Hot night on Bourbon St.

I'll Fly Away-1st Krewe of the Dead Pelicans Parade

back on track

In my first week back I wrapped up 4 days of glory at the French Quarter festival. Made new friends in strange and sudden ways, I’m sure that the alcohol had something to do with it.  But not entirely. Spent three action powered days with Larry my chef friend from LA., who swears that he will be coming back, the place has gotten under his skin just as it has mine. The saying here is that the mud is thick-it sticks to you.

When walking down St. Louis we spied an interesting scene that we couldn’t identify so we paused and turned to ask the guy on the stoop what we were looking at. He said that it was his home and when we jokes that “Well honey I’m home” he invited us in to his private party, treated us to some really decent red wines . The house formerly belonged to Al Hurt and as is typical of houses in the Quarter, it took up a small amount of curb but once inside, went on forever. out into an open courtyard.Out back by the old slave quarters there were giant boats of crawfish and bowls of sweet southern praline’s. We stayed for hours and swapped restaurant stories.

Life is grand. Sitting C.C.’s on the internet and having my french roast. I must return to Robiere’s and pack. Today I move to Napoleon to D’s and start my work with her. I think today we will start with steam cleaning one of her apartments so that she can get some rental income.

D. is my Blanche, right out of A Streetcar Named Desire.  She smart and spun, cultured and careening, a once moneyed old New Orleanean, who would be comfortably retired if it were not for Katrina. .I suspect that she suffers from PKSD- Post Katrina Stress Disorder. Her house in the Garden district once belonged to Earl Long, Huey;s brother and governor of Louisiana. The roof was breached in the hurricane and she has not been able to get her insurance company to pay out.  Common story We met in a soup kitchen that she was running and I was volunteering in. Her food sense is refined and she is demanding and the result was probably the best food that any soup kitchen has ever produced. For my birthday last year she took me Galatoire's. Before we went she called to make sure that her favorite waiter would be waiting on us, they assured her he would. In old world New Orleans you are nothing without your own waiter at Galatoire's and your family tomb in a reputable cemetery. 

I have been busy rebuilding again.
(I've already installed a toilet, raised a roof, worked a machete until my arm refused to move, installed dry wall and ancient cypress mop boards and got back my favorite tool, the chop saw) connecting with old friends and going out to clubs day and night reveling in all this rich culture, ever flowing generous music, and eating, always eating.

I am way behind in my emails and in writing for myself. Have to figure a way to correct this soon. 

.  If you have HBO please watch 'Treme' I know quite a few of the 'real' characters in it and it gives you a some idea of why I'm so in love with this place.

Bon temp

Paradise Lost

Last night I went to hear Kerry St. Pe speak on the gulf oil disaster. Kerry is a marine biologist and the director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program. Not only is he a marine biologist but his family first settled in the estuary in the 1760s!.

People came for the information but also to commune with others. We are anxious and grief stricken and stuck to our computer screens with not much else to do. Although the news was far from good, the chance to process it with others was. We are a volunteering bunch here was no opportunity to put our energies to work. We watch our screens.

Unlike before and after a hurricane, when there is plenty of work to do (and during as well, although that might consist of the heavy lifting of glasses) we can't DO much. Clean up poses serious health risks and they don't want us anyway.

We got a good education on how toxic this stuff is and a feeling that the hubris of man has allowed us to create technologies that can destroy what is not in our power to fix.



What I'll never forget is Kerry saying repeatedly, "We are losing our culture, we are losing our culture". It is different here and these differences need to be saved now, as well as protected and preserved.


Free buffet was served after. Nothing flies here without good food.

BTW-In the last three years BP has had 760 safety citations while Exxon has had one.

Back To New Orleans

Free Black Men of Labor Parade

Last year, starting at Sweet Lorraine's. This year stay tuned for my second annual Bayou Bogaloo Pub Crawl to the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club.

Original Prince of Wales Social Aid and Pleasure Club

Honey Swamp, I'm home...

Honey swamp, I’m home.

Café du Monde at 8am. The place is already packed with tourists and some locals whom you can usually spot as the manner of dress here is unique. I’m especially fond of the older gents who sport straw hats, dressy linen jackets and shorts with sandals. I’m on a pilgrimage, once again taking in everything I find wonderful about this place. I short cut through Pirates Alley , where Jean Lafitte's’ brother had a blacksmith shop and cross Jackson Square to get my cup of chicory coffee and fresh beignets

I’m Gonna Let It Shine

The walk over is a doo wop of sounds: a small village and living museum waking for the day. Shop keepers opening shutters and throwing out buckets of swill water. Street musicians are setting up shop. Already the sounds of alto jax and horn in the air. In the air also is the smell of river mud, crawfish and funk. Centuries old urine and sewage systems stressed with the shock of all of us. But no matter, all great old cities wear this perfume. Bars are opening and preparing to get busy. Mist hangs in the air like smoke on Old Man River. Tourists are talking about their problems and who they said what to and how much they paid for their hotels and their tours. The locals quiet but acknowledging each other with nods and “how ya’ doin’”s. . There is still a chill in the air.

I’m staying in the Quarter on Dauphine between Toulouse and St. Peter's. My hosts are still sleeping. Robiere is the French sax player that I met in Johnny White’s on Bourbon St. last year. We became fast friends and I was lucky to receive such a quick entree into the city's music and cultural history through him and his wife Holly who gives leads historical tours through the city. They are both scholars and music aficionados. I owe a good chunk of my NOLA education to them. Within hours of landing we were watching vintage Count Basie 'soundies' from the 40’s in their loft. They are late sleepers as they keep musician’s hours. I’ve been living with no electricity in the jungles of Quintana Roo. I rise and fall with the chickens and the sun, so in spite of long travel day, I’m up and anxious to see my city.

New Orleans is pulsing with its usual energies and then some, still coming down from the high of the Saints win. Everyone tells me about what it meant to this city and how it has helped to change the world's view of them. Tourism is back. New Orleans is not lost but standing proud, full of hope for the its future with its newly elected mayor, Mitch Landrieu, the city's first white mayor since 1978. New Orleanian's were so tired of the failings of Ray Nagin that Landrieu won by a landslide, even capturing the black vote by 78%

But the work and struggle goes on here, as I was reminded within minutes of landing. While waiting to claim my luggage I heard my first story. A chauffeur sitting waiting for his ride told me of how his wife now lives in Chicago with the kids as in the time it has taken to rebuild their life here, she has built a new life elsewhere. He now visits her when he can. Versions of this story abound. Later, making my way into the city, I was dropped at Johnny Whites, the famous local’s bar that has never closed its doors, even during Katrina. The man sitting next to me starts to tell the tale of his return to Mississippi and the search for his house on a street that its self had been blasted into nothingness by the ferocity of those winds. The same stories that gripped me last year of what happened to these people and this culture during and after Katrina, are unfolding . They come pouring out, with no prompting, stories of loss and shock and courage. They both break your heart and inspire you , not told in self-pity but from an unrecognized need for catharsis.

I reach Cafe du Monde

I get my favorite corner table by the main entrance and cover myself in powdered sugar while " Down By The Riverside" and old jazz hits favored by the tourists are belted out.. I'm looking across to Jackson Square and the grand St. Louis cathedral, the oldest cathedral in north America. Flanking St. Lou are the Pontalba apartments, purportedly America's first apartment complex, built in the 1840's. My friend Donna grew up in them. One of the cooler thing about New Orleans is how personal all this history quickly becomes. It's not book dry and abstract, but up close and personal, you can feel it, smell it and run your fingers through its long tangled hair.

I went on a pilgrimage to see old friends and places. First taking the street car down Canal, arguably the widest street in the country, to Mid City to see my friends Mayla and Dianna. They had kindly left me their double shotgun camel-back for 3 months last summer. Their only condition fro this generous gift was that if a hurricane came, I would not let the truck drown as it had during Katrina. They are vegetarian and I arrived just in time for lunch. For once I got my ten servings of vegetables for the day. Something that is often lacking but seldom missed in my diet here. Good to eat green when you can.

That evening went to the new bar The Maison on Frenchmen for a free crawfish boil. The secret in the pot seems to be oranges. I lifted the lid and looked in. The chef told me with some anxiety that he was not giving away his secrets. Naw uh. I scored with two plates of crawfish, as my friend Donna is a vegetarian, bless her. Then we crossed the street and entered the latest revival of The Spotted Cat to catch my friend Robiere sit in with the a local band. The lead singer doing a sincere imitation of Billy Holiday, complete with white gardenia behind her right ear.