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John Stoss’ Whatever Passes for Love is Love is a primer for anyone who wonders what it is like to be part of the fabric of New Orleans. The drama unfolds inside the Maple Leaf Bar and into a few pages you begin to imagine you are sitting there on a tottering bar stool, smelling smoke and ash, listening to the droning of those intent on living their couch potato lives as public fixtures. But there is a twist. Commanding the bar is Everette Maddox (or rather Madden), the poet laureate of the Maple Leaf. Andrew Codrescu wrote, “Everette was the perfect master of ceremonies over a dying dance that took a few happy, booze-soaked years to play out . . . . The South, New Orleans, decay, poetry, wit, crippling nostalgia, and carpe diem–all of these things wafted off Everette like the smell of whiskey and cigarettes . . . .” And so it is that reading Stoss’ script evokes New Orleans more than a whole season of Treme has ever done, because Stoss gets what’s going on here, as Maddox did.

The dialogue, “I can remember when people ate possum,” the scene descriptions, “PIANOBOY, THE GREATEST BLUES PIANO PLAYER EVER, A YOUNG BLACK MAN, WAITS AT OAK ST. AND CARROLLTON FOR A STREETCAR. IT ARRIVES AND HE GETS ON. WE WALKS PAST TWO BLACK MEN WHO ARE HOLDING WINE BOTTLES, ONCE SEATED, WE HEAR HIS PIANO PLAYING AND THE TWO MEN DRUNKENLY DANCE TO HIS MUSIC, AND THE DRIVER PARTICIPATES WHILE DRIVING,” and the characters, “ENTER JOE. HE IS A NEW ORLEANIAN AND HAS AN EASTERN ACCENT, AS MANY DO. HE IS VERY FAT, IN SUIT AND TIE AND AS TASTELESS AS A HUMAN BEING CAN BE” are all uniquely New Orleans but the tenderness with which Stoss depicts these ne’erdewells and this ethereal, moribund city is his very own brand of what could only be described as love. Or whatever passes for love.

Never, ever go to a Tiki Party again.
Never, ever drink fruity cocktails with lei decorated straws, ever, again.
Never again.

Fidel’s death is still not confirmed but HIGHLY SUSPECTED now for months. You read his obituary here first!

Fidel Castro just died and so too his and Che’s dream of a new order.

My family in Miami might spit on me for saying this but Fidel achieved in a short order of time a total revolution – he brought literacy to the people, he brought equal opportunity, and sadly he lost sight of utopia and he became more and more removed from the people themselves and soon there was equally no opportunity and literacy meant little when all there was to read were books about Fidel. Yes folks, he lost his mind and his vision, but in concept, his vision had merit.

I was born in May 1959, we left Havana in March 1959 with the clothes on our backs (I was in my mom’s tummy). I went back in 1999 to celebrate my 40th birthday and I saw a Cuba that was an enigma – I went with the backdrop of the dotcom explosion happening in San Francisco and found a way of life in Cuba that seemed more worthy of living, and still I was repulsed by Castro’s rigid hold on the minds and bodies of the people there. I have little hope in his brother’s rule and truly believe the best days of Cuba lie ahead, but it is not without concern about what happens to the island when special interests take over and once again exploit the natural beauty of the people, land and culture for private material gain.

Viva la Revolución! Only this time, the right one.

I went to a study group the other night on Rudolf Steiner’s Education as a Force for Social Change and for those who don’t know Steiner called his philosophy spiritual science. This may come as an oxymoron for some, but it doesn’t for me. I often describe myself as a secular Jew, but only a few people really get what I mean.

I was listening to a Bill Moyers podcast on my bike ride out to Lake Ponchartrain where he was interviewing author Robert Wright, about his book The Evolution of God.

First, can I just say I am in love with Bill Moyers – I just want to be him when I grow up into my true journalistic self.

The book sounds fascinating, but right now my books-to-read stack is outweighing me, so sadly like I used to read the New York Review of Books instead of reading some books, now I’m listening to podcast about some books in lieu of reading them – (see my Live a Weary Life post). Interestingly enough, Wright says that one of his epiphanies came while at a Buddhist meditation retreat, he felt a one with the universe feeling we (or some of us) are aiming for in our spiritual lives.

Here is an excerpt from the podcast:

BILL MOYERS: Are human beings likely to grow out of their need for God?

ROBERT WRIGHT: I think it’s going to be a long time before a whole lot of them do, if they do. So religion will be the medium by which people express their values for a long time to come so it’s important to understand what brings out the best and the worst in it. And I think, you know, the answer to that question depends partly on how abstractly you define religion. You know, there is this William James quote about religion is the idea that there is an unseen order and our supreme interests lie in harmoniously adjusting ourselves to that order. And it’s a good definition because it encompasses the great variety of the things we’ve called religion, I think. And not many definitions do. If you define religion that way I think it’ll probably be with us forever, because if you define religion that way, I’m religious. And that’s defining it pretty broadly if I qualify.

At the study group, we began by going around the table and describing why we had come and what our spiritual background is – an interesting way to start a meeting no doubt. We discussed everything from Christianity and social justice to hallucinogenics that was another path to empathy and spirituality.

I think James’ quote sums it up pretty succinctly – there is an unseen order and our supreme interests lie in harmoniously adjusting ourselves to that order – whether that be through meditation or hallucinogens.

I keep getting these spam emails about baldness – hmmm, let’s see, I wonder why.

Yesterday, I went over to Swirl to hang flyers for Waldorf’s open house and a friend told me that another friend had said my hair was starting to grow back. She looked at my smooth pate and said, um, I don’t think so.

I yam what I yam.

When I returned to New Orleans after being in California for sixteen years, I was taken aback by Margaret Orr, our local meteorologist – she looked fabulous. Not to mention she had become a redhead, my own personal favorite shade. So yesterday, when I was in Saks getting my Kiehl’s moisturizer and I ran into her I said, “You know Margaret, I have to say you look stunning – I mean you are more beautiful than you were twenty years ago – how I don’t know, but you are.”

She focused instead on my bald head, and said her daughter was fighting cancer too – she was diagnosed in 2007 with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. It’s hard to believe you could be any more embarrassed than just being bald, but being bald and having to tell people you don’t have cancer all the time is in and of itself uncomfortable, especially when either they have come through cancer themselves or have a love one struggling with it. It almost seems trite trying to explain Hashimoto’s Disease and alopecia and stress.

In the meantime, I’m rooting for Margaret’s daughter.

October 12, 2012
Taurus (4/20-5/20)
There is a lot of love swirling around you today, so why don’t you reach out and get some of it for yourself? You deserve it. Start showing yourself the affection you want other people to show you, in whatever way you feel that it’s appropriate. Buy yourself a nice present, take yourself out for a great dinner, or book yourself a day at a spa. You can’t rely on other people to pamper you — it’s not realistic. So if you deserve it, you should go out and get it.

Down the street at the church on the corner of Canal and Jeff Davis is a marquis saying, “Live a Worthy Life.” Tall order, I say.

We’ve started a Rudolf Steiner study group at Waldorf and the first group met for the first time last night and the book we are studying is called, “Education as a Force for Social Change.” It is a series of lectures Steiner gave leading up to the opening and development of the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart.

In the first lecture he talks about how a child’s development centers around the first seven or so years of imitation and the job of a parent is to be worthy of that imitation. Let’s see how many times I’ve failed in that category – I don’t have enough fingers to count off.

It’s an interesting notion that you bring this child into the world, or in my case, bring him up in the world, and how do you envision your role? I think a lot of parents are just slugging it out and trying their best and might be living up to a different motto, which is Live a Worthy Weary Life. But if you stop for just one moment and take a breath and remember what your goal is – to raise an independent and free thinking child – then you have to remember that Phase 1 is all about you being worthy so your child is imitating the best in you.

And again we learn, parenting is not for pussies.

I was speaking to an ex colleague today about stretching our writer’s muscles again, about new opportunities, and about the brave new world of social media. And the truth is that I’m passionate about all of these things, but my main job right now is Mom and for that I’m grateful. I pick up Tin every day from school and we have different activities – on Thursdays, it’s Kenjy time, on Wednesdays is Jerrod time, and sometimes they overlap – they are the three musketeers, even Jerrod and Kenjy have gone on to a higher grade.

it is not all self sacrifice because the truth is that in Tin’s friends, I’ve made my own: