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Enjoy this YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her v348 8/24 cc&d issue/book “Pandora’s Box” & the CyberWit.net Summer 2024 Janet Kuypers poetry book “The Universe is in Your Hands” poems “On a Mission for This Reprieve”, “Using Bamboo and “Embracing” the West”, & “Embracing History, Race, and Creole Soul” to start her “Poetic License 8/4/24 global open mic” she hosted through Zoom & a Facebook event page (from a Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera; on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr).. Also enjoy this as a Facebook live video stream (Samsung S9; Color Film; on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, and Tumblr). #janetkuypers #janetkuyperstheuniverseisinyourhands #janetkuyperspoetry #janetkuypersbookreading #janetkuyperspoeticlicense

Embracing History, Race, and Creole Soul Janet Kuypers 1/30/24 Lake Pontchartrain toward sunset looks like a lake of fire when driving over that never-ending bridge, the causeway claiming the Guinness World Record as the longest bridge over water for decades... Getting closer to New Orleans, you have to pass the desolation. Over those swamps, you overlook decaying trees — and occasionally a home surrounded by alligators, snakes, bugs, and ever-present crawdads. Witness a different kind of decay1 from what the religious right would refer to as the moral decay of the French Quarter. But that loosey-goosey 2 mindset when Jazz sprung forth was an African-American movement, and while segregation was still all the rage in the United States, New Orleans did have mixed-race revelry in creole Jazz, where people were allowed to mix and mingle, no matter your race. Maybe that’s what that evangelical mindset misses out on — including all people, which is what any NOLA regular will expound, because race is as embraced as gender identity when you walk those beer- stained streets. Some may be tacky and buy beads from a cheap shop or degrade themselves enough to strip to get those beads for free. Don’t even bother with the Marie Laveau trinket shop when you should visit her tomb marked with X’s between restorations — that is, unless they’ve restricted access to her cemetery because teens vandalize tombs near hers. But, you see, that’s the thing about NOLA, the history of not only the music, not only the voodoo, but also the history of racial and class segregation that still exists. When Katrina struck, those religious right talking heads said this was god’s wrath over the evility of the French Quarter, even though the French Quarter, comparatively, received more minimal damage. For it was depressed neighborhoods who felt the brunt as the floodgates opened, as damaged homes serve as testament to the history of New Orleans as once the largest slave market in the United States. But maybe we need to see that in NOLA, understand the brutal history of slavery, and despite that, creole spirit took blues and bluegrass and created Dixieland Jazz, that ultimately brought races together... because really, sometimes the bottom line is that no matter our race or gender, let’s still celebrate together.   1 from the poem “The Bridge to New Orleans” 2 Captain Shaw, Star Trek: Picard, s3 e1

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