Three years ago, filmmaker Spike Lee and CNN reporter Soledad O’Brien gave video cameras to several New Orleans teens to document their lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Brandon Franklin, saxophonist for To Be Continued Brass Band, was one of those children. (2:38 mark) He survived the floodwaters and went on to become a young father and a beloved and widely respected musician and teacher. He was gunned down on Mother’s Day this year at the age of 22.

Although TBC has been one of my favorite brass bands for years, I didn’t know Brandon very well and had only hung out with him a few times in the weeks just prior to his death. Yet writing an article about the loss of this young man has been one of the most difficult assignments I’ve ever faced, harder in some ways even than reporting from Ground Zero after Hurricane Katrina. Before the levee breaches, folks in New Orleans joked after every storm, somewhat morbidly, about how we dodged a bullet, ‘The Big One’ that would surely one day hit and fill our bowl-shaped city with water. Five years after surviving a near fatal wound we, the ‘resilient’ ones, have finally turned a corner in the recovery of our city. But we’re also still dodging bullets that threaten to take out what we’ve fought so vigilantly these last five years to save - a future for New Orleans. We all must commit ourselves to addressing this threat if we’re truly going to redeem this city. Brandon’s story serves as a testimony to what’s worth saving in New Orleans and a portending of darker days should we fail to heed its warning.

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8:30-11:30am: ‘Bravery, Strength, Resilience’
Memorial Celebration Will begin at The Lower Nine Monument, Tennessee St. at N. Claiborne.  United States Congresswoman Maxine Waters to serve as keynote speaker.

10:00am-6:00pm: 5th Annual Katrina Commemoration March
Healing Ceremony located at Jourdan Road and North Galvez at the levee breach in the Lower 9th Ward. March starts immediately after reading of names, going down Claiborne Ave ending at Hunter’s Field (St. Bernard Ave. at Claiborne Ave).

* video courtesy of Lisa Palumbo

Harvey Pekar, the cartoonist behind American Splendor, died this morning at his Cleveland home at the age of 70. Memories of Pekar are already flooding the Web, along with official obits (The New York Times, The Washington Post).

In the early 2000s, Pekar was coaxed into being a sometimes-Gambit contributor by former editor Michael Tisserand, who was a huge fan of the man and his work. In 2003, Tisserand even wrote his own American Splendor-type comic about his interactions with Pekar and had it illustrated by Rhett Thiel.

Today, in honor of Harvey Pekar, we’re running that comic again (download the whole thing here), and presenting Michael Tisserand’s remembrance of his cantankerous friend:

Lonnie Johnson, Fats Domino, Dennis McGee, Clifton Chenier, Kid Ory. Thanks to Harvey Pekar, these aren’t just Louisiana music legends. They were comic heroes in the pages of Gambit Weekly.

Pekar is known to most people for his American Splendor comic book, his memorable appearances with David Letterman, and the acclaimed movie American Splendor, in which he appeared as himself. For a few years in the early 2000s, he also became an occasional Gambit contributor. His masterful portraits of local musicians managed to convey essential biographical information, Pekar’s own opinions, and a dash of wry wit in just a few words and images. It was a great honor to work with him.

Shortly after Katrina, I wrote in an essay that I returned to my Gambit office shortly after the waters went down and salvaged my Harvey Pekar bobblehead, a gift from arts editor David Lee Simmons. The essay was picked up by the alt weekly in Harvey’s home town of Cleveland, and the next day I received an email from Joyce Brabner, Pekar’s wife. “Interesting priorities,” she wrote. “Until reading this I believed that I would be the only one thinking to grab and save Harvey Pekar in the event of a catastrophe.”

That was the last contact I had with either Harvey or Joyce … almost. A couple years back, Harvey was appearing in Chicago to promote a comics anthology that he had edited. I was living there at the time and when we met up, I was feeling pretty forlorn about missing New Orleans and the chain of events that had brought me north. Harvey certainly recognized self-pity when he saw it. “You’re writing and your wife’s got a good job,” he said. “What have you got to complain about?”

I started to answer him, but then stopped. What did I expect? A soft shoulder from the man who made timeless art out of a decades-long drudge job as a hospital file clerk? When Pekar scoffed, it was like being serenaded by a master soloist. As he explained in the film American Splendor: “If you’re the kind of person looking for romance or escapism or some fantasy figure to save the day, guess what? You’ve got the wrong movie.”

This afternoon, we spoke to Betty Fox, the daughter of Antoinette K-Doe, who has been keeping the family’s Mother-in-Law Lounge open for a year and a half since her mother passed away unexpectedly on Mardi Gras 2009. Betty sounded exhausted down to her soul.

“I really have to do this. It’s actually overwhelming,” she said. “Everybody has a certain niche for something. My mama’s niche was this place, but it’s not mine. It’s just not mine. I been doing this a year and a half and I’m just tired.”

Regarding the sale of the bar’s contents, Betty said she was keeping the family’s personal mementos (including the famous K-Doe mannequin, the costumes, and the photos), but would be selling the fixtures at a garage sale/silent auction on July 10. “I’m going to sell the tubs in the yard, and some of the household stuff, but I’m keeping the family things. I want to maybe open a museum in a year or so.

“Right now I need to find a house,” she said. “I been sleeping on a couch in the bar for a year and a half. People don’t know that. Upstairs, there’s no electricity or water, there’s mold, and the termites have eaten up everything, it’s not livable … people don’t know the half of it. I want to get me a house.

“I have to do this,” she said, “for my own sanity.”

The garage sale/silent auction begins at 10 a.m. on Sat. July 10 at the Mother-in-Law.

According to a post on the bar’s Facebook page, Ernie K-Doe’s Mother-in-Law Lounge — a fixture in the Treme and a draw for locals and visitors from around the world — will be closing for good in July.

The lounge, which was operated by Antoinette K-Doe after the 2001 death of her husband, R&B legend Ernie K-Doe, has gone through a number of setbacks in recent years, from Hurricane Katrina and the federal floods to the unexpected passing of Miss Antoinette herself on the morning of Mardi Gras 2009. The lounge has been operated by Antoinette’s daughter, Betty Fox, but Betty has announced on Facebook that the contents of the lounge will be sold at a garage sale/silent auction on Sat., July 10.

We’ve got a call in to Miss Betty to talk about the passing of this local institution.