We pulled Brief Encounters out of my Janus collection that T gave me for my 50th birthday and began watching it last night. It’s a 1945 movie by David Lean about a woman who has an affair – it’s a melodrama – they say this movie may have even set the bar for melodramas to come. It’s a great movie and deserves to be part of anyone’s classic collection. The thing that was fascinating is…
We don’t have a babysitter so we can’t go but if we could – we’d be there with flying colors: Evan Christopher and Tom McDermott at Snug Harbor joined by James Singleton with Meschiya Lake on vocals. Damn!
When I saw that 2000 dead birds had died the same day I was contemplating double digit birds on a wire, I worried the news was a harbinger of worse things to come. Now I read in the NYT this morning that it was 5000 dead birds in Arkansas and 500 here in Louisiana. I read this with great interest because for the 60th day in a row, I woke with a terrific headache. A…
The New Orleans Museum of Art’s 100 year anniversary kicked off this morning with the St. Augustine Marching Band marching up LeLong Avenue. We got out there right at the band had gotten into formation, at the entrance to City Park, and what ensued was nothing short of magical. I’ve always seen the band marching during Mardi Gras, but to have this outside on this splendid day almost to ourselves was just splendid. They were…
We went to see Dive last night, shown by the Afrikan Film Festival above the Fair Grinds Coffehouse and it was refreshingly well done. Of course, it brought up a lot of the same reaction I had to reading Michael Pollan’s food diatribes, in particular the open letter he wrote to the President elect printed in the New York Times. We’re caught in a trap could have been the title of either – the film…
Last night was an innocent night out, to go watch a documentary, which I will go into later, but along the way many things happened. I had emailed a number of friends about the film and when I saw one of them there, I was delighted. Then she told me that she’s separated from her partner. Like us, they recently adopted a little boy. I just started crying. It almost reminded me of my friend…
This week felt like 10 weeks and I still can’t believe I’m telling people to have a good weekend. Monday started in fits and then proceeded to ramp up and up and now it is at a level of impossible – so this is when you say, Phew! Thank God It’s Friday. We’re headed to see a documentary on Dumpster Diving that is being screened at the Fairgrinds today at 6PM.
If my dad were alive, he would turn 87 tomorrow. He died in 1985 – 26 years ago. It took a long time for me to think of him as gone – he was such an enigma, so powerful, so iconic. What I always remember most is being in my parents’ king-sized bed and being tickled, hugged, snuggled and kissed. 51 years later I still hold those memories fondly. One of my dearest friends just…
To further seal the deal, today I got the shiny dime that we had hidden in the sweet potatoes on New Year’s Day.
It is a lovely day here in New Orleans, January 6th, Epiphany, the beginning of Mardi Gras and a temperate winter day as we have come to expect here in the Gulf South. The dogs and I romped through the park this morning and there was a bird party going on. Geese, grebes, ducks, swans, cormorants, pelicans – it was looney. As we rounded the backside of the park and were making our towards the…