After I left the Saints & Sinners panel discussion yesterday, I walked across the street to the Arcadian Books store on Orleans and bought a book of historic jazz photos. Tin, of course, loves it. Today when I returned from spinning having felt some sort of transcendence in working my body through the ongoing fatigue I’ve been feeling, I drove up to find a friend and her mother and the dogs and T and T2 all…
Last night, a friend ragged my joie de vivre saying she reads my blog but disagrees sometimes with my effusiveness about New Orleans. “It’s so great to live here!” she mocked, “is there any place better?” she rolled her eyes [well, no] – she harpooned me, “there are other places, this place isn’t always so great.” Oh, really now? Do tell? Could I live in another city and raise Tin like I’m raising him? I…
Tin’s nanny, Margarete Beeson curated her first big show in New Orleans at the Candle Factory last night, the Toy Art Show, and oh my was it fun! Sure there was plenty of doll art, but there was also a shadow puppet show doing A to Z of mythological creatures, a lighted hooping act, a marching band called Noisician Coalition playing some weird funky stuff that took Tin a while to get his groove on,…
A fellow blogger asked me to cover one of the panels at the 2011 Saints & Sinners Literary Festival and thereby introduced me to it, as it always followed too close on the heels of the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival and Jazz Fest to pique my interest. But having gone yesterday for only one panel to whet my appetite, I’m sorry that it has taken me this long to notice it. And I was even…
I received a $50 gift certificate to iTunes as a thank you for Jazz Fest hosting – do you know how awesome that is when I made a pact not to buy any new music this year and it was almost breaking me! I received a boar’s head skeleton from a friend who found it in the swamps – I’m a boar according to the Chinese horoscope – so it’s perfect. I received a jeweled…
For many of us toys are the gateway to imagination. They rekindle childhood, gifting us misplaced memories and sparkles of happiness. Over 20 local artists and several amazing performers have come together for NOLA’s first Toy Art Show! May 14th at the Candle Factory Doors open at 7pm, performances start at 8pm. *Sliding scale donation $5-10 goes to the performers.*( no one turned away) Children welcome. Acts include: Puppet show by: Mudlark theatre Troupe, Aerial…
We’re 18 days away from the beginning of Hurricane Season here in New Orleans and today, we’re watching the floodwaters cresting and the opening of the Morganza Floodway to head off a catastrophe. Take a deep breath in, then let it out. And if it weren’t unnerving enough to sit down here at the approach of hurricane season and know that it could go either way, and to think that our plan for a weekend…
So in 2004 during Mardi Gras, I was walking around the streets singing Who Shot The LaLa over and over and a little boy kept telling me to quit singing that song. But obviously the song stuck in his head so in 2005 when I bought the house on Moss Street his dad drove him by to look at it and he pronounced it first Rachel’s Writing House and then later changed it to Rachel’s…
The Cox Cable guys decided to come camp out at my house the last two days. Everyone wonders what is wrong with Rachel – her computer dies, her modem dies, her printer dies, her cellphone dies, her Blackberry dies, her camera dies, her email goes down, her web host goes MIA – it’s like I am in the digital world but the digital world is against me. Know what I mean? I really need to…
S0 dragging around after our post Jazz Fest blues, we’re all looking for some music. Lucky for us, we live in New Orleans, where it is a stone’s throw away (after all Bayou Boogaloo starts this coming weekend). Two friends who are musicians (one teaches kids drumming in schools) started a drumming circle that meets in Fortier Park on Thursdays at 6PM. We went yesterday before Tatjana returned from her trip and although Angie asked…