The super storm on the East Coast seems so far away and removed from our lives down here in New Orleans as we regale in the beauty that is today. Tin was out of school so a bunch of his friends came over and we made pesto fresh from the garden, and we ran races on the bayou in the sunshine, we inspected spider webs on the Magnolia Bridge and we ate snacks and played…
I was thinking this morning about Lance Armstrong because something on a smaller scale happened recently. I met someone and thought they were truly fine and then out of the blue met mutual friends who said something ugly about the person. It gave me pause. But with Lance, it gives me big pause. Lance was a doping fiend – good god I thought when I heard this – what’s next? Recently, I’ve been thinking about…
Last night, we watched Patrik, Age 1.5, a Swedish film about a gay couple who adopt what they think is a baby, but turns out to be a teenage boy. Touching. And then I picked up Whatever Passes for Love is Love by John Stoss and began again this book, which I had picked up a week ago and then a week got in the way. More on this later. Monday started at 4AM, with…
I’ve always considered that my place of worship is City Park. I’m not sure when it became so, but I did realize one day that any day I did not walk through the park was a day without my soul being inspired. This morning, I was walking through the park and looked across the lagoon to the Peristyle and saw a gospel choir robed in purple and gold lifting their voices to the sky. On…
First, let’s start with shana tovah u’metukah, which in Hebrew is a wish for a good and sweet new year. Symbolically, we’ll eat apples with honey in this house – this is tradition. And on Rosh Hashanah, which starts tonight and also starts a ten day trek to Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, it will be all about teshuva or returning to what is pure inside of us and realizing where we might have…
City Park is still dealing with a lot of limbs down and a lagoon that looks like it was almost drained. But I have lots of faith in that crew over there – they have made that park shimmer and shine through worse. I walked earlier and so I could feel a little crispness in the air – surprising given the heavy humidity we have been having since the storm. The light through the trees…
I just ordered a glass of champagne and was given a bowl of assorted snacks in the Lowes Hotel on Poydras. There is a/c, there is WIFI, there are cocktails and food. I’m now a believer that I can survive anything if every once in a while someone gave me some luxuries. A friend is here with her son, Tin’s friend, and they are up in the room jumping on the beds in the a/c.…
They cancelled the flights into NOLA and we were able to slip onto one at the last moment. And home we came in a plane full of Red Cross workers on their way in to deal with Isaac. New Orleans was desolate, no cars on the street, houses and businesses boarded up, and a sky that looked like it was painted on a stretched canvas. The wetlands were Monet’s, the mighty Mississippi river belonged to…
Meanwhile, back at home I read the headlines and they are still stuck in death death death. Someone is killing someone every day in New Orleans. The New York Times this morning said that there is going to be a major overhaul of the police system – but the whole system is rotten from the top down. Someone commented, where is Vice President Jindal while this is all going on – you tell me. Here…
Cadiz is considered the oldest Western city due to its strategic location dividing Europe from Africa. Yesterday, Tin and I went out for a little exploration that started blocks from our apartment in Plaza Fragela – where the great theater Falla and the University of Cadiz are located. Our destination, if we had one, was to check out the gym that offers pilates and other classes, but it was closed and suddenly we found ourselves…