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


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Green Parrots of Uptown New Orleans Are Back!

Image
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
Read more

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
Read more

The Fifteen Years Later Affair

Image
  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
Read more