words and Music Festival. Here is an excerpt chapter... Note: This writing deals with some heavy issues and is not for everyone. If you are so inclined please send me feedback!)

Sertaç and Engines Running Over White Palace

Sertaç had got the Portuguese translator job with Turkey’s biggest soccer team and his stomach had started to grow. Flying high we drove fast around the city in a team car, followed by a rich Brazilian girl he was fucking. All things were possible! In Istanbul the roads were gold paved! We drove along the Bosphorus, the girl passing us, Sertaç passing the girl. He was speaking to me in Turkish and then she was calling him on his cell in Portuguese. He had a full can of cold beer.

THE BALL OF GRIEF, NOVEMBER 19TH, 2009

My mother died over six months ago.

I’d say that grief is like a tai-chi energy stream. It is all around. When relaxing into a mediation, grief is a ball of liquid wide open and across one’s chest. You hold that energy’s weight and see that the weight itself is weightless.

In younger years I wondered how I would “deal” with death. I strove to understand it. I read the right authors. I traveled to the Holy Land; went to Egypt and stood on pyramids. I tried to touch death like a dog pissing on electricity. Late at night I played with fire; embraced a fear-filled Kurdish girl in Istanbul and a sabotaged mid-western chica in New Orleans…

And…

While those experiences smashed me across the face they weren’t “death.” Death came soft.

I heard about it three years ago. I was at a gutted school in New Orleans’ 9th Ward. All around me young volunteers from Vermont and California chirped away. I was in New Orleans for only a few months, helping to rebuild after Katrina. I had a plane ticket purchased to return to my old life in Istanbul.

And then a funny thing happened. On a break in the gutting of the school my father called me.

Dad’s voice is normally smooth and rich like well aged bourbon. It is the kind of voice which covers you and holds you tight. But that day his voice was quiet on my cell. Mouse-like. All of its magic was gone. He said, “Your mother.. Your mother.. we just came from the doctor’s office. Your mother has ovarian cancer.”