Week in Review – August 9th, 2026

“Visit to Austin”

On Sunday, after my last post, we watched a couple of interesting things.  This YouTube video of “special places” is amazing – such crazy places where people survive.

Later, Diana had chosen “Project Hail Mary” for us to watch.  I thought this was a serious sci-fi movie, and was surprised at the humour in the first hour or so – Ryan Gosling has such a good comedic sense.  The 2nd and 3rd hours (yes – one of those films that could have used a real editor) got a bit sillier and more sci-fi.  A good movie overall but I would not have wanted to sit through it at the theater.

I’m sure you know by now what a typical Diana Monday looks like.  That’s right – two pickleball sessions.  And then again on Tuesday morning.

We did well at trivia on Tuesday evening, despite ignoring Jack E’s correct answer about the most predominant colour in countries flags – red, not white.

Our first place finish was cemented with a correct answer to the final question:

Add up the answers to these four questions, getting within 5 points of the correct total:

How many Raiders of the Lost Ark etc movies did Harrison Ford appear in?  (5)

How many wives of Henry VIII? (6)

How many 1,000 yard rushing seasons did Derek Henry complete? (7)

How many seasons did Henry Winkler star in Happy Days (11)

The correct answer was 29 and we guessed 30 for the win!  The only meaty debate we add was around the seasons of Happy Days – for some reason I thought it was less, say 5 to 7.  Denny persisted with over 10 and was correct.  Oh, there was a short debate about the wives of Henry VIII – Denny submitted when I shared all of their names.

Wednesday started with a walk/run in the park for both of us, then Diana had yoga and I splintered off to Tartine for coffee and the newspaper.  They had a stuffed baguette advertised that I couldn’t resist.  Stuffed with ham, bacon, onion, mushrooms, fontina and some spicy peppers.  Ridiculously yummy.  It doesn’t look exciting in the photo but I wanted to add it so that I remember to try it again.  This is certainly my favourite breakfast spot.

When I returned to pick up yoga D, this is the sight that greeted me – a bunch of bottoms up in the air.  Apparently that was their final stretch.

 

 

We were scheduled to fly to Austin on Thursday afternoon.  Diana managed to work in a morning pickle session before our 2pm airport departure.  Emerging from the Austin airport to hike over for an Uber, we commented on what a change the difference in the level of humidity made.  It was much more pleasant to move around than in New Orleans.

We checked into the lovely Carpenter hotel and made our way to the Odd Duck to meet Tim and Heidi for dinner.  Tim had been fielding investment analyst calls all day and so we were appreciative that he was able to meet.  The Odd Duck is my favourite Austin eatery and it’s particularly fun when you have four adventuresome diners to share dishes.  So many great choices:

We started with the redfish ceviche with the wonderful watermelon aguachile sauce:

and the antelope tataki:

and the pork belly chalupa:

The antelope was the tastiest of the first round for me.

Tim started the second round with orders of the pork chop and fried quail.  I added the seafood and pork sausage papperdelle:

It was harder to choose a round two winner, but I ultimately opted for the fried quail – so perfectly cooked.

Heidi suggested the olive cake for dessert – delicious.

This was a lovely evening – so nice to catch up over a casual and delicious meal.

Diana hit the river trail early on Friday morning and then we shared a breakfast sandwich before making our way to Blair and Lisa’s compound for a “lite lunch.”

 

 

I got kitted out in UT gear and we admired the amazing charcuterie platter that Lisa and her friend had assembled.  Have you ever seen one like this?

We passed a very pleasant afternoon in the backyard of the compound enjoying the pool, cornhole, and pickleball experiences.  The net for pickleball was set up for the first time and fancy paddles broken out of their packaging.  Diana enjoyed explaining the basics of the game to her new converts.

We picked up dinner from a local Italian hole in the wall – all very tasty.  Blair had been saving a bottle of Opus One that we gifted him for Christmas several years ago to drink together.  He clearly stored it well as it tasted even better than I was expecting.

Diana started Saturday with a walk through the new neighbourhood, commenting on the difference that hills made to a route.  We had some migas tacos (perfect – thanks Lisa) after that and then prepared for the “Trifecta” of a day.

  1.  Boating on Lake Travis
  2.  Dinner at Mexican Sugar
  3.  Concert with The Romantics/Christopher Cross/Toto

Over four hours on the lake was plenty for me, and I know Diana would have kept going all day.  We cruised around the lake:

Stopped to drop anchor and float around for a while:

and stopped into Stumpy’s for a snack:

The boat docked, we made a quick change at the resort and were picked up by Sami for our ride over to dinner and the concert.  Mexican Sugar was a very large and pretty restaurant and the food and drinks were fine.  The location was perfect to breakup our commute over to the concert.  The amphitheater was located by the Formula 1 racing track on the south side of town.

The concert was considered “Yacht Rock” – a genre that includes bands like Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers, and Christopher Cross.  That’s the reason for the yacht captains’ hats in some of the ensuing pictures.  The first band on the bill was The Romantics.  We only knew two of their songs.  Here’s an interesting version of one:

What’s up with Blair’s vintage Earl Campbell Oilers jersey, you ask?  Well…he saw several videos where Christopher Cross was wearing the same shirt, and was hoping to attract his attention.  Our seats were third row, center with perfect views – that’s how Blair rolls.  Christopher Cross sounds great and broke out his biggest hit early in the set:

The last song was the other huge hit:

And then an acoustic reprise of “Sailing” – even better:

After a relatively short stage change over, Toto were ready to go.  I captured their three biggest hits:

It was a treat to have Christopher Cross, his backup singers, and the guitarist from the Romantics join for the last number, Africa.

We found Sami easily and were back at the resort around midnight.  What a fun packed day, we checked all 3 boxes of the “Trifecta.”  A massive thanks to Blair and Lisa for all of their work coordinating, executing, feeding, and planning.

While we participated in all of that excitement on Saturday, the annual football Hall of Fame induction ceremony was taking place in Canton, Ohio.  A couple of very poignant sentences from Drew Brees, quarterback who took the New Orleans Saints to the Superbowl:

“New Orleans … You accepted me. You embraced me. You believed in me. But more importantly, you entrusted me with the soul of the city. And I would have died to protect that calling!”

And in even more poignant news for me, the EDS headquarters building in Plano, TX was imploded.  I worked there off an on for many years, starting shortly after it opened.  It’s hard to believe there wasn’t a continuing use for all that space.

EDS Plano HQ imploded

Sami, having proven himself very reliable on Saturday night, transported us in style back to the Austin airport for our flight home.  I chuckled at this album display in the airport from local artists – that’s Christopher Cross at the top left and that album has both hit songs that I shared earlier.

 

 

Jon Cleary, wonderful English born piano player who has resided in New Orleans for 40 years and is an expert on all things funky NOLA style piano, has an album coming soon.  This was recorded from a solo show at the Royal Albert Hall in London.  Hard to believe he sold that out and plays in small venues in his adopted home town.

“I’ve played music to crowds at the Hollywood Bowl, Sydney Opera House and Bertha’s Bon Ton Lounge on Basin Street – all sophisticated, high-class joints. But there’s nothing that gets the spine all atingle and the funk juices bubbling quite like the prospect of getting down at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Fortunately, someone had the good sense to roll tape on that special evening last year, and the result, for your delectation, is a new solo live album that’s coming out on October 2nd!“

A later post from Cleary as he responds to a “badge” from Facebook to congratulate him on being an “emerging” artist:

“It’s not without a degree of curiosity, and even some slight alarm, that I learn today that I’m ‘emerging’.

Just to set the record straight, the last thing you want to do in New Orleans right now – if you have an air-conditioning unit that works – is to ‘emerge’. It’s too bloody hot outside. I will only emerge from the cool comfort of the red room in my house if there’s a life threatening emergency or if my manager Reed calls and invites me to join him for a cold Guinness in the equally cool environs of Markey’s Bar on Royal Street.

Editor’s note: Reed will call.

So, you can imagine my surprise on discovering today that Mark Zuckerberg has announced to the world that:

1) I am apparently a ‘talent’. This is very flattering, Mark. Thank you for the kindly compliment.

2) That I am ‘emerging’. A blatant untruth.

All this, and the further bombshell that Mr Zuckerberg, in his infinite kindness, wisdom and good taste, is awarding me a special ‘badge’. A badge! I do hope that it’s an especially big and shiny one.

I started playing music when I was 5, started playing in public when was 11, started getting paid for gigs when I was 14 and now, at the age, of 63, apparently it’s official, I’m finally emerging.

Mark, I know you’re a clever chap, and I hate to disappoint you, especially after the nice badge and everything, but, honestly, trust me, I’m not emerging, I’m staying indoors as much as possible, here on the couch, where it’s nice and cool. I’m not going anywhere (except perhaps the afore-mentioned Markey’s. Reed?)”

And finally (we’re skipping the Reading portion this week as I have made light progress) Robert Glasper does Radiohead, “Everything in its right place.”

Week in Review – August 2nd, 2026

“Happy Hours and White Linen”
The week started with the typical Monday morning and afternoon pickleball sessions for Diana.  I forgot to tell you about a silly, funny movie, “The Dink”, that we watched the other night.  It’s about the way tennis players view pickleball, the “dink” being a shot where you tap the ball over the net where the opposing players can’t reach it quickly enough.
The movie had several all-star cameo appearances.  Here’s how AI describes a dink in pickleball:

“How a Dink Works

  • Location: Hit from near the kitchen line so the ball bounces inside the opposite kitchen.
  • Technique: Uses a short, gentle tap instead of a big swing.
  • Result: Forces the other player to hit the ball upward from below the net level. 
Strategy and Purpose
  • Neutralize: Keeps you safe when your opponent is waiting to smash a hard hit.
  • Control: Stops the other team from attacking.
  • Patience: Builds a soft rally until someone hits a high ball you can attack.”
I made a solo trip to Trader Joe’s while the pickling was in progress.  I amaze myself when I actually enjoy a quick trip to TJs.  Never would have believed it.

Later in the afternoon we made a trip to the bank to do some maintenance on our safety deposit box.  The manual, paper based process involved is a great thing to behold.  They guy who helped us was quite proud of the collection of massive binders that he accessed to get our box history.  “I organized all of this myself.”  The paper card was retrieved for us all to sign and then we did the dueling keys thing to open the box.  I love the old schoolness of it all.

The air conditioner at Merry Lee and Jeff’s condo broke and they came over to borrow a couple of fans.  That gave us a chance to enjoy their dogs, Jazz and Cali.  They were not shy about letting Jeff know when they were ready to go for a second walk.

Tuesday brough some morning pickling, and then I drove Diana over for pool time with Merry Lee.  They ended up hanging out all day, with Jeff joining the guys for trivia.

Jeff was the only person in the building that knew the answer to one of the questions.  He had gone off to get a beer and none of us knew which coach won basketball championships at both the college and NBA level.  I said that I thought Jeff might know.  Returning to the table, he said “I know this one – Larry Brown.”  Oh yeah – we should have remembered that.

The final question involved putting four “Barry” things in order from largest to smallest:

Number of senate terms served by Barry Goldwater

Number of seasons Barry Bonds played MLB

Number of Barry Manilow studio albums

Number of top 10 hits by Barry Gibb and the Bee Gees

We were in 7th place and so bet the maximum 20 points and stayed in 7th place – nobody got it correct.  The right answer is:

Barry Manilow

Barry Bonds

Barry Gibb

Barry Goldwater

Diana had a typical Wednesday morning – a run/walk with Kara followed by yoga in the park.  My excitement was going over to Aidan Gill for a haircut.

Diana’s haircut turn was on Thursday.  She followed that with an extended happy hour with her new pickling friend, Sandi.  They went to the Bower on Magazine for snacks and drinks.  I watched a new movie called “A Private Life”, starring Jodie Foster speaking mostly in French – apparently she is fully fluent.

The Talking Heads “Psycho Killer” was playing at the start of the movie and I heard these amazing bass lines from Tina Weymouth for the first time.  I paused to play the original and make sure they hadn’t enhanced the bass for the movie – they had not, I just hadn’t listened closely enough on the right system to hear.

We met Kenny and Richard at Hungry Eyes for dinner on Thursday.  This is an 80s themed restaurant, named after the Eric Carmen song, that I always enjoy.  Here’s the menu:

What do you think we had?  You could probably guess that McD couldn’t resist the steak tartare – yes, it was served with interesting crackers.  Then we shared the calamari curry with roti – that was a highlight – absolutely delicious.  One of those dishes that would make you go back to the same restaurant for the same dish the next day.  No – we resisted.  Kenny had the pork chop and Richard an Iberico ham skewer special.

Hungry Eyes also does a great job with their martinis.  Kenny and I both had the Vesper.

This was a very pleasant meal – we don’t get to visit with Richard like that very often.

We had our fourth Gentlemen Out at Lunch (GOAL) on Friday.  These were supposed to be once a quarter or so and we have only managed four in the last couple of years.  We need to work on that.  I had suggested Here Today Rotisserie.  This is from the chef who just closed Coquette to focus on chicken.  The menu is pretty simple:

We opted for the “Feed Me” approach.  This resulted in a lot of delicious food.  Iceberg wedge salad, pimento cheese with crackers and hot peppers, a mound of chicken wings, red beans and rice, stewed cabbage, rotisserie potatoes, half a rotisserie chicken, and half a fried chicken.  So much food.

The guys seemed please with my choice.  It me the GOAL criteria – somewhere most of the guys hadn’t been, not fancy, casual, and not too expensive.

Kenny brough a note from his Mom with a couple of books she recommended for me if I hadn’t read them.  One is one of my all time favourites (All The Light You Cannot See) and the other I’m putting on my list.

We retired to the Avenue Pub, where Kenny was talking about how to wrap a phone in tin foil and prevent it from receiving calls or being tracked.  We were skeptical and decided an experiment at Kenny’s house was in order.

Thom got us organized with a hypothesis, control group and step by step experimentation – very scientific.  Kenny was correct and he apparently constructed an effective Faraday cage.  Diana was not overly enthused about her role in the experiment.

Anne arrived at Kenny’s to give Denny and me a ride home.  We decided to stop at Verret’s (voted New Orleans number one dive bar and two blocks from our home.)  A guy was setting up for karaoke in there and had an interesting name for his business.

I sent the picture to Kara and she replied “That’s Me.”

Elspeth retired on Friday.  We’re hoping David might follow next year some time.

I delivered Diana to Merry Lee and Jeff for White Linen night.  What’s that you ask?  Well…it’s an art walk along a few blocks of Julia street, known as the art district.  It started in 1994 and is a way to generate revenue for the art galleries during the slowest part of the summer season.  White linen clothes to best deal with the swampy climate.  It has become very popular in recent years, drawing tens of thousands of people, and appealing to youngsters – a good thing in my opinion.  The youngsters, not the large crowd.

The trio had an interesting photo experience.  Here’s the original picture:

And here’s the AI driven caricature:

I think it’s very well done.

River was playing on the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) stage – he’s everywhere these days.

Here’s Diana in front of a steam punk looking vehicle.  I think it’s the “Bed Zeppelin.”

Our Sunday morning walk in the park was stymied by a house shaking thunder storm.  Maybe it will cool off a little after the storm and we can venture outside.

I finished up “Truth & Beauty: A Friendship” by Ann Patchett this week.  A bit depressing, but a very good read.
A second Talking Heads reference in this post:
“At home Lucy and I stretched out on a couch that had been unfolded into a bed and watched the video of the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense. Those had been our favorite songs to dance
to in Iowa when Lucy had been so in love with David Byrne.  “You know, I met him once,” she said as he slid across the little television screen wearing a big white suit. “You met David Byrne and you didn’t tell me?” “It was a couple of years ago, I think. There were writers and musicians reading together at Central Park and I ran into him backstage. I told him that when I was a teenager, hearing his music had saved my life. I guess it was a stupid thing to say but he was very nice about it. He was kind of shy.”
The beginning of the end:
“I WOULD SAY that was when things fell apart, but it would imply the disassembling of a time when things were all together and I couldn’t remember when that time was anymore. Lucy had started making little cuts on her hips with a razor blade. She was doing more drugs. We talked constantly about the possibility of her committing herself to a mental hospital but she kept holding it off, wanting to wait until such a time that committal sounded less painful than the life she was presently living.”
And then some more from the disaster file:
“I really, really should go,” she said. She kissed us both good-bye and was out the door. Two minutes later she was back. “Come look at this,” she said. “A plane’s hit the World Trade Center.” 
History is strangely incomprehensible when you’re standing in the middle of it. Lucy, Adrian, and I all made the wrong decisions that morning but none of us could have seen it at the time. Lucy rushed on to Penn Station and made her train, which turned out to be the last train to leave New York, and Adrian and I decided to go down to the World Trade Center to see what had happened.
The dreaded phone call:
“One day in the middle of the summer, Lucy’s doctor, Stuart, called me. As soon as I heard his voice, my heart froze in my chest. I leaned my head back against the wall where I stood and closed my eyes. “Lucy’s dead,” I said. “What!” Stuart said. “There’s only one reason you’d call me.” It turned out there were two reasons: Stuart and his girlfriend were coming to Tennessee on vacation and he wanted some advice about places to see. We laughed about it because everything was fine, but for the rest of the day I felt cold.”
Really this time:
“We came back from New York on December 18, 2002, a Wednesday afternoon. When Stuart called me at ten-thirty that night, I was already asleep. This time he was calling to say that Lucy was dead. His voice was surprised and afraid. He wasn’t sure of the sentence himself. “Ann,” he said. “Lucy’s dead.” When I hung up the phone I gave myself a few minutes in the dark to lie in bed and pretend I had been dreaming. He still had my number programmed into his cellphone from his trip.
At three o’clock in the morning, I drove to Karl’s house and when I woke him up and told him what I knew I started to cry, because I had just begun the second half of my life, the half that would be lived without Lucy.”

 

Here’s a very interesting interview with Daniel Lanois where he discusses working with U2, Bob Dylan and many others – mostly in New Orleans.

Daniel Lanois Rollingstone interview

I love the guitar on this John Prine gem:

This song also has some original instrumentation and sounds:

 

 

Week in Review – July 26th, 2026

“Home to New Orleans for friends, music and food”

Monday was a slow day after our early morning arrival back from Montreal.  Diana didn’t even play pickleball.  I was pleased that we earned a good review from our Airbnb host, Justin.  It makes it easier to rent future places.

Catching up on local news, I read that Plas Johnson died last Wednesday at the age of 94.  I wrote about him a few weeks ago – famous for the Pink Panther theme and played on numerous New Orleans soul and R&B records in the 50s and 60s.

 

 

 

At Tuesday trivia, we had a similar question about 1981 to one we had a while ago.  Several events were given and you had to answer with the year they happened.  The events included Charles and Diana’s wedding, MTV launching and others that I don’t remember now.  I “showed my work” again – I was in holiday in France after finishing high school in 1981 and the family went to a common room at the caravan park to watch the wedding.  The team listened.

We were ahead by 1 point going into the final question.  This involved putting four events in order from oldest to most recent.  Here’s the correct answer:

When did the Knicks last win an NBA title before this year? (1973)
When was Nikki Minaj born? (1982)
When did Nickelodeon launch Ren and Stimpy? (1991)
When did Nicolas Cage win an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas? (1996)
The two Jacks knew that Nikki Minaj had her big hit in 2000 – so had to be older than the old folks thought.  Denny knew that Anne loved Ren and Stimpy when they were first dating.  With that and some lengthy discussion, we were able to arrive at the correct answer to secure a 1st place win.

A heat advisory greeted us on Wednesday – can you imagine what a “feels like temperature” of 118 degrees is like?  Very swampy.

Tim called to check on us after storm Bertha passed through and told me about a book he got for his birthday from his daughter.  They each have to draw an object daily and text it to the other.  Tim was upset that the paper is too thick to trace through.  I thought he had done a good job with his snake until I saw the competing version.

Isn’t that a great gift idea – keeps on giving every day.

We met up with Kenny for Happy Hour at Cafe Degas on Thursday.  I called to coordinate with him and caught him visiting his Mom.  He said he would need to stop home and change as he wasn’t dressed for Cafe Degas.  I told him he would be fine in shorts and a t-shirt as that’s what I was going to wear.  Some hilarity (from my perspective) ensued as Kenny’s Mom and cousin (she called his Mom during the discussion) shared their thoughts on what Kenny should wear.  He ultimately came as he was and everything was fine.

We had a very nice time at Cafe Degas and then retired to Kenny’s porch for a little while.

We were up early for a walk in the park on Saturday morning.  The humidity was relatively low, allowing us to enjoy a walk/run without sweating all the way through our clothes.  On the drive home we came across Alvin, a cyclist who had hit his head on a low tree branch and been thrown out into Prytania Street.  Another lady was helping and nurse D jumped into action.  The police, and ultimately an ambulance, did show up and by that time Alvin was feeling a lot better.  Diana walked with him and his bike over to the Emergency room and he decided he didn’t need to go in and could easily make the short walk home.  Very nicely done, Diana.
We met the KKs, Denny and Anne for lunch at Tan Dinh Vietnamese restaurant in Gretna.  Denny spends a lot of time on the Westbank of the Mississippi river with his car washes, and so we took his recommendation for a lunch stop.
Here’s a map that shows red circles around our home and the restaurant.  You can see that we had to take the Crescent City Connector (CCC) bridge across to reach the restaurant – not something we do very often.
The trip took around 10 minutes – so not exactly an onerous drive.  What were we doing over there?  Aren’t there good Vietnamese places in New Orleans proper?  Fair questions.  We were enroute to a gallery opening at Brian Bush Art.
Brian and his wife, Lisa, are friends that we typically see a few times a year at music festivals.  Brian has been making these wonderful Mardi Gras flowers for over 20 years.
They really are works of art.  This building became available recently and Brian snapped it up as a place to store his art, show it by appointment, and host events like this one.
Ian Cunningham and Chris Senac, long time friends of Brian’s, provided some wonderful music – very skilled guitar playing.
Diana was up early on Sunday morning for the 8am girls tennis activity.  She was pretty worn out from 2 hours in the sun after that.
The Desert Nudes played a free 5pm show at NOLA brewing (0.5 miles from home) on Sunday afternoon.  Kenny and I had a robust mini-debate about the pros and cons of NOLA brewing during happy hour at Cafe Degas.  Keith – “too many kids running around, the music is too loud if you’re in the front part, and too quiet in the back – you can’t hear over the chatter and kid noise, the pizza, food, and drinks are good.”  Kenny – “kids are a given, you need to get there early and pick an in-between table or one on the right side of the stage to hear the music without it being too loud, the place is air conditioned, the music is free, and the food is great.”
Okay, I decided to take Kenny’s input “on board” and we arrived around 4:30 to get a good table.  Apparently we needed to get there earlier than that as all but one of the tables were already occupied.  We grabbed the one remaining and began to amass the chairs we needed for our krewe – KKs, Thom, Denny, and Mason.  I was pleasantly surprised when the music started – I could hear nicely from our back table.  The band was excellent – lovely three part harmonies and a fun repertoire of songs that you don’t hear too often.
A good version of “Don’t Fence Me In”, originally written by Cole Porter, led to Kenny claiming the song as his latest theme song.
I started “Truth and Beauty: A Friendship” by Ann Patchett this week.  I read the first chapter of her latest, “The Whistler”, and can tell it’s going to be so good that I’m saving it for the perfect reading environment – whatever that might be.  So I’m making do with one of her earlier books and am a little over half way through so far.  Here’s an online summary:

“Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In Grealy’s critically acclaimed memoir, Autobiography of a Face, she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn’t Lucy’s life or Ann’s life, but the parts of their lives they shared. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years, from the long winters of the Midwest, to surgical wards, to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined . . . and what happens when one is left behind.

This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save. It is about loyalty, and being lifted up by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest.”

Here are some passages that I enjoyed:

Thoughts about “worrying” early in Ann’s relationship with Lucy:

“I was stunned by the rawness of her pain. I came to understand that night in the sports bar, safe from the blinding rain, that I could not worry about Lucy anymore. I knew then it was just too enormous for me to manage and that worrying about her would swamp me. If I was swamped by worry, I would be useless to her. It was even possible that I would desert her, and that was the thing that could never happen. I decided that night I would take all the hours of my life that could so easily be spent worrying and instead I would try to help her. I had been raised by Catholic nuns who told us in no uncertain terms that work was the path to God, and that while it was a fine thing to feel loyalty and devotion in your heart, it would be much better for everyone involved if you could find the physical manifestations of your good thoughts and see them put into action. The world is saved through deeds, not prayer, because what is prayer but a kind of worry? I decided then that my love for Lucy would have to manifest in deeds.”
Some great advice from Mom and I presume this book might not exist without them:
“One night after work I was sitting on the edge of my mother’s bed, reading her Lucy’s letter. “Save all of those,” she told me when I was finished. “I save some of them,” I said, but she and I both knew I never was much on saving anything.  My mother said it again. I was to save them all. “Someday you’ll both be famous writers,” she said. “And these letters will be very important to you.””
Patchett discovers the wonder of the service on a short flight from London to Scotland:
“All through the flight from London to Aberdeen I stared out the window at the rough patchwork of landscape and thought how beautiful it was, how beautiful it would be to live so far away from my mistakes. It was a small plane and we did a good deal of pitching and tossing, but everyone got a nice cheese plate and a glass of red wine and I managed to hold my snack steady. The world that existed in the air over England and Scotland seemed extremely civilized, even sophisticated, and for those moments I thought that Lucy was leading a glamorous life, at least when you compared it to being a waitress in Tennessee.”
On finishing her first novel:
“Then finally one day everything I had imagined for these characters while I was at Friday’s was down on paper. I wrote the last sentence of The Patron Saint of Liars in early April and stumbled out of my apartment and into the beautiful spring feeling panicked and amazed. There is no single experience in my life as a writer to match that moment, the blue of the sky and the breeze drifting in from the bay. I had done the thing I had always wanted to do: I had written a book, all the way to the end. Even if proved to be terrible, it was mine.”
A rumination on the varied thoughts and personalities of Lucy’s doctors:
“They were the busy, important men (and all of the pivotal doctors in Lucy’s life, to the best of my knowledge, were men) who occasionally sat on her bed and stroked her forehead, handsome men who for the briefest moment paid all of their valuable attention to her. They told her she was the most remarkable case they had seen and made promises of how they would shepherd her through to a better life. The surgeons stoked her deepest dreams of repair like coal men shoveling fuel into a roaring furnace. They told her not to worry about the money, and then presented her with enormous bills. They told her it would take three surgeries over six months, only to discover it was ten surgeries over three years. There were wonderful doctors, full of compassion and innovation, but they never seemed able to consider any surgery but the one they were about to perform. They never took her lifetime into account or figured in the enormous costs, physically, financially, and emotionally, of all that had failed so dismally before. They didn’t account for Lucy, only for her face. And maybe they couldn’t. She was too huge for casual consideration. But how can you operate on the face without understanding what the face means to the girl? How can the meaning of kissing, swallowing, speaking, be completely ignored in favor of mechanics? The doctors took what they needed from her body, sometimes without ever mentioning it, so even though her head was swollen beyond recognition, what she cried over was the scar running up her leg where some surgeon had taken a vein without asking. She loved her pretty legs.”
I love this comparison with slapstick comedy for Lucy’s money skills:
“LUCY WAS AWFUL WITH MONEY IN A WAY THAT ONE imagines the Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy might have been awful with money. There could have been a movie, Laurel and Hardy Go to the Bank, in which our heroes try to bring their life savings in for safekeeping but at every turn find themselves distracted: pretty girls, butterflies, squalling children. All the while the money flutters out of their pockets like a careless trail of bread crumbs. In the sequel, Back to the Bank, they would mistakenly spit their chewing gum into the big check they were supposed to deposit and then for the rest of the movie they would struggle to undo the sticky damage they had done.”
Heartbreaking:
“Lucy’s loneliness was breathtaking in its enormity. If she emptied out Grand Central Station and filled it with the people she knew well, the people who loved her, there would be more than a hundred people there. But a hundred people in such a huge space just rattle around. You could squeeze us all into a single bar. With some effort you could push us into a magazine shop. If you added to that number all the people who loved her because of her book, all the people who admired her, all the people who had heard her speak or had seen her on television or listened to her on the radio and loved the sound of her odd little voice, you could pack in thousands and thousands more people, and still it wouldn’t feel full, not full enough to take up every square inch of her loneliness.“
I’ve been rationing “Living in the Present with John Prine” by Tom Piazza (my autographed copy – thanks KKs).  By “rationing I mean that I’m allowing myself a chapter a week.  It’s just too good to read through too quickly.
The chapter this week has John and his wife visiting Tom and his wife in New Orleans.  Tom takes them to Boucherie, one of his favourite restaurants.  Prine struggles to find something on the menu and ends up opting for the ribs.  They turn out to be Asian style and not the slab with barbeque sauce that he was hoping for.  The next night they visit Brigtsen’s, one of my personal favourites.  Frank Brigtsen comes out and makes a big fuss over John as do the rest of the staff.  With all the wonderful dishes on the menu, executed flawlessly, Prine’s wife confides later that he would rather have had a slice of meat loaf and some mashed potatoes.  I suppose it’s all what you’re used to.
Here’s a link to the latest Jon Cleary show playlist on Spotify.  I’ve listened and there are several gems on here.

 

It’s been a while since I heard this song.  It was on WWOZ the other day and I realized I didn’t know who played the amazing slide guitar.   Research reveals it’s Bonnie Raitt.

Week in Review – July 19th, 2026

“Montreal Week 2”

On Monday, our first day sans KKs, we made our way back down to Old Town.  We enjoyed lunch on the Terraces Nelligan – a rooftop restaurant with great views atop the Hotel Nelligan.

I tried to order a medium rare burger and was stymied by a Quebec regulation that says any ground beef not ground on the premises has to be cooked well done.  Not fancying that, I opted for a cauliflower steak – yummy.

While I was enjoying that (munched in before realizing I wanted a picture), someone bungee jumped from the crane on the other side of the river – 100% hard No on that activity.

I’ll have a sip of a refreshing beer and try to wash away the memory of the person bouncing around like a rag doll on the end of that elastic band.

Diana enjoyed a very colourful Niçoise salad.

After lunch, we walked around Old Town and took a spin through Notre Dame cathedral.  Not the very famous one, but still quite impressive – particularly the blue lighting.

I always enjoy checking out church organs and this one seemed serious:

This bronze sculpture caught my attention.  It’s called “The English Pug” and is part of a diptych called “The Two Snobs”, created in 2013 by Canadian artist Marc Andre J. Fortier.

Tommy’s Cafe was close by for our after cathedral coffee stop.  And the chair available for “Miss Champagne” seemed appropriate.

Tuesday began with a repeat visit to Chez Greenberg, down the street from the Airbnb.  This time I had a poutine stuffed knish with my macchiato – I recommend this as a good way to try poutine.  Jake Greenberg, presumably the owner, came by to check on the food and we had a good chat.  We told him we were planning on trying Milos for lunch and got positive feedback.  He also recommended Faros – the place we ate at last week with the KKs.  “Best two Greek restaurants in the city.”

We had chatted with two ladies leaving Milos one evening and they raved about the place.  It’s been in operation for many years and has since expanded globally.  We checked with Nick about the one in Miami Beach and he described it as “an institution.”  Okay – let’s see if we can get a seat at the bar and give it a try for lunch.  I started with the house special martini, which came in a fish container.

Our waiter/bartender had been to Miami Beach and to Carbone – still one of our most amazing dining experiences.

Here’s the prix fixe lunch menu:

I started with the tomato (Greek) salad and then had the Dorade Royal (sea bream.)

Diana had the phenomenal octopus, followed by lamb.

Fortunately the desserts were small.

Don’t miss the baklava ice cream.  Here’s a silly picture on the way out.

What a wonderful lunch all around.  We decided to try and make a reservation for dinner later in the week.  I think I heard something like “It’ll be our way to celebrate our last night in Montreal.”

After lunch, we watched the Spain vs France World Cup game.  I had high hopes for an exciting game but France seemed flat and tired, ultimately losing to Spain.

In the evening, we made a pilgrimage to find Leonard Cohen’s grave.  It was quite an uphill trek at the end of the walk to the entrance of the Mont Royal cemetery.  We came across this church on the walk, not Notre Dame but the location of that picture of the girls with the young men in tuxedos.  Or at least that’s the latest cover story – something about they were putting on their ties and getting all ready for a wedding, and offered to take the picture.  Hmm.

Here I am checking out the family plot.  Leonard is buried in a pine box next to his parents,  Nathan and Marsha, as well as his grandparents and great grandparents.

Diana captured some pictures showing how beautifully the cemetery plots are kept.

We heard thunder rolling on our walk back but did not get any heavy rain or “squall” – there were a few “squall warnings” during our stay that seemed to amount to nothing much.

Wednesday took us over to the Botanical Gardens – some of the largest in the world.  Research showed that we should visit the Japanese garden, the Chinese garden,  and the Alpine area – we set off in search of those.

The Japanese area sported some very old bonsais:

The Chinese garden had interesting buildings and water features:

We came across oodles of lovely flowers on our meander through the gardens.  Hydrangeas:

Balloon flowers (platycodon grandiflorus), native to East Asia:

 

Pom pom or ball dahlias:

We both agreed that our favourite section, not mentioned in my research, was the Lilly and brook garden.  Amazing colours and very extensive.

The Olympic stadium was next to the Botanical gardens – here’s a picture of the tower attached to it.

Some facts about the tower:

In the evening we tried another of our Uber driver recommendations – the Atwater cocktail club.  This was a speakeasy style place in the downtown area known as Atwater.  I had read that entry was by an alley behind the Foiegwa restaurant.  The one alley that I found looked a bit dodgy but closer inspection of the graffitied door revealed the “ACC” sign – must be the place.

We risked it, opened the door and headed inside to the fancy club.

We perused the detailed cocktail menu – most were less than $20 Canadian and made our choices.

The food menu seemed to have all of our favourites at once:

We started with chicken liver mousse, then beef tartare, and finally black truffle spaghetti.  So rich and decadent and all wonderful.

Our waitress, Ashely, gave us a post card with some of her recommendations on places to try.  We did try at least one of them.

What a nice touch from Ashley.

Diana decided to summit Mont Royal by the stairs on Thursday morning.  This took her a little bit higher than the terrace we reached on our first day in Montreal.

Some details on the stairs.  Good job Diana!

I think all that stairclimbing work was worth it:

We wandered the neighbourhood in search of a lunch spot, and ultimately ended up back at Bishop and Bagg for a burger at the bar.  It was interesting to observe their display of over 100 gins.

The evening brought a highlight of the trip for me – a visit to the Upstairs jazz club. Their logo is upside down because the club is actually downstairs from the street level.

There were only a few tickets left when I bought ours and so I opted for bar seating.  That turned out to be a great option – high stools so that Diana could see well and an amazing view of the stage.

We had wonderful service at the bar with great drinks and food.  I had a drink called Le Vieux something (don’t remember the word).  It was Canadian Club whiskey, Drambuie and ginger beer.  Like a slightly modified Rusty Nail and delicious.  We split a salad and a seafood pasta that was excellent.

And then the band!  A very good tribute to the Buena Vista Social Club.  This was an album from 1997 by Cuban legends with Ry Cooder.

Here’s the Upstairs version:

Friday was a busy day.  We visited the Terrasse William Gray, an Ashley recommendation, for brunch.  This was quite similar to the Nelligan terrace with excellent river front views of the Ferris wheel and Cirque du Soleil.

We shared a salad and you’ll be surprised…another tartare.  Both delicious.  Montreal really is an amazing food town.

The boeuf in the description reminded me of the boys in Paris as youngsters and the kick they got out of the McDonalds ads in the Metro – “100% pur boeuf.”

We wandered through Old Town after lunch, making a stop at Wolf and Workman before heading back to the Airbnb.

We had reservations for dinner at Milos in the evening.  Everything was fine, but not up to the amazing experience that we had at lunch.  Diana had a lobster and I enjoyed halibut.  Both were good but not at the outstanding level we had anticipated.

After dinner, another musical treat awaited.  The “Candlelight” performance of Abba and Queen songs.

This is a concert (apparently they have them in New Orleans sometimes) where a string quartet performs the music of Abba and Queen.  Here’s the order of performance:

I thoroughly enjoyed the arrangements:

A very busy and enjoyable day all around.

We were due to pack up and leave on Saturday.  Around 2pm, just before we ordered an Uber to the airport, we received notice that our flight was canceled.  Oops!

Not able to extend the Airbnb or find a room at any others close by, McD came up with a great idea – let’s stay at that really nice Nelligan hotel where we had lunch.  Booking was easy and we were checking in less than an hour later.  This was an old school luxury hotel – they had thought only I was staying and so stalled a bit at check in to make a “profile” for Diana.  I suspect what they were really doing was updating the welcome card on the petit fours.  We were escorted up to the room so that we could be shown the amenities – I don’t think I’ve had that since the Park Hyatt in Sydney many, many years ago.

We had dinner at Mignon across from the hotel and it was another delicious meal, including oysters of course.

Diana was out early on Sunday morning to explore the Old Town area some more.

We took advantage of brunch on the lovely Nelligan terrace.  The bacon Benny was just what I needed before setting of to try and make it home a day late.

I had checked transit time from the Nelligan to Montreal airport (YUL) in the morning – 20 minutes or so.  Our flight was at 5pm and so we ordered an Uber around 2:30pm.  As we departed the hotel, it showed the better part of an hour to the airport – hopefully we had enough wiggle room.  We did – the traffic entering the airport was ludicrous – 2o minutes to go less than a mile, but they had Global Entry and TSA pre at the airport and you actually cleared US customs in Montreal – who knew?

We did have a tiny snafu at airport security.  The bagel spreader souvenirs were not permitted as carry on items – such dangerous weapons.  Diana decided to go back out and check her back – no problem, she made it to the gate in time for boarding.

Our flights to Chicago and then New Orleans were fine – the usual sitting on the tarmac waiting on a gate routines.  We were home a little after midnight – tired and happily reflecting on a great trip.

My book this week was “Who is Maud Dixon” by Alexandra Andrews.  You may remember that I read her “The Fine Art of Lying” a few weeks ago.  All the reviews said that this was a much better read.  I agree with the reviews for once – much deeper characters and better humour.  Here’s an online summary:

“Florence Darrow has always felt she was destined for greatness, but after a disastrous affair with her married boss, she starts to doubt herself. All that changes when she sets off for Morocco with her new boss, the celebrated but reclusive author Maud Dixon. Amidst the colorful streets of Marrakesh and the wind-swept beaches of the coast, Florence begins to feel she’s leading the sort of interesting, cosmopolitan life she deserves.

But when she wakes up in the hospital after a terrible car accident, with no memory of the previous night—and no sign of Maud—a dangerous idea begins to take form. . .”

Some of the passages that I enjoyed:
Solid advice:
“You shouldn’t have to try to like things,” Florence insisted. “It’s like people who force themselves to finish a book they’re not enjoying. Just close it! Go find another story!”
And the retort:
“I hate to tell you this, but you might be in the wrong business. Do you know how many books I don’t like that I have to read every week? Sorting the good from the bad is the job.” “Oh, I’m not interested in becoming an editor,” Florence said with a wave of her hand. “Just to be clear,” Simon replied with a bemused smile, “you realize that I’m your boss’s boss, right? You might want to fake a modicum of enthusiasm for the work we’re paying you to do.”
From the life’s not fair department:
“Take my word for it,” Helen went on. “If you spend your life looking for fairness you’ll be disappointed. Fairness doesn’t exist. And if it did, it would be boring. It would leave no room for the unexpected. But if you search for greatness—for beauty, for art, for transcendence—those are where the rewards are. That is what makes life worth living.” Helen set her glass of whiskey down roughly, splashing some on the table. “I’m sure there are people in my past who don’t think it’s fair that my life turned out like it did. And who knows, maybe it isn’t. But I want you to understand this: I wouldn’t change a single thing I’ve done. Not a single thing.”

 

I enjoyed this article about attempts to create a Scottish Music Hall of Fame.  I’m all for it.

Scottish Music Hall of Fame article

Something Moroccan related for Maud Dixon:

Week in Review – July 12th, 2026

“Montreal – Week 1”

I enjoyed this online story, celebrating a truly amazing individual:

One of Britain’s biggest mazes is celebrating Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday by creating a spectacular design in the shape of a mountain gorilla.

Wistow Maze in Leicestershire, England, came up with the design to pay tribute to the legendary broadcaster who hails from their local county, having grown up near the University of Leicester.

The popular award-winning attraction features a winding labyrinth that stretches for three miles and takes around two hours to walk.

After my posting last Sunday, England beat Mexico 3-2 with Harry Kane scoring 2 goals, all while down to 10 men for much of the game.  It was a very exciting and entertaining match.

We watched the movie “The Choice” on Sunday evening.  This was our third attempt and we were successful in finishing before Diana “fais do do.”

There were more good sporting opportunities on Monday.  The great British hope, Fery, made it through to the Wimbledon quarterfinals in entertaining fashion.  Later in the day, the USMNT was dominated by Belgium from start to finish, ultimately losing 4-1.

I watched “Still of the Night” in the evening – a movie from 1982 with what I thought was a 25 year old Meryl Streep, turns out she was 33, alongside Roy Scheider.  This was very much a noir style mystery with an early eighties feel.  I enjoyed it quite a bit.

We had an early start on Tuesday, 6am in an Uber, to catch the first of our two small (American Eagle) flights to Montreal.  I watched a movie called “The Christophers” on the flight from New Orleans to Chicago.  This starred Ian McKellen and a leonine looking lady (stand by while I look her up..), Michaele Coel, in a story about an aging artist, forgery and the greed of his children.  It was a quiet, “adult” movie that I enjoyed quite a bit.

A long layover in Chicago was eased by the Admirals Club with good coffee, creative food, and excellent WiFi.  We were able to watch Zverev defeat Lehecka, and some of Argentina vs Egypt (Messi missed a penalty.)

Diana had an impressive set up on our next flight (Chicago to Montreal.)

Mimosa, book on iPad, Wimbledon on phone and texting on phone.  Check, check, check, and check.  All taken care of.

All that multi-tasking was stressing me and so I went old school, finishing off my Violent Femmes book from the book store talk several weeks ago.  I enjoyed the read and am looking forward to referring to my marked up sections when I listen to the album next.

It was quite a trek from the arrival gate, through immigration and out to the Uber pickup area in Montreal.  Our Lyft (much shorter wait time than Uber) driver dropped us off in the alley behind our building rather at the front door.  That was pretty disconcerting but he was sure it was the right place and we figured it out after he left, dragging our luggage down the alley, past the famous bagel place, and around to the front door, where we were able to easily gain entrance to the lovely Airbnb.

Next stop – the local stores for some supplies.  There were several small grocery stores very close by and a liquor and wine store right next door.  Easy peasy.

After our pre-dawn start, we opted for a nice early night.

We awoke early on Wednesday morning.  I went back to sleep while Diana explored the neighborhood.  She did report back on a restaurant that she found that ended up being very good (more to come.)

Later in the morning we headed out on an expedition to summit Mont Royal, the mountain/hill that Montreal is named for.  My research showed that Chemin Olmsted was a pleasant and meandering trail with a light gradient, passing Beaver Lake before arriving at the Mount Royal chalet and terrace.  That was all true, however, the weather was not what my research had indicated – hot and humid, and not the cold, crisp respite from the New Orleans swamp that I had hoped for.  Oh well, I took a few breaks to cool off and ultimately summited.

There was an interesting statue as we entered the park.

Diana was not a fan of my “bucket hat” and particularly the orange colour.  I stuck with it all the same, and was delighted to find a tribe of my people on our ascent.

Here we are up on the terrace with a view of downtown Montreal.

Kenny and Kara (henceforth known as the “KKs”) arrived around 5pm and seemed not to much the worse for their day of travel.  We started their first evening with dinner at Molenne, the restaurant that Diana found on her ramble.

This was an excellent dining experience all around – fun and attentive service and wonderful food all around.  Kenny’s raw scallop was a big hit, as was Kara’s clam pasta dish.

I loved my cod in mushroom sauce and McD couldn’t resist the bison tartare.

Kenny found an excellent stop for dessert on the way home.  Some wonderful cakes and after dinner drinks.

The KKs were at it early on Thursday.  They got some bagels from Saint Viateur and then navigated their way down to Old Town and the Riverfront district on foot. We arranged to meet them at Maison  des Eclusiers by the riverfront and enjoyed our first taste of poutine.

 

 

What is poutine?  I’m glad you asked – fries, cheese curds, and gravy with various other optional toppings.  I thought it was relatively tasty but didn’t need to order it again on the trip.

Fred texted us that his favourite stop in Montreal was Pub Saint Pierre.  We hoped to camp out there and watch the France vs Morocco World Cup game.  Alas, that was a no go.  They were fully booked with supporters of both teams and so we had to vacate our table before the 4pm kickoff.

There was a decent rain going when we were ejected from the Pub, and so we made our way back to the Airbnb to prepare for dinner.

Dinner was at a lovely Indian place that Kara discovered, Le Taj.  A fancy/cool setting with very good food.  We enjoyed onion bhaji and samosas to start, followed by chicken korma, lamb vindaloo, mixed grill and garlic naan.  Lots of yummy food and plenty of leftovers.  Nice job, Kara!

We headed back downtown on Friday morning.  First stop was the Crew cafe, a coffee shop in a very fancy, old, art deco style Royal Bank of Canada building.  The lines for coffee were too long, but the building was worth the visit.

The World Trade Center building was next door and we gave that a quick visit.  Long enough for Kenny to purchase some cool new shoes, and for me to snap some pictures of a part of the Berlin wall.

We then made a decent hike over to Rue Crescent, a “super cute street with bars and flower boxes.”  The street also sported the first of two Leonard Cohen murals.  I think it’s a very well done representation of the Canadian gentleman.

I first discovered him in my mid teens via the “Greatest Hits” album.

Look at that list of songs!  “The Partisan” and “Suzanne” were my youthful favourites.

We made our way from the mural over to the Boulevard Saint Laurent, which we believed would ultimately take us close to home.  There we found mural number two:

Do you think he might be a bit of a big deal in Montreal?

We stopped at a cafe for a lunch snack of Breton style galettes, sitting outside on the street.

Kara wanted to try the world famous smoked meat sandwich from Schwartz’s deli down the street from Cafe Breizh.  This wasn’t overly appealing to me but tasted good – somewhere between pastrami and corned beef.  This place is very popular – seems to have a constant line out the door.

After that sustenance, we hiked onwards to the Avenue Mont Royal, a pedestrian street (mostly.)  Kara browsed a used record store and we ordered up macchiatos from a coffee window.  We stopped into a little Chilean place to try and watch the World Cup game.  They had it on but didn’t serve any wine or beer.  I ordered an empanada – very good with a delicious sauce.  When I complimented the sauce, the owners told me they brought the recipe from Chile and gave me a little sample to take home.

After a quick freshen up, the girls walked around to the Sparrow, a restaurant/bar with an amazing oyster happy hour – $1 Canadian/oyster – that’s $0.70 US.  Granted, these are the smaller, PEI oysters, but those are usually even more expensive than our local gulf varieties.  I prefer the small, briny ones, but most others like the gulf ones.

I think you can tell from these pictures what the girls thought of the experience:

There was a small music club across from the Airbnb and the girls alerted us to the band playing that evening – Kataklysm.  I listened to a few seconds of a track – do so at your own risk.  There was an interesting Nordic/French band playing later in our stay.

Kenny and I joined the ladies at Sparrow and gave them an excuse to order some more oysters.  The place did make a very good gimlet.

The oysters weren’t enough to sate everyone and an Uber driver had recommended Fugazi pizza – handily just across the street from Sparrow.

That place made a tasty pizza.

I was amazed at the number of pizza, bagel and coffee shops in our neighbourhood.  It was a younger area from a demographic perspective, but still – how much pizza can one eat in a week?

The KKs were excited to try the local ice cream before leaving.  The line wasn’t too long.

Some down memory lane ice cream pictures:

The KKs went off early to summit Mont Royal – successfully completed.  Diana went out for a wander and I walked down the street to Chez Greenberg for breakfast.

Something about Montreal – everybody knows how to make a macchiato.   The special thing at this place was the latke with schmear, smoked salmon, chives, onions and crunchy things.  Different and delicious.

I rendezvoused with my spouse and we went to Bishop and Bagg to watch the Wimbledon ladies final.

It looked like it would be over before the KKs could join us.  Fortunately the match became competitive and needed a third set to decide.

The ladies went out for an extensive walk prior to another Sparrow happy hour, while Kenny and I watched the World Cup game at the apartment.

You’ll have to ask them about the background on this picture.  The one I got seemed quite fishy.

And then back to Sparrow to discuss the cover story.

We tried a well recommended and reviewed neighbourhood Greek place for dinner – Faros.  Again – great service and delicious food.  I tried something new – squid stuffed with cheese and veggies.

Diana had a grilled octopus, Kara lamb, and Kenny steak.

There was an interesting option where you could select a very fresh fish.

The bus boy was helping us with coffee and desert and recommended the yogurt plate.  Great recommendation – we all enjoyed it a lot.

And we were not done at that.  A fruit plate appeared.  We asked questions about one of the melon looking fruits and the owner/chef (for 30 years) came out with an explanation and then reappeared with another exotic melon that he wanted us to try.  What a great experience!

Somehow, on returning to the Airbnb, we got on a favourite show from our childhoods kick.  We watched Lancelot Link and the episode about the “Hong Kong Sneeze” – one of Kenny’s favourites.  Then I shared some Magic Roundabout, The Herbs, and then we finished with the Pink Panther for Kenny and my Dad.

The KKs left us on Sunday.  We sadly moped around and watched some Wimbledon.  In the evening, we couldn’t resist revisiting Molenne for a reprise of that ridiculous raw scallop, bison tartare, and spaghetti clams trifecta.  Just as tasty.

I finished up John of John by Douglas Stuart this week.  Not one of my top reads of the year, but as I said last week, some interesting things about life on the islands.

The Kevin Keegan reference made me smile:
“Dad, I seem to remember a wedding photo where you looked like a hippy.” “It was the style.” “And then there were the Kevin Keegan years. A mullet and a perm.” “I never permed it. I was blessed with natural curls.”
The mother in law who pretended not to speak Gaidhlig:
“He leant forwards. “It’s been forty-eight years. How have you not learnt a lick of the Gàidhlig? You carry on, filling this house with English, like some lazy foreigner.””
I like the “lazy foreigner.”
I can remember reading “The Wasp Factory” – certainly not for the feint of heart:
“The house was heavy with bookshelves. He found his mother’s copy of The Wasp Factory where he had left it two Christmases before, coverless from love. He picked it up and put it inside some-other-man’s bomber jacket. Then he slung his bag over his shoulder and went out into the drizzle.”
The joy of clever nicknames:
“He had earned the name ‘Flash’ because he had once shimmied to a Boney M song. His brother-in-law, Shockie, who was feeling a simmering resentment at his own nickname–earned when he was recounting a shopping trip to Edinburgh and had exclaimed, “Oh now, those prices gave me the shock of my life!”–had been the one to see Aonghas shuffle across the floor. “Hey, Flashdance!” he cried. “Give us a twirl.” And in the
very moment all the men laughed, Aonghas Calder had been renamed ‘Flashdance’ for the rest of his life.”
The danger of being sucked into the island employment traditions:
“Cal stood at the loom and listened to the hum of the fluorescent tube. He worried that the moment his hands settled on the beater they would stay there for the rest of his life. That this shed would become his hermitage, and that one day he would raise his head and he would be older than his father.”
Some thoughts on modern Oban:
“Oban was an inconvenient place to meet. Perhaps Innes had chosen it for that reason–it was unlikely they would run into anyone they knew. The mainland port town had been charming once, but it was spoiled by a busy one-way system that snaked round the half-dead centre. It was all tearooms and tourist shops, and Cal had walked from one side of town to the other in less than twenty minutes. The town square was little more than a traffic island, bordered by raised flower beds and littered with loitering pensioners with their coats on top of coats, sitting alone on damp benches, looking slightly lost, as though they’d been dumped there by their families.”

Poor David’s Pub has been the site of many wonderful concert memories for me.  David retired recently and his daughter is now carrying forward the responsibility for the club.  Here’s a Dallas Observer article with the details:

I love this tribute that Jon Cleary (local piano legend) wrote about James Rivers who passed recently.  We saw Rivers play with Cleary at the Broadside a year or so ago – wonderful.
And finally, to end a very long post, we can’t forget about Bonnie Tyler who died this week.

Week in Review – July 5th, 2026

“Happy Semiquincentennial”

I wonder why spellcheck hasn’t been updated to include “Semiquincentennial”?

The usual early alarm woke me on Monday morning so that Diana would be ready for the 8am pickleball clinic.

Monday was upset day at the World Cup – Brazil barely squeaked past Japan, Germany was ousted by Paraguay, and the Dutch lost to Morocco.  Sinner avoided a first round loss at Wimbledon in five sets and Djokovic looked a bit rocky for a while, losing the second set.

I forgot to mention a story about the Japanese fans from last week.  They clean up the stadium before they leave – picking up all the trash and mess.  The team did the same in the locker room – leaving it spotless with all towels neatly folded by the door.

Japanese clean up

We read and listened to albums in the afternoon.  Joe Jackson always goes over well with McD.  The chickpea wraps made another appearance for lunch – we split one as they are so filling.

Diana was back to play pickleball with some friends later in the afternoon.

 

 

I watched France easily dispose of Sweden on Tuesday.  They really do look like the strongest team by quite a bit.  Diana played some more pickleball while I was doing that.

We picked a new table for trivia in the evening.  This one had the “American Weiner” painting:

A take off on “American Gothic” by Grant Wood.  I had always thought it was a farmer and his wife, and read today that it’s his daughter.

Vacations led to a small team again – Jack, Aidan and Kyle on the youngster squad, me, Kenny and Alex (after jiujitsu) on the old folks contingent.  We did well – in first place with 86 points before the final question.  The second place team had 85 points.  Here’s the final question:

Put these in order from largest to smallest:

The theme was “Flys”.

How many years did Marty McFly travel back in time in the original “Back to the Future” movie?

How many Philadelphia Flyers team members are in the hockey Hall of Fame?

How many episodes of “In Living Color” was J. Lo in the Fly girls?

How many days does a fruit fly live?

How confident do you feel about your ability to put these in order?  Aidan and I wanted to bet zero, not confident at all.  The group consensus was to bet 14, meaning we would be second if the third place team didn’t get it right.

The correct order is:

J. Lo Fly girl  – 62

Fruit fly life – 50

Mary McFly back in time – 30

Philly Flyers HOF – 14

We did not get that order correct and ended up in second place.  A good showing from a small team.

Diana was busy on Wednesday morning – a walk in the park with Kara followed by yoga, and then her annual doctor appointment.  She got a good report.

She got a new nickname at the blood draw lab.  The first draw on Tuesday had one vial that didn’t work and she had to go back on Wednesday morning.  Struggling to pronounce Campagna, the ladies decided that she was going to be Mrs. Champagne going forward.  Little did they know that was a perfect nickname.

I got excited thinking that the English were going to be eliminated from the World Cup by Congo.  The very annoying Harry Kane spoiled that late in the game, and they live to play another game.  We’ll see how they do later today against Mexico in Mexico City.

We decided to pass on the gathering of the large Krewe to watch the USMNT World Cup game at Tchoup yard on Wednesday evening.  Too loud, crowded and noisy with very salty food.  It sounds like the group found a good seating area and had a good time.

Thursday was haircut day for me.  Diana dropped me off and then met me for lunch.  We were looking forward to Mayas but it is only open for lunch on the weekend.  Juan’s Flying Burrito to the rescue with our usuals – Luau quesadilla for me and modified Superbowl for McD.

I watched a bit of Wimbledon after lunch, and was happy to see Tiafoe win in four sets.  Unfortunately, he was eliminated yesterday.

We were invited over to Michael and Laurie’s house for the first time on Friday evening.  They live very close to Denny and Anne.  The excuse for getting together was to review our recommendations for their visit to San Sebastian in a week.  We had a very pleasant evening.

I enjoyed watching the tall ships sailing into New York harbor on TV on Saturday, July 4th.  It was nice that we had the chance to see them up close in New Orleans.

The sailors up in the rigging on this one made me a wee bit queasy.

Thom was home alone and so we invited him to join us for our second annual 4th of July visit to Toups’ Meatery.

The restaurant was very quiet and we had amazing service from Dave, starting with a cheese board and a foie gras torchon.  Dave explained the cheeses and accoutrements beautifully.

I had a glass of Grenache and Thom a Cab Franc – both were delicious.  Then it was time for the wagyu burgers.  I think you can tell that Thom was quite happy with his:

Diana and I split one and it was just as good, if not better, than we remembered.

This was such a good experience.  Thanks to Dave, Toups’ and Thom for a lovely brunch.

We headed home and changed into our pool gear for a trip back over to Michael and Laurie’s home.  Kenny, Kara and Thom joined and we had a very pleasant few hours telling stories in and around the pool.

Diana played tennis with the girls this morning and since then we’ve been watching tennis and listening to the thunder roll through.  I also spent some frustrating time trying to manage the synching of my various Apple devices with iCloud.  I don’t want my iPad to synch and it seems impossible to stop it.

My first book this week was Mendell Station by J B Hwang.  I didn’t love this book.  The story about training as a postal delivery person was interesting and I enjoyed reading about San Francisco neighborhoods that I know a little bit.  The story was too choppy along the timeline and a bit convoluted overall.  Here’s an online summary:

“A tender debut that follows a woman who, after her best friend’s death, loses her faith and quits her job to join the postal service, quickly becoming an ‘essential worker’ as the city shuts down.

It’s January 2020, and Miriam is already getting a sense that the world might be ending. First, she learns that her best friend, Esther, has died. Then her faith in God-in everything, really-follows suit. Her job teaching Scripture at a private Christian school suddenly seems untenable, so she quits. Thankfully, the postal service is hiring.

While Miriam finds comfort in her route, the mail truck can hardly outpace the memory of her lost friend and eroded faith. She finds herself composing letters to Esther that she will never deliver, reflecting on their shared childhoods and deep understanding of each other’s difficult families.

Mendell Station depicts one woman’s deliverance through the peculiar rhythms of work, and the beauty found in small details and gestures, those quotidian labors of love.”

I’m about half way through “John of John” by Douglas Stuart.  This is much better than my last book.  Stuart wrote “Shuggie Bain” – an excellent book but so depressing and grim.  “John of John” is a bit lighter so far, but there is definitely some darkness lurking.

I’m enjoying the Scottish island setting with the crofting and weaving occupations.  I’ll have much more to report next week.  Here are a couple of the reviews:

“Douglas Stuart brilliantly weaved a layered, compelling and yet so intimate a story of identity, what it means to belong, and the courage to claim your own truth.”—Oprah Winfrey

“One of 2026’s literary triumphs.”—Boston Globe

Local piano wizard, Jon Cleary, an import from England, hosts a weekly radio show on Jazz FM in the UK.  I haven’t found a way to listen to it yet, but he makes a playlist of the songs he played available.  Lonnie Johnson had a good song and I attempted to get some background from him via Google.

The first result made me chuckle:

Those Super Soakers were the bane of my existence in our California pool.

Here’s one from Charlie Gabriel of the Preservation Hall band.  What’s interesting about Charlie?  He’s 93 years old and still playing.  I heard him play live last year and he is amazing.

Some wonderful funk:

And finally, something to recognize the 250th anniversary, arranged by the wonderful Jaco Pastorius:

Week in Review – June 28th, 2026

“The Tartan Army heads home”

We began the week with a walk in the park on Monday morning.  We had a couple of celebrity sightings during the outing – Kenny passed on his bike with a “Hey, Hey, Hey,” and then we passed Cooper Manning with his very recognizable gait.  I also got a thumbs up for my Gleason t-shirt from another guy wearing a similar tribute.

I watched some World Cup in the afternoon and it was almost a replay of last Monday – Messi and Mbappe with multiple excellent goals.  Messi’s goal gave him the lead with the most goals ever scored in World Cups.  The France game in Philadelphia had a long weather delay as a major thunderstorm moved through.  Ronaldo had yet to score and has a lot of catching up to do.  I really am enjoying the early games and looking forward to the elimination rounds, which may well include Scotland for the first time ever.

We hung the new jazz stars that Diana gave me for my birthday in the evening.  Bill Evans and Dizzie Gillespie are now playing with Miles.  I love looking at this band and enjoy that they all came from that wonderful little store in San Sebastian.  The artist really captures all three so well.

Here’s some background if you’re not familiar with the three players – their careers are very much linked:

“Miles Davis, Bill Evans, and Dizzy Gillespie are connected through the evolution of modern jazz, though they played different roles and belonged to slightly different generations.

Direct connections

  • Miles Davis and Bill Evans
    • Bill Evans was a key member of Miles Davis’s late-1950s groups.
    • Evans’s harmonic style and impressionistic piano playing strongly influenced Davis’s landmark album Kind of Blue.
    • Evans played on most of the tracks on Kind of Blue, one of the most influential jazz recordings ever made.
  • Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie
    • Both were trumpet virtuosos and major innovators.
    • Early in his career, Miles Davis was influenced by Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop revolution.
    • In the 1940s, Davis played alongside bebop pioneers including Charlie Parker, who was Gillespie’s close collaborator.
    • Davis later moved away from the fast, complex bebop style associated with Gillespie and helped develop cool jazz, modal jazz, and jazz fusion.

Musical lineage

You can think of their relationship as a chain of influence:

Dizzy Gillespie → Miles Davis ← Bill Evans

  • Dizzy Gillespie helped create bebop, the modern jazz language that shaped the young Miles Davis.
  • Miles Davis became one of jazz’s greatest innovators, building on and reacting to bebop.
  • Bill Evans collaborated with Davis and helped shape Davis’s modal jazz period, particularly on Kind of Blue.

Shared importance

Together, they represent major stages in jazz history:

  1. Dizzy Gillespie — Bebop pioneer (1940s).
  2. Miles Davis — Innovator across multiple jazz movements (1940s–1980s).
  3. Bill Evans — Influential pianist whose harmonic concepts helped define modal and modern jazz (1950s–1970s).

In short, Dizzy Gillespie influenced the jazz world that shaped Miles Davis, while Bill Evans was a close collaborator who helped Miles Davis create some of the most important music in jazz history.”

We watched the new Netflix rom-com “Voicemails for Isabelle” on Monday evening.

We both enjoyed the movie, although one of us fell asleep and missed the last few minutes.  Interestingly the settings oscillated between Austin and San Francisco and so we were able to comment on how unlikely it was that scenes would take place where they would – e.g. the main character sitting on a bench by the lookout on the far side of the Golden Gate bridge – that would have been a several hours walk up a very steep hill from where she worked.

Diana had her usual pickleball on Tuesday morning and I went for a workout at the New Orleans Athletic Club (it’s getting too hot for me to do too much outside.)  I listened to an audio book of “Just Kids” by Patti Smith as I exercised.

After the NOAC, I relaxed by watching the Portugal game.  Ronaldo redeemed himself with two nice goals in the first half, and Portugal finished with a commanding victory.

We had a larger group than anticipated for trivia in the evening.  Jack, Alex and Aidan came just a few hours after returning home from Iceland.  By all accounts they had a fabulous trip.  Mason came as well, after a hard day at work.  That was a good thing as he knew several answers that nobody else had a clue about.  We were in the lead going into the final question with 90 points, and three teams tied for second with 86 points.

Here’s a disturbing picture from inside Dat Dog:

Jack Nicholson from “The Shining” in an Edvard Munch “Scream” style hot dog.  Quite unique and disturbing.  I know quite a bit about the “Scream” painting, having “helped” Will with a paper about it.

The final question was not something any of us new anything about – so we bet zero out of a possible 20 and won by 4 points – most of the other teams deploying the same strategy.  We were quite proud of our win – a true team effort.

Diana had her first walk in the park with Julia in a while on Wednesday morning – summer’s get busy with kids and travel.

Anticipation had been building all day for the Scotland vs Brazil World Cup match in the evening.  I enjoyed watching the interactions between the two groups of fans on TV – Brazilians teaching the Tartan Army to Samba.  The commentators noted that they had not heard such levels of participation in the national anthems at any other games.

Unfortunately, Scotland made several silly mistakes that cost them goals – the first at 7 min into the game, ultimately losing 3-0.  I really hope one or two of those silly goals don’t end up being the difference in advancing to the elimination round, and I have a nasty feeling they will.  It is pleasant to hear World Cup updates on the national news where the presenters biggest concern is if Scotland will make it to the next round – wasn’t even on their minds prior to the start of the tournament and their introduction to the Tartan Army.

I enjoyed this LinkedIn post from Matthew Ricks, one of my Sun Microsystems customers when we ran their data centers.

I enjoyed this clever cartoon in the newspaper on Thursday morning:

The temperatures in Europe continued to break records and I laughed at this article about the “gritters” being out in Scotland to spread sand over the main roads to try and reflect heat and cool the surface.

Gritters out in Scotland in Heatwave

It was 88 degrees in Dumfries (my birthplace) and that’s what prompted the “gritting.”  I would be quite happy with 88 this week, but it’s all what you’re used to and equipped for.

Denny was experiencing some very nice cool temperatures in Colorado.  Doesn’t he look a bit like Julie Andrews?  “The Hills are Alive.”

We watched the movie “The Sheep Detectives” on Thursday afternoon and night.  Highly recommended.   I have no idea how they make these AI generated sheep so loveable and believable, but they do.

In between movie sessions, we tried a new place for dinner and music.  I had heard a song from Dex Daley on WWOZ (local radio station) that featured steel drums – they are a favourite of McD’s after she watched a show about how they are made.  The song is not available on Spotify and so I had looked across the internet and found an article saying he was playing at Afrodisiac (intentional spelling change) in Gentilly on Thursday evening.  This is a Jamaican themed restaurant and I had been wanting to visit for a while to try their jerk chicken.  I missed the Gentlemen Out At Lunch (GOAL) lunch there a few months ago.

The food and drinks were delicious.  We tried the jerk chicken and shrimp nachos, a salad with pineapple, cucumber and avocado with a lemon vinaigrette dressing, a hibiscus lemonade and a pain killer (D doing her best to teleport to an island beach.)

I highly recommend the food and drinks and just caution you that it seemed to take the better part of an hour for them to arrive, and the place wasn’t overly busy.  Fortunately, we had the music of Dex Daley to enjoy.  Such positive energy and sound.

Here’s a link to a lot more detail about Daley’s interesting history and background:

Dex Daley and Jamx bio

Friday began with another walk in the park – seemed a wee bit cooler than earlier in the week.

Diana played pickleball in the afternoon with some friends and came back quite pumped about the session.  I enjoyed some World Cup.

In the evening we watched the “Somebody Feed Phil” episode about Montreal and made note of a couple of potential places to visit for local fare.

I also watched a bit of a very silly movie called “Little Brother” starring John Cena.

They seen to have more elections in New Orleans than I’ve seen anywhere else.  On Saturday you voted to decide if we should keep paying for the Garden District security patrol (hope so) and for the run off candidates for Senate.  There’s an initial election and if nobody gets enough votes (above 50% I think), then there’s a run off between the top two candidates (the case in this one), and then there will be the final vote in November.

I walked down to the fire station on Magazine Street with Diana on Saturday morning so that she could vote and I could get us coffee from the French Truck.  She was finishing voting by the time I picked up our coffees – very efficient.

After that, we made a trip to the NOAC for some exercise in the air conditioning.  Then a trip to Trader Joe’s for needed groceries and supplies.  Saturday morning is most certainly the prime time to go there – as confirmed by our checkout guy.  Apparently Sunday morning is a quite different proposition.  We gathered the ingredients to make buffalo chickpea wraps – what appears to be a healthy version of Taco Bell’s crunchwrap supreme.  For the first time that I remember we divided up the ingredients and set out to different sections of the store.  Such good teamwork!  This is what they should look like:

Diana also treated herself to some peonies, one of her favourite flowers.

As the group matches ended, Scotland’s fate was sealed by that 3-0 loss to Brazil, and the Tartan Army began the journey home.

We made the chickpea wraps for a late lunch/early dinner on Sunday.  They were tasty and the recipe created way more filling than could fit in four large tortillas – we easily filled six.  After eating, we drove over to the Constantinople porch stage to see Dave Jordan and Rurik Nunan perform.  We’ve heard them both separately at the Broadside and enjoyed their individual sounds.  Together they blended very pleasantly.

Can you believe Jack has hosted 281 shows on his front porch?  That’s some staying power.

Kenny and Kara attended a music festival curated by Wilco in Massachusetts over the weekend.  I’ve always wanted to visit Morocco and so was intrigued by this photo:

I finished “Contrapposto” by Dave Eggers this week.  I always enjoy Eggers writing and was not disappointed.  The detail of the art world was a whole new thing for me – at a much deeper level than that from “The Fine Art of Lying” from a few weeks ago.  I’m not sure this is for everyone but I enjoyed it quite a bit.  Here’s an online summary of the story:

“Cricket Dib, born on the American prairie, has no particular prospects or ambitions until, in grade school, he realizes he can draw. He soon meets a girl, Olympia Argyros, one year older, who is captivating and brilliant and far more worldly. Recognizing his talent, she convinces him to deface, with profound vulgarity, a popular playground. Under her direction, he does it willingly, already in love, and thus begins a sixty-five-year entwining between Cricket and Olympia, encompassing friendship, working partnership and love affair. Together they go to art school—an experience of dubious value—and then navigate the art world for the next fifty years, together and apart.

Contrapposto is a moving and very funny novel about allies and art, and what it means to be an artist. All through their lives, Cricket sees Olympia as his soulmate and destiny, and while she is always his champion, romantically her eyes are always seeking something—and someone—else. Their love changes over the decades, but their commitment to each other, and their search for meaning in the making of art, never wanes. The novel spans the globe, from New York to Thailand, Indiana to Paris, and follows Cricket and Olympia through sickness and health, war and death.

The novel is a wild and beautiful examination of the rules and market forces of the art world, but chiefly it’s about two friends who believe they can change that world, and bring new meaning to it, if only they can start their own movement, dodge charlatans, remain open-eyed and open-hearted, avoid going mad, avoid dying young of rare cancers, stay true to their ideals, and never tire of beauty. Not easy, but not impossible, either.”

My next book was “The Man Who Came Uptown” by George Pelecanos.  I don’t think I’ve read any of his books before and picked it up online while waiting in the queue for several other books.  It was a quick, easy and relatively entertaining read.  Nothing special.

“In bestselling and Emmy-nominated writer George Pelecanos’ novel, one of the best mysteries of 2018 (Publishers Weekly), an ex-offender must choose between the man who got him out and the woman who showed him another path.

Michael Hudson spends the long days in prison devouring books given to him by the prison’s librarian, a young woman named Anna who develops a soft spot for her best student. Anna keeps passing Michael books until one day he disappears, suddenly released after a private detective manipulated a witness in Michael’s trial.

Outside, Michael encounters a Washington, D.C. that has changed a lot during his time locked up. Once shady storefronts are now trendy beer gardens and flower shops. But what hasn’t changed is the hard choice between the temptation of crime and doing what’s right. Trying to balance his new job, his love of reading, and the debt he owes to the man who got him released, Michael struggles to figure out his place in this new world before he loses control.

Smart and fast-paced, The Man Who Came Uptown brings Washington, D.C. to life in a high-stakes story of tough choices.”

A paragraph explaining the title.  Apparently one “comes uptown” when leaving prison:
“I like my job. Sayin, it’s okay for now, till I figure out what’s next.” He flashed on Ornazian and what they were planning to do. “It’s always a challenge when you come uptown.” “What’s that mean, come uptown?” “It’s just somethin dudes say, when they come out. Uptown doesn’t mean it’s fancy. But it’s way better than where you been, because it’s home.”
Criminals discussing the Greek roots of words made me smile:
“All I’m hearing from you right now is cacophony.” “Huh?” “From the Greek. Caco means ‘bad.’ Phony is ‘sound.’” “Oh my God. That again.” “You’re making bad sounds.” “Don’t get turned around by money,” said Sydney.
One of the interesting threads in the book related to Anna, who worked as a librarian in the prison system:
She handed him a slim copy of The Red Pony. Since the book club had read Of Mice and Men, Larry had asked for more “Mr. Steinbeck.” She had erred in giving him East of Eden, which he returned unfinished, saying it was “too slow and too long.” She thought this one would work better for him. Larry inspected the cover art, a lovely black-and-white photograph of a grazing horse, circa 1926, taken by Albert Renger-Patzsch.
Is it a “Full English”, Full Scottish, or Full Irish?  I’ve heard them all now and they refer to very much the same breakfast.  I suppose only the Scottish has the black pudding.  And they all have the beans that Denny does not want with his breakfast.
SYDNEY HAD prepared a large breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausage, beans, and mushrooms after Ornazian had woken up just past noon. It was what she called a Full English. He sat at their kitchen table eating ravenously, washing the meal down with juice and coffee. The dogs, Whitey and Blue, were following Sydney around the kitchen, hoping for scraps. She commanded them to sit, and when they complied, she gave them each half a strip of bacon.
A concluding paragraph revisiting “coming up town:”
To anyone watching, he was one of many out on the street, going along, stepping quick against the weather. They couldn’t know his inner life, or his history, or that he was a Washingtonian, born and bred, with a steady job, family and friends. A lover of books. A man who knew who he was and who he hoped to be. Just another man who came uptown. Walking in the rain.

There were second line tributes this week for Ronell Johnson, a multi-instrumentalist with the Preservation Hall band for many years.  I love this picture with the band members on the balcony above the Hall.

Offbeat article on Ronell Johnson

“Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House has been a long time favourite of mine, and so I was intrigued when I heard local hero, Deacon John, playing a cover on WWOZ.  He does a great job.  I love the “Crowded Shotgun House” name for the EP.

Week in Review – June 21st, 2026

“Happy Anniversary to Us, Happy Birthday to Finn, Happy Father’s Day”

Five hours.  That’s how much pickleball McD played on Monday.  Two hours starting at 8am and three hours finishing at 9pm.  Do we think she might have a wee problem?

Dee introduced us to these snacks that are surprisingly good and addictive – just like the sport for Diana:

I was out doing some anniversary preparation on Tuesday and stopped into Magasin for lunch.  This is a Vietnamese place on Magazine Street near Theo’s pizza and Shaya, that I’ve been wanting to try for a while.  It’s a small place with classical piano music playing – very relaxing and not what I was expecting.  I started with crab Rangoon and followed that with shrimp garlic thick noodles (including a fried egg nestled on top).  Both were delicious and provided lots of leftovers.

The majority of our trivia team was overseas on vacation – Alex in Iceland with Jack and Aidan, Thom in Crete with his Jack, Denny in Boulder, and Pepperoni in Cincinnati.  Couple that with the constant rain all day and I wasn’t heart broken when Kenny suggested that we take a week off – seemed like it was just going to be the two of us and there are a lot of topics that aren’t our strong suit – anything to do with games, comics, Marvel movies and the like.

I enjoyed a couple of World Cup games on Tuesday afternoon and evening.  MBappe started things off with two amazing goals for France.

That was followed by an even more impressive hat-trick for Messi and Argentina – his first goal was just amazing.

The US media have been quite interested in the exploits of the “Tartan Army” (Scottish World Cup fans.)  Here’s a report on them drinking Boston out of beer – consuming three times as much as is drunk on St. Patrick’s day.

Tartan Army drinks Boston dry

Here’s a segment from the Today show featuring fans from different countries and their reactions to US culture.  I love the Norwegian fans playing Viking rowers on the escalator:

Today show segment on World Cup fans

Finn celebrated his birthday on Wednesday and shared this picture of some of his cards on his fridge.  Can you spot the one that came from New Orleans?

Here he is with his birthday dessert:

We celebrated our 9th anniversary on Wednesday with a lovely lunch at Commander’s Palace.  Very stormy weather was forecast and it held off until we could make the 600 foot walk back home.

Yes – for the second or third time this year, I put a suit on.  Diana wore her very pretty pink dress that I’ve eclipsed in this picture, and got compliments on it from the staff at Commander’s.

Our meal was great – I started with the trio of demitasse sized soups, and followed that with the cochon de lait tostada (why would spellcheck not know cochon, it has clearly never been to New Orleans) – the most tender and flavourful pork.

Diana also started with the trio of soups and followed those with the grilled fish (drum).  And then she decided on the chocolate tart – so decadent.  The chocolate is from the Piety and Desire chocolate and coffee shop next to Aidan Gill (where I get my hair cut.)  I often have a macchiato in there after my trim.

And of course the 25 cent martinis:

We exchanged gifts and cards after lunch.  Look at this frame with San Sebastian city map around my favourite picture of McD from that trip – nicely done, Diana.

Here’s a fun game.  Remember those things as a kid where you had to find a number of differences between two similar pictures?  Well, what’s different about these?  (answer at the end of this post)

Diana is getting very fancy with her cards.  Apparently the theme for nine years of marriage is pottery.

Denny shared one of his favourite pictures from our wedding day.

I asked him what Dad and I were looking at.  He thinks it was the storm brewing in the distance, as we wondered if we had to move the reception under cover.  He has no idea what Mum and Diana were in such a serious conversation about.

We “enjoyed” some severe weather on Wednesday night/Thursday morning.  The first named storm of the season, Arthur, sat on us for a while and was very loud.  We didn’t have any real flooding or impacts, but other areas a few miles from us had major damage and some tornadoes with roofs gone.

We made our first trip to our new, closer Trader Joe’s on Thursday.  The parking was much better than I expected and the store was very quiet and calm.  It was a pleasant shopping experience overall.  I enjoyed the murals they have above the shelves that are locally focused.

Mason sent this video in support of the Scotland vs Morocco game on Friday afternoon – very funny:

We met Kenny to watch the USMNT World Cup game at the Tchoup Yard – one of the collection of breweries that are situated along Tchoupatoulis Street, an industrial area by the river that provides large spaces at much lower cost than other areas.  We were looking forward to lunch – they advertised a crunch wrap take off on my Taco Bell favourite, and Kenny wanted to try the chicken sandwich that Pepperoni raved about on a prior visit.  We didn’t love the food – decent but way too salty, I suppose that’s supposed to make you drink more beer?

This was my first visit to the brewery and I was impressed with the variety of seating areas – inside with A/C, outside in the humidity, and with various different seating options.  It got very busy and loud inside as the match proceeded.  As is typical with events like this in New Orleans, everyone says they’re “going to watch the game” and then nobody does – they form in circles and chat and catch up.  The same thing happens at music festivals and concerts.

The USMNT won handily and we made our way back to our home to watch Scotland and Morocco.  Kenny and Kara joined, with a brief appearance by Mason and his buddy, Evan.  Alas, Scotland lost 0-1.  The positive news is that they played quite well in the second half and have a good chance of making into the round of 32 for the first time in their 8 appearances.

I enlisted Kenny to sing along with our anthem, “Flower of Scotland”, and I got confused when the crowd didn’t sing the second verse, only the first and third.  Apparently this is standard and it shows how much attention that I’ve been playing.  The second verse about the aftermath of the Battle of Bannockburn, is actually one of my favourites.  What’s that?  You’d like to know a wee bit more about the Battle.  Okay then:

The Battle of Bannockburn (June 23–24, 1314) was a decisive Scottish victory during the First War of Scottish Independence.  King Robert the Bruce led a smaller Scottish army to rout a much larger English force commanded by King Edward II, securing Scottish sovereignty and confirming Bruce’s reign.

I got a text from my neighbour, Tony, “Go Tartan Army!”  I was concerned that he had heard us singing and that was the reason for the text.  Thankfully they are in Florida for a few days.

I offered to watch a rom-com with Diana on Friday evening but she was too tired for a full movie and so we watched an episode of “I Will Find You”, the latest series from a Harlen Coben novel on Netflix.  She was very gracious in reminding me about the large cast of characters that I struggled to recall from previous episodes.

Saturday was a relatively lazy day – Diana went for a long walk, then had her “pool time” interrupted by the typical afternoon thunderstorm.  I watched some of the Netherlands beating up on Sweden (5-1), read for a while, and watched some of the US Open golf.

Sunday was Father’s Day.  Kenny, Kara and Nina kindly invited us to crash their plans for the afternoon in the French Quarter.  First stop was The Historic New Orleans Collection, a free museum with various exhibits celebrating the history of our city.  They had a special exhibition to celebrate the American Revolution.  Here’s how they described it:

“American Revolution:  The Augmented Exhibition

Immerse yourself in America’s fight for independence in this new exhibition experience designed and produced by French technology firm Histovery.”

You were issued a tablet on entry and had to scan in 14 different stations to read the history, find treasures, and travel around the various scenes.  This became tiresome for Kenny and me pretty quickly – seemed like an overuse of technology and it was annoying to have to spin around in circles holding the tablet aloft to see everything.  That being said there was a plethora of interesting information presented in an engaging way.  We beat a relatively quick retreat to some comfy seats and waited a while for the ladies who had started and were determined to finish.

Kenny and I wandered upstairs to check out the Aeolian residential player pipe organ.

Apparently these player organs were very popular in the houses of the rich in the 1800s.  We listened to a couple of songs from downstairs when they gave the 3pm demonstration – sounded great.

We were all hungry for lunch at Acme oyster house.

I enjoyed some of the delicious chargrilled oysters and a cup of crab and corn soup.  The others had po-boys, and raw and chargrilled oysters.

Kenny and Kara met a friend they had worked with at the Hard Rock Cafe years ago, now working at Acme, and he treated us to some desserts.  That deconstructed pecan pie martini looking thing in front of Kenny was the best.

In the evening, the group minus Nina watched the movie “Greg Allman: The Music of My Soul” at the Broad.  This movie only had two showings in the New Orleans area.  We all thoroughly enjoyed it and I would highly recommend it to any music lover.

I enjoyed this Father’s Day article from Keith Spera, music writer for the local paper, about his father’s love for music:

Spera father’s day

My first book this week was “The Midnight Train” by Matt Haig.  I have read a few of his books and was looking forward to this one.  I had a bit of a hard time not feeling that the premise was a bit trite and formulaic.  The story was great and engaging once I decided to put that aside.  It was just a little too close to “The Midnight Library” for me not to feel like Haig is riding too much of a good thing.  Here’s an online summary of the plot:

“The Midnight Train is a 2026 novel by Matt Haig, set in the same universe as The Midnight Library, about a recently deceased man named Wilbur who boards a magical train to revisit key moments in his life, particularly his regrets and lost love with Maggie. The story follows his journey through his past, exploring themes of regret, redemption, and the importance of appreciating the life you have, even with its flaws. It’s a magical, time-traveling love story that serves as a companion to The Midnight Library, focusing on a more active exploration of past choices. “

A couple of paragraphs that set up the main premise:

“It’s like that Kierkegaard quote. “Life can only be understood backward; but it must be lived forward.”  And this train offers a solution.  Life relived forward.”

“”As I have told you,” she said, “eternity is a moveable concept.  it is what you make it.  to get the most out of it, you need to know yourself.  And that is what these windows are for.”  She looked a little sad for a moment.  But then put on a brisk and professional smile.  “I’ll leave you to it.  Toodle-pip.””

Wilbur’s first entry into bookshop work:

“Sometimes the biggest moments in a lifetime are also the smallest, pondered the Ghost.

And sometimes people don’t quite know they are the biggest moments until you are able to step out of the train and look back at them.

Like getting a holiday job in a bookshop back in 1961, during the school summer holidays.”

I read this passage and had to look up “contrapposto.”

“Wilbur had been in a strange twisted position as he wrestled for control of the car.  And this awkward contrapposto, with his leg trying to reach the brake pedal, meant that he was lower in his seat.”

Here’s what I found:

“Contrapposto (Italian for “counterpose”) is an artistic technique where a standing human figure shifts most of their weight onto one foot.  This causes the hips and shoulders to tilt in opposite directions, creating a natural, relaxed, and asymmetrical posture.”

And then things got strange.  I was looking through the library of books that I had on my iPad from the local library to choose a new one to read in bed.  And there was “Contrapposto” from the wonderful Dave Eggers.

“Contrapposto is a 2026 novel by Dave Eggers about the lifelong friendship and artistic journey of two characters, Cricket and Olympia, as they navigate the art world from their youth into old age, exploring themes of love, meaning, and the pursuit of authentic art. The story spans decades and continents, following their complex relationship as they try to create their own art movement while dealing with the commercialism of the art world. The title refers to a classical art pose, reflecting the book’s focus on art and its meaning. “

South African born pianist Abdullah Ibrahim died this week.  He was a loud voice against apartheid and lived most of his life in exile in New York.  I think his touch and laid back phrasing are amazing:

Here’s an NPR article about Ibrahim:

NPR on Abdullah Ibrahim

I watched a very interesting documentary about the Kinks – the biggest band in the UK in the 60s behind the Beatles and the Stones.  Here’s a fun song of theirs:

A song from the Bob Dylan birthday show many years ago that popped up on my list:

Morgan Freeman has an album coming out, “Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience.”  Here’s the initial track featuring

Morgan Freeman Album

Here’s the answer to the question about the two pictures of Diana in San Sebastian:  Her pocket is inside out in the second picture.  She had Alicia “fix” that for the first one.

Week in Review – June 14th, 2026

“Happy Retirement, Tim”

The New York Knicks had a 2-0 lead over the San Antonio Spurs going into game three of the NBA finals on Monday evening.  I loved watching the Spurs come rallying back for a win.

They are a very young team and have the potential to be contenders for many years to come.

Before I was even out of bed on Tuesday, American Airlines had let me know that my flight to visit Tim and Deirdre in Philadelphia was delayed by two and a half hours.  They’re trying to get better about giving reasons for the delays – this one seemed a bit light:

I watched a movie on the plane that I would describe as a psychological thriller – “The Housemaid.”  I was telling Denny about it yesterday and he teased me relentlessly that the movie’s target audience was ladies in the 18 – 25 year old demographic.  Not sure I believe him – but he is now cut off from my movie recommendations.  His loss.

Tim had planned to pick us up at the airport, and we let him off the hook as our flight would now be arriving in rush hour.  We took an Uber and arrived around 7pm for some delicious Tim cooked ribs.  Diana said they were the best she had tasted.  I wonder what’s Tim’s secret?

Tim loves to decorate for all holidays – Christmas, July 4th, Halloween, Autumn, St. Patrick’s Day, and any number of others.  Deirdre keeps him restricted in how soon and late his decorations can stay.  He is in full July 4th mode right now – particularly down in his new basement bar.  There have been many improvements since I visited 15+ years ago – a new deck, a completely refinished basement with bar (beautifully stocked with whiskies and snacks), TV room and gym, and a downstairs patio.

Buddy the Beagle likes to go out early in the morning – around 5am.  He came to visit me and make sure all was good when he came back inside.  It’s been a while since I woke up to a dog in my face.  We took advantage of the early start to go out for a walk on the very well maintained trails through the woods.  It’s already starting to get warm in Pennsylvania early in the morning.

Our main activity for Tuesday was a visit to Peddler’s Village – about a 30 minute drive.  What is that place all about?  Here’s the advertising scoop:

We started with lunch on the patio at the Buttonwood Grill.  The food was good and we did hear something very entertaining as we were deciding on our orders.  “I’m allergic to mushrooms,” said Tim.  “No you’re not,” was the quick rebuttal from Dee.  The theme was revisited many times throughout the day, with Dee ultimately admitting that she had seen Tim eat things that contained mushrooms that he didn’t know about, and he had survived just fine.  “Who are you?  Sneaking mushrooms into my food.”

Walking around the artisanal shops with a drink is encouraged.  There is a local distillery and brewery to choose from.  I get a moonshine margarita slushy – not sweet at all due to the moonshine bite.

Each season seems to bring a different set of exhibits to the village – scarecrows, Christmas trees, and for our visit, sand sculptures.  Titled “Sights in Sand – an American Road Trip,” these very large sculptures were quite impressive.

The big question we all had was, “What holds the sculptures together?”  Apparently they are periodically sprayed with a blend of water and wood glue.  Each sculpture took around 125 hours to complete, and they will be on display through the end of August.

We made a quick stop on the way home to pick up sandwiches for our outing on Wednesday.  Then a quick visit to Wormwood farms brewery before heading home for Tim to grill a tri-tip.  It’s a while since I had this cut of meat – always popular at sporting events in California, and rarely seen in New Orleans.  Grill master Tim did another excellent job – finishing just before the “meat” of a rainstorm arrived.

Caitlin, Tim and Dee’s oldest daughter, visited for dinner – still in scrubs from her occupational therapy job – I believe related to patients suffering with brain trauma.  I would guess that it’s 15 years since I last saw Caitlin.

After dinner, Tim and I watched game 4 of the Spurs and Knicks basketball finals in the basement.  The Spurs had a 29 point lead and so I retired to bed at half time.  The big news in the morning – the Knicks were the first team in history to overcome a 29 point lead, and now lead the series 3-1.  Ugh!

We took our sandwiches to Bishop Estate winery for lunch on Thursday.  We each tried a flight of wines and then voted on which bottle to get for lunch – the Chardonnay won.

 

 

Diana picked up a couple of red white and blue wine glasses to go with Tim’s decor.

After the “allergic to mushrooms” theme died down a bit, the complaints about Tim’s birthday falling on father’s day ratcheted up.  So…he got one glass for his birthday and one for father’s day.  Here they are in the bar:

Tim got a night off from cooking, and we enjoyed dinner on the patio at 59 Almshouse.

In the evening Tim opened the retirement gift that Dee had hidden away for us when we had it shipped there.  More “Who are you, sneaking around and hiding things?”

It’s a line art sculpture of a Beagle, and was well received.

Friday was a smooth travel day back to New Orleans.

Kenny, Kara, Nina, Denny, and Anne met us at Merry Lee and Jeff’s pool on Saturday afternoon.  Diana had organized a cabana and so we were able to have a fridge and soccer on TV, and a place to shelter during a brief but heavy rain shower.

I had to oscillate between two sporting events on Saturday evening – Scotland vs Haiti in the World Cup, and Spurs vs Knicks basketball.

 

Scotland did win but played unimpressively and gave what I would describe as a flat effort.  They did lead their group for a while:

And the Spurs lost, giving the Knicks their first NBA Championship in over 50 years.

My book this week was “The Fine Art of Lying” by Alexandra Andrews.  Denny would probably say that I’m not in the target demographic for this book,  and I don’t care as I enjoyed the read.

Here’s an online summary of the plot:

“From the critically acclaimed author of Who is Maud Dixon? comes a riveting new novel about a young wife and mother thrust into a world of wealth and privilege, whose rash mistake sets off a domino effect of murder and betrayal.

In the beginning, there was art.

It was Clare Bast’s love of art that saved her from a bleak, predictable life in upstate New York, and drew her to the cultured world of Manhattan’s Upper East Side where she met Jed, her doting, affluent husband.

Despite her best efforts—including a half-finished PhD, abandoned when her daughter Sadie was born—Clare secretly can’t help but feel like an imposter in Jed’s one-percent, Park-Avenue life.

When the well-connected wife of Jed’s new boss introduces her to influential friends—a curator here, a gallerist there, an aficionado abroad—Clare feels an essential part of herself coming alive again. And when she discovers that an important work painted by the subject of her unfinished dissertation is hanging in the brownstone of a seductively attractive dealer, she believes fate is leading her where she belongs . . . until she finds herself at the scene of a gruesome murder and a stolen masterpiece. Caught in the perfectly wrong place at the perfectly wrong time, every clue the investigation uncovers points back to her.

Suddenly, Clare is trapped inside a dark and treacherous art world filled with unscrupulous dealers and international criminals. What, exactly, has she gotten herself into . . . and how is she going to get herself, and her family, out?”

This paragraph made me smile – we have the same anniversary and will celebrate later this week.

“She brought it to the living room and sat on the couch. Noodle lifted up his head to look at her before settling back down in his cage. Clare tapped in Jed’s password—0617, their anniversary—and the display opened onto a picture of Sadie and her in the pool in East Hampton. She swiped down and searched”

Have you heard of Erma Franklin?  I had not.  She is the older sister of Aretha and recorded the original version of this song, nominated for a Grammy.

The famous version was recorded by Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company a year later.

The first Rush shows of their much anticipated tour happened in LA this week.  The reviews rave about Anika Niles, the new female drummer, replacing the late Neal Peart.  I watched a video of them performing the entire 2112 suite for the first time in 29 years.

Week in Review – June 7th, 2026

“A Relaxing Week at Home”

Pickleball kept Diana busy on Monday.  She had a clinic in the morning and then a match with some new friends from the clinics in the aftenroon.

I watched the French Open tennis in the afternoon.  The match between Tiafoe and  was excellent.  Tiafoe had multiple chances to win and couldn’t capitalize.

A real shame, as he had a chance to go far with many of the big names eliminated.

I suggested John Fohl at Dos Jefes to Diana and she jumped on it.  John has been playing Monday nights at Dos Jefes cigar bar for around 30 years and always puts on an excellent show.  There were very few people there, around ten, with Fohl commenting about how much things slow down after the Memorial Day weekend.  As is typical, he started with some finger picked instrumentals before diving into his song repertoire.    I heard all my favourites, particularly this one with the lyric “Left hand of Toussaint, right hand of God.”

John Fohl live always gives me a very nice boost.

While Diana attended another pickleball session on Tuesday morning, I headed over to Aidan Gill for a haircut.  Then I spent an hour or so on a paint by numbers kit – heading straight back to my childhood.  I did find it very relaxing, even if I had to use my phone magnifying glass to see the numbers in some of the sections, and paint them with a very fine tipped brush.  I’ll share a picture when I’m finished.  We visited the New Orleans Athletic Club in the afternoon – I had a swim and a steam while Diana used the treadmill.

Tennis entertained me again in the afternoon – this time Mescik and Fonseca with one of the better matches that I’ve seen in a long time.

We had another good trivia showing in the evening.  The final question asked us to put these 4 events in chronological order:

  • The Geneva Conference
  • Five Easy Pieces movie
  • The launch of Reese’s Pieces
  • The publication of a Separate Peace

With a great team effort – Denny on Reese’s, Jack on Geneva, Thom on Separate Peace, and me on Five Easy Pieces – we bet the maximum 20 points and got it right for the win.  Another great leadership job by Kenny!

More pickleball on Wednesday – this time a serving and returning clinic that Diana seemed to enjoy.

And the final pickle session for the week was the Thursday morning clinic.  In the evening we attended a fun event – an outdoor movie at the wonderful Broadside theater.  The offering this time was Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior from 1981, the second in George Miller’s popular series.  An online summary of the plot:

“After avenging the death of his wife and young son at the hands of a vicious gang leader, Max drives the post-apocalyptic highways of the Australian outback, fending off attacks from nomadic tribes that prey on outsiders. Falling into an encampment led by the relatively peaceful Pappagallo, Max at first schemes to steal their oil, but soon becomes the group’s reluctant defender against the hulking Humungus and his ruthless marauders.”

I love the Humungus name, and one of my other favourite characters was the boomerang wielding “Feral Kid.”  Listed just like that in the credits.  Emil Minty was 9 years old at the time.

We really enjoyed sitting outside and enjoying the soundtrack on the massive Broadside sound system.  There is very little dialogue in the movie and the orchestral soundtrack sounded great.

Kenny and Kara stopped into the Chicory house coffee shop across the street from us after their Saturday morning yoga.  We had a nice visit and it was a good excuse for me to enjoy one of the ridiculously good mushroom, brie and shallot turnovers – they have a high butter content.

Anne’s sister, Mary Francis, passed through town on her way to Navarre and the continued condo clean out.  We met the girls at Charmant for a delicious brunch.  Diana did not enjoy the bacon infused Bloody Mary, so I had to help finish it.

I met the boys (Denny, Fred, Richard and various kids) in the afternoon to watch the USMNT play Germany in the last friendly before the World Cup gets underway.  The game was relatively entertaining and it was nice to try a new place that is a close walk for me, the Rendezvous bar.

I wondered why the US team is denoted as the USMNT, when none of the other countries feel the need to append “Men’s National Team” to their country name.  It’s just “Scotland.”  Denny posited that it was in order to make internet searches more efficient.  Perhaps.

I needed something lighter and quicker after the trudge through “Doxology.”  Claire Keegan’s “So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men” was a perfect antidote.  Three short stories that were easy and thought provoking reads.

Here’s an online review:

“So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men is a 2023 collection of three short stories by acclaimed Irish author Claire Keegan, exploring complex gender dynamics, misogyny, and missed connections through tales of regret, intrusion, and desire.  The stories, “So Late in the Day,” “The Long and Painful Death,” and “Antarctica,” are praised for their precise, powerful writing and ability to pack significant emotional depth into a small space, often leaving readers with a sense of unease and haunting reflection. “

My next book was “Ghost Town” by Tom Perrotta.  I read this in just over a day – it was another quick and enjoyable read.  I enjoyed “The Leftovers” and was interested to read another of Perrotta’s novels.  Here’s an online summary:

“Jimmy Perrini lives in 1970s suburban New Jersey, a few miles from Manhattan, but a world apart. At the end of eighth grade, after tragedy strikes, Jimmy finds himself lost in a fog of grief that alienates him from friends and family, drifting instead into troubling friendships with two older teenagers: one a notorious local burnout with a fast car, an endless supply of weed, and a shaky grasp of reality; the other a smart, eccentric girl, whom Jimmy finds himself drawn to as they become entranced by her Ouija board, which may just offer the only salve to their grief.

As a fateful public drama unfolds, Jimmy is torn between the occult beyond and the cold realities of the place he has called home. Narrated by a much older Jimmy, a literary-turned-commercial novelist, Ghost Town is an “emotional wallop [that] nails the restless ennui of adolescence” (People Magazine), revealing how the past haunts the present and the way our ghosts are always with us, even when we think we’ve left them behind.”

Some highlights:
I enjoyed this paragraph – mainly because of the pickleball reference:
“She pursed her lips and tilted her head, making a poor-baby face to acknowledge my pain and maybe mock it a little too, because my problems weren’t all that serious in the grand scheme of things. I was just struggling a bit, emotionally and professionally, finding it difficult to visualize a happy and productive future for myself. It was a garden-variety case of the midlife blues, nothing that couldn’t be cured with a little Zoloft and some pickleball, or so everyone told me.”
I didn’t know the origin of the Ouija board:
“The first time she mentioned it, he thought she’d said weegee board, and she had to spell it out for him letter by letter. She explained that Ouija was a compound of the French and German words for yes, though in her opinion the name gave a misleading impression of what the board was for, and what it was capable of.”
A great question from the section at the end of the book with questions for book clubs:
“The story begins with Jimmy Perrini receiving an email invitation to return to his childhood home of Creamwood, New Jersey, to honor his late father’s memory with the naming of a new municipal building for him. While the message disturbs Jimmy, it causes him to reflect on that fateful summer of 1974 and the “bad memories” of his hometown that he had locked away. How does Jimmy’s attitude about his hometown, and his hesitation to return, set up the novel for what took place for him that summer?”

 

I read that Suzi Quattro, a regular on “Top of the Pops” when I was a kid, turned 76 on Wed.

Alex recommended this one with an interesting band name:

From Marc Paradis, a very talented local musician who plays in a large number of ensembles: