Author’s Opening Note Here is something most people do not know about New Orleans Voodoo. For generations, many practitioners baptized their children in Catholic churches on Sunday morning and honored the Iwa in their homes that same evening without seeing a contradiction. They did not separate the sacred into neat little boxes. They understood that spirit is too wide for fences. That alone unsettles people who like their beliefs color coded and labeled for convenience. New O

Author’s Opening Note Here is something most people do not realize about their own body. Your blood is salty. Not poetic salty. Not metaphorical salty. Chemically salty. The sodium moving through your veins is what allows your nerves to fire, your muscles to tighten, your heart to keep rhythm instead of stuttering off beat like a trumpet player who forgot the tune. Even your tears carry salt. Even the sweat that rolls down your neck in Louisiana heat leaves that faint white t

Authors Opening Words Before you step back into Maye’s world, let me say this plain. New Orleans is not just a backdrop in this story. It breathes. It watches. It remembers. Part Three demanded I lean deeper into that rhythm. Not the postcard version with beads and brass bands for tourists. I mean the real pulse. The humid nights where the air sit heavy on your shoulders. The porches where elders rock slow and say, baby, everything that shine ain’t blessed. The corner stores

Author’s Opening Note Here is an unknown fact they do not put on postcards or whisper during carriage rides. New Orleans does not just remember its past. It keeps it moving. Memory here does not sit still. It drifts. It hums. It taps you on the shoulder while you are mid bite of a beignet and asks if you are paying attention. This city does not bury lessons. It circulates them. I learned that early. Not from a book. From watching people take things without asking where they c

Author’s Opening Note Here is something they do not print on postcards or tuck between pictures of powdered sugar and brass bands. New Orleans has more above ground cemeteries than almost anywhere else in this country not because we are fascinated with death but because the land refuses to cooperate with secrecy. The water table sits too close to the surface. You try to bury something deep and it floats back up like it has something left to say. Coffins rise. Secrets resurfac

Author’s Opening Note Here is something they do not teach you in school or put on postcards with smiling pelicans and brass bands frozen in mid note. Trees near water grow slower rings. They do not rush. They learn patience from standing where floods come and go. Cypress trees down here know how to wait. They keep their knees above the water like they learned a lesson the hard way long before we showed up with our opinions and our plans. Nature does not hurry when it knows st

Author’s Opening Note. I need to say this before anything else because pretending otherwise would be dishonest, and I have learned that honesty without care is just arrogance wearing church clothes. This reflection cost me something. It wasn’t written in one sitting. It wasn’t written clean. It was written between pauses, deep breaths, and moments where I had to step away and remind myself why I even bother putting words on paper in the first place. Writing like this doesn’t

Author’s Opening Note. Here is an unknown fact they do not put on postcards or tourism brochures. New Orleans has more cemeteries above ground than almost anywhere else in the country not because we are obsessed with death but because the water table is too close to the surface. If you try to bury anything too deep it comes back up. Coffins float. Secrets rise. The truth refuses to stay hidden. That alone preached to me before I ever heard a sermon that stuck. You cannot bur

Author’s Opening Note New Orleans taught me something early that I did not understand until much later. Peace is not the absence of noise. If that were true, this city would never rest. Peace is learning how to breathe while the band keeps playing and the street keeps moving and the world keeps asking you questions you do not have answers for yet. I grew up watching people laugh with tears still sitting in their eyes. I watched neighbors argue loud enough to wake the dead and

The Brick Was Never a Weapon A New Orleans Dream About What We Refuse to Drop. By Kāteb Shunnar Part One I was standing somewhere without a name. One of those dream places that feels familiar but does not belong to any address you have ever lived. The air was still. Not peaceful. Just waiting. In my hand was a brick. Solid. Heavy. The kind that fits too comfortably in the palm. The kind people throw when anger dresses itself up as righteousness and swears it knows what it is

Author's Opening Note Unknown fact before we even start New Orleans is one of the few cities in the world where anger and joy learned how to live in the same house and argue in the kitchen without breaking the table. We were raised on second lines and funerals that sound like celebrations. We cry loud and laugh louder. We hug hard and we curse under our breath while doing it. Down here we do not deny emotion. We season it. And sometimes we oversalt it. I did not write this be

Author’s Opening Note Here is an unknown fact most people never stop to consider. Emotional endurance does not grow evenly in human beings. It does not line up neat like pews in a church or chairs at a second line. Some folks were taught how to carry pain early. Others were taught how to hide it. And some were never taught anything except how to survive another day without falling apart in public. That alone should make us slow our mouths. I did not write this because I figur

Author’s Opening Words Let me tell you where this came from, because it did not fall out the sky wrapped in incense and poetry. It came from watching people talk themselves out of rooms they begged the Creator to put them in. It came from watching folks snatch defeat out the mouth of victory because they could not sit still long enough to let wisdom finish its sentence. It came from moments when I felt heat rise in my chest and had to decide whether I wanted to feel powerful

Author’s Opening Note Before you step into this reflection, let me tell you something plain and honest, with my shoes still dusty from life and my heart still a little tender. I did not write this from some quiet place where everything finally worked out. I wrote this with memories sitting beside me, pulling up a chair, tapping me on the shoulder, saying remember this too. I wrote this with tears that showed up uninvited and stayed longer than expected. And yes, I laughed at

Everybody Measuring Something That Don’t Matter How a Loud World Stay Counting the Wrong Things By Kāteb Shunnar Listen. Not the polite, church‑fan kind of listen where folks nod but already halfway gone. I mean lean in. Elbows on knees. Like somebody about to tell you something you didn’t ask for but probably need. That kind of listen. Because everywhere I look, somebody measuring something that don’t matter like it’s life or death. Folks counting likes like they calories. C

Get Down Off That Horse Before It Bucks You A Reflection on Humility, Ego, and Learning the Hard Way. By Kateb Shunnar Humility usually doesn’t knock politely. It kicks the door open when you’re halfway through congratulating yourself. One minute you’re feeling real accomplished, chest out, back straight, thinking you finally arrived. The next minute life says, “Arrived where?” and hands you a receipt you weren’t expecting. Most of us don’t start out arrogant. We get there sl

Bridges and Water: Lessons from the Edge of Fear. How Mama, the Lake, and the Creator Taught Me to Stay Afloat. By Kateb Shunnar I woke up with my heart acting like it had just run from something it couldn’t name. Eyes open, room quiet, but my spirit still jittery, like it didn’t get the memo that danger had clocked out. I lay there staring at the ceiling, letting the dream finish stretching its legs, because some dreams don’t like being rushed. You pull them too fast into d

Still Warm on Jonquil Street A Porch Side Reflection on Purpose, Loss, and the Kind of Wealth That Don’t Follow You Home. By Kateb Shunnar New Orleans will teach you things without ever pulling you aside. It don’t sit you down nice and neat. It lets life bump into you, shoulder first, and waits to see if you paying attention. This city hums with lessons. In the sidewalks. In the kitchens. In the way joy and grief walk arm in arm like they been knowing each other forever. Lif

Ignition When the Fire Knows Your Name Written by Kateb Shunnar Fire does not knock. It does not clear its throat. It does not wait for you to get comfortable or get dressed or get your thoughts together. Fire shows up when heat and fuel and oxygen decide to dance together, and once they lock arms, something is going to change. That is not science to me. That is life. That is the way the universe pulls us by the collar and says pay attention now. Growing up around New Orleans

When the Soul Runs a Fever A Reflection on Ego, Whispers, and Remembering Who Got Us Here. By Kateb Shunnar I still see it clear as a summer mirage on Claiborne. That old 1989 Chevrolet Vandura G-Series, G30 to be exact, sitting there like it had stories it wasn’t done telling yet. Sun beating down, cicadas hollering like they paying rent, and me eleven years old, skinny as a question mark standing next to my Paw Paw Wallace while he leaned over that engine like it owed him m