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We walked over to the Botanical Gardens to see New Orleans Mystics playing covers of early Motown. A neighbor’s sister was in from out of town and had a mint julep in one hand and was flailing her other hand up in the air to the rhythm of Mustang Sally. She said she felt like she was back in Myrtle Beach in 1965. I was getting a kick out of seeing all those old men and women getting out of their seats and getting down but couldn’t figure it out – I kept thinking how does this generation know MY music – then it clicked, I was 6 years old in 1965 and this was THEIR music because they were in their twenties on the beach listening to the Ojays, Sam Cook, the Temptations take their breath away. I was still in short pants playing 45s on my portable turntable.

Tin was having a blast – he was eating dried sour cherries and rice crackers and watching everyone getting tipsy on mint juleps and Try A Little Tenderness. When we put him down he started swaying his hips back and forth. The band was rocking, they brought in the full fledged glitter zoot suits and moves and do wop and I have never seen the Botanical Gardens shake rattle and roll like that before.

Fun times.

These challenge grants that Pepsi is handing out all over the place are a nuisance, they don’t do anything but refresh Pepsi’s email list so that they can market to you, the person who benignly thinks you are helping out a cause close to your heart get the $50,000 Pepsi promises them if they get loyal supporters to keep clicking on the grant award. I get every day emails from Friends of Tennessee Williams and others looking for me to go on and give them a click, but that means I must as well give Pepsi my information.

I would prefer not to. There are just some things I won’t do for money.

Last night, a friend and I went to have dinner at the new restaurant on Frenchman Street – the Three Muses – a very welcome addition to the area. Nicely decorated in a New Orleans folksy decor, a live band playing in the window a la Spotted Cat, and tapas that ranged from lamb sliders to Korean bento box. Very yummy. And pretty packed for a Wednesday night as it should have been.

Then we walked over to another new restaurant called the Italian Barrel on Barracks Street, across from the Mint, on the edge of the French Market – the chef/owner, Samantha is from Verona- we ate delicious tiramisu at an outside table and enjoyed the first feelings of fall in the air.

My friend said she had just had hatch peppers and I made a mental note to get some myself – another seasonal cue that fall is here. How great is it these hatch peppers appear for such a short time so they can be regarded as special unlike all the other fruits and vegetables that have become year round staples as they travel in from around the world as growers rotate their crops south to keep the same vegetables growing out of rhythm and time. Time to celebrate local and hatch season.

And celebrate some damn good cooking going on in New Orleans – go out to dinner if you can – try Three Muses and Italian Barrel – two scrumptious additions to the already wonderful cuisine of New Orleans. Also take a walk around the Quarter since the weather now allows you to enjoy being outdoors.

Sat on the back steps this afternoon – I voluntarily sat on the back steps – meaning that I was eating a snack and was coming back to my office and I was compelled to sit on the back steps. Must be fall.

I sat on my terrace today. I actually went out the door of my office and pulled the chair into the shade and read a trade journal. I was on the terrace – I have only run out there since May to show someone the lovely view and dash back in. Must be fall.

I got in my truck today and sat there for a moment before I started the engine. The warmth from the sun was welcoming. WELCOMING – you heard? I love that feeling of getting in a sun warmed vehicle when it is WELCOMING. Must be fall.

Summer is over. Fall is here.

When the dogs and I walked around the park this morning the light was even lower and more horizontal. A tree was glowing, I mean this, it was radiating these warm pink tones like it was lit up from the inside. That was because this slant of light, this fall sun ray, was hitting it just in the right spot to illuminate it. Must be fall.

FEMA has just announced that New Orleans schools will receive $1.8 billion for construction and renovation projects.

A dear friend told me “change requires sacrifice” today – it’s a spin on beauty requires sacrifice, which she overheard a mother telling her young daughter who was whining about too tight shoes (yikes!). But who likes change? No one. I mean some thrive on change and some force change to happen, but change is always disruptive (and I don’t use disruptive as a pejorative term). The thing is I got two calls today – one from a source I have spoken with for ten years who left the company she has worked at for 23 years after one reorg too many. She basically downloaded in a one hour conversation the highs and lows of her tenure and also conveyed the thrill, fear and excitement of the new. I went about my day and then got another call – this one an SOS from a dear friend – having tried to quit her job earlier this year and being convinced to stay on she was confronted with a new situation that would not stand and she needed to know, or needed to hear, that it was okay to feel that way and to take action.

Who likes change? Nobody, really. Change is the unknown. But remember the meaning of life, the meaning of life is not to be comfortable, it is to live it and life is nothing but enormous changes at the last minute to quote a Grace Paley title.

I’m sure the food chain is going to break down – exposé like Pollan’s are not the only reason. How about zillions of eggs recalled from Iowa? We bought our milk from Smith’s Creamery at the Green Market on Saturday – it is from Washington Parish where my grandmother ran a dairy farm when I was a kid. We’ll get our eggs from them too – they were out this Saturday.

Instead of plowing into vegetarianism like we were considering – we’re making steps towards sustainable, small and local and that is making sense to us right now.

Tin’s favorite thing in the world right now is the moon – everything is the moooooooooon. He got to see the moon in all its fullness last night as we were waiting for T to get home from her first night of class before going to sleep and we sat on the porch and watched the big old moon in the ink dark sky and the honeyed hues it cast on the bayou last night. I pulled out my pocket like my Turkish friend taught me and said “Fill it up, Fill it up, Fill it up.” But I don’t need anything really – it’s more like I was saying I’m full up, I’m full up, I’m full up – thanks thanks thanks.

There are times when the weight of things gone by tends to drag us down. There is a great zen story of two monks walking in dense woods under an oath of silence when they happen upon a woman who has tried to climb a fence and got stuck in the barb wire. One of the monks goes to help her, and untangles her dress from the fence and soothes her with calming words as he helps her across the fence. Then the monks keep walking and after they have passed the threshold of where their silence ends the other monk turns to him and says, “You broke your vow.” And the monk looks at him and says, “I left that girl on the other side of the fence, so should you.”

This morning I walked the dogs around the bayou up by Desaix and they went swimming and I saw a friend who lives down there. He said he was tired of hearing about the anniversary of Katrina this and that and wanted everyone to just move passed this in their lives. Passed Katrina, passed the BP oil spill, passed all of these things that don’t serve us anymore.

Today’s yoga musing was about Rudra who fiercely disavows you of any tired thoughts you have and makes you think in an enlightened way – sort of very direct – but in yoga we talked about losing the tired, world weary ideas that weigh us down and opening ourselves up to new. Rudra is usually depicted with music and surrounded by fire and much like we have here in New Orleans it’s about destruction and resurrection and about the music that guides us through these transitions whether they be about sorrow or about joy.

Sunday marks five years since New Orleans was under water – yes we are moving on, but maybe it’s the Jew in me that also feels like we should never forget – so we’re going to release some of our inner demons by burning wisps of papers with all the things that we harbor that no longer serve us written on them and then we will cast a piece of bread into the bayou for each of those things we welcome into our lives now. We’ll be channeling a little Rudra.

Today, as we were trying to decide with the nanny which corner would be where Tin would have his time-outs since he has taken to hitting when he’s frustrated or tired, and taken to fits when he doesn’t get what he wants, we settled upon the corner of the bookcase. Might be good to be right there by all those writings about life’s ups and downs.

A friend sent a link to a book recently written by a father who had adopted his first child at 50 years of age and then his second five years later and he wrote about it. Here is an excerpt:

Baby, We Were Meant For Each Other: In Praise of Adoption: By Scott Simon

Adoption is a miracle. I don’t mean just that it’s amazing, terrific, and a wonderful thing to do. I mean that it is, as the dictionary says, “a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of divine agency.”

When we started down the road to adoption in earnest we read many books and most of them about transracial adoptions. A few we read were written from those who were adopted and there was some heavy stuff in them from now 40 year olds given a voice in their adoption and what it meant to them – for some it did not have good or warm fuzzy meaning, instead they felt ripped out of their culture and thrown into foreign territory (and they never quite got over it). We read a book by a Jewish woman who adopted an African American boy and the joy that permeated those pages made the book itself glow with warmth.

A friend adopted biracial children and told me he had read that the girls want to seek their roots when they get older and the boys are just mad, angry at having been abandoned.

I want you to know all of this would give the most steadfast pause but here is the truth of the matter as I see it. One day my little boy is going to want to know why the woman who gave birth to him could give him up if he is so special and for that my answer would most likely be, “You can’t know what that woman’s life was like until you’ve walked a mile in her shoes. It would be better to think that the woman who gave you life loved you enough to know you would have the life you deserved with parents who had the capacity and desire to raise you to be the man you are today.” And for that I am hoping he is grateful.

Because we sure are grateful for him, and just like my mother told me how she thanked god every day for me, even with having to find a corner where Tin can have a time-out being top of mind today, today is just another day that I thank god for him.