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Location: New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

Leonard Earl Johnson (photo credit Frank Parsley) covered Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (2005), and the 2010 British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for ConsumerAffairs.com. He is a contributor to Gambit Weekly, New Orleans Magazine, SCAT, Baton Rouge Advocate, Advocate Magazine, The Times-Picayune, Country Roads Magazine, Palm Springs Newswire and the anthologies: FRENCH QUARTER FICTION (Light of New Orleans Publishing), LOUISIANA IN WORDS (Pelican Publishing), LIFE IN THE WAKE (NOLAfuges.com), and more. Johnson is a former Merchant Seaman, and columnist at Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans; and African-American Village. Attended Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and Harry Lundeberg School of Seamanship at Piney Point, Maryland. Winner of the Press Club of New Orleans Award for Excellence, 1991, and given the Key to The City and a Certificate of Appreciation from the New Orleans City Council for a Gambit Weekly story on murder in the French Quarter.

Tuesday, October 01, 2024

✍ WHAT GOES UP / October 2024


~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher.

Created A. I. free

by Leonard Earl Johnson 

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

 www.LEJ.world 

© 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved 

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October 2024

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⭐ WHAT GOES UP 

Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series

BY  Leonard Earl Johnson

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© 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

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Photo credit: Leonard Earl Johnson

Amtrak  🚅.....
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The train bearing our little klatch of 
Red-Hatted 
Women-for-The-Donald
wobbles off down the tracks leading from Lafayette, Louisiana to the Texas border.  

At a table under the club car's upper deck observation 
dome sits the large woman who boarded in Lafayette with a small following and the biggest red hat she could find in Dallas. She opens a green alligator briefcase exactly like the one Sylvia and Balthazar took to New Orleans, and extracts a clear cube inside of which sits a solidly frozen Republican Snowball.

"A manifest example of non- Global Warming." 

She continues, 

"To quote Our Fearless Leader: 
'Global Warming is a  
Liberal Wacky Wokey Hoaxy'."

She smiles at one of her acolytes and instructs her to pass pamphlets to three glum faced women watching from the table across the aisle. 

The three women are bound for Lake Charles. They hold red paper coffee cups liberally laced with Bourbon, and wear faces that are liberally skeptical. 

Now they live in Lafayette. They previously lived in Lake Charles and 
Capital One Bank's Bank One Tower
Lake Charles, Louisiana 
proudly worked at Capital One Bank's Bank One Tower   
~  ~  at twenty-two stories the tallest building between Lafayette and Houston. They are taking the train back home to witness The Tower being brought down in a highly publicized implosion, following years of FEMA inertia, and private investor reluctance to reopening the building after Hurricanes Laura and Delta blew out its windows and closed it down but left it standing. The implosion will not be so sparing.

"Makes you think FEMA and investors might know more 'bout  Global Warming than Republicans do." one of the former Lake Charles residents says to the acolyte handing her a pamphlet.

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Meanwhile in Lafayette, at the Rosa Parks Amtrak stop, Sylvia and Balthazar cross Jefferson Street for Rêve Coffee Roasters. There they are greeted by their friend, The Mulato, who asks if
 they brought Stormy Daniels back with them for Halloween.

Photo credit:
Leonard Earl Johnson
"No," Sylvia says. 

"But Balthazar did buy a Trump Voodoo Doll for twenty-dollars, from a street picker at a gas station under the Broad Street overpass."

Balthazar holds up the little orange headed doll with a long hat pin through its bloated chest.  The Mulato sits their coffee on the counter and laughs.

Balthazar picks up the cups and they move out to the curbside tables. Sylvia unlocks their broken green alligator brief case and transfers it and its empty snowball cube to a Rouses Supermarket bag. 

Shortly an Uber driver pulls up, takes the bag and drives off down Jefferson Street. The Street is under an early Fall canopy of browning 

Spring budding, Bald Cypress Trees
Jefferson Street, Lafayette, Louisiana
Photo credit: Leonard Earl Johnson 

Bald Cypress Trees gathering deciduous needles round their knees, and around storm drains up and down The Hub City's Great Art Way

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Copyright, 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
~ to be continued ~

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Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

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Lagniappe du Jour

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Implosion Day, Bank One Tower
Lake Charles, Louisiana

Jefferson Street Cypress Knees
 The Great Art Way, Lafayette, Louisiana
Photo credit: Leonard Earl Johnson
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Photo credit: Leonard Earl Johnson

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The Ladies Wore Red,

July 2021

Origin Story

 

If you wish to read any month's column go to www.LEJ.world anytime. 
They are posted on the first of each month and polished for the next few years.
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 LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp
is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.world,
Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER,
and historically at
Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans
publication of the

It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana