It’s that time of year again in New Orleans, in Faubourg St. John, on the bayou – JAZZ FEST! And as usual, I have my brass pass in hand and can’t wait. This will be Tin’s first Jazz Fest and I hope there are many more in his future. Tonight, the strategy – to mark the acts I want to see and to make other choices as well. Tomorrow, by this time I will have…
Yesterday the WWL newstruck pulled up as we were all sitting on the porch ending our week with Tin having peanut butter and rice crackers for the first time, and us just starting to relax. CNN had just named New Orleans as one of the ten most dangerous cities in the world and they wanted to know what we thought about it. We gave them an earful – yes New Orleans has long had the…
We sidled up to our friend and neighbor’s couch to watch the premier of Treme. I came to the show with trepidation that New Orleans is in essence an enigma and hard to capture, but willing to suspend my disbelief to join in the fun. Half way into the plotless story I had this weird feeling that someone was staring into our daily life here in New Orleans and viewers would need a translator because…
I keep thinking about the article in the NYT magazine about Treme when it said that New Orleans is all about the moments. Like the moment when we were about to come out of the park yesterday, and I noticed, beside the white stairs that are in the meadow that are an installation post-Katrina that signify the steps home, a gold chair made of twigs and leaves. I did a double take. Today Tin and…
Usually I wake up in the morning and T is talking already, she wakes up with words gushing out of her mouth. I always marvel at her ability to find speech so soon after sleep. Similarly, at a certain point even before he wakes, T2 is talking up a storm about something that nobody knows – Da Da, Moo Moo. About this time, Loca jumps up in the bed and does a few downward dogs…
When my mom was in the hospital for six months in critical condition, I harped at the nurses for not updating her blackboard every day with the day and time and who was her nurse in charge. I think I was sort of mental about it because it just made me think if they couldn’t tell her what day it was then they had no hope for her. I started my visits with updating my…
I’m sitting here waiting to throw my old Blackberry and my old Samsung phone into the bayou. I’m waiting and waiting and waiting. What I’m waiting for is for Verizon to start selling iPhone which I hear will happen this fall. But what am I really missing? I see so many iPhone users with their eyes staring at the little screen, absorbed with their apps, and GPS, and other moving features that I wonder if…
I pledge allegiance to The Saints, and to the great city of New Orleans; and to The Super Bowl, for which we will win; One city, below sea level, under God; with Mardi Gras & fun for all. Amen!
I was speaking to a friend of mine one time – a Jewish father of a grown boy. I asked him if he would mind if his son married a non-Jew and his response was, “He knows who he is.” It had this omnipresent tone to it, even though in reality the man I was speaking to was pretty hip and although he was Jewish (almost obviously), his Jewishness never seemed to be top of…
The NFL is has warned several Louisiana T-shirt shops that are selling merchandise bearing the slogan “Who Dat?” and New Orleans iconic fleur de lis on it that they own the trademark, so it is sending out cease and desist letter to merchandisers. It now wants the unlicensed T-shirts and merchandise out of the stores ahead of the Super Bowl finals. ?Who Dat? is the unofficial chant song of the fans of the New Orleans Saints.…