Week in Review – October 19th, 2025

“True Companion”

Monday started with a walk in the park. We both talked to our financial advisor during our walk – Diana being sure to let him know she was ahead of me. He was calling to commiserate on our legal bill for estate planning and the like – the price remains the same.

I got a few interesting pictures on Tuesday. Will and Christine’s professional pictures from the Eiffel tower:

And these three rock stars that are making my retirement savings blossom:

$4/share when I joined to $19 shortly after I left – I’m sure that’s all my hard work…

Those guys are in Roatan, Honduras at the annual recognition event that Diana and I loved the last two years – some things you miss out on in retirement – particularly spending time with those three daily.

While we’re on non-weekly activity based content, I learned that a “Nickelodeon” was originally a jukebox that took a nickel to play a song – that’s where the TV channel came from. I did not know that.

Continuing in that vein -a funny that Diana got from Ken – “if a con is the opposite of a pro, does that mean that congress is the opposite of progress” – most definitely!

We, and particularly I, had a pretty poor showing at trivia on Tuesday. Even worse given that it was Thom’s birthday. The only highlight was the cannoli’s that Thom brought form Brocato’s – perfect little nibbles. We had a table based trivia question – what movie has the line, “Leave the gun, take the cannoli”? I guessed Pulp Fiction, everyone else got it right – Godfather part I.

“Leave the gun, take the cannoli” is a famous line from the movie The Godfather. It was delivered by the character Peter Clemenza after his associate Rocco kills a traitor and it was an improvised line by actor Richard Castellano, who added it after his wife suggested it to him.”

Here was the final question. We bet the maximum and got it wrong by a long shot. I think we bet 49 as the answer, you get 5 points either way from the correct answer of 25 and we somehow arrived at 49.

The “Number of seasons in the original Star Trek” did get a funny story out of McD. After she guessed the answer correctly, she told me her favourite episode was “Trouble with Tribbles.” And went on to describe how cute the “tribbles” really were:

We flew to Kansas City on Wednesday, ahead of the Marc Cohn and Shawn Colvin concert on Thursday night. Marc has Parkinson’s disease and we wanted to see him one final time.

Wednesday night diner was at the Antler Room. My search for “best restaurants in downtown Kansas City” had this one on it – and I almost skipped by, envisioning a trophy animal head type of establishment. Thankfully I gave it a second look. The shared plate menu was amazing, located in a house in a historical neighborhood.

Diana looked at the small menu and said, “I’ll eat anything on this list.” That lets me know it’s an amazing selection. And it was. We started with cauliflower, then carrots, then radiatori pasta with crab, and finally amazing mushroom things. Everything was so good. When I got to the concert on Thursday night, the guy next to me, the lead architect on the renovation of the Folly theater, said it was his favourite KC restaurant. The cauliflower (reminds me of the amazing place in Bend, Oregon when Finn was there):

Carrots can be so wonderful:

And finally the crab pasta (I didn’t capture the wonderful mushroom pockets):

If you find yourself in KC, skip the steak houses and BBQ joints and go here.

After all that, we had made a reservation at 1587 Prime for 10pm. This is Patrick Mahomes (KC Chiefs quarterback #15) and Travis Kelce (KC Chiefs tight end and Taylor Swift fiancée #87) new place. It opened a few months ago and folks in town told us it takes months to get reservations.

There was a party going on in this place. I couldn’t believe it was full at 10pm – and it was. They were playing great music at a good volume, but it was still easy to have a conversation at the table – some amazing acoustic planning. We were going to have a drink and the steak tartare. Our server talked us into the carpaccio instead – good call – the steak, truffles and mushrooms were amazing. The tuna tartare, served with some fancy foam, was also delicious.

1587 was way over the top, and the service was perfect – casual, relaxed, kind and knowledgeable – very hard to teach. I was impressed by the environment and the wait staff.

I started Thursday with a swim in the 22nd floor lap pool (nice feature that clearly pre-dated the Marriott acquisition – they wouldn’t spend the money for a lap pool.) After that we walked to Homegrown for brunch. It’s weird how quiet downtown KC is during the day – no cars on the streets, parking lots empty, restaurants quiet – where is everybody? Brunch was good but nothing exceptional.

The concert arrived on Thursday night – a solid hundred yards from our hotel.

The Folly theater was gorgeous. I was asking the usher about the new seats. He told me they widened them, taking out one per row, about 20 years ago. The guy sitting next to me turned out to be the lead architect for the renovation – he had to negotiate the acoustic damping discs versus the group who wanted to retain the details of the ceiling. I don’t know how it sounded before, but after it’s excellent. The discs are similar, but much smaller than those in the Royal Albert Hall.

And then there was the concert. I think I said before that Marc Cohn has Parkinson’s disease and this may be his last tour. We knew this, but were not prepared for the vision of him walking out so frailly and relying on Shawn Colvin for his balance. The first song just floored us:

He may be “tougher than the rest” indeed. That’s a setlist from a couple of days before and pretty close to what we heard.

Marc started his solo set with 29 Ways, a Willie Dixon cover, and a great example of his wonderful backup pianist:

Shawn Colvin took over for a bit to give Marc a break:

Marc came back for his two famous songs, first “True Companion”, our wedding song (I smile every time I hear “my arms are open wide” and remember our choreography):

And then, “Walking in Memphis” – “Ma’am I am Tonight”:

The concert finished with a cover of Van’s “Into the Mystic”, morphing into all his other well known songs. What a poignant event – a great musician sidelined by a horrible disease – particularly for someone who relies on the steadiness of his fingers for his livelihood..

How about this song leading up to the encore. Geez:

We walked to the “River District” on Friday morning for brunch at the Farmhouse. This was a yummy farm to table spot that had some interesting mushrooms for their omelets. Diana chose to explore the river area while I walked back to the hotel. She accidentally found a large homeless encampment and then explored the rest of the river area. We had commented earlier in the week that there were so few people living on the streets, and Diana found out where they congregated.

Here’s some quick research on the history of Kansas City, which appears to be modern and booming city:

History of Kansas City

Other than some traffic leaving the airport for our drive home, this was a smooth trip for a last concert from Cohn.

We watched the “Diplomat’ TV series on Friday night – so well written and acted.

We enjoyed the show with a “Smoky Blue Rogue Creamery” cheese – wonderful! The best cheese that I’ve tasted in a long time.

I watched LSU lose on Saturday morning in college football – such an underperforming team. Alabama did win for the Ogan contingent visiting for homecoming weekend. UT did eke out a win over Kentucky – a late birthday present for Thom, albeit barely a win.

My main book this week was “Blood, Bones and Butter” by Gabrielle Hamilton. Anthony Bourdain advertised this as his favourite chef book – I loved it all around.

Speaking of a friend’s kitchen:

“Her kitchen, over thirty years ago, long before it was common, had a two-bin stainless steel restaurant sink and a six-burner Garland stove. Her burnt orange Le Creuset pots and casseroles, scuffed and blackened, were constantly at work on the back three burners cooking things with tails, claws, and marrow-filled bones—whatever was budgeted from our dad’s sporadic and mercurial artist’s income—that she was stewing and braising and simmering to feed our family of seven. Our kitchen table was a big round piece of butcher block where we both ate and prepared casual meals.”

Orange Le Creuset pots always make me remember the taste of my Mum’s wonderful Boeuf a la Bourguignon.

I enjoyed this “speaking on the inhale” passage:

“but Hilda’s jowls jiggled with every “oui, oui, oui,” that she offered—in that way that the French have of speaking on inhaling rather than on the exhale, “whey, whey whey”—in apparent commiseration with everything Jean or my mother uttered.”

The New Yorker cartoon entertained me – I find those very funny sometimes too, other times I just shrug:

“while inside our mother would whistle along with the classical music station, stir pots of fragrant stews, and repose in her chair, howling out loud, a New Yorker open on her lap and a particular cartoon cutting her in half.”

How better to describe this brunch than a fallen Victorian woman with her skirts:

“I made stacks and stacks of those chimichanga bowls by dropping the flour tortilla into the deep fryer, where it would float and sizzle on the surface for a moment like a lily pad on a pond. Then, with a deep ten-ounce ladle, I pushed down in the center, and the tortilla came up around the bowl like the long dress and underskirts of a Victorian woman who had fallen, fully clothed, into a lake, her skirts billowing up around her heavy sinking body.”

On cooking for kids as an accomplished chef:

“This was the last meal I could prepare that still had adult appeal to it, because the next morning, the four-foot-tall “nothing green, nothing spicy, nothing healthy, nothing dark, nothing but nuggets” crumb snatchers arrived and for the rest of the summer we cooked little more than plain spaghetti and plain chicken.

It’s hard to cook for kids, and when something doesn’t appeal to them, instead of saying a polite no thank you, they instead break into a giant yuk face and shriek “eewww” right in front of you, as if you had no feelings at all. There were moments that summer when I felt more distressed by a nine-year-old’s disgust with a fleck of basil in his tomato sauce than I had in the entire previous decade when ostensibly more serious failures had occurred.”

Of being identified as a member of the cooking class:

“Every single time that I sit at a restaurant’s bar, order the txacoli or grüner veltliner rather than the sauvignon blanc, ask for the razor clams and not the calamari, I am sniffed out immediately by the server as an industry peer. Having said nothing. “Who are you?” I finally asked, having picked up every single one of his gang signs. “I’m Mark. Mark Bittman.” The father of Emma turned out to be Mark Bittman, the cookbook writer and New York Times columnist. Of course she loved balsamic vinegar and Parmesan cheese and fresh ground black pepper.”

Going to college in later years, knowing how to cook:

“In the world I had occupied before coming to this campus, I was the one with the words. In those kitchens filled with transient part-timers, it was an obvious testament to my potential for high intelligence that I completed the crossword puzzle each day of the week, including Sunday, in pen. That I could remember and recite a few stanzas of Chaucer. In this new world, where twenty-three-year-olds discussed Barthesian tropes and post-Hegelian moments with the same ease with which I boiled water for pasta, I smarted with the realization of my own amateurism.”

This made me think of the delight of Commander’s Palace and all the waiters for a table lifting the domes at the same time:

“and Russian Imperial Service, in which the entire dining room is surrounded suddenly by two hundred fifty waiters—exactly one waiter per guest, each bearing one silver-domed plate—and at the signal of the captain, all two hundred fifty waiters step forward, in stunning synchronicity lift the domes”

On starting her first restaurant:

“My resolve to start a new kitchen-free life was further weakening in the direct warmth of Misty’s home style of cooking, her bumpy, misshapen tomatoes ripening on the back steps, her cabbages shredded and broken down with salt and vinegar, her hunks of pork swimming in smoky, deep, earthy juices. Unwittingly, she was untethering me from my ten-pound knife kit, propane torches, and ring molds and showing me that what I had been doing these past twenty years—and what I had come to think of as cooking—was just the impressive fourteen-ring string of a twelve-year-old exhaling her first lungfuls of a Marlboro. Nothing more than the tricks of the trade. She was waking me, in her nearly monosyllabic way, out of a dark and decades-long amnesia. But then, without telling me and worse, without taking me, Misty worked her last day at the catering company and went across town to pursue an opportunity to open a restaurant. Misty, without letting on in the slightest, was in the early stages of opening a restaurant across town, with her brother as co-chef, and because she would never behave in such poor form as to poach cooks from the catering company, she did not offer jobs to anyone there. She just left. Her spot across from me at the prep island remained empty as we continued to cook the old familiar menus on autopilot.”

More about starting that place:

“I WAS NOT LOOKING TO OPEN A RESTAURANT. THAT WAS NEVER ON MY mind. I was just dashing out to park the car one spring morning, when I ran into my neighbor Eric, a guy I knew only peripherally from years of living on the same block. I didn’t even know his last name, but we often saw each other during that hectic morning ritual of alternate side parking that New Yorkers, or at least East Villagers, seem to barely accomplish in time to beat the meter maid. It’s a twice a week early morning ritual, Mondays and Thursdays or Tuesdays and Fridays, depending on which side of the street you’re on, in which everyone on the block with a car comes rushing out of their building to move their machines, still wearing their pajamas and with pillow creases still marking their faces. Eric was sitting on the stoop in front of a long-shuttered restaurant space mid-block, and as I zoomed by in my sweatpants and hastily”

On the regular annual trips to the house of the in-laws:

“There before us sat a Pompeiian villa, with a large room smack in the center of the house that has no ceiling. It’s called an impluvium, meaning where the rain is gathered, and I have often noticed that my son Marco.

A woman arrived on her motorino, a bicycle with a small motor the size of a hairdryer you have to pedal to ignite, and pulled from the handlebar’s basket giuncata and mozzarella cheese, still

warm, that she had made herself using seawater, though no one could explain if this was from a parsimony—too poor to buy salt—or an aesthetic impulse to create the perfect balance of salination in the cheese using water”

On an annoying husband who doesn’t get it:

When he said he was thinking about the new iPhone, in spite of having a rather new iPhone right now this very moment already in his pocket, I dissolved irrevocably. I lost the first fifteen days of my vacation with that iPhone comment. I lost my vacation to a seething, hot black rage that crawled up the back of my neck and covered my head and nose and mouth until I was suffocated by it and could barely breathe and certainly could not speak or make eye contact. It’s true; I tend to run a little hot.”

D’Angelo passed away this week in his fifties. I don’t know his music well, but one of my local heroes, Jon Cleary, appears to:

Remembering D’Angelo

From a bus in Florianopolis to an audience with the King from Indianola

It’s 1995 and I’m riding 12 hours on a bus in Brazil, an uncomfortable, bouncy, long, overnight journey on bad roads from Sao Paolo to a coastal town called Florianópolis, many miles distant. Buried somewhere in my bag is a tape that had arrived the week before in my New Orleans mailbox. It was from a friend in the UK. ‘Listen to this’ said the handwritten scrawl on the cover. So, as the long night stretched ahead and the ceaseless panorama of dreary Brazilian jungle paraded past the bus window, I dug out the cassette, glanced at the picture on the cover of someone I’d never heard of, put the headphones on and pressed play.

I knew nothing about D’Angelo, had never heard of him. I was prepared to be underwhelmed; the name seemed pretentious – something a major label exec. would have come up with. Over the next ten or eleven hours, I listened and nodded off and woke, the music still playing, and listened and glanced at the blackness through the window and listened some more and flipped the tape over again and fell back asleep. My curiosity grew as my discomfort and fatigue deepened. And while I dozed, woke and slept, the music filled my head and my imagination, and I think it’s true to say that the contents of my skull have not been quite the same since.

It was a game changer and an epiphany. The more I heard, the more it seemed to me that the music I was hearing on this cassette tape was the missing link: the connection between music of the future, as yet unborn, and the rhythm and blues and soul of two decades past, the world of Curtis Mayfield, Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson and Donny Hathaway; that linear evolution that had been side-lined into oblivion by ‘crossover’, major label distribution and the ‘four on the floor’ Disco of the mid ‘70s.

In the mid nineties there was no internet yet, no googling, well at least there wasn’t for me, not in my neck of New Orleans in South Louisiana. No information, no way of finding out who was actually hands on, playing the musical instruments on this record. What was D’Angelo? Who was D’Angelo? I didn’t know but it seemed obvious that that voice was connected to those fingers on the keys, one mind at work, one brain and that there was genius there.

It’s 1996 and I’ve just arrived at John Porter’s house in Los Angeles from the airport. John, stirring a freshly brewed cup of tea, says excitedly, “I’ve been asked to produce a B.B. King record for MCA, an album of duets. Help me make up a list, the record company’s sent me the names of who they want and it’s the same people they always suggest: Willie Nelson, Carlos Santana, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton…”

So we put their list on one side and came up with another hipper list on the other and I asked him, ’Have you heard of this guy D’Angelo? No-one really knows him, but he’s amazing. We should definitely get this guy, he’d be perfect’. He hadn’t, and really at that point, neither had anyone else. ’No’, he said, “sadly, the problem is the label won’t go for it’. It’s typical, they only want big famous names that’ll guarantee record sales”.

It’s 1997 and I’m in New York, at the recording studio for the first day of tracking. I’d arrived with John before everyone else showed up and I was at the piano, checking it out, getting the morning’s cobwebs pout of my fingers. John Porter came from the control room, stuck his head round the door with a slightly mischievous smile on his face and said,”Oh, By the way, I forgot to tell you, guess who’s coming in today? D’Angelo”. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been listening to nothing but Johnny Watson and D’Angelo for the last six months.

Minutes later D’Angelo walked in to the room, empty but for me and the mics and the instruments. He walked over to the piano, I stood and we shook hands, he said hello, smiled a shy smile, seemingly a little embarrassed to have interrupted my piano noodling. He sat behind the B3 organ and we played, grooving for about ten minutes, just the two of us in the room. Hearing those first few notes, I knew that I’d been right, that it was indeed him playing keys on the Brown Sugar record, it was one person’s brain behind all that music, music that had been spinning around and bouncing off the walls of my brain since that long bus ride in Brazil – confirmation that he was everything I suspected and more – and we hit it off.

We fooled around on the instruments and chatted and he asked me if I dug Thelonious Monk, I said I did, I really did. He said he’d only recently got hip to him and then proceeded to casually trot out some ridiculously cool Monk licks that blew my mind. That’s when I knew that not only could this guy really, really play, but that that he had something different. He was possessed of genius, the real thing. In a world where that word has been bandied about and whose currency has been so devalued, he was a genius, the real deal. And I knew even then that this was one of the few times in my life I was likely to be in the same room as that much talent.

The session got underway. The musicians filed in introducing themselves, taking their places, twiddling controls and getting sounds, drinking coffee, telling jokes. John Porter and Joe the engineer came in to make some mic adjustments. ‘What are we doing?’ I asked. John said, “Dunno yet. The song B.B. wants to to cut is ‘Ain’t Nobody Home’ by Jerry Ragavoy. But first we should just play something for everyone to warm up and get some sounds. D. just said he wants to play some Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson”.

B.B. was a delight to play music with, an absolute monster gentleman. And the rhythm section was killing too: Hugh McCracken, Steve Jordan, Leon Pendarvis and bassist Pino Palladino who had flown in from London, an old acquaintance of mine through a mutual friend, alto player, Mike Paice.

D’Angelo started singing ’Superman Lover’. The musicians fell in, one by one, and the combined instruments locked into a natural groove, everyone gracefully re-calibrating to D.’s unique sense of time as the unit, playing together for the first time, morphed into a well-oiled machine. His unique vocal phrasing, his timing and the way he approached the keyboard smothered extra layers of grease on the gears. For about twenty minutes we jammed, the band fine-tuned now like a cross between a Rolls-Royce and a ‘73 Cadillac Eldorado while the engineers made all the adjustments. We got to the end and I said fuck, that was incredible, let’s cut it. ‘Oh no,’ D. said, ‘I didn’t want to record it, I just felt like playing it!’

We got back to work, and If I remember correctly we cut ‘Ain’t Nobody Home’ in one take. We filed into the control room to listen back and everyone was pleased with what we’d got, ready to move on to the next guest artist and the next tune. I think it’s fair to say that at that time I was perhaps the only one in the room that had really familiar with D’Angelo’s music and knew that one of the things that made him so special was the way he sang his own background vocals. I suggested to D. who was sitting next to me, talking on the phone, that before he left he should stack up some falsetto harmonies on the chorus hook. He seemed pleased that someone had suggested it, almost too shy to have suggested it himself. I had a quick word in John’s ear and D. went back to the vocal mic and laid one part on top of another, quickly, effortlessly, flawlessly and brilliantly. And the song was complete. All that was left to do was to record Wardell Quezergue’s horn arrangement, a separate session that happened a few months later in New Orleans when John was in town working making a record with me at the Boiler Room studio.

D’Angelo was happy and had obviously enjoyed the morning’s work. I don’t think he’d ever done a session quite like this before, a little overawed to be in a New York studio recording with this calibre of session players, and for a legend like B.B. King, no less. He took a few selfies with B.B, introduced me to his friend, Amir, who had a great afro and his girlfriend, Angie, who was holding their new baby.

He was unhappy though with the phone conversation. It had been from his bass player, who had called to cancel – stranding D. at short notice without a bass player for an important gig. An idea had occurred to him though – a long shot. He’d been impressed by Pino’s masterful bass playing and before leaving asked him if there was any chance he might be able to change his plans and fill in.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Here’s the song:

I know – not that exciting after all of that.

Here are some more exciting things, the songs that Mark Cohn and Shawn Colvin covered:

Coexist peacefully, with patience and kindness for all.

Week in Review – October 12th, 2025

“Fall Weather – must be festival season”

Monday morning was all Diana – she started with a run with Laurie and then the poor thing had to have a root canal done. Her mouth was sore the rest of the day and night.

I was surprised to get an email for a Rush concert tour presale. Their amazing drummer, Neal Peart, died several years ago and I really didn’t expect them to ever replace him. And they haven’t only replaced him – but with a girl. Who knew? I’m hoping to be able to see them on this tour – one last time. I’ve loved every one of their shows that I’ve attended. Here’s what Rick Beato has to say about the new drummer, who played in Jeff Beck’s band before he died.

Late breaking news – I tried to buy tickets and was abhorred by the price they were asking. There’s no way I’m paying close to $400 for a ticket when I can see amazing music here in New Orleans for $20. That doesn’t even take into account the airfare and hotel to go and watch the show. So disappointed in the remaining two members of Rush – just a money grab.

I watched a documentary about Paddy Chayefsky and enjoyed it a lot. If you’re not familiar, he is the only screenwriter to win three Academy awards (for Marty, The Hospital, and Network.) Here’s some more detail:

Paddy Chayefsky Wiki

I smiled when I heard that Paddy, Mel Brooks, Bob Fosse, and Neil Simon used to eat lunch together at the Carnegie Deli every day – can you imagine how entertaining those sessions were?

We made an excursion over to the old Gretna mall (10 minute drive, but on the other side of the Mississippi) on Tuesday afternoon. I bought a replacement bezel and insert for my old watch and wanted to see if the watch repair guys there could install it, as I followed the instructions and couldn’t make it work. It’s been a long time since I was in one of these malls – food court, Dillard’s, JC Penney and all the rest of the stores you would expect, and I realize that I have spent waaaay too much time in those over the years. They couldn’t make the bezel work but did show me that it was slightly the wrong size and told me what model number to try and find. I think I found one and will give it a try.

After that excitement, I stopped by the New Orleans Athletic Club (NOAC) for a pleasant swim and steam.

Diana started Wednesday with her usual run and yoga routine. Meanwhile, I worked on the guitar part of “Centerfield” by John Fogerty – there is a lot of work to be done. This is the first time that I’ve picked up the guitar in a while, and I’m looking forward to getting into learning some new songs. I’m amazed at all the different way YouTube teachers tell you to play the same song. And none of them seem to match up with what I watch Fogerty playing on his videos.

In the afternoon, we made the short walk down to Aquila Bistro for a coffee and a chat (crossword already done.) I regaled Diana with stories from the “Perfect Tuba” book that I’m reading – discussing how the two perfect tubas created by the York company in the 1930s have not been duplicated after all the major and specialty manufacturers have tried. Just like the difference between a Stradivarius and all comers.

We tried the NOAC pickleball court on Thursday morning. It wasn’t useable, even for warm up rallying. There were too many dead zones where the ball didn’t bounce at all. I have since talked to the owner of the club who told me he’s having the stones re-laid and flattened to provide a better court. We look forward to that happening.

I had a swim instead of pickleball and Diana walked on the treadmill.

After that, I twisted Diana’s arm and we drove over to 1,000 figs for a delicious Mediterranean lunch – sharing the falafel platter (more than enough for two.)

In the evening we watched the movie “What Happens Later” starring Meg Ryan and David Duchovny, and directed by Ryan. This was a quiet movie – the two characters had a relationship many years ago, and meet randomly when attempting to catch connections in a small airport. A snow storm delays their flights and they have an opportunity to catch up on their lives. I enjoyed this one.

After that, I watched “Famous Last Words”, an interview with Jane Goodall that she made to air after her death. She is so straight forward, open, and clear in her feelings. One that made me laugh is when she talks about putting Musk, Trump, Trump’s lackeys, and Putin into Musk’s spaceship and launching them off into oblivion. A very engaging watch.

Friday began with some time in Audubon park. Diana and Julia met up for a walk and I had a short run and then walked with them. Julia always has some entertaining news to share – this time that her husband, John, had just made his first hole in one on the golf course. Had to happen at some point for someone who plays golf four or five times a week.

After that I drove Diana around on various errands – over the Mississippi (again) to the Harvey Target for some returns, over to the NOAC to pick up the fancy water bottle she forgot on the treadmill yesterday, and then to the Whole Foods on Broad Street to pick up some supplies for the weekend. Quite the tour of New Orleans area hotspots…

John Prine’s (likely my favourite song writer) birthday was celebrated at the Broadside on Friday night with Dave Jordan and an amazing band that he assembled.

Rurik Nunan was the star of the band for me – wonderful violin and a great voice, and seemed to be keeping the band on point and organized. Here he is doing the hilarious “In Spite of Ourselves” with his wife:

I think she did a great job of hamming up the Iris DeMent part.

Lynn Drury did a great job with “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness”, followed by “Hello in There” and finally “Angel from Montgomery.” The emotional impact of those three in a row was almost too much for us.

Dave Pomerlou did a good job on a couple of songs and was very solid on the bass:

Jacob Tanner was a star on the pedal steel and slide resonator:

What an amazing band playing some of my favourite music!

Saturday started early so that Diana could vote in the local election before meeting Laurie for a run. I walked down to the Magazine Street firehouse with her and had a coffee while she voted across the street.

Walking in the newly arrived fall weather is a treat.

After the walk, I spent some very pleasant time reading on the front porch. Tourist season is picking up rapidly and there were many folks walking past to meet up with walking tours or to enjoy jazz brunch at Commander’s Palace.

Tommy showed up to change out the air conditioning filters and do some other minor A/C work. I had expected him yesterday, but was happy he came by.

We drove to Jeff and Merry Lee’s place on Saturday afternoon, parked there, and then walked to the Blues and BBQ festival at Lafayette square. Carolyn Wonderland, a favourite from our time at the Kessler theater in Dallas and at various venues in Austin, got things started for us.

I learned something new in Carolyn’s intro speech to one of her songs. She was the lead guitar player in the John Mayall Blues band from 2017 until he retired in 2022. That’s the same band that introduced us to Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and many others. Here’s some more details from Carolyn:

Carolyn Wonderland in John Mayall Blues Band

And a performance with John Mayall:

Kara and Anne met us at the festival and the girls enjoyed a chat on our blanket:

After Carolyn, Leo Nocentelli did a set on the opposite stage. This festival is run by the guys that do the Jazzfest and everything runs to the minute with no downtime between stages. Leo was a founding member of the Meters – the famous funk band from New Orleans that created a whole new style of music. Leo wrote “Cissy Strut” – part of Diana’s introductory course to New Orleans music.

Leo Nocentelli bio

And here’s the 1975 Meters song, “Fire on the Bayou”:

Diana organized food – bringing me yummy garlic shrimp and noodles from the wonderful Vietnamese “Magasin,” and a pupusa for herself from the batture farmer’s market guys.

The Devon Allman Blues Summit were the headliners. Devon is the son of Cher and Duane Allman – looks somewhat like his mother and sings like an even more soulful version of his father. I loved this entire set – alternating Allman Bros songs with their own band and other covers.

My favourite from the Summit was “Little Wing”, the Jimmy Hendrix song that was covered by Duane Allman (Devon’s uncle) on the Derek and the Dominoes album. Here’s the start of the Dominoes version:

And the end:

Larry McCray, a special member of the Summit, did an amazing version of Soulshine:

I love the Les Paul guitar sound on Mellisa:

And the band finished up with “Midnight Rider:”

What a great afternoon and evening of music.

Sunday brought a whole change of pace. We started with a long walk down St Charles Avenue (the streetcar line) to the Jefferson intersection, approximately 2 miles, stopping for a coffee at the Columns on the way back home. Such luxury in such nice weather.

We went to a new country and met the people with their different language and customs on Sunday afternoon. What Kenny calls “the Bahamas of the 9th Ward.”

Trey lives in Venetian Isles – I had no idea that it was a 30 minute drive from our home. The annual Fishing Rodeo was a hoot – not our normal group of folks but a great time. Trey’s friend Nina provided the great music:

Denny participated in the competition but didn’t win the flounder category he was betting on:

A quote from Trey – “No sharks on my boat, you can go to Popeye’s for dinner and it won’t bit you back – absolutely no sharks on my boat.”

Look at these keen fishermen:

And this guy with the hat that Will gave me from his Wolf clothing line – the guys were calling it my “rapper hat” because of the straight bill:

I oscillated between a few books this week. The first was “The Perfect Tuba: Forging Fulfillment from the Bass Horn, Band, and Hard Work” by Sam Quinones, a decorated journalist who had focused on drug issues until now. Here’s an online summary:

“The tuba’s sound is mighty, emerging, it seems, from deep in the human body. Very little music has, up until recently, been written to play to its strengths. The best the tuba seems to promise is a seat at the back of the band. No stadium shows, no Internet adulation. And yet, this horn-the youngest of all brass instruments-has captured the hearts of an inspired group of musicians ever since its invention in 1835.

In The Perfect Tuba, Sam Quinones embarks on a trek to get to know American tubists. He tells the astounding stories of two men who set out to replicate the “perfect tuba,” an instrument made by York & Sons in the 1930s and never since equaled; of Big Bill Bell, whose 1950s album rearranged the tuba landscape; and of Arnold Jacobs, a tuba guru at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who studied the physiology of breathing and offered rune-like nuggets of wisdom to his legions of students. Quinones also takes us through the tuba scenes of New Orleans, Orlando, Knoxville, New York City, and, most importantly, Roma, Texas, a dusty town in the Rio Grande Valley where a visionary high school marching band director fashioned a program that now regularly wins state championships and sends its students off to college.

After nearly a decade on the front lines of America’s battle with drug addiction, Sam Quinones delivers another story of our nation, this time brought together by the transformative power of shared joy and humble achievement.”

I remember the first time that I heard Arnold Jacobs and the Chicago Symphony on a piece where the tuba was somewhat prevalent – I was amazed at the depth and resonance of the sound and assumed it was related to the location used for the recording. Turns out he was playing one of the two “perfect tubas.”

There’s a quote in the book about a tuba student who sees John Fletcher play with the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble for the first time and is astounded when he breaks out the “Flight of the Bumblebee.” I vividly remember Dad taking me to see these guys and being amazed at the versatility and quality of the playing.

Here’s my favourite John Fletcher and overall tuba recording:

A recording called “Big Bell and his Tuba” from the 1950s was mentioned in the book as the earliest album to feature the tuba as a solo instrument. This is a very entertaining album:

My second book was “The Common Good” by Robert Reich (of the documentary that we watched a couple of weeks ago.) This was an insightful and frustrating read. I agree with most of Reich’s points and we are moving so quickly away from anything resembling what he advocates for.

Reich’s premise for why something needs to be done about “The Common Good”:

” I WAS AT the impressionable age of fourteen when I heard John F. Kennedy urge us not to ask what America can do for us but what we can do for America. Seven years later I took a job as a summer intern in the Senate office of his brother Robert F. Kennedy. It was not a glamorous job, to say the least. I felt lucky when I was asked to run his signature machine. But I told myself that in a very tiny way I was doing something for the good of the country. That was a half century ago. I wish I could say America is a better place now than it was then. Surely our lives are more convenient. Fifty years ago there were no cash machines or smartphones, and I wrote my first book on a typewriter. As individuals, we are as kind and generous as ever. We volunteer in our communities, donate, and help one another. We pitch in during natural disasters and emergencies. We come to the aid of individuals in need. We are a more inclusive society, in that African Americans, women, and gays have legal rights they didn’t have a half century ago. Yet our civic life—as citizens in our democracy, participants in our economy, managers or employees of companies, and members or leaders of organizations—seems to have sharply deteriorated. What we have lost, I think, is a sense of our connectedness to each other and to our ideals—the America that John F. Kennedy asked that we contribute to.”

A definition of “The Common Good:”

“The idea of “the common good” was once widely understood and accepted in America. After all, the U.S. Constitution was designed for “We the people” seeking to “promote the general welfare”—not for “me the selfish jerk seeking as much wealth and power as possible.” During the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II, Americans faced common perils that required us to work together for the common good, and that good was echoed in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms”—freedom of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear. The common good animated many of us—both white and black Americans—to fight for civil rights and voting rights in the 1960s. It inspired America to create the largest and most comprehensive system of public education the world had ever seen. And it moved many of us to act against the injustice of the Vietnam War, and others of us to serve bravely in that besotted conflict.”

On Ayn Rand – she was the answer to a trivia question a few weeks back and we had a short debate about her philosophy – universally disagreeing with her (as did several other tables that we overheard.)

“Ayn Rand had it completely wrong. Moral choices logically involve duties to others, not just calculations about what’s best for ourselves. When members of a society ask, “What is the right or decent thing to do?,” they necessarily draw upon understandings of these mutual obligations. While our contemporary culture of self-promotion, iPhones, selfies, and personal branding churns out a fair number of narcissists, it is our loyalties and attachments that define who we are.”

My third book didn’t last long – I gave it one chapter and was thoroughly bored with the quoting of names, record labels, and recordings with no through story or narrative. Absolutely not my thing.

I love this song that I heard on a recent TV show. Is it sampling Leon Russell? I think it has to be but haven’t confirmed yet:

I just listened and can confirm that the vocal is definitely sampled:

This band is playing at the newly reopened Jazz Market soon and may be worth a visit:

Coexist peacefully, with kindness and patience for all.

Week in Review – October 5th, 2025

“Gretna Fest, 2025”

When I left you last week, I was watching the Saints and Bills football game. The Saints hung in well and ended up losing – a much more promising game than last week.

After that game, we walked over to NOLA Brewing to listen to The Walrus, a very good local Beatles cover band. Denny joined us for a while.

Next we made the short walk to Peet’s out in the cold so that Diana (and Denny) could get a frozen Pimm’s cup. Denny was then going to drop us home. We let him drive a little while before asking where he was going (seemed to be heading home and not to our home.) He was confused and we ended up driving further down Magazine to check out a brand new place called Studio. This seems to be a high end steak and other exotic meats place and they say they will open a butcher shop soon.

Then it was time for the Cowboys and Packers game. Very evenly matched, ultimately going into overtime and ending in the first Cowboys tied game since 1969.

Here’s a more detailed recap:

Cowboys Packers Game Recap

Diana had finished her new puzzle before lunch on Monday. I’m going to get more than 1,000 pieces going forward.

Diana had to get a sore tooth looked at on Monday afternoon – likely a root canal candidate. While she did that, I hosted Tommy at the house to investigate a leak from the A/C duct in our living room. I was also able to track down a guy in Gulfport, Mississippi who may be able to fix our electric grand piano. The annual termite inspection was also scheduled for this week. Look at me cranking out administrative tasks at the start of the week.

“Roadtrip to Gulfport, Mississippi” was the Tuesday theme. We left around 10:30am and arrived before noon. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the intent was to rendezvous with a guy who might be able to fix our Yamaha electric grand piano. I met Eric and handed over the patient – I had disassembled the keyboard and I thought identified the issue – a capacitor on the amplifier/sound board. We went to find some lunch while Eric worked on things.

I had assigned Diana the task of finding a nice place for lunch during our drive. She chose “The Chimneys”, a somewhat upscale place on the beach road.

We were both pleased with our seafood lunches. Diana had a crab and shrimp salad and I had grouper with scallops. The setting was lovely – mature oak trees and a view of the beach and ocean.

Eric called, as we were enjoying an after lunch coffee at Boozers, to let us know that all was fixed.

I enjoyed the piano pickup – made the pleasant mistake of asking if he worked on Hammond organs. Eric took me to the other room, full of Hammonds and regaled me with stories of the various churches that he had retrieved them from and how he maintained all the local church’s Hammond organs. Good stuff.

The capacitor was indeed the issue – an $0.18 part – good grief!

All fixed:

Here’s a bunch more info on Gulfport and the history:

Gulfport Mississippi Information

We listened to a podcast of Terry Gros from Fresh Air, in conversation with Mark Ronson about his new book, “Night People – How to be a DJ in New York in the 90s.” This was a very good listen. Ronson has won 9 Grammy awards as a producer and collaborator and has an amazing musical ear and creativity. His step father is Mick Jones of Foreigner and I enjoyed his stories about helping Mick decide which mix of famous Foreigner songs was best.

Here’s a quote from the podcast:

“You just get this crazy blowback, this charge from the crowd all going like, ‘Oh!’ at the same time. You can call it the scream, the chant, whatever it is,” Ronson says. “It’s like clay or Play-Doh, like the whole crowd is this thing that you’re able to mold together. It’s incredible. It’s kind of why I can’t stop DJing. It’s still a feeling that I only get from this one thing, no matter what else I do in my work as a producer.”

I enjoyed talking to our friend Nick about this book. He was a DJ in New York around the same time and says Ronson was his idol.

Open in Spotify

I was sorry to read this article about the wonderful Austin, TX guitar player and singer, Ian Moore, and his voice loss:

Ian Moore Can’t Speak

The Tuesday newspaper included an article about the “skeleton house” on State Street – it’s up and running and one of the new pieces for this year is hilarious:

This just made it on the Sunday morning national news show with Willie Geist.

I did not make it to trivia on Tuesday night and the krewe came in third. This was the final question, which they answered correctly:

My guess is iPod, Office, Farmville, Netflix. After research the correct list is:

Farmville 2009

Netflix 2007

Office 2005

iPod 2001

I’ve never heard of Farmville, so no wonder I got that in the wrong spot.

If it’s Wednesday, then it’s likely that Diana, Kara, and Laurie are running in Audubon park and doing yoga. Yes – this is a typical Wednesday.

Then we went to see the movie “Eleanor the Great” starring June Squibb, 95 years old and amazing, playing a 94 year old lady who has moved back to New York.

Eleanor the Great details

The movie is directed by Scarlett Johansson and I teased Diana that we were just going to see it to support the director. We both loved this movie and highly recommend it. There are not many movies made like this these days – a great story, small cast, wonderful acting, and lots of quiet scenes with no dialog.

After the movie, I surprised Diana with a wander through the French Quarter to Patula, a hidden restaurant near the Toulouse and Royal intersection. This was our first visit and an excellent experience. A beautiful hidden courtyard, a wine that Diana loved, delicious Turkish style meatballs with yogurt and dill sauce, and wonderful service. Highly recommended and going on the regular rotation.

Here’s a more detailed write up on Patula:

Patula – Gambit article

Diana just told me there’s a new article about Patula in the paper – from a selfish perspective, that’s not helpful.

We had a walk and run in the park to start out Thursday. I even ran a bit as the weather starts to cool marginally. The termite inspection guy decided to try and come a couple of hours early as I was in the park – and wanted to argue with me that he had no control over his schedule and it wasn’t his fault I was told the wrong time – “I really don’t mind and am happy for you to reschedule.” Surprisingly (not) he was able to fit us in during the afternoon – and we are termite free.

We watched “All the King’s Men” on Thursday evening. This is about Huey P. Long and stars Sean Penn in that role. Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Patricia Clarkson, Anthony Hopkins and James Gandolfini all have parts. The movie occurred to me as I read in the Kermit at Vaughan’s book that they remodeled the bar with the money they received from the movie. I’ll have to watch again as I didn’t see anything that looked like Vaughan’s.

Diana had a run with Laurie on Friday morning, and I walked the 2.5 miles to meet her for breakfast at a new place afterwards. Cafe Malou opened on Monday and is connected to the wonderful Octavia Books via louvered book shelves, giving a speakeasy feel.

I listened to a podcast interview with the bluegrass phenom, Bill Strings, during my walk. This guy has had a very difficult life. My goodness. Thankfully music seems to have saved him so far.

Open in Spotify

The restaurant is small and loud when filled with the uptown ladies meeting up after dropping their kids at school. We will time our arrival differently next time. The food, however, was very good. I had grits carbonara – baked eggs with creamy grits and bacon – yummy. Diana had smoked salmon toast and a side of bacon – also yummy. I was notified that we’ll need to return soon to try the chocolate pot de creme:

Friday afternoon brought one of my weekly highlights – making groceries (that’s what they say here) with my wife. Always a treat. We bought supplies to make a lemon chicken and orzo dish and to reprise the breakfast casserole that I enjoyed recently.

Here was my mis en place preparation for the lemon chicken. Just like a cooking demonstration on TV.

I listened to WWOZ (local radio station) reprising their “Festing in Place” series:

“Festing in Place” was such a treat during COVID. Reliving Jazzfest experiences – and Diana decorated our patio with all the wonderful photographic memories over the years.

After dinner we watched Jon Batiste performing the opening show of the new Austin City Limits series (maybe the last given funding situations these days.) Excellent as always and highly recommended – such a variety of music and musicians.

Here’s a short biography of the wonderful Batiste:

Jon Batiste – a brief biography

And after that we watched about half of “The Lost Bus”- about a bus of school children trying to make it out of the Paradise, California wild fires. Matthew McConaughey is the bus driver.

Diana met Julia for a walk in the park on Saturday morning. I made my breakfast casserole and added Italian seasoned chicken this time. Here’s the recipe if you would like to play along:

breakfast casserole

And here’s a recommended cooking playlist that I used with the casserole:

Diana showed me this post from our neighbours and the three pups:

It rained off and on all afternoon, and I decided to break open my model car that Mum gave me for my birthday. It’s a large, complicated undertaking and comes with a 500 page assembly manual. After over an hour, I had just this start to the chassis done. It took a while to figure out the difference between many pieces that look alike. I think things will go much faster now that I’m over some of the basics.

Denny and Anne picked us up to go and see the Honey Island Swamp Band at NOLA Brewing on Saturday evening. Greg, Colleen, Fred and Kelly also attended.

The opening band went on forever and then the Honey Island tuned up forever. A show that was advertised to start at 7pm (albeit with an opening band) didn’t start until 9pm. They lost at least half of their audience. Once the band started, I enjoyed them:

I made the mistake of suggesting frozen Pimms cups on the way home – Anne and Diana were all in. It took a while for Anne to convince Denny to take a picture with this “Shout out to my arms for always being by my side” sign:

I enjoyed an article in the Sunday paper about the ability to get a haircut and a shot for $20 at the R bar in the Marigny. Diana was there recently with Kenny and Kara and took a picture of Kenny relaxing in the barber chair. This happens on Monday nights from 7pm until midnight. One puts one’s name on the list with the bartender and waits one’s turn.

https://app.nola.com/article/a-cut-of-the-action/content.html

We braved the rain on Sunday for Gretna Fest (one of my favourite annual festivals.) My weather app showed no rain from noon until 5pm – that would allow us to see the three bands I like before heading home.

The rain was light when we arrived and soon let up – I thought we were in the clear.

This scary looking wolf thing was guarding the Italian village food area. Sent it to Adamo as his Lupo constrcution is named after this species.

You can tell from the pictures that this festival was very lightly attended when we arrived just after noon. Even fewer people in the margarita area – usually very busy:

We set up near the front of the main stage and awaited the first band, Uncle Lucius.

We like this band a lot and have seen them several times. Kevin Galloway has a great voice. I thought this was the best that I had heard them – I think a new guitar player was helping lift their game but haven’t researched that yet. You might see someone you recognize up on the big screen in this video:

Next up was St. Paul and the Broken Bones. I have seen them on TV quite a few times, but never live. The band was very good and the singer very passionate, but they didn’t grab and keep my attention as much as other live bands. I know they’ve sold out Tipitinas a few times and think that might be a better venue for them.

Some heavy rain arrived during the St. Paul set. Thankfully Diana and I were prepared with ponchos and her wellies, Denny – not so much:

Look at these four drowned folks:

Denny, in an attempt to needle me, mentioned a young up and coming Country artist playing on the other big stage on the Riverfront. I offered to accompany Diana over there and miss the second half of St. Paul.

The offer was well received and she enjoyed John Foster quite a bit. He was quite impressive for 19 years old. Here’s the band doing the Charlie Daniels classic, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia:”

We returned to the Main Stage for JJ Grey and the rain rejoined us – quite heavy now. I’m amazed that these shows continue with as much water on the stage. JJ Grey was a real highlight for us – even better than I’ve heard him before, with two backup singers this time. Diana looked to see where he’s playing in the future that we might want to visit – that’s how much she enjoyed the show:

And finally, here’s what that sounded like a year ago at the same location:

This was a wonderful day of music and fun, despite the persistent rain. We did leave before Trombone Shorty – enough rain and stuff for the day already.

Here’s a wonderful personal history story from Ann Patchett, published in the New Yorker:

Glowworms by Anne Patchett

Clorinda loved Ann Patchett, particularly “The Dutch House”. I’ve enjoyed everything of hers that I’ve read, the only disappointment being “Bel Canto”, which others really enjoy but I just couldn’t relate to at all.

I read less than normal this week, making meager progress on “Real Tigers” by Mick Herron. I’ve always enjoyed the “Slow Horses” TV series and have been happy to find this series of very well written books. Here’s a summary of the story:

“London: Slough House is the MI5 branch where disgraced operatives are reassigned after they’ve messed up too badly to be trusted with real intelligence work. The “Slow Horses,” as the failed spies of Slough House are called, are doomed to spend the rest of their careers pushing paper, but they all want back in on the action.

When one of their own is kidnapped and held for ransom, the agents of Slough House must defeat the odds, overturning all expectations of their competence, to breach the top-notch security of MI5’s intelligence headquarters, Regent’s Park, and steal valuable intel in exchange for their comrade’s safety. The kidnapping is only the tip of the iceberg, however–the agents uncover a larger web of intrigue that involves not only a group of private mercenaries but the highest authorities in the Secret Service. After years spent as the lowest on the totem pole, the Slow Horses suddenly find themselves caught in the midst of a conspiracy that threatens not only the future of Slough House, but of MI5 itself.”

I really like the opening paragraph of this book:

“Like most forms of corruption, it began with men in suits.
A weekday morning on the edge of the City; damp, dark, foggy, not yet five. In the nearby towers, some of which reached upwards of twenty storeys, random windows were lit, making haphazard patterns in the glass-and-steel grids, and some of those lights meant early-bird bankers were at their desks, getting a jump on the markets, but most were a sign that the other City workers were on the job, the ones who wore overalls, and whose pre-dawn tasks involved vacuuming, polishing, emptying bins. Paul Lowell’s sympathies were with the latter. You either cleaned up other people’s messes or you didn’t–and that was the class system for you, right there.”

This Bowie cover was playing on the Patula patio and caught my ear:

This was on a radio show this week, I just can’t remember which one:

One of my cooking soundtrack songs:

Coexist peacefully, with kindness and patience for all!

Week in Review – September 28, 2025

“New Orleans – amazing music on every corner”

Monday was a day of rest and recovery after a very busy previous few days.

We invited Kenny to join us to see the documentary “Last Class” on Tuesday. This is about the last semester that Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, taught his “Wealth and Poverty” class at the University of California in Berkeley. The class is about the widening income and equality gaps, but I think the most poignant parts of the film are when Reich reflects on his teaching career and what it means to retire. As the son of two highly dedicated educators, this film really resonated with me. I strongly recommend seeing this film if you can find it.

If you’d like to know some more about Reich’s life and the positions he held in government over many, many administrations, you can check out this blog post that I put together after watching the film:

My Robert Reich blog – biography and links to his writings and podcasts

Trivia Tuesday was a mediocre performance. Thom had some correct answers that we didn’t use for various reasons – mostly that he wasn’t emphatic enough that he really knew the answer. We did get the last question correct and added twenty points to our total, breaking one hundred:

Do you know the order, North to South?

It’s Oslo, Ottawa (we had a lot of debate over which was further north), Oklahoma City, and then Ouagadougou. If you’re like me you’re wondering where the heck that last place is. Well, it’s the capital of Burkina Faso. Not helpful? I know. Here’s the location in West Africa:

Don’t forget that for the next time it comes up in trivia (ten years from now.)

Diana began Wednesday in typical form – a run in the park followed by yoga. She always seems pumped and energized on return. This time she stopped at Whole Foods and brought me some delicious Indian food for lunch. That might have been my reward for attempting to strap the silly Halloween spider to the porch column – I realized it was a two person job after my third attempt. It took about a minute with Diana’s help.

Having completed “project spidey”, we took on replacing a can light in the kitchen. The hardest part was hauling the very heavy “little giant” ladder in from the three car garage (small ToughShed) and setting it up for McD to scale. She had the replacement installed very efficiently.

In the evening I half watched the “America’s Got Talent” show while reading – that was until this crazy trapeze performance. I’ve never seen anything quite like that.

A street singer busker from New Orleans, Jordan Blue, won third place in the finals.

I started watching a Netflix series, Black Rabbit, with Jude Law and Jason Bateman later in the evening. It’s very dark but very good. Most episodes are directed by either Bateman or Laura Linney, with somewhat of an “Ozark” feel.

We tried to play pickleball at the New Orleans Athletic Club on Thursday morning. It’s outdoor and it had rained a bit in the morning – so it was a no go as the court was too slippery. We decided to take a look anyway and it took some work to find the thing. Make a turn at the vending machine by the stairs to the pool. We did and it didn’t seem right – no signs and an outdoor walkway that customers would never be allowed to use in other states – and there it was:

The hidden joys of a very old athletic club – we’ll be back to play in a few days. I do have to wonder why they have big speakers spaced every few feet around this courtyard space.

Kenny invited me to go to lunch and shopping for Kara’s milestone birthday. He very efficiently procured something from Kiki Huston, one of Kara’s favourites. Kiki is quite the artist with silver and gemstones.

The Dutch Alley artist co-op was an interesting place – painters, sculptors, photographers, jewelry and others all in one place.

Next stop was Port O’ Call for lunch. Your choice is a burger or a big steak. I opted for the mushroom cheeseburger.

There are no fries, salad or other side choices. Only a baked potato and choice of toppings – cheese, chives, bacon, mushrooms, sour cream. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed a baked potato.

The burger and potato were both delicious and I had nice leftovers for post-nap afternoon snack time. The newspaper had their “Best of New Orleans” issue this week and I wasn’t surprised to see Port O’ Call with a few mentions:

I really enjoyed this Diane Millsap canvas painting of Port O’ Call:

Looking into her other works, I found this very nice St Charles streetcar painting:

Diana had read something online about a “one day only” tasting of five different sashimi grade tunas at GW Fins on Thursday evening. I shuddered to think how much that would cost, but decided to go with it. We’ll sit at the bar and if it’s ludicrous then we can just have a drink and leave. I was still pretty full from the burger and tater but would try something if forced to. It turns out the sashimi was reasonably priced and amazing.

Diana declared the cognac French 75 that the bartender created for her “the best I ever had.” Seems like we were off to a good start. She loved all the sashimi tuna. I tried her favourite and it was very fresh and delicious, albeit not my go to food group.

I gave into pressure and ordered the fried oyster “Bahn Mi.” I put quotes on that because it was brioche toast and not a steamed bun. This was ridiculously tasty:

Diana, not having sucked down a burger and tater at lunch, was still hungry. She had the tuna tartare tarts – I sampled one and they were also ridiculously good.

One has to wonder why we have never been to this restaurant before. We loved everything about it. Answer – there are just too many amazing places in this city. Look at all these “best of” awards this place won this week in the newspaper polls:

You’ve read my musings about number 2, Peche, and I do think for pure seafood, GW Fins is superior.

Ahead of Galatoire’s? I have so many wonderful memories of number 2 – bachelor party, Cowboys-Saints game with the maître d wearing my Cowboys jacket, Halloween with Diana. I don’t agree that GW Fins comes out ahead of the overall Galatoire’s experience. And that is just what it is – my opinion versus the readers. They can’t get them all correct.

Another disagreement so soon? Yes! Commanders is the place to get dressed up and go and do the fine dining with fun. GW Fins was certainly fine dining but without the je ne sais quoi (pizzaz) of Commanders .

I’m going to let this one slide. And if you’re not from New Orleans, I know you’re tired of reading these debates already. I love the garden at N7, as you would have read last week. Diana did mention the semi-circular booths at GW Fins that she thought were “very romantic.”

One last “best of” – Diana’s favourite New Orleans place, Cafe Degas, was voted best French restaurant. And it’s the antithesis of what that term might evoke – very casual and reasonably priced with wonderful food.

I awoke Friday, picked up my phone, and noticed the cards in the back sleeve sliding around unusually – where’s my usual credit card that locks them in there? Oh no – I left it at GW Fins. How could that have happened? I have a system, a best practice even – put the card away before signing the check. Ugh! I locked the card and went about my business for a while. We had a walk and run in Audubon park (humidity down now and almost bearable.) After that we went to Martin wine store to put together a gift basket for Kara’s birthday on Sunday. While waiting on Diana to choose things, I made a call to GW Fins – yes they had my card and, although not open, would be happy to bring it out to me, if I called them on arrival.

We decided to go and get the card while the basket was being assembled and shrink wrapped. They always say fifteen minutes and take at least thirty. I was so excited to drive up Bourbon Street and into the French Quarter for a second time in two days – it’s a lot of work to avoid all the human obstacles. I retrieved my card and we drove back to Martin to pick up the gift basket.

The basket was not to D’s standards – they had a package of something with a big price tag in the middle. Everyone agreed it obviously needed to be redone. Said Andrew, “they gave me a lot of wine training and not much gift wrap training.” We sat in the parking lot and waited for the redo – nicely done.

I went for a haircut on Friday afternoon, and was looking forward to hearing about Derek’s (barber) update on his trip to a wedding in Australia. I was surprised when he told me that the Australians tried to ruin his trip – they see Trump on TV all day and assumed he was a disciple – such a sorry global situation. I felt badly for him as Diana and I have had nothing but wonderful experiences with the Australian population. Times change.

I had a coffee and picked up a “puzzle” for Diana on my way home. Aquila bistro has these “blind date with a puzzle” offerings. I was hoping the “surreal” piece wasn’t going to be another Salvador Dali puzzle. Let’s see:

No, not Dali, but a lot of detail in that tiger’s neck. The puzzle has already been started with pieces being organized in the drawers of the puzzle board. I predict significant progress while I’m watching football today.

Due to the summer humidity, it’s been a while since we spent time on the Columns porch or patio. The evenings are now great for patio sitting, and so we decided to support the NOLA x NOLA music week offering of River Eckert and Matt Perrin on the Columns porch.

River is fifteen and plays and sings like an old veteran, and has for a couple of years now:

Here’s one of my favourite of his videos. That’s our favourite New Orleans artist, Frenchy, painting away behind him:

For more about River Eckert, check out this post:

River Eckert – videos and biography

I love this video of Matt Perrin doing the “Baby Elephant” walk in a club on Frenchmen:

We started Saturday with a trip over to the Bywater Bakery. This is about a fifteen minute drive from home, and close to Elizabeth’s. As previously discussed, we thought fifteen minutes was “close by” in McKinney, while in New Orleans it’s almost outside the acceptable drive circumference.

Kyle Roussel, genius level local pianist, was advertised to be playing at the bakery. I expected an old upright piano, a la Booker session at the back room in the Maple Leaf (Andre Bohren last week.) No – this was the grand piano in a pickup situation. Note the ladder to get in the bed and sunshade.

The bakery is amazing. Always in the running for best King cake and with some amazing looking sandwiches and pastries – I’m coming back for lunch soon.

Kyle is one of my favourite pianists – so creative and with such a unique touch and style:

Here’s a track from his album, “Church of New Orleans”, with John Boutte:

Diana, Kara and Nina enjoyed the cabana and pool at Merry Lee’s condominium on Saturday afternoon – early birthday celebration for Kara. Diana took two kinds of Chantilly cream cakes from Bywater bakery to the pool. Apparently they were well received by all three girls.

I saw a piece about Major General Joseph McNeil on a Sunday news program. He was one of the “Greensboro Four”:

“On February 1, 1960, McNeil and his fellow activists, Ezell Blair, Franklin McCain and David Richmond, walked together from the university’s library to the Woolworth‘s store in downtown Greensboro.^[12] Once there, the men purchased some items, and then sat down at the “whites only” lunch counter, where the group was refused service. McNeil and the group stayed until the store closed, and then left to return the next day.”

I visited that Woolworth’s on a trip to Greensboro while working for AIG. Such a sense of history looking at it.

More here:

Major General Joseph McNeil

I’m watching football now – the Saints are actually almost hanging in there with the Buffalo Bills. I had predicted a massive blowout for the Bills. Football is so slow with so many commercials that I usually catch up on my magazine reading during a game. The cover of the New Yorker this week made me laugh:

I finished up “I Might be in Trouble” by Daniel Aleman this week. Lots of entertaining twists in the tail. I really enjoyed this read, but be careful if you don’t like the dark and different stuff.

This showed up on one of the final pages:

““How is—” “Listen, I was thinking,” he says. “Would you want to go grab dinner? Or drinks? I just… wanted to celebrate with you, unless you have other—”

Begin rant – When did the “grab” verb insert itself into these kind of phrases? I don’t ever want to “grab” dinner or drinks. I want to sit down, relax and leisurely enjoy them. I see it in buttons to click to buy tickets for a movie or a show – “Grab your tickets now.” I’m fine with “buying” a ticket but not really interested in “grabbing” one. Rant over.

I also read “Kermit Ruffins and Vaughan’s Lounge” by Jay Mazza, inspired by his turn as an interview host for the book talk at Octavia last week. This was wonderful and reminded me of my first night in New Orleans and is a short manifesto on why we moved here.

A quote prior to my first visit to New Orleans:

“Kermit’s gig at the tiny Bywater club has become the spot for up and coming and established jazz stars to jam in a low-key setting to a truly appreciative crowd. You never know who’s going to show up, and this night proves to be incredibly special. Pianist Henry Butler sits in for the entire second set and leaves the keys burnin’ and smokin’ with his monstrous chops. Probably the single best soloing of the entire year. Kermit was good too.”

On my first ever night in New Orleans, Henry Butler sat in with Kermit. I could not believe the piano virtuoso I was hearing in this tiny dive bar – not to mention Kermit on the trumpet, the ridiculous bass, and the strong drumming. After reading this book, I understand a bit more of all that went into creating that.

And thanks to Anne for stopping to introduce Mr. Butler to me on her way to getting him a cab (he was blind.)

I’m glad I finally made it to the city I knew I should be in after that first night.

I enjoyed this piece in the New Yorker by Zadie Smith about writing essays for tests and otherwise:

Zadie Smith – on the impersonal essay

I like to read “five albums that I can’t live without” on Spin magazine’s site. This week made me smile. The comments on Springsteen’s Nebraska from a metal guy were so on point with my feelings and so well articulated ahead of the new movie about this album starring Jeremy Allen White (of the Bear):

His second choice reminded me of a night in New York with the late Greg Holowach. We arrived at a cigar bar and the bartender put on this album. I started talking to the guy next to me about it and he went DEEP into the musical technicality of it. I can’t remember a good example. I finally asked him what he did for a living. “I write symphonies, and my latest is being premiered by the New York Philharmonic tonight. I’m too nervous to attend.” Huh – feel free to critique Radiohead with me then…

And lastly, the third choice from this metal dude, I listened to extensively in my bedroom, fascinated by how these guitar and jazz parts went together:

Weird that all those three parts were in different sizes and different fonts on the same technology – not my IT problem anymore. I did remind Diana that we saw Johnny Depp perform with Jeff Beck shortly before he died (Beck, not Depp). “Isolation” was the song they swaggered through together.

I love the trombone rhythm section on this:

And finally something from the master:

Coexist peacefully, with patience and kindness for all.

Week in Review – September 21, 2025

“Good Friends + 4 Days in New Orleans = Priceless”

When I left you last Sunday, the Cowboys and Saints were both losing. The Cowboys did finally manage to eke out a win with an amazing 64 yard field goal by Aubrey – he is certainly a bright spot on the team. The Saints were not so fortunate either that Sunday or particularly the most recent Sunday.

Augie was busy for several hours decorating for Halloween:

Diana had a routine medical test on Monday that required fasting for a while. I gave her the choice of where to have lunch afterwards. “Let’s go to Shaya, we haven’t been there in while.” It was shortly after 11am and there were two other folks in the place. The temperature was set to very cold and so we asked to sit on the patio. Apparently opening the patio door to serve us was going to be too much. So we left for plan B.

Red Dog Diner was happy to sit us outside. We missed the 8-10am morning Happy Hour but I had a frozen Irish coffee anyway (a meal in itself.)

I entertained myself in the afternoon with the Americana music awards while Diana napped. John C. Reilly hosted and did a nice version of Tom Waits’ “Picture in a Frame:”

Mary and Chuck finally arrived in Scotland on a trip that Mum helped them plan a while ago:

I’m looking forward to hearing about it.

I met my friend Fred from Plano (really from New Orleans originally but now lives in the Dallas area) for Happy Hour at the Evangeline on Tuesday afternoon. I picked the location so that Fred could walk from his sister’s house and that worked out very well. This is one of Kenny’s favourite bars and I felt guilty going for the first time without him, but had a great visit with Fred.

Trivia on Tuesday night – all good through the first half and then we took a nosedive. We were close on this final question. You had to guess within five of the total and we were just a few outside that. The only one we knew with certainty was the hockey goals – seven.

Diana began Wednesday in typical fashion – a run and then yoga. Then we went to look at a house on Nashville Ave that had a nice pool, pool house, and way more rooms than we need. Too much upkeep and maintenance on that place.

We got some culture on Wednesday evening at a reading at Octavia books. Here’s what their email said about the event:

“From the legendary producer of Nick Drake, R.E.M., Toots and the Maytals, and Pink Floyd and author of White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s comes a riveting, world-spanning tour de force illuminating the artists, histories, controversies, and collaborations that shaped global music.”

I enjoyed the stories and music that he played. I picked up a book by the interviewer, Jay Mazza, about Kermit Ruffins and Vaughan’s lounge. Mazza attended over 300 Thursday night shows at the venue with Kermit and band. That’s where I ended up on my first ever evening in New Orleans and I was sold.

One of my favourite songs that I heard that night:

Back at the house we watched an episode of the new “Morning Show” series – not too exciting yet.

April and Jason, friends from Austin, arrived on Thursday morning. We had a nibble on a breakfast casserole that I made for the first time – yummy, and then it was off to Commander’s Palace for lunch.

After the usual trio of small soups, I passed on the usual stuffed quail and tried the cochon de lait tostada – a good new option. And of course, you can’t finish without the whiskey souffle:

Next up, Booker Sessions at the Maple Leaf. This week was Andre Bohren and he was strictly classical – none of the hybrid style that Booker is famous for creating. Lots of Chopin and Liszt.

A brief stop in to Jacques-Imo’s for alligator cheesecake and a hello to Debra, and we had day one of the visit in the books.

Our guests had not spent time in the French Quarter and so we rectified that with a brief ramble on Friday afternoon. We stopped in the lovely Peychaud’s courtyard where Jason fell in love with the Hurricane cocktail.

We had the obligatory wander down Bourbon Street and back up Royal Street, then caught a car over to N7. This is always such a lovely place to take guests when the weather is nice. The garden seating worked out very well, and we were able to share several menu highlights: tomato salad (the popping flavours), octopus, duck liver pate, tarte flambee traditionelle (always a highlight for me with those lardons and caramelized onions) and steak au poivre.

After that N7 feast, we regrouped and made a visit to Dos Jefes to watch the Joe Krown trio. After a bit of a late start (actually 30 minutes late is pretty much on time for New Orleans) we were treated to one of the best performances that I’ve heard from Joe.

We met the local krewe (Jack, Alex, Thom, Laura) at Oak and Ale to watch football on Saturday afternoon. That gave April and Jason a chance for a repeat French Quarter visit and another Hurricane.

We enjoyed dinner together at the Bouligny Tavern. How did they get that smoky char on the broccolini with the burrata? The deviled eggs were also very fancy:

We planned on Elizabeth’s in the Bywater for brunch on Sunday. I had a last minute thought that it would be nice to invite Chris who lives close. Diana did not he was joining until she saw his bike parked in front. Nice surprise!

They always have such a good selection of brunch specials – hard to decide:

The Cowboys and Saints both lost their games in the afternoon – the Saints by the worst margin since the 1970s – going to be a long season for them.

I’m a little over half way through “I Might be in Trouble” by Daniel Aleman. I’m finding it well written and funny so far, albeit a bit dark. Here’s the online summary:

“A “hilarious, suspense-filled” dark comedy about a struggling writer who wakes up to find his date from the night before dead—and must then decide how far he’s willing to go to use this as inspiration for his next book (Entertainment Weekly).

A few years ago, David Alvarez had it all: a six-figure book deal, a loving boyfriend, and an exciting writing career. His debut novel was a resounding success, which made the publication of his second book—a total flop—all the more devastating. Now, David is single, lonely, and desperately trying to come up with the next great idea for his third manuscript, one that will redeem him in the eyes of readers, reviewers, the entire publishing world…and maybe even his ex-boyfriend.

But good ideas are hard to come by, and the mounting pressure of a near-empty bank account isn’t helping. When David connects with a sexy stranger on a dating app, he figures a wild night out in New York City may be just what he needs to find inspiration.

But after one of the best nights of his life, David wakes up hungover but giddy—only to find prince charming dead next to him in bed. Suddenly faced with the implausible idea that he may have actually killed his date, David calls the only person he can trust in a moment of crisis: his literary agent, Stacey.

Together, David and Stacey must untangle the events of the previous night, cover their tracks, and spin the entire misadventure into David’s career-defining novel—if only they can figure out what to do with the body first.”

The passing of Robert Redford brought to mind this song from Allison Moorer that she performed in “The Horse Whisperer:”

Take a listen to this gorgeous cover of “Dancing in the Dark” that Jason shared with us:

Coexist peacefully, with patience and kindness for all!

Week in Review – September 14th, 2025

“Hello Cleveland”

Monday was the fist low humidity day in months and we took advantage by walking down to Aquila Bistro and Cafe. It’s only half a mile away and we haven’t been since it opened in what used to be the Rabbit’s Foot (a coffee shop that I really enjoyed.) The food and coffees were very good and the service excellent. We’ll put this back on the rotation – we have so many good coffee shops in walking distance, particularly as it starts to cool off a wee bit.

Diana got avocado toast which was served with tater tots (her number one comfort food), eggs and a salad. All very good. The shop had a clever item for sale – “A date with a puzzle.” These were jigsaw puzzles wrapped up with a description that included the number of pieces and three words to describe the subject. Maybe I’ll have to go back and get one for McD to do on a rainy day.

I’ve been working to step up my omelet game in retirement. Plenty of time for chives, avocado and radishes to spice up the presentation:

We were planning to see the Spinal Tap II movie on Friday, followed by the “Hello, Cleveland” cover band. In anticipation we had Kenny, Kara, Thom, Libby and Jack over to watch the original movie on Monday night. The classic line from the original is that their amplifiers go to “11.” Diana helped me adjust mine to the same:

Spinal Tap II was filmed mostly in New Orleans with cameos from Paul McCartney and Elton John. The cheese shop scenes were filmed in the store next to my barber, Aidan Gill, and he provided the “green room” for the day with Guinness and Irish whiskies. Diana and I wandered by and saw Rob Reiner directing the action in “Nigel’s Cheese Shop.”

I ordered up some coasters and a wee Stonehenge (plays a role in the original movie stage set) to make things fun.

We had a fish and chips dining theme (would have been better if Jack had remembered his freshly caught snapper) with malt vinegar and tartar sauce – the easiest British food we could come up with on short notice.

Here’s the trailer for Spinal Tap II – complete with the Stonehenge themed 2:

I thought these beers were funny – came across them while shopping for Monday dinner with Jack “O”gan.

We seem to think we won trivia on Tuesday – there appears to be some confusion but we’re going with it. The only questions I knew were these two:

“Fuddy Duddy”

“Jimmy Johnson”

By the time I called Denny on Wednesday morning he had already heard from Jack that I was minimally helpful.

We made it to the Hot and Soul restaurant next to the new Trader Joe’s for lunch on Wednesday. This is a single shotgun house and seemed to have an interesting menu. I enjoyed the veggie curry and Diana had a tasty ceviche. We sat at the bar and I was surprised when one of the cooks proceeded to chop up more than a dozen onions on a surface just behind the bar. I asked the bartender/waitress why he didn’t do that in the back instead of bringing tears to all of our eyes. I got what I’m sure she thought was a funny reply, but it just seemed rude and flippant to me. Not sure I’ll be rushing back to this place.

Diana led an expedition to the Banks Street Bar on Wednesday evening to listen to Mia Borders perform. This was a pleasant neighbourhood bar and Mia played a good set that started on time at 6pm – always appreciated by the old folks.

We split a burger from the place next door and enjoyed it with the music.

“Set It Up” was a funny movie that we watched later in the evening.

Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell were very entertaining.

I accompanied Diana to a doctor appointment on Thursday and then we made a visit to Octavia books – such a nice store and much expanded. I picked up the Tom Piazza book about his friendship with John Prine and “Buckeye” by Patrick Ryan. More to come on both of those soon.

We picked up Kenny and Kara for the Spinal Tap II excursion on Friday evening. Here’s how the Broad newsletter advertised the event:

“First up, on Friday night, we have a twofer of Spinal Tap bliss! At 7pm, we will screen the film at The Broad Theater, then immediately following, Broadside will host HELLO CLEVELAND, the greatest (and maybe only?) Spinal Tap cover band. Hello Cleveland is compromised of Marc Paradis on guitar, Beth Patterson on electric bouzouki-tar, Dave Pomerleau on bass, Mike Barras on drums, and Josh Paxton on keys (most of the members from Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes). Check-in will be at the theater where you will be given a wrist band to enter Broadside.”

The movie was very funny and well done – I enjoyed it even more than the first one. Diana was particularly entertained – haven’t seen her laugh as much at a movie ever. We both remarked that it was fun to watch a movie in a full theater with folks that were enjoying the humour.

The cover band of all-star local musicians was also very entertaining. What a lot of work those guys did for a one night only performance. Here are some highlights:

“Heavy Duty”:

The wonderful pianist, Josh Paxson, doing an intro to “Stonehenge”:

A couple of clips from “Stonehenge”:

Jeff was in town solo on Saturday to attend his Mom’s birthday on Sunday. Merry Lee had to attend a funeral. We met Jeff at the Rusty Nail (walking distance from his condo) to watch the LSU college football game.

We left at halftime and watched the conclusion (a nice win for LSU) from our respective homes. Jeff enjoyed the Rusty Nail and was excited that it was dog friendly.

Diana joined me on a walk to French Truck coffee this morning. I realized on leaving that I had made quite a mess on the floor with my very flaky and delicious croissant.

I’m currently watching the Saints struggle to get anything going against the San Francisco 49ers. And there was just an update that the Cowboys (not on TV in New Orleans) are losing to the Giants. There’s still time for both teams to recover.

This article in the Tuesday newspaper reminded me of the literary geniuses that have inhabited New Orleans over the years:

William_Faulkner_(1924_publicity_photo_-_pipe).jpg — *William Faulkner is shown here in 1924, just a year before he arrived in New Orleans as an aspiring writer.*

For aspiring writers, New Orleans in the 1920s wasn’t just another city; it was a cultural crucible where artistic voices were forged amid a tolerant, bohemian atmosphere. For William Faulkner, his transformative stay in the French Quarter in 1925 proved pivotal, marking his transition from an aspiring poet to a fledgling novelist and profoundly shaping his literary trajectory.

When Faulkner arrived in January 1925, a few months after his 27th birthday, he was only passing through on his way to Europe. But he quickly fell under the city’s spell, finding in its French Quarter a poor man’s Paris where he could live cheaply and richly among artists.

He rented a modest apartment in Pirate’s Alley (then Orleans Alley), today a literary landmark. This lean living situation was part of the Quarter’s allure: Low rents attracted a diverse creative class that lived and worked cheek by jowl in its crumbling townhouses.

The city itself was a sensory feast. Faulkner wandered its alleys with his notebook, soaking up what he called the “city’s sweet stink,” the cacophony of street vendors, jazz and dialects swirling together in the Quarter’s courtyards and cafes.

“The brooding and timeless quality of the city,” he observed, “is broken only by the sudden raucous cry of a newsboy or the ironic laughter of a drunk.” It was the city’s unapologetic pageantry and mercurial cast of characters, observed with a sharp outsider’s eye, that would teach him to inhabit perspectives far beyond his Mississippi roots.

According to Jay Watson, recently retired Distinguished Professor of English and Howry Professor of Faulkner Studies at the University of Mississippi, New Orleans offered the young writer something Oxford, Mississippi, could not.

“In Oxford, Faulkner was condescended to for wanting to live a life of the mind,” Watson said. “In New Orleans, he found an aesthetic metropolis — a community of like-minded people that gave him permission to stay with this kind of life.”

A decisive influence during this period was Sherwood Anderson, the celebrated author of “Winesburg, Ohio,” who had made New Orleans his semiretirement home. Anderson encouraged Faulkner to abandon poetry for prose, advice that changed the young Mississippian’s life. Anderson also introduced Faulkner to his New York publisher, paving the way for his first novel, “Soldier’s Pay.”

Faulkner never forgot the kindness, later dedicating the book to Anderson. But as Watson notes, Anderson’s impact went even deeper: “Ironically, one of the most important things Sherwood Anderson ever did for Faulkner was to tell him to leave New Orleans — to go back to Mississippi, to the place he knew best, if he really wanted to maximize his talent.”

The French Quarter’s literary ferment brought him into orbit with other figures, including William Spratling, John McClure and Roark Bradford. Spratling, a Tulane architecture instructor and Faulkner’s housemate, collaborated with him on “Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles,” a satirical limited-edition book that caricatured the bohemian circle around them.

*William Faulkner sold stories to The Times-Picayune during his stint in New Orleans.PHOTO COURTESY OF SAMUEL BIRDSONG*

McClure, an editor at The Times-Picayune and the influential Double Dealer magazine, became one of Faulkner’s earliest champions, publishing his first poem and later his experimental prose sketches.

The Times-Picayune itself became Faulkner’s training ground. He sold numerous short stories and sketches to the paper, often earning $5 to $15 apiece — much-needed income for the young writer.

His series, initially titled “Mirrors of Chartres Street,” offered slice-of-life portraits of the city’s inhabitants, written with a poet’s ear but shaped by the practical realities of newspaper work.

Paid by the inch, Faulkner learned to adapt his lush style into something immediate and concise. “Being paid by The Times-Picayune must have been empowering for Faulkner,” Watson said. “For the first time, he was making coin for his writing — not vanity press or favors from friends, but real income. It helped him believe in himself.”

Beyond journalism, New Orleans gave him experiences that became raw material for fiction. A disastrous yacht excursion on Lake Pontchartrain with Anderson and other artists — plagued by mosquitoes, engine trouble, and frayed tempers — would inspire his second novel, “Mosquitoes.” The Quarter also encouraged him to experiment with shape-shifting into character, vanishing into other voices and perspectives. As he later reflected, New Orleans was a place where “imagination takes precedence over fact.”

The results were extraordinary. In just a few short months, Faulkner published 16 stories in The Times-Picayune Sunday Magazine and nearly completed “Soldier’s Pay” in his Pirate’s Alley apartment. These achievements launched his career as a novelist, providing the confidence and momentum that would carry him through the masterpieces of the next decade.

Carl_Van_Vechten_-_William_Faulkner (1).jpg — *William Faulkner’s life as a man of letters and one of the United States’ most important writers began in New Orleans.LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/ CARL VAN VECHTEN PHOTO*

Faulkner’s time in New Orleans was brief, but it became a lifelong touchstone. Later in life, he remembered the city with affection, saying he “had more fun there than I ever had and ever will have again anywhere now.”

As he once wrote in his early sketches, “Here is the substance of a thousand dreams, their beauty broken, trampled, and cast aside. Yet it still clings, the romance of a past that will not pass.”

For the Nobel laureate who would one day bend time itself into fiction, it was New Orleans that first gave him permission to play, to absorb the chaos of modern life, and to transform it into art.

The Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society will mark the centennial of Faulkner’s New Orleans year with a festival Sept. 25—28, a reminder that the city continues to celebrate the writer it once helped transform.

Joseph S. Makkos is a New Orleans — based archivist, writer and director of Intelligent Archives, a company dedicated to preserving and reimagining historic newspapers.

I hope to be able to attend the Faulkner festival this year.

My book this week was “The Grand Paloma Resort” by Cleyvis Natera. This didn’t hold my attention too well – lots of peaks and valleys with the storyline feeling a bit repetitive quite often. I would recommend skipping it. Here’s the online summary:

“The Grand Paloma Resort is a lush paradise in the Dominican Republic where the guests enjoy incredible luxury, and the staff is always eager to please—that is, until they are pushed to the brink.

Laura is a local Dominican woman who, through sheer hard work, has risen through the ranks to become manager at the Grand Paloma Resort. Her idea to pair a “platinum” guest with their own resort employee to attend to their every whim has been wildly successful, and she’s just weeks away from a promotion that could blaze a path for her off the resort and toward a life of opportunity. If only her younger sister, Elena—who she’s looked after since the death of their mother—could get with the program.”

I made a start on “Living in the Present with John Prine” by New Orleans resident Tom Piazza, and can tell that I’m going to really enjoy it.

Here’s an online summary:

“A vivid, joyful, moving window onto the life and heart of an American icon.

In the spring of 2018, Tom Piazza climbed into a 1977 Coupe de Ville with the great singer-songwriter John Prine to write an article for the Oxford American. Their Florida road trip ignited a deep friendship, full of tall tales over epic meals, long nights playing guitar and trading songs, and visits back and forth between their homes in Nashville and New Orleans. Along the way, Prine invited Piazza to work with him on a memoir, with John telling sprawling, often hilarious stories of his youth and family in Chicago and Kentucky, his breakthrough into the national spotlight, his riotous early years in the Nashville country scene, and much more. When Prine died suddenly of COVID in April 2020, that unfinished memoir evolved into an intimate and very personal narrative of the artist’s final years. In it, Piazza offers fans an unforgettable portrait of the beloved musician in his late glory―as a boyish cut-up, an epic raconteur, a great American poet, and, most important, a beloved friend.”

A couple of favourite passages so far:

Describing a ride in a massive 1977 Coupe de Ville:

“He gets in behind the wheel; I climb back into the marshmallow-white leather interior next to him, and as the engine starts with a Wagnerian roar a middle-aged guy walking in front of us-startled-gives us a grin and a thumbs up.

“I like giving people a smile when they see this car,” Prine says, happy as a man can be. “This car brings back dreams.””

On first seeing Prine perform at the Saenger theater in 2016:

“At one point I realized that tears were running down my cheeks. The lone figure on stage, ravaged by time and circumstance, yet standing there and delivering this painful beauty into the cavernous theater, alone…it occurred to me right then that I might want to write something about him, although I wasn’t sure just what or why.”

It’s been a while since we had anything from the inimitable Billy Preston:

I love the guitar sound on this one:

Another sweet sounding, laid back guitar:

Coexist peacefully, with patience and kindness for all!

Week in Review – September 7th, 2025

“Getaway to Bay St. Louis”

You should see this one handed catch if you missed the Miami vs Notre Dame college game last Saturday:

I’m sure Timmy didn’t love the C.J. Daniels acrobatics.

I listened to this Fresh Air podcast during a walk in the park on Monday. It featured late 80s interviews with Charles Brown and Ray Charles. Highly recommended. Charles Brown playing live in the studio is easily worth the listen.

We made the short (one hour) drive to Bay St. Louis on Tuesday afternoon. I rented an Airbnb for a few days and we invited Kenny and Kara to join us. We arrived before check in time and so had a relaxing drink at Barracuda tacos – this is the sister of the place that we have on Magazine St in New Orleans, but I think they make better drinks.

You can see how close Barracuda is to the Airbnb – it’s right next to PJs Coffee:

We were very pleased with the house on check in. The pool and outside seating areas were great.

It came with a golf cart and bikes that we didn’t use – everything was within close walking distance.

There were some interesting features – a parking meter mailbox and “Seize the Bay” neon sign (once I figured out that there was a fancy remote to turn it on):

Diana and I walked to the Thorny Oyster for dinner on Tuesday evening. We passed a few interesting buildings on our walk (church and courthouse).

This ended up being one of the best meals that we’ve had in a long time – in a large part due to the recommendations from our waiter Zak. We shared three small plates – whipped ricotta with “reds” (apparently Argentinian red shrimp), crab claws with a wonderfully good sauce (Zak joked about bringing a straw to enjoy all of it, and apparently I was the only person in months to take advantage of it), and a tuna tostada with massive cubes of very fresh tuna.

I like the oyster wallpaper in the restaurant. Seems appropriate for Diana’s office given her penchant for those creatures:

Kenny and Kara arrived later on Tuesday evening and we enjoyed relaxing by the pool for a while.

The girls went for a run along the beach on Wednesday morning while Kenny and I enjoyed a breakfast snack at Barracuda.

That was followed by pool time and then lunch at the Blind Tiger. Here’s some history on the name:

This was an easy, casual beach front place with good food and service.

Randy and Amy (friends who live in Bay St. Louis) came over in the afternoon. Amy showed up fully loaded – pool floaties and pump, Old Fashioned cocktails with large ice cubes and cherries, and cookies. The perfect guest. We had a very enjoyable afternoon and early evening visiting by the pool. Amy suggested Trapani’s for dinner and I think everyone enjoyed their meal. I had a fresh and well cooked trout and I know Kenny really enjoyed his steak.

Later that night, as we were watching some of the tennis, Kara entertained us with a comedy bit on all the ways the professionals played a similar game to her – “They hit it into the net, I hit it into the net.” You had to be there.

Thursday began with pickleball. They had some city courts that were no cost – just rock up and play. Good fun.

We followed that with a well earned breakfast at the Mockingbird Cafe – just across the street from Barracuda and very close to the house. Kara and I enjoyed frittatas, avocado toast for Diana, and a yummy looking breakfast burrito for Kenny.

Kara and Kenny left in the early afternoon so that Kenny could be back in time to teach his tennis clinic. I do love that when he commits to something, you can 100% count on him to execute.

We had a pleasant evening walk over to the Depot district – this is where the railway station is located and it has grown into a small retail area. There is a duck pond and you can buy feed at the depot.

A rail service from New Orleans to Mobile with stops in Bay St. Louis started a few weeks ago. They call it the “Mardi Gras Express.” I might consider it for our next trip – $15 and about an hour.

We walked from the Depot down to the beach and along to the Thorny Oyster. I didn’t enjoy this meal as much as the last one – no Zak for starters. The Italiano salad that we split was large and very good. The calamari was good but not the best that we’ve had.

We were home in time for some pool time before the Cowboys and Eagles game. The Cowboys played better than expected but came up just short 20-24 after an hour long lightning delay. This meme about Jerry Jones trading Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers made me chuckle.

I’m not laughing as much after just watching Parsons make an amazing sack for the Green Bay Packers – the closing speed!

Friday had a leisurely start. Sleep late and then pack up and make sure we take care of everything on the checkout list. Then back to the Mockingbird Cafe. This time I got the biscuits with sausage gravy and a fried egg – delicious. Diana reprised her avocado toast and added some excellent bacon (a meal in itself.)

We had an easy drive back and even stopped at Trader Joe’s to pick up some supplies once we reached New Orleans. We’re hosting a “Spinal Tap” watch party on Monday, ahead of the release of “Spinal Tap II” next Friday. We picked up some fish and chips type snacks for that.

Back at the house we watched the Djokovic vs Alcaraz tennis semi-final – very good tennis.

This article showed up in the Saturday newspaper. So funny how this happens sometimes – all about the recovery of Bay St. Louis since Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago:

“Katrina battered Bay St. Louis — destroying half the city’s homes, blowing out the bridge that connects it to Pass Christian and decimating the population. The downtown area, once busy, was essentially flattened to a blank slate.

Recovery was a yearslong effort sustained by an outpouring of assistance from the government, volunteers and locals who stayed. Public buildings, roadways and vital bridges were eventually repaired and replaced by federal money. By 2013, new developers were flocking to downtown as longtime business owners rebuilt.

Today, the ghost of Katrina’s devastation is hard to find in most parts of Bay St. Louis. In Pearlington, though, it lingers just about everywhere.

A town reborn

On Friday, the anniversary of Katrina, Nikki Moon sits in her Bay St. Louis home and remembers that day 20 years ago. When the storm hit, she clung to a bald oak with her Scottish terrier and three guests from her bed-and-breakfast, Bay Town Inn.

Today, that tree still stands by the inn. Carved into its branches are two angels, one facing the water and another looking toward Beach Boulevard, lined with busy seafood restaurants and palm trees rustling in the breeze.

Even on its slower days, the town’s rebirth is unmistakable.

On the corner of Main Street and Beach Boulevard, a couple walks into Pearl Hotel with rolling luggage. A few blocks away, in Mockingbird Cafe, a group of locals sit at a table and talk about how Bay St. Louis has transformed in the last decade.

“It is a community that came back very strongly,” Moon says, “And its people are really something special.”

Several businesses, including Bay Town Inn, began reopening on Beach Boulevard in 2013. Moon had applied for a $150,000 grant from the Hancock County Chamber of Commerce, which she said gave her “the seed money” to rebuild her bed-and-breakfast. The county’s tourism office also provided funds for advertising.

“We had no roads. We had no water. We had no power,” Moon says. “Our infrastructure was starting from scratch. The city and the county had to raise the money.”

Bay St. Louis slowly came back to life, regaining its pre-Katrina identity as a quaint art colony and weekend retreat for New Orleanians.

Moon sold the inn in 2022 to Jim MacPhaille, a New Orleans developer who owns a restaurant and several other businesses in Bay St. Louis. A decade earlier, he had already seen the town’s potential.

In 2013, MacPhaille purchased two buildings on Main Street. Despite its damaged infrastructure and lack of tourism, he recognized how Bay St. Louis was “eager to get things done” as storm recovery in New Orleans lagged.

But still, “business was tough,” MacPhaille said. “Back then, they were barely making it. We had like three or four tenants roll in and out.”

In 2018, he opened two New Orleans staples — PJ’s Coffee and Creole Creamery — in his two buildings on Main Street. Today, that once-empty corridor is filled with new boutiques and restaurants. There’s little trace of the blight Katrina left behind.

Signs of hope

Even in Bay St. Louis, the story of recovery extends beyond downtown.

A few blocks away in the Depot District, new restaurants, boutiques and other businesses have opened across from the Amtrak train station, where Bay St. Louis is a stop along the Mardi Gras Service from New Orleans to Mobile. In other parts of the city, new subdivisions are emerging with houses and condos.”

We enjoyed a walk/run in the park on Saturday morning. Diana had planned on playing pickleball on Saturday evening but didn’t know about the need to register ahead of time and just missed a slot. Lesson learned. We watched some TV instead – a Catherine Zeta Jones movie called “The Rebound.” Not too bad.

Sunday was about sports – U.S. Open men’s final (relatively easy Alcaraz win) and Saints loss. I’m hoping the Lions come back against the Packers soon.

My first book this week was “I Regret Almost Everything” by Keith McNally. I enjoyed this a lot and read it in a couple of days. I used to love eating at Odeon when I was working on Wall Street for AIG – it was an easy walk and I loved the feel of the place and the quality of the food. Reading this book I learned a lot about the history that I didn’t know at all. Here’s the online summary:

“The entertaining, irreverent, and surprisingly moving memoir by the visionary restaurateur behind such iconic New York institutions as Balthazar and Pastis.

A memoir by the legendary proprietor of Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and Morandi, taking us from his gritty London childhood in the fifties to his serendipitous arrival in New York, where he founded the era-defining establishments the Odeon, Cafe Luxembourg, and Nell’s. Eloquent and opinionated, Keith McNally writes about the angst of being a child actor, his lack of insights from traveling overland to Kathmandu at nineteen, the instability of his two marriages and family relationships, his devastating stroke, and his Instagram notoriety.”

The book starts right out with McNally’s stroke and then rewinds through all of his previous accomplishments:

“After the doctor left, I tried wriggling my arms and legs to check that I wasn’t paralyzed. I wasn’t, thank God. To test my memory, I wrote the alphabet on the back of the nurse’s chart. I then tried saying the letters aloud, but here there was a problem. The words wouldn’t conform to my efforts. They exited my mouth in such a slurred and disorderly way that I sounded like a stage drunk. But this was a small price to pay for my stroke. My first stroke, that is. Because the next day the artillery arrived and gave me such a hammering that in one fell swoop I lost the use of my right hand, right arm and right leg. And my slurred speech, perhaps in fright, went AWOL. Overnight I was confined to a wheelchair and deprived of language. So much for The Restaurateur Who Invented Downtown.”

McNally describes the days following his stroke in a shared ward:

“I shared a ward with five other men whose ages ranged from forty to eighty. At night, with words inaccessible to me, I’d listen in awe to them talking. Speech suddenly seemed like a divine accomplishment. Even everyday words had an element of poetry to them. I dreaded the moment when the men would stop talking and I’d be left with my own thoughts. Sleepless, half-paralyzed and unable to speak, I felt buried alive. More than anything, I wished the stroke had killed me.”

Talking about the desire to keep on building and creating rather than running:

“Although my restaurants were taking in $ 80 million a year before my stroke, my reason for building them was never the pursuit of money. It was partly to gain the admiration of those I respected, and partly the satisfaction I received from seeing an idea realized. But whatever satisfaction the restaurants gave me was fleeting—which is probably why I can’t stop building.”

Diana and I have spent a few fun evenings at Pravda (subterranean vodka bar) with Teddy – it was fun to hear about this encounter:

“I caught the misty reflection of an Asian-looking woman with a sultry gaze. She was accompanying her friend to a job interview. Although we scarcely talked to each other, Alina cast such a powerful mix of tenderness and sensuality that I couldn’t look at her. During the thirty minutes she was there, we barely exchanged two words. The next time we met was two weeks later at Pravda, a subterranean vodka bar I owned. It was raining heavily that night and the place was packed and steamy. I was helping the maître d’ seat customers when Alina walked in with some girlfriends. I took a break and sat down with them. After twenty minutes we were sitting alone together.”

Who leaves school with one O level and waits on Marlon Brando two days later?:

“I left school at sixteen with just one O level—the barest minimum of qualifications—and took a job as a bellhop at London’s Hilton Hotel on Park Lane. On my second day, I was asked to escort Marlon Brando to his room. Like most movie stars, Brando was shorter in person than on the screen. He had a boxer’s broad shoulders and a surprisingly high, nasal voice. In the elevator, he asked me what I intended to do with my life. I had no idea and said as much. (I still have no idea.)”

I love this Woody Allen joke:

“the old Woody Allen joke: “You know, this guy goes into a psychiatrist’s office and says, ‘Doc, my brother’s crazy! He thinks he’s a chicken.’ And the doctor says, ‘Why don’t you turn him in?’ And the guy says, ‘I would, but I need the eggs.’”

I remembered this passage when wondering why the Napkin dispenser at Barracuda in Bay St. Louis had an exclamation point:

“Standing ovations began to increase in the 1970s, which, by coincidence, was the same decade in which the use of the exclamation point increased. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the key for the exclamation point—which in some ways is the standing ovation of correspondence—was added to a typewriter’s keyboard. The exclamation point has no grammatical purpose except to turn up the volume to eleven.”

A great description of Heathrow:

“At Heathrow I was jolted into the real world. After six weeks in the hospital and rehab, the frenzied terminal was an assault on my nerves. It was a snake pit of manic confusion. Faces strained and contorted. Couples arguing. Kids being screamed at. Is any vacation worth the anxiety that precedes it? When did travel become such a torment?”

The genesis of the title of the book:

“Po Ming was an exceptional man with a kind face and rare integrity. I once read that great people never regret anything. I regret almost everything. But most of all I regret not saying goodbye to Po Ming.”

An excellent point about all the wonderful 70s movies prior to Star Wars and the onset of the blockbuster movie phenomenon:

“the seventies: Taxi Driver, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Klute, Network, Marathon Man, The French Connection, Don’t Look Now, Mean Streets, Young Frankenstein, Deliverance, Annie Hall, Barry Lyndon, Three Days of the Condor, Shampoo, The Conversation, Five Easy Pieces, The Godfather parts 1 and 2, Paper Moon and my favorite film of the period, Dog Day Afternoon. By coincidence or not, each of these films came out before the blockbuster Star Wars had its theatrical release in the summer of ’77.”

The reason for calling his first restaurant “Odeon.” I enjoyed this place so much.

“Within the month, we’d signed a fifteen-year lease and roped my brother Brian into being our third partner. It was Brian who came up with the idea of calling it the Odeon—growing up, our local cinema was the Mile End Odeon.”

Some local New Orleans colour – I remember that clock very well:

“Between signing the lease for the restaurant and fixing it up, Lynn and I spent a week in New Orleans. While walking around a shady area outside the French Quarter we saw a large thirties-style neon clock in the window of a junk shop that looked perfect for our unbuilt restaurant. The only problem was there was a NOT FOR SALE sign in front of it. The eternally shy Lynn persuaded me to go in alone and make an offer. “Offer a hundred dollars but no more,” she advised.”

“That twenty-five-dollar neon clock was our first purchase for the Odeon and has been hanging in the same position on the wall next to the bar since October 1980.”

One of the things that I liked about Odeon was the different cast of characters – folks in suits and folks in jeans and tees:

“The Odeon’s success was mostly due to happenstance: being in the right place at the right time. It was a sort of success that defies logic and defines its time. Through no intention of our own, the Odeon quickly became the epicenter of the downtown art scene with Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Julian Schnabel mixing with the likes of Anna Wintour, Lorne Michaels and the cast of Saturday Night Live. Harold Pinter, as well as the writers Joseph Heller and Edward Albee, ate at the Odeon that first year.

During the Odeon’s early days, the actor John Belushi was our most regular customer. An original cast member of Saturday Night Live, he’d recently starred in the blockbuster film Animal House. Looking like someone who’d perpetually slept through his alarm, Belushi would swagger in just before closing and sit down with the staff as they gossiped about the night’s customers. One time, he came in after the cooks had left and volunteered to make the few remaining staff hamburgers. I somehow felt he was eager to show them that he could do something other than make people laugh. Watching him alone in the kitchen, cooking, was the only time I felt that Belushi was truly himself. The rest of the time I felt he was acting. But he had such a boyish charm that one couldn’t help but like him. The staff adored him.”

Talking about visiting Belushi and Aykroyd’s secret bar. I would have stayed and enjoyed the performance:

“Cheeseburgers on our laps, we sat in the limousine as it delivered us to an anonymous bar in the middle of nowhere. Anonymous, that is, until we opened the door: two hundred of Belushi’s friends and hangers-on were crowded into the tiny bar. After wolfing down the burgers, Belushi and Aykroyd jumped onto a makeshift stage and began belting out a well-known Motown song. Predictably, the crowd went berserk, and the place became too frenzied for me. Aside from a chronic inability to enjoy rock concerts—even small ones like this—I had my own bar to run. Unnoticed by Belushi and Aykroyd, Lynn and I meekly left midway through James Brown’s “I Feel Good” and returned to work.”

I loved the book “Bright Lights, Big City” years ago – not sure it would have an impact on me these days:

“In 1984, an unknown author called Jay McInerney showed up at the Odeon and asked if he could use an image of the place for the cover of his first book, Bright Lights, Big City.”

I was invited to Balthazar a few times and never made it. My loss:

“The idea for Balthazar came about while I was living in Paris seven years before I built the place. Although it’s hard for me to come up with good ideas, the few decent ones I’ve ever had have come about by pure accident. I was searching for vintage curtains at a Paris flea market in 1990 when I suddenly spotted an old sepia photo of a turn-of-the-century bar. Behind the bar’s zinc counter were hundreds of liquor bottles stacked twenty feet high, flanked by two towering statues of semi-naked women carved in the classical Greek style. I was so mesmerized by this image that I forgot about the curtains and bought the photo instead. For years I carried it in my back pocket, thinking that if I ever found a space with a sky-high ceiling, I’d build a bar just like the magnificent one in the photo. Stepping into Adar Tannery in the summer of 1995, I’d found that space. Five months later construction began.”

I love this adoration of the solitary diner and reader. I enjoy a restaurant with a book – maybe not quite as high end as these places:

“The literary critic Harold Bloom once wrote that “there is nothing more profoundly healing than the act of solitary reading.” I never really thought about this until my stay at McLean. The first books I reread were Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Reading The Sun Also Rises at twenty-two, I was bowled over by how good it was. I found Pride and Prejudice, which I read at twenty-three, artificial and silly. Rereading the Hemingway book, I winced at the dialogue and found parts of it embarrassing. With Austen it was the opposite. Second time around I thought Pride and Prejudice was a masterpiece and couldn’t believe I’d ever thought otherwise.”

I agree – the pace of change of places seems to increase as you age:

“After spending a month on Martha’s Vineyard and nine weeks at McLean, I’d been away from New York for over three months. I returned to the city in the fall of 2018 only to discover that my local barbershop had turned into a Baskin-Robbins. Why do changes in the landscape accelerate as one ages? You take a quick shower and another Duane Reade opens. You wake from an afternoon nap and there’s a new president. The second you hit sixty, life becomes the unstoppable bus in the film Speed.”

I highly recommend this autobiography. I’m not sure those who haven’t spent much time in New York restaurants will enjoy it as much as I did.

My next book was “Broken Country” by Clare Leslie Hall. This was more of a romance than I had expected, but the plot turns and construction of the story were very impressive. Will be a good one for Diana. Online summary:

““The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.”

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.”

Gabriel’s goal for his writing:

“The only thing I want in life is to write novels. I used to want to be Graham Greene. But then I read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis and it changed everything for me. It’s such a funny book, but daring too. And that’s the kind of novelist I’d like to be. Taking risks. Surprising people.”

Jumping to the trial, I really like the way this book jumps back and forward in time, usually something that irritates me:

“DS Morris looks down at his notebook. “We received a call at nine thirty-seven that night. We’d had report of a shotgun accident at Blakely Farm. The victim was already deceased.” “Let’s pause there for a moment. You were the officer on duty that night. You drove straight out to the Johnson farm?” “Yes. The police station is based in the local town, a drive of around eight minutes.” “Can you recall your thoughts on that journey? A man had died in a shotgun accident. One who was well known to you. Did it strike you as strange or sinister in any way? What I’m asking, DS Morris, is whether you had any inkling this might have been murder?” “Not at that point, no. Farming accidents are fairly common, unfortunately.” “But you changed your mind, once you got there?” “I did, yes. The facts didn’t seem to add up. I’ve been in this job twenty years, and you have an instinct for when you’re being fed a story.” Now Andy looks at the defendant. “Within twenty-four hours, I knew we had a murder investigation on our hands.””

I always loved an Airfix model and taking my time to assemble it. The Flying Fortress at the World War II museum last week reminded me of making an Airfix model of that plane:

“While we cook, Bobby and my father start work on an Airfix model he has given him, peering in confusion at a bag of plastic parts. I hope Bobby never grows out of Airfix, because my father certainly won’t.”

I would recommend this book to anyone who can tolerate some romance with a well written murder mystery.

The New York Times(NYT) puzzle this week had a clue “Many TV Panelists” with the answer “Talking Heads.” Rex Parker, NYT puzzle blogger, shared this video about that:

What an excellent performance.

I had always thought this was a Paul Young song (growing up in the UK). Turns out it’s a Hall and Oates classic:

Did you know Stevie Nicks had a song about New Orleans? I didn’t. Found out in the “Inside Out” section of the newspaper – a couple was talking about flying back from New Orleans to Chicago, landing at O’Hare and this song was playing. They took it as a message to pack up and move;

I love this Isbell cover of R.E.M. and also highly recommend his interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air (argumentative in a kind way):

Coexist peacefully, with kindness and patience for all!

Week in Review – August 31st, 2025

I shopped for and cooked Sunday dinner – look at me go in retirement. The black bean enchilada skillet dish was very well received by my wife. I did ask her later what dish I had bought the plain yogurt for. The one last night – “Remember I suggested that you substitute if for sour cream and added it to your shopping list?” Ahh – I do remember now and we can use it on the leftovers.

A link to the recipe if you’re interested in giving it a whirl, don’t forget the sour cream:

Recipe – black bean enchilada skillet

Another “culture pass” from the library took us to the Ogden Museum of Southern Art on Monday. The first thing we saw was this “Universal, Cosmic Mule” on the way up the stairs:

Something about this guy really appealed to me.

We started on the fifth floor and worked our way down. The views from the fifth floor terrace were impressive. Here’s the World War II museum and Crescent City Connection (CCC) bridge:

And a good view of the “wing” cover over the terrace of the World War II museum:

An interesting seahorse on the patio:

There is an annual competition for local artists to have their work displayed at the Ogden and that was our favourite part of our visit. Such creativity in pieces created over the last year or two by folks living in the area.

This is a collection of 50 paintings of Vietnamese folks to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war:

This level of detailed information really made this fifth floor exhibit for me. This one was called “Hurricane Proof House” and was painted “en plain air” shortly after Katrina:

The next floors had some older Southern art. I enjoyed these two paintings:

The one directly above had a real 3D feel to it.

This is one of the more well known paintings in the collection – French Quarter rooftops by Knute Helder from 1923 :

You might be getting bored with my tour of the Ogden by now. I’ll conclude with one final painting from the “20 years after Katrina section:”

The Ogden is a beautiful building – I remembered watching the HBO Tremé series character, Annie, playing the violin there for an event along with Joe Krown. I tried hard, even using AI, to find a clip to share – none out there. I guess HBO is just as effective as Bryan Adams at policing pirate copies of their videos. There’s the episode info if you would like to watch on HBO:

Episode

Season 3, Episode 5 — “I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say”

Performance Setting

Ogden Museum of Southern Art

Music Played

“O Ma Charmante, Épargnez‑Moi!” (Gottschalk) & “All That & Then Some” (Joe Krown)

YouTube Availability

Not currently found via public search

And after all that, I don’t think this is the episode I’m looking for. I’ll have to watch the whole series again.

I gave McD a choice of two places for lunch after the exhibit – Peche or Cochon Butcher. I knew which she would choose, and I was fine with either one. We started with tuna crudo and followed that with Jimmy Nardello peppers over whipped tuna – the waiter sold it to us and I’m glad he did. Those peppers were smoky and sweet. I’m ready for some more right now.

This is some research on the Jimmy Nardello pepper that I had never heard of before:

“This fine Italian pepper was grown each year by Giuseppe and Angella Nardello at their garden in the village of Ruoti, in Southern Italy. In 1887 they set sail with their one-year-old daughter Anna for a new life in the U.S. When they reached these shores, they settled and gardened in Naugatuck, Connecticut, and grew this same pepper that was named for their fourth son, Jimmy. This long, thin-skinned frying pepper dries easily and has such a rich flavor that this variety has been placed in “The Ark of Taste” by the Slow Food organization. It ripens to a deep red, is very prolific, and does well in most areas.”

We finished lunch with the crab capellini pasta – such fresh pasta and tasty sauce.

We were chatting about how unique these dishes at Peche are compared to other New Orleans restaurants, the combinations of ingredients and flavours reminding us of the wonderful Odd Duck in Austin.

I watched the movie “She Came to Me” on Monday night. Peter Dinklage is an opera composer, Anne Hathaway his wife and psychiatrist, and Marisa Tomei is a tugboat captain. Very quirky and well done.

Tuesday began with a walk in Audubon park. It was a tiny bit less humid and I didn’t feel totally sweated out after a couple of laps. After the park, we made our way over to the Batture farmer’s market. This happens every Tuesday and the Batture is the part of land that is on the Mississippi river side of the levee – grandfathered in through some weird law. If you want to learn more, check out “River Rats” by Macon Fry:

They Call us River Rats by Macon Fry

I spent an interesting day at Macon’s Batture house and will be happy to share some stories the next time we talk…

The farmer’s market was small but very well done. Great looking peppers, exotic mushrooms, tomatoes, honey, and smoothies. We bought a crawfish and mushroom risotto that a fun lady was selling, and I couldn’t resist buying a pupusa from a lovely gentleman named Mike. It was huge and very filling – Diana and I nibbled on it for several hours. Certainly the best pupusa I’ve experienced – stuffed with delicious cheese and topped with a fried egg, pickled onion and crema. I highly encourage my New Orleans friends to check this guy out – he does the City Park market on Sundays as well. Additionally, he is opening a 70s cocktail bar and Tokyo style jazz club on Freret Street opposite the Gasa Gasa club. Should be open in a couple of months – permitting delays have delayed the anticipated dates – imagine that in this city.

The Batture will reopen with food trucks and other popup restaurants this weekend for the fall and winter seasons. We will certainly check that out.

We made our way home, McD did a quick change and pack, and then I dropped her off at Merry Lee’s pool for the afternoon.

My next agenda item was to see about my cyst surgery – this time in the right week. I told the doctor that I had previously had a one inch cyst removed and now a much smaller version had grown back. “You mean 2.5 centimeters, based on your accent?” It’s not usually picked up that quickly. Apparently his daughter his studying linguistics at Trinity college in Dublin – he might know a bit about accents. The poor doctor tried really hard to arrange my surgery while I was there and was unsuccessful.

How did we do in Tuesday evening trivia? We took second place by a very small margin. I think Kenny was our MVP this week.

I always enjoy the mashup questions – “What would you call an Abba song about the longest reining UK monarch?”

Dancing Queen Elizabeth – I got that one. Dad would be disappointed if I didn’t.

In other trivia news – Glasgow featured ab0ut cloning and Dolly:

Lastly, here’s our team captain turning in our answer that Kenny got right away. “Joan of Arc.” MVP for Kenny?

As we were leaving trivia Alex asked if anyone wanted to go and see the band at the Ponchatrain hotel. Sure, I’ll do that. At the very least it’ll get me closer to home. I can walk from there.

Turns out Alex has been taking drumming lessons from Stanton for a few weeks and he invited him to come and watch the show:

Alex was impressed that I knew Oscar Rossingoli- by a week from research following the John Boutte show last week.

We attended the funeral service for the lovely Alicia Cole on Wednesday. The last time I talked to her she was feeling great and enjoying life – that changed quickly. Such a lovely lady with a massively kind heart.

Kenny suggested Mandina’s for lunch after the service. This is a classic old school Italian seafood place with a Cajun twist, reminding us of Original Joe’s in San Jose (not the Cajun part).

We had a delightful lunch with great food and company. I made the mistake of texting Denny that I had enjoyed my first visit to Mandino’s. “You have been. 1st NOLA boys trip. Followed by a stop down the street for Rebirth at Chickie Wah Wah.” He is so correct – and I had a feeling when I wrote the text that he was going to say that. Mandino’s had a lot of Hurricane Katrina (more on that coming) damage and had just reopened when we visited the first time. And the Rebirth gave us a great show – almost too big for the newly opened Chickie Wah Wah.

Diana had a loaded salad and Kenny and I split the “burger on French” – I still couldn’t finish my half.

Mandino’s reminded me a lot of Tony Moran’s – the very first place I ate in New Orleans. I came in to check up on a team that supported State Farm insurance from New Orleans. They were still recovering from Katrina. I met Denny and Anne downstairs in the bar and we had desert together with the group upstairs. Then they took us to Geno Delafonse at the original Rock ‘N Bowl and the amazing Kermit Ruffins with Henry Butler on keyboards at Vaughans lounge. Why don’t I live in this city? Took me a decade plus to make it happen

Then, it was finally time for my surgery. Took about 10 minutes and was completely successful. The surgeon is very confident that I will not have another cyst in that location.

We had planned on going t see Mia Borders at the Banks Street bar, but I wasn’t really feeling up for it. Sorry Diana – two weeks from now?

Thursday had a very exciting start – checking out the newly opened Trader Joe’s. I’m not sure how to describe this store – here’s what AI has to tell me:

” known for its unique, private-label products, affordable prices, and a welcoming shopping experience. The stores offer a wide range of products, including unique snacks, international foods, dietary options, wine, and beer, with a focus on quality and value rather than traditional branded items. The company has a cult-like following, in part due to its discovery-driven model, friendly staff, and often limited-run products. “

I think that’s a great summary. We got a lot of interesting and varied food at a good price. It seemed like they had listened to all of my complaints about other locations – nowhere near enough parking, such skinny aisles that y0u can’t even pass someone coming at you, crowding by the salad and dip section right by the front door. All resolved at the new Tulane avenue location.

We had our first quarterly financial review on Thursday afternoon. Doing well so far. Thanks Uncle Pauline.

The paper had some “Then and Now” pictures today -part of the many 20 year anniversary of Katrina reporting.. The same location then and now. I’ll share a couple of examples:

Then:

Now:

Continuing on the Katrina theme, Chris Rose wrote this. Very well written (as always) and my friends will be upset with me for giving this ******* airtime:

“Dear New Orleans: Have you heard? The exhibitions, exclamations, exhortations and excoriations — in memorium, et ceterum, ad nauseam? Triggered yet? All these sad songs they keep playing, they’re so damn … sad. As Dr. John might put it, New Orleans is being traumaticalized, all over again. Deja Vieux Carre.

It’s been 20 years since I wrote a letter like this. That one was addressed to America, introducing our beleaguered friends and neighbors who were fleeing the floodwaters — unknowns bound for elsewhere. Our Exodus. So what is this thing that is happening right now, this … reckoning? An anniversary? Accurate, but that term always seems to fail this auspicious occasion. A commemoration? A remembrance? That one’s got a touch of proper gravitas.

An apotheosis, perhaps — a collective acknowledgment that Katrina still lords over our lives two decades later? The head spins. Who can even think straight with all this 8/29/05, 24/7, somebody please pass the 4/20.

Dear New Orleans. Here’s what it looks like from a distance — of time and geography, of memory and progress, of laughter and forgetting. I have come from the mountaintops, literally — and I’ve got Katrina cred with me. I was “the voice of the tortured city,” said The Washington Post. A truth teller, Oprah called me. (Or her people, anyway.) The McClatchy News Service crowned me “the literary avenging angel of the 504.” That was my favorite.

Folks even said I saved lives, that the stories I wrote in the aftermath were righteous balm for Katrina fatigue. Just last week, an old New Orleans acquaintance of mine showed up at the state park where I am living in the mountains of western Maryland just to cry on me. That’s happened a lot over the past 20 years. People see me, they cry. That’s some heavy right there.

What did I do to deserve all this? A city lay in ruin, 1,600 dead, homes and businesses destroyed, a vital culture drowning in its own filthy water. Somebody had to tell the jokes. Me and the refrigerators.

But I’m no hero, that’s understood. What became of me was, I drank myself to death just like everybody said I would. Caused a lot of pain to family and friends. In the fall of 2021, I was diagnosed with end-stage cirrhosis. These past 20 years of active, sometimes relentless drinking have turned my liver to stone. There is no treatment and there is no cure. I’m a dead man walking.

A recent article in this newspaper told my story in grim, vivid detail — a story of my death foretold — a story so convincing that my brother in Florida received several texts from friends expressing condolences at the news of my passing. But, like my dear City of New Orleans 20 years ago — reports of our death were greatly exaggerated. The writing may be on the wall, but I’ve still got some ink left in my pen.

It is said: The longer you live in New Orleans, the more unfit you become to live anywhere else. OK, I said that — 20 years ago. And I am proof. After my diagnosis, my vicissitudes of fortune rendered me unwilling, unable — yes, unfit — to live in New Orleans anymore. After 35 years of residence, if there’s anything left in this city that I’ve never done before — I probably shouldn’t do it. So I retreated to the woods, off the grid, into the solitude of the outdoors where the nightmares of my own past dissolve in each day’s new dawn; I fall asleep to the sound of waterfalls, wake each morning to campsmoke and songbirds. I have found my own peace.

But I raise a (nonalcoholic) toast to you who remain on this occasion, my dear New Orleans, for having stayed put longer than me, kept it together, stayed strong, stayed true. For having survived. Perhaps you’re tired of hearing about your resilience, equanimity, determination, fortitude and triumph of the human spirit — clichés all — but they’re still damn true.

Another cliché goes that living in New Orleans after the flood was like staying in an abusive relationship. For all her glaring faults, her vulgarity, her violence, she loves back like no other. Nobody puts the funk in dysfunction like the Maid of Orleans. A taste of her wicked, jasmine lips changes you forever. That’s why I still come back. I’m still smitten. New Orleans and I may be divorced now, but I guess you could say we’re still friends with benefits.

The last time I was in New Orleans was Jan. 21, 2025. If you’re looking for a balm for Katrina fatigue now, mark that date on your calendar. That was the day the people of New Orleans came out together like the folks in Whoville on Christmas morning when the Grinch brought all the presents back to the children. The day it snowed in New Orleans. Another weather event that crippled the city, blanketed streets and rooftops, canceled events and services, shut down roads and bridges. Only this time, when the snow melted and all that water soaked back into the ground, there was no bathtub ring left behind to remind us. Just some frozen toes and fantastic photographs.

But there won’t likely be any streaming documentaries about that day. Hell, it doesn’t even have a name. No books written about it, unless maybe a children’s book. No church services, obituaries, memorials, nor weeks and weeks of insufferable media coverage to keep reminding us over and over about how terrible was that Whole. Damn. Thing.

Funny though — there is a song that comes to mind. It’s called “Crescent City Sneaux.” Here’s a snippet:

Hold all our memories in one hand

So tight that you won’t let ‘em go

And in the other hand we pray

That the wind and the panic and the rain

Would all turn to a soft and quiet snow

New Orleans singer-songwriter Susan Cowsill wrote that song — 20 years ago — not about Jan. 21, but about Aug. 29. And yes, it’s so damn sad. At first.

Then it does this weird New Orleans thing. The song starts as a melancholy lament, an elegy for the landscape, “just paper and sticks and tattered sheets.” But then something happens, a slow parade snare creeps out of the dirge, Cowsill’s voice rises then soars, the coda drops a Cajun beat, then a second-line rhumba, and then inexorably, inexplicably, inimitably — and of course — a Who Dat cheer and the Saints go marching in.

It’s mournful, beautiful, inspiring, puzzling, convincing. It makes me cry, it makes no sense, just like my city — that mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma — still here, still strong, still heart-breaking, love-making, wash away my sins and tears, my dear, dear New Orleans.”

Another article about Sean Payton (Superbowl winning coach of the New Orleans Saints) after the recent pre-season match between the Saints and Denver Broncos:

The floral arrangement from the Denver Broncos at Fats Domino’s gravesite at Mount Olivet Cemetery in New Orleans.

See how Sean Payton honored a New Orleans ‘icon’ after the Broncos win against the Saints

- BY JEFF DUNCAN | Sports columnist
- Aug 25, 2025

Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton didn’t celebrate his team’s preseason win against the New Orleans Saints on Saturday.

Instead, he took the time after the 28-19 victory against his former team to celebrate one of New Orleans’ favorite sons.

On the way to the airport after leaving the Superdome, Payton took the Broncos’ entire six-bus, 180-person travel party to Mount Olivet Cemetery in Gentilly to recognize Fats Domino and pay respects to the musical legend, who died in 2017 at age 89.

Broncos players and coaches visited Domino’s tomb on the first floor of the historic mausoleum and displayed a floral arrangement, highlighted with flowers in the team’s orange and navy-blue colors.

The visit was the offshoot of a Broncos’ game-week tradition. To set the tone for the week ahead, the Broncos play music representative of the city of the Broncos’ upcoming opponent. At the meeting, Payton played two of Domino’s biggest hits, “Ain’t That a Shame” and “Blueberry Hill,” and asked his players and coaches how many of them had heard of the legendary pianist, who was born and raised in the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood of New Orleans. Only a handful of people in the room raised their hand, spurring Payton to schedule the visit for the Broncos’ trip to New Orleans.

“It hit me, but it also upset me, relative to this icon, who was born in this city,” Payton said to the players and coaches at the cemetery in a video of the visit posted on his social media account. “We should know who Fats Domino is.”

The visit was originally scheduled to occur on the day before the game, but it was delayed until Saturday afternoon after the team’s charter flight to New Orleans on Friday afternoon arrived later than expected.

Domino is one of several notable New Orleanians buried at Mount Olivet, among them: pianist Henry Roeland “Professor Longhair” Byrd; saxophonist Herbert Hardesty; hip-hop artist Soulja Slim; and baseball player Walter Wright.

Payton is in his third year as the head coach of the Broncos. He coached the Saints from 2006 to 2020, leading the club to its only Super Bowl championship in 2009.

Friday began with a walk in the park. Then we met most of the krewe for Happy Hour at the new Milan lounge (underneath the Library bar) on Prytania. Diana is a big fan of the food that Andrew and team create to serve both locations. She was clearly hungry, ordering the whole fish tacos.

We met the same krewe for the kickoff of the college football season on Saturday afternoon.

Texas vs Ohio State was first, with local interest in the Texas quarterback, Arch Manning (3rd generation in the dynasty.) Texas lost – not the result that I was looking for. Next up Alabama vs Florida State. We didn’t stay for the end, but Alabama disappointed all those folks with red hats and shirts on. Not disappointed – the champagne girl:

She didn’t actually drink any of those, but they call Miller High Life “the champagne of beers” and so we thought this picture worked.

Where is that fun looking patio. That’s the Rusty Nail – a great place to watch football. I hadn’t been in many years and enjoyed the return visit.

I had started watching the new “Thursday Murder Club” on Netflix earlier in the week and just couldn’t get into it. I must have been in a more open mood on Saturday evening and enjoyed finishing this movie with such an excellent cast.

Kenny invited us to join them at the Southern Decadence parade in the Quarter on Sunday afternoon. I just wanted to chill at home, but Diana jumped on the offer and had a very good time watching all the crazy walking groups.

Meanwhile, I put together a white bean salad with feta and lemon-garlic vinaigrette. Tasted very healthy and filling.

My first book this week was “A Family Matter” by Claire Lynch. I’m not sure what possessed me to add this to the reading list – certainly not typical of my selections. Nonetheless, having rejected my prior read, I felt compelled to persevere with this one. While the subject matter didn’t appeal a lot, the humour and style certainly did.

An online summary:

“A young wife following her heart. A husband with the law on his side. Their daughter, caught in the middle. Forty years later, a family secret changes everything in this “quietly heart-scorching” (Barbara Kingsolver) debut novel.

1982. Dawn is a young mother, still adjusting to life with her husband, when Hazel lights up her world like a torch in the dark. Theirs is the kind of connection that’s impossible to resist, and suddenly life is more complicated, and more joyful, than Dawn ever expected. But she has responsibilities and commitments. She has a daughter.

2022. Heron has just received news from his doctor that turns everything upside down. He’s an older man, stuck in the habits of a quiet existence. Telling Maggie, his only child—the person around whom his life has revolved—seems impossible. Heron can’t tell her about his diagnosis, just as he can’t reveal all the other secrets he’s been keeping from her for so many years.

A Family Matter is an “intricately layered and infinitely nuanced” (Oprah Daily) exploration of love and loss, intimacy and injustice, custody and care, and whether it is possible to heal from the wounds of the past in the changed world of today.”

This is a quick and easy read. I think I particularly enjoyed the references to UK based things that I hadn’t thought of in decades.

From a section about a jumble sale:

“Everybody knew that the best clothes would go first. Older women pulling tartan trolleys outmaneuvered young women leaning on prams.”

The old biddies with the tartan trolleys are not something you see in the US – maybe because few people walk to the stores.

Here’s one of those references from decades ago – “Rupert the Bear:”

“She runs her hand over some children’s clothes, a pair of worn-in jeans, a mustard-yellow jacket with Rupert the Bear embroidered on the chest pocket.”

“Butterfly cake” – another one from many years ago – I can picture it so well:

“Nobody is expecting her home for at least an hour, so Dawn finds the refreshments table and splurges on a cup of tea and a butterfly cake.”

“Flailing arm” – I’ve been accused of that a few times:

“Maggie sleeps with her arms thrown above her head like the laziest of ballerinas. She knows this because she wakes in this pose most mornings, with pins and needles in her hands and a pain between her shoulders. She knows it because Conor frequently complains about being hit in the face by a flailing arm in the middle of the night. When the alarm on her phone goes off, she reaches a hand down.”

“Wallpaper covers” made me smile. I think mine were more typically brown wrapping paper:

“There is work to finish before she can leave the school. Spelling tests waiting for her red ticks, the stack of project books with their wide lines and wallpaper covers.”

I love “like some metal creature settling down to sleep”:

“Perfect timing,” he says, as Maggie locks her car with a click of the key fob, the wing mirrors folding in like some metal creature settling down to sleep. He will pack away the ladder and she can stick the kettle on.”

Another UK reference that I haven’t considered in decades – “Subbuteo players”:

“She unrolls a whole-school photo from 1991. Rows and rows of girls, shrunk to the size of Subbuteo players.”

One final UK reference that made me smile – “laminated in Sellotape”:

“Her gift is so well wrapped it is virtually laminated in Sellotape, but Maggie manages to tear at one corner and open it.”

I lied – one more reference – “Matey bubble bath”:

“Bathtime and her daughter is perfection, the curve of her back, every limb and inch of her. For a treat, they pour in extra bubbles. Dawn makes the Matey bottle tip his hat, then they sing, as they always do”

There’s a new Jon Batiste album out last week, and it’s superb. This gentleman has limitless talent:

Open in Spotify

From the “Beethoven Blues” album from last year:

Open in Spotify

And his collaboration with the wonderful Randy Newman from the new album:

Open in Spotify

Here’s one other excellent song I heard this week. A cover of “Little Wing” by Devon Allman. Hoping he plays this at their Blues and BBQ appearance in early October:

Open in Spotify

Coexist peacefully, with kindness and compassion for all.

Week in Review – August 24th, 2025

“Pickleball, Trivia, Music”

Our pickleball set arrived on Monday and Diana organized a court for us at The Exchange (indoor with air conditioning) for Tuesday. I chuckled at a sheet of stickers in the package – stick on the bottom of the paddle handle and then you can use it to pick up the whiffle ball without bending all the way over – they know the target demographic for the game.

Kenny was kind enough to come along and give us some pointers. It’s the common sense things – “Angle your paddle up unless you’re hitting it really hard”, “get down lower before you swing at ground balls” – that really help. I had a good time and think Diana and I might make this a regular part of our week.

I might be most comfortable with the backhand – that was the same at table tennis.

On Tuesday afternoon I had scheduled an appointment to have the sebaceous cyst on my back looked at. I had this several (3 or more) years ago and ultimately had to have it cut out as it got large and painful. They warned me that it may come back. Well, now it’s back and still very small. After consultation with McD, I decided it was a good idea to get it cut out before we switch to a new benefits year (October 1st) and a new deductible kicks in.

Diana dropped me at Baptist on Napoleon and went on to drop some shoe returns off at the UPS store. I made my way up to the 6th floor and was confused when the room it told me to check in at had a “Women’s wellness and menopause center” sign on the door. Oh well, apparently that’s where the general surgery patients check in as well. The lady behind the desk couldn’t find my appointment. “Don’t worry – I’ll look it up n my phone. I’m sorry I got the wrong week. My appointment is next week.” As if that wasn’t enough embarrassment, I’m leaving the menopause office and run into Julia – “What are you doing here?” Ah geez! I explained my situation and gave her a laugh. She’s recovering from shoulder surgery and probably needed the laugh.

Returning home, I watched a new Cowboys Netflix documentary – “America’s Team, the Gambler and his Cowboys.” I thought the episodes that I watched were very well done, and that even non-Cowboys fans might enjoy them. I should have known better than to voice that opinion at trivia with a bunch of diehard Saints fans. Aikman, Irvin, and Emmitt Smith were amazing – surviving the 1-15 season before all the Superbowls.

On to trivia. We had a good session on Tuesday evening. For the first time, I captured some pictures of the questions along the way. We were behind at half time – all these peppy Tulane and Loyola students back in town and ready to play. I’ll take you on a bit of a play by play from there:

The half time question – 3 points for every correct answer, up to 4 guesses:

We maxed out with 12 points – Cowboys (they didn’t want to write it down), 49ers, Steelers, and Patriots. We are often a second half team:

I enjoy the “mashup questions”:

We were looking at the gasses and several of us triggered on “Noble Gasses” – must be “Barnes and Noble Gasses.” Correct!

The group had settled on “Jailhouse Rock” and then I started trying to process on 1956 and a female blues singer – “Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog” popped into my head. That was it.

I don’t know “Don Quixote” well, but had some brain flash on this horse name. Again, we lucked into being correct. We’re now on a big second half roll.

I should be the right guy to answer this. I flashed back to a dinner at Tim’s house. His son, Tegan, was playing “Trouble” with me. I told him it was called “Sorry” in the UK. He was very strongly opposed to that concept. “No, it’s Trouble.” I told the gang that “Sorry” was the correct answer. Tom, quiz master, said the correct answer was “Frustration.” I objected and he came up with an alternative question, that we nailed. I did some Googling and found that “Frustration” is the current name for the game, and apparently they recently changed it from “Sorry.” I don’t feel badly for objecting.

For some weird reason, I knew the answer to this. Not sure how. Maybe because I watched the series on TV about Uber and remembered the years. I don’t know. I’ll take the points. I was positive on 2012 versus 2013 though. Thom was thinking 2013 initially.

We were in first place with 101 points going into the final round. The competitors had 93. For the last question, one can wager up to 20 points. Given our standing, we wagered 13 points. Unfortunately we lost to “Phlat Phil” who got the last question right – we were somewhat close, but no cigar. Second place and $25 of Dat Dog food and drink.

That’s a lot more trivia detail than I plan to share in the future. It’s been a hot and slow week so far here.

On returning home, glowing in the second place aura, I watched a Netflix documentary on the band Devo. Alex mentioned at trivia, and then I learned in the film, that Devo stands for “de-evolution”. The members of the band attended Kent State university during the Vietnam protest incident – “Four dead in Ohio.” They decided that mankind had “de-evolved” – “beginning to regress as demonstrated by the dysfunction and herd mentality of American society.” I think they might have been onto something about the present day.

Open in Spotify

We used our “culture pass” from the library to attend the World War Two (WWII) museum on Wednesday. This is advertised as the “#1 attraction” in New Orleans. I had heard very positive reviews of this museum from everyone who had attended, and am happy to report that my experience was way better than I expected, even after all those reviews. Such beautiful, professional, and carefully created exhibits.

The main entry hall was very impressive, with a huge bomber lurking overhead. I often found that there were massive things overhead that I hadn’t noticed.

Our first exhibit was about the Aleutian islands – fascinating knowledge of these islands that are such a bridge between Alaska and Russia. Did you know that Russia sold the US Alaska in 1865?

We migrated from there to a D-Day exhibit. It’s hard to imagine the scale of this endeavor these days, and the commitment of the individuals involved. This exhibit tried to convey some of the magnitude:

Did you know that a large number of the personnel involved in D-Day were dropped in via gliders? I had never heard that. Apparently towed across the Channel by boats and then released to glide into the zone.

My favourite exhibit on my first pass through this wonderful museum was about the war in the Pacific. We were down in the bowels of a warship and then in a jungle. The settings, videos and artifacts were amazing:

Of course all this ends up with the Enola Gay on August 6th, 1945. Followed up with another atomic bomb on August 9th, 1945. Reading the flight log from the Enola Gay was chilling. “God, what have we done?”

Open in Spotify

Our final stop was at the Boeing airplane exhibit. I’m astounded by how they got all these massive objects inside this exhibit hall – I’d love to see a video about that (haven’t checked YouTube yet). The 3rd floor viewing gallery had me marginally dizzy (thanks Dad!), and so I rejected Diana’s request to check out the 4th floor gallery. Look at all these suspended and amazing planes:

Diana wanted to capture my dizzy self with all the massive planes above me:

On exiting the museum I suggested that we visit Taqueria La Lucha – this is a place owned by Kenny’s friend Ryan. He makes wonderful tacos and an amazing hibiscus margarita. We had a nice visit with him. He started off with how difficult it is to run a restaurant in New Orleans in the height of summer – no doubt, and finished with stories about parade rides that his Dad helped him make. Ryan’s hibiscus margaritas are the best that I have tasted, ever:

Here’s the taco menu that we need to take advantage of soon, when the weather cools off:

We got home just in time to meet Tristan who was going to service our generator. He changed the oil, filter and spark plug so that we’re ready for the remainder of hurricane season.

Some interesting facts about what happened on August 20th:

In 1882, Tchaikovsky debuted his 1812 overture. I can remember playing this at the Interlachen casino in Switzerland – such an amazing tour and very difficult bass part. The casino did not reverberate like the mountain churches we had played in the previous few days. One of the highlights of my brass band career. Second only to my Albert Hall experiences. Walking the stairs that Eric Clapton walked in the start of the Cream reunion .

There’s a lot of excitement in Austin and in New Orleans about Arch Manning starting as quarterback for the University of Texas. Here’s an interesting article in the paper about his bond with his grandfather, Archie:

Arch Manning Time Picayune article

On Thursday morning, I watched the Jennifer Lawrence movie “Causeway.” This is one of my very favourite movies – understated with huge emotional connections and set in New Orleans. Unlike some other movies, this could only be New Orleans – almost every scene.

I visited Aidan Gill and Derek for a haircut later on Thursday morning – always a good blether. Then it was over to Rouse’s to do some shopping for an enchilada casserole that I planned on making. I ultimately got too tired to mess with that and just popped a “Sicilian” pizza in the oven. It seemed to be well received by my half Sicilian friend.

We had an amazing musical experience on Friday night. John Boutte was playing in the indoor pavilion at the Broadside. We’ve seen him before as a guest of Jon Cleary, but not with his own band and show. I was happy when the second song in his set was Louisiana by Randy Newman:

And what an excellent guitar solo:

Who is that genius on the guitar? It took a bit of work, and I identified him as Caleb Tokarska. Here’s an Offbeat article about him:

Caleb Tokarska bio

After a while, Boutte started taking requests. Caleb requested this one, “Blowin’ in the Wind”:

In addition to Caleb on the guitar, Oscar Rossignoli on the piano was a wonderful surprise. As Diana said, “He could play anything.” Indeed he could – a complete virtuoso who played all over the map for 2 hours without any music.

I enjoyed Boutte’s story about meeting Paul Simon and this cover of “American Tune”:

And this Cyndi Lauper cover:

Finishing with the song that made him all that HBO money from Treme:

I read this interesting article about living in and leaving New Orleans:

New Yorker New Orleans article

The Krewe of OAK rolled on Saturday night. This is a walking parade on Oak Street and Carrollton midway between Mardi Gras celebrations. We met Anne and Jack for dinner before the parade. Chais Delachaise was close to the parade route. We found out that Fred, Kelly and Richard had the same idea when we arrived. Here are a couple of the walking groups:

Meanwhile, on the Mississippi coast, the boys were watching the Marshall Tucker Band, or rather, the one surviving member of the original band. Apparently they found him after the show:

Open in Spotify

I read “Hell of a Book” by Jason Mott this week. It wasn’t a long read and one that I should perhaps have abandoned midway through. I found this a strange book, not totally devoid of great writing and promise, and just not cohesive at all – different writing techniques and approaches that don’t come together, if at all, until the last few pages.

Here’s the AI summary of Amazon reader reviews:

“Customers find the book heartbreakingly poignant and eloquently written, with great insight into the complexities of race and humor throughout. The storytelling receives mixed reactions – while some praise its astounding narrative, others find it confusing at times. The authenticity and pacing also get mixed reviews, with some finding it true and timely, while others question its reliability and find it challenging to follow.”

I can get behind that summary. It’s always interesting when I don’t love a book that gets universally hugely positive reviews from so many sources, e.g. from The Sunday Times:

“Brilliant and inventive. What is most surprising, however, is how funny the novel is. Jason Mott, an already successful American novelist, has dared to bring anarchic farce, vertiginous layers of irony, and often riotous hilarity to the Black Lives Matter movement. Striking . . . intelligent . . . ingenious.”

There were certainly some funny passages, but I would not describe the overall novel as “funny” by any stretch of the imagination.

Some passages that I enjoyed:

“The eighth-graders in the back all migrated up to the center of the bus, all of them sitting and leaning in a semicircle around Soot and Tyrone, pulled by the persistent gravity of cruelty.”

“The persistent gravity of cruelty” is a wonderful phrase.

The main character, speaking of his new book:

“It’s in brick & mortar stores. It’s online. It’s been Kindled and Kobo’d, iPadded and Audible’d. It’s been optioned so that it can be movie’d—Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Donald Glover are both said to be interested. We’re even in talks to have it comic book’d. My publisher is happy. My editor is happy. The company I pay my student loans to is happy. My agent and publicist is . . . well . . . she’s involved, and I think that’s as close to happy as publicists get.”

I like the verbing of nouns – “iPadded”

“and the fact that I’ve already nearly cleaned out Renny’s minibar did nothing to help make Daedalus’s maze any more navigable.”

I saved this so that I could learn more about Daedalus’s maze, guessing that could be a future trivia question:

“In Greek mythology, the Daedalus maze, also known as the Labyrinth, is a complex structure designed by the legendary architect Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. It was built to house the Minotaur, a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man, who was eventually killed by the hero Theseus. The Labyrinth was so intricate that Daedalus himself struggled to escape it after its completion. “

“Thanks,” I say, trembling as the handshake persists. He squeezes tight enough that I think that, when this greeting finally ends, I might find a raw diamond where my hand once was.”

Tight enough to create a raw diamond – clever.

“So I pull over and let her out in the middle of the block. The cars behind me in traffic don’t honk their horns because this isn’t the type of town where people do that type of thing. This is a good place filled with good people who know that they’ll get wherever they’re going when the time is right. It’s a philosophical city. She steps out and shuts the door.”

Oh to live in a city with these driving habits, as contrasted with universal red light running, shooting out of side streets, and the like.

““The next what?” “You think this is over?” he asked, opening his eyes again. He looked around his seat as he spoke, searching for something. “This is just book one. Just an introduction.” “An introduction to who?” “To whom,” he corrected, finally finding what he was looking for: a blanket. Then he leaned back in his chair again and shut his eyes and before I could even ask another question, he was already asleep. Deep and instant slumber, like somebody had just closed the lid on the universe’s laptop.”

Closing the lid on the universe’s laptop – very clever imagery.

“Laugh all you want, but I think learning to love yourself in a country where you’re told that you’re a plague on the economy, that you’re nothing but a prisoner in the making, that your life can be taken away from you at any moment and there’s nothing you can do about it—learning to love yourself in the middle of all that? Hell, that’s a goddamn miracle.”

This was almost a closing, summary paragraph.

Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols on “5 Albums I Can’t Live Without”, discussing Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” album. His list also included Rod Stewart, Roxy Music and Steely Dan. That last one just makes me smile. Steve Jones loves the precision and musicianship of Steely Dan.

“I know he had a few albums before that when he had curly hair and wearing dresses. I knew a couple of the songs, but that whole look, the glam look, I was sold hook, line, and sinker when that came out. I saw him a few times. I love Mick Ronson, Woody Woodmansey is a fantastic drummer, and Trevor Bolder. They were just a great band. I know it was basically David Bowie’s thing, and then he left them after two albums. Pretty much all of them anyway. Mick Ronson went on a bit longer to play with him on Pin Ups. That album was definitely one of my favorite albums. Very inspirational to me. Steered me in the direction. I loved all that glam, to be honest with you. T. Rex, Mott the Hoople. Good glam. There was a lot of cheesy glam, which I don’t mind now, but at the time, I was a bit particular. They had to look a certain way. Slade and The Sweet and bands like that, they seemed a bit more just manufactured and Top of the Pops friendly. I liked a bit more avant-garde with Bowie, and the next album, I’m going to say, as well. If you want me to still talk about the rise and fall, I will, or are we done now?”

Coexist peacefully, with kindness and patience for all.

Week in Review – August 18th, 2025

“Pickleball?”

I finally had enough of putting air in a tire with a slow leak, and I know Diana certainly was tired of it as well. Time to get it fixed. Paul had recommended Al and Al’s shop and what a wonderful experience that was. Not a place I would ever have considered using from a curb appeal perspective, but I was in and out in 15 minutes with two patches in place. I would recommend Al senior and junior to anyone with tire woes.

The rest of Monday was boring administrative work – bills and other paperwork.

A hearing aid check up on Tuesday took me over to Metarie. I typically swing by Taco Bell for a snack while over there. My drink cup usually gets my secret visit busted by McD. I’m going to have to be stealthier.

Kelly organized a girls Happy Hour for Anne’s birthday at the Columns in the evening. Seems like they had a good time for three or more hours…

Diana had a busy girls day on Wednesday. Running with Lori in the morning, followed by yoga. I found out that Lori refers to her as “Coach D” while she’s pushing her to run further. In the afternoon, Anne and Kara joined Diana at Merry Lee’s pool for the afternoon. The brightly coloured bracelets that Diana had manufactured for Anne’s gift were well received.

Of course, the big fish were landed after Kenny and I left Grand Isle. Thom looks quite pleased with himself and apparently that’s a cobia that Jack has:

Jack was kind enough to drop off some trout fillets for us when he got home.

A text from Diana at the pool asked me if I had interest in seeing the new Jeff Buckley documentary at the Broad theater on Thursday. I had noticed this on their email an hour earlier and was waiting to ask if Diana would like to go when she got home. Nice when things work out like that. We both enjoyed the movie a lot. Here’s an interview with the director, Amy Berg:

Spin interview with Jeff Buckley documentary director

After the movie we stopped into the Whole Foods on Broad (not one we’d ever been in before) to get ingredients for making a lemon butter sauce for the trout. The store was small but very pleasant, and the sauce turned out well.

The roasted carrots were also yummy.

Diana and Lori had another run on Friday morning. I walked over to French Truck for a coffee while they were running. The sidewalks and walls of the cemetery are always “interesting.”

Then I made a trip over to the bank to renew our safety deposit box. Diana correctly pointed out that it should be overdue – apparently the notice was still going to McKinney and the mail forwarding stopped a year ago. Oopsy.

We had read that the Milan lounge had reopened in the bottom floor of the Library bar on Prytania and decided to give it a try for Friday Happy Hour. The door was open but the bar was deserted. I saw some guys in the kitchen at the back and went to check with them. Apparently the bar tender had an issue with their roof at home, so no go on the Milan and Jeopardy. No worries – let’s try the Library upstairs. This was a very pleasant experience with good drinks at a good price and delicious dim sum treats from those guys in the kitchen downstairs. Connor the bar tender and Andrew in the kitchen were both very pleasant.

Some interesting things from August 15th in history:

1057 – Macbeth, King of the Scots, was killed in battle by Malcolm, eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had slain

1969 – first day of the Woodstock music festival

1939 -The Wizard of Oz was first released

1914 – The Panama Canal opened

Kenny invited us to join the krewe at Pickleball in City Park on Saturday afternoon. Diana was talked into joining several doubles games, and I think I would have tried as well had I not decided to wear my usual flip flops. I enjoyed chatting with the guys in the shade.

We had a group dinner at Taqueria Guerrero on the way home. This was a casual and delicious spot near City Park and next door to Angelo Brocato’s (home of the famous gelato and cannoli’s.) Another good Denny recommendation.

We made a trip over the Mississippi to Algiers on Sunday for brunch at the new Saint Claire restaurant. This is a large house on some beautiful grounds that once were part of some kind of Naval base. Chef Melissa Martin of the Mosquito Supper Club (close to our home) is in charge of the menu at Saint Claire.

Brunch was very good. Delicious biscuits, niçoise salad for Diana and lamb meatballs and grits for me.

After brunch we made a visit to the nearby Crown and Anchor “English Pub.” The entry is through an old Tardis like police box as seen in Doctor Who.

When we entered the bar tender was leading a debate on which musicians were better – “Joan Jett or Pat Benatar?” – obviously Joan Jett. “Elton John or Billy Joel?” – that’s a more complicated choice. This was a very pleasant stop on the way home.

From the only in New Orleans files, this was the headline this week – our Mayor indicted on 18 counts. Thankfully she only has a few months left in office.

My book this week was “Culpability” by Bruce Hoslinger. Here’s an online summary:

“When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them all in the tragic accident.

During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.

Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.”

This was a thought provoking, entertaining and relatively quick read. I give it a strong recommendation.

An interesting paragraph that defines “anthropomorphic projection”:

“These systems are designed to respond in recognizably human ways. We give them names like Siri and Alexa. We speak to them as if they share our worldview, or care about our feelings and futures. This behavior is known as anthropomorphic projection. We want our helpful machines to be like us, and so we tend to project onto them our ways of understanding the world.”

A section that gets to the heart of the book – culpability of AI systems:

“Artificial Intelligence confronts us with the problem of distributed culpability. Human morality, historically, centers around agency and intentionality. We blame the drunk driver, not the car; we credit the artist, not the brush. AI systems muddy these waters. AIs are not mere tools; their learning algorithms endow them with agency. They make “decisions” based on data, albeit without consciousness or intent. A strict division between human and machine culpability is quickly becoming untenable, creating a landscape where ethical norms strain under unfamiliar weights. In this context, both legal and ethical frameworks must evolve to address this novel, intricate web of agency and accountability. Failure to adapt our frameworks risks ethical disarray, misassigned blame, and ultimately a kind of moral haziness that is already having a corrosive effect on our society. We must always take responsibility for our own mistakes. Yet in this new age of intelligent machines, we must also take responsibility for theirs.”

One of the scarier elements of AI, in my opinion, the “black box” decision making:

“The phrase “black box” refers to AI systems whose internal workings and computational processes are neither transparent to nor easily comprehended by humans. While deep learning and other AI models may produce accurate results and generate correct predictions, the means through which they arrive at these outputs is a mystery even to their most knowledgeable programmers. Nearly all of these systems’ decision-making processes, including how exactly they process ethical constraints, remain opaque. The black box thus embodies the inscrutability of AI in many of its current incarnations. In this sense, the black box is a harbinger of a potentially terrifying future of unknowability. In a black box, we are all flying blind.”

The ethical and moral issue at the core of the discussion of AI in the book:

“When humans do something wrong, they generally face consequences. Even when our wrongdoing goes undetected by another—a parent, a spouse, an institution, law enforcement—we tend to experience guilt, shame, or regret. Only a psychopath lives life free of remorse. Algorithms face no such consequences for their misbehavior, either societal or emotional. Punishment, guilt, culpability are alien to them. There are no moral qualms in an algorithm. Yet without acknowledgment of wrongdoing, how can there be regret? Without self-consciousness of guilt, how can there be remorse? And without regret and remorse, how can there be moral growth?”