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I was thinking that next year I’d like to have Carnival masks to hang outside for Mardi Gras. You know the kind that look like jesters and one is frowning and one is smiling. A friend told me that she went to the Quarter alone with her toddler and saw a woman standing on the corner of Royal and Esplanade, with two children in a wagon, and one in her arms and she and the…
Sign A Petition To Ban Cruel Kangaroo Experiment March 11, 2011 A proposed experiment by the University of Wollongong in New South Wales has animal lovers seeing red, and a petition has been set up to voice disapproval over the experiment, which school officials have not yet decided on. According to the petition, the experiment aims to measure and study the farts of Kangaroos – which are notable because they don’t release any methane gas, unlike other grazing animals. The goal of…
It was back to music class this morning after a respite for Mardi Gras and it was good to see all the little people who just months ago were strangers and are not part of the repertoire of our lives. Afterwards, we stopped by friends uptown and wound up in the pool where Tin wanted to go underwater and then didn’t want to stop going underwater – good sign for our future of summers at…
My Father’s Drums Through closed doors and double-glazed windows all over the neighborhood. The one true American art form, he called it, records turned up so loud the floorboards buzzed. No rock and roll allowed. No three-chord progressions in this house; no rudimentary hook, no bridge, no lame refrain, no silly haircuts please, we are musicians. Bashing along with the hi-fi he banged through our days and nights with a rat-a-tat rage, the fury fired…
I have written extensively before about my loathing of mothers who have said to me over the years, “you can’t know until you’re a mother.” Blech. I hate the superiority of that statement, the you versus them, the mommy club. It really strikes me like a club over the head. But last night, I ran into this exchange from the opposite side. I was chatting with friends, one with two biological children, one with an…
Last night at Swirl just in conversation I said three cuss words – $60. Oh well, I’m trying but the jar is getting rich off my inability to turn off the cussing spout. Meanwhile, a while back I wrote that I’m trying to change my life a thought at a time. Well, during Mardi Gras I didn’t meditate once, but yesterday I finally did and it opened up my day because I was able to…
I went last night to watch the Sacred Harp at the Fairgrinds Coffee Shop, put on by the New Orleans Afrikan Film Festival and was impressed to see a packed house. Only the film itself was about an hour too long for me because I didn’t find anything sacred in scared harp singing other than from an historical point of view. Someone said there were no black people singing sacred harp and I thought well,…
I’m sitting here looking out the blue blue bayou and thinking of Japan. It’s nighttime there and people are dealing with stranded transportation systems, telephones and communication systems down. And dead loved ones. In one second your life is turned upside down. How people endure tragedy – natural to human made is still a mystery to me – a testament to the human spirit. I still haven’t gotten my own Federal Flood/Katrina tattoo – nor…
I’m sort of surprised after listening to It’s New Orleans! podcast on gay life in New Orleans that there is no history written about this subject, but stay tuned because Frank Perez’s book In Exile will be out soon. I’m also surprised that it’s 2011 and being gay still has to be defined, has to be labelled, has to be out there – different and queer.