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The Fifteen Years Later Affair

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  For my Man from U.N.C.L.E. fandom friends who get the reference in the title of this blog post, I salute you! But alas, I am referring to another fifteen years later affair: the fifteenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, August 29, 2005. Days after Laura, an even more powerful storm, slammed into western Louisiana with 150 mph winds and flooding storm surge, it feels a little bit awkward to be remembering Katrina. But we will always remember Katrina.  The year after the storm, when I was between church assignments, I worked at the Metairie Barnes & Noble. It had sustained damage when the air conditioning units on top of the building collapsed into the building, and the store had to be completely renovated. They hired a lot of employees to reopen the store, and I was one of them. It was, quite simply, one of the best jobs I have ever had. We reopened in mid-March of 2006, and for the grand reopening party, we all wore T-shirts with this artwork on the back, which as I recall was
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The Green Parrots of Uptown New Orleans Are Back!

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Look who's back! The green parrots of Uptown New Orleans (technically monk parakeets), after an absence of many years, graced our telephone wires with a visit this morning. Nine of them. Squawking and flying into the thick leaves of the Japanese magnolia where the sparrows and cardinals like to hang out. I thought they used to hang out in the date palm trees on Jefferson Avenue, a block away. Some years back the city cut the palm trees down at the start of a five-year drainage project. Those palm trees were older than I am, older than any of the workers who cut them down. Nobody asked my permission to cut them down. Certainly they didn't ask the monk parakeets' permission. But there you go. So I figured the parakeets had left the area. I've never seen one on the ground; they seem to like to stay up somewhere. And they like good things to eat. They used to feast on fermented Japanese plums in the tree in my front yard. Unfortunately, what Dan Gill called fire blight kill
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A Metaphor from My Garden

For quite a few years now, I've been battling an invasive vine in my yard. Its Latin name is Cayratia japonica, and it's commonly known as bush killer vine. Those who live a little farther north than me (but still in the South) speak with awe of another invasive vine called kudzu, that legend has it will grow feet in a day. Cayratia is a completely different vine from kudzu, but in far southern areas of Texas and Louisiana, this vine grows just as fast as kudzu and will choke out desirable shrubs and trees.  Cayratia japonica seems to be related to poison oak (maybe). If you pull too many of them with your bare hands, your hands will begin to sting like fire, and washing off the sap from the vine won't make it stop. So, always wear gloves when you pull this stuff. It also has clusters of little white flowers that look a bit like Queen Anne's Lace. They're kind of pretty, actually, and you might like them if the plant weren't choking out something you want to l
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Then and now

Fifteen years ago, there was this hurricane. Yes, I wrote a novel about that time in the life of some New Orleanians. I titled it The New Normal. In 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, that phrase seems to be on everyone's lips. Even selling a few copies of the book on Amazon, presumably from people searching on the phrase and finding it.  Back then, an entire city emptied out as people fled to other places. Eighty percent of New Orleans was under water and uninhabitable. The parts that didn't flood were mostly in higher areas closer to the Mississippi River -- hence the phrase "the sliver on the river." I live in that sliver, and my house missed the flood waters by four blocks.  I wasn't pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at that time -- Cliff Nunn was -- but I had a close relationship with the church. The buildings flooded. Close to three feet of water in the sanctuary, the offices, and the preschool. The nasty dirty water stood in the heat in those buildings
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Where's the reverse gear on this thing?

I love a good time travel yarn as much as the next fantasy/science fiction fan. Back in the nineties, there was a tv show called Quantum Leap. Scott Bakula starred as Sam Beckett (wink, wink, for you English and theater majors out there), a scientist who was being hurled back and forth in time in a period that covered the years of his own life. His mission was to try to change events in the past so that bad things going on in the present could be fixed. More or less. The show was popular because, well, many of us have a deep longing to be able to fix mistakes that were made way back when. (For the record, Sam's attempt to stop the Kennedy assassination failed. As you may have noticed.)  And in our own lives, many of us have tried to go back and make right what once went wrong, as the introduction to Quantum Leap would tell us each week. But here's the rub: while it may be possible sometimes to make amends, or to do that thing we once wanted to do but never did, it's never t
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God's got this!

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When you don't have a professional film crew and a permit from the city to shut everything down around you, filming a video outdoors in your neighborhood can get a little tricky. Today's video is short. Filming had to be halted and restarted several times because of a barking dog, a rattle-y truck going by, and a repair crew welding an iron fence next door, using a generator. As we were filming this take that you'll see below, I saw the repair truck for the welding company slowly backing up the street toward me, and I figured I'd better wrap this thing up quickly. So, the point I intended to make not quite so briefly, is that in a time when everything seems out of our control -- like in the middle of a pandemic, when just about everything is shut down (except for people who repair iron fences, apparently) -- we may be surprised to discover that we don't HAVE to be in control. God's got this! It's going to be okay! Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Let i
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Can't keep a good city down!

Monday, April 27, 2020 It's JazzFest season in a time of social isolation. No JazzFest? No way! Welcome to the year of FauxFest, when WWOZ Radio and takeout from favorite restaurants keep the spirit alive! In the church, we're trying to figure out a way around this social isolation thing so we can be together again. It's going to be awhile, but we're working on it. Today's video link: https://youtu.be/8I1sxG3xgNI
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