New Orleans is for Lovers

Living in New Orleans is like winning a round trip ticket to Heaven.  Love, not hunger, makes the best sauce.  New Orleans is a harbor for ships of any flag.  New Orleans is a melting pot, a catholic city, where dignity is tradition, and joy is the rhythm of life.  The lucky are thankful for what they receive.  New Orleans is for lovers.

Be both a borrower and a lender.  Borrow the well worn quilt of New Orleans hospitality, and pass it on to the next person once you are hot.  Lend your talents to New Orleans as long as you are here.  Be yourself when you are here.  When you are somewhere else, be New Orleans.  Home is where the heart is.  You have a friend in New Orleans, Louisiana.  New Orleans is for lovers.

Louisiana is a sportsmen’s paradise, but New Orleans is a world apart.  No one shoots guns at animals in New Orleans.  The people who fish Bayou St John, the lagoons of City Park, the shallow waters of Bayou Lafitte, and the people who drag lines on the Algiers Ferry, catch and release.   You can get more than you bargain for in New Orleans, just don’t read the newspaper.  Listen to the song of the street.  Dance.  New Orleans is for lovers.

A pelican in its piety

There is tit for y’at in New Orleans, America, a city that dances like no one is watching.  Good things happen from Bywater to River Bend, from Hollygrove to Holy Cross, from Venetian Isles to Jackson Barracks.  From the West End to New Orleans East, every day is filled with lagniappe.  There is no such thing as a bad day in New Orleans, because every day is just an introduction to tomorrow.  New Orleans is for lovers.

The swans in City Park mate for life.  The whistling ducks in Audubon Park carry the city’s tune.  Every week is a parade route.  Sweet dreams are woven through New Orleans nights.  This a city as full of brass and polish, as it is a city in which every neighborhood is rich.  New Orleans is for lovers.

Every person is an artist.   New Orleans is a city in which art is intimate with life.  There are more than nine muses.  There are more than nine streets.  Pelicans soar in their piety over the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, over Bayou Saint John, and over the Big Muddy, itself.  It is easy to get lost in New Orleans.  It is also easy to find a friend.  You have a friend in New Orleans.

There is always room at the bar in New Orleans.  There is always room to bend an elbow.  There is always an ear willing to be bent.  New Orleans is affectionate to those who love her.  New Orleans is full of kisses.  It is a moist caress.  There is no place on earth more open to celebrating itself, and being itself.  New Orleans is an oasis pierced by a river.  Liquid defines New Orleans.  Where life is fluid, it rains pennies from heaven.  New Orleans is for lovers.      

You have a friend in New London, Conn.

It's New London, baby.  Mare liberum!!

New London, Connecticut is a city that knows no rival, It is Connecticut’s Whaling City.  It is a good fishing place off the west bank of Connecticut’s Thames River, where the shad and the alewives run thick with the eels, in season.  It is a city built on a foundation of spermaceti and spunk.  Like a plate of spaghetti, there is no way to separate all the tangled, slippery propositions in New London’s try pot.  

New London, Connecticut is hygienic.  New London, Connecticut is pure and clean.  East New London is to the north of the city’s center.  Powder Island is made of granite and generations of guano sedimented into tall tales close to the waterline.  There are a few ledges in New London, Connecticut, and there are plenty of lights.

Just Under The Goldstar Bridge Overpass (JUGBO), on Central Avenue, in New London, Connecticut, life unfolds with the same graceful splash that reigns over the whole city.  Husbands love their wives on Adelaide Street.  Husbands love their husbands on West Street.  Wives love their wives on Hempstead Street.  Parents love their children on Jefferson Avenue, and children love their parents on Ocean Avenue.  People who live alone find solace and comfort in Bates Woods, or in Cedar Grove.  

New London, Connecticut is a small city, and it is a very hip city.  It has chosen to stay true to its flukes.  New London, Connecticut is for lovers. 

If anything is true in New London, Connecticut, it is that you never know what tomorrow will bring.  If you get turned around in New London, Connecticut, you will always find your way.  Head toward the ebb and flow of Connecticut’s Thames River.  Breath the New London air.  The sun is always shining on New London, even when the clouds are raining.

They should be riding motor scootes.

Life in New London, Connecticut is opera without soft soap.  Life in New London is good.  Life in New London is better.  Life in New London, Connecticut is a healthy salt bath in sack cloth and garters.  A day in New London, Connecticut is like a day at a health spa.  Nothing relaxes like an hour walking Bank Street on a New London day.  In New London, Connecticut, The Parade is the goal of a pleasant stroll.  There are public restrooms located in the train station.

New London is elegant.  New London is beautiful.  New London is for lovers.  New London soars as high as the halo over the Mohican Hotel after midnight.  New London is an open clam shell slick with whale oil.  New London wears a pearl necklace and a corset strung with baleen.  New London has a long tail.  When you expect the worst...POP!...everything is better than before.  That is the way things work in New London, Connecticut.

California Fruit?

There is an old song that was popular in the Gay Nineties.  It was called, “I’ll Never Forget My First Old New London Gal.”  It was popular on the vaudeville circuit, and sailors sang it while they were climbing the mizzen heads on the lookout for Ledge Light.  Some nights, at 2:00 AM, after the Dutch Tavern is locked up for the night, the bartender will sing “I’ll Never Forget My First Old New London Gal,” while he mops under the card tables.

Nobody ever forgets their first day in New London, Connecticut, and no one forgets their last day...unless they die in New London, Connecticut.  In that case, they are in heaven.  


Nobody forgets New London, Connecticut for long.  Every poison has its antidote.  If a spermatozoa were as large as a whale, it would be as large as New London’s heart.  That measures out to be a filament more than five square miles and miles and miles of heart.  

Lamplighter Of The World, New London, Connecticut is a place better lived than learned.  Whatever you read between these lines is but a rainbow on a puddle compared to the slippery slope up Town Hill past the courthouse on a December night when the sleet is blowing fast off Long Island Sound.  The spirit of Nathan Hale inspires the good folk who live on Granite Street.   

Kanesha Murphy kisses her daughter goodnight on Vauxhall Street.  Otis Shear says his prayers with his son on Ashcraft Road.  Mickey Finn is nursing a pint at the Polish American Veterans Club on Central Avenue.  Joan Morrow is heading home after a late shift at Shallett's Laundry.  A party of eight is enjoying pizza pie at Illiano's.  Everyone is healthy at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital.


A third-class pharmacist's mate from 1906 could get off the train at the foot of State Street today and know exactly where he is.  New London, Connecticut is eternal.  New London, Connecticut is for lovers. 

A Five-Star Whale Production.!

Lamplighter of the World, New London is for lovers.  There are no rivals when all is fair in love and peace.  There are no enemies when everyone is a neighbor.  Fellow-citizens work together.  Fellow-citizens make good neighbors.  New London is for lovers.  New London is where it is at.  Home is where the heart is.  New London, Connecticut is a fertile garden where flowers bloom like spume year round.

A Salute to Dave Spinelli

Shhhhhhh.....

It doesn’t matter where you put the accent, but it does matter how you tilt your hat.  Everyone is a Berliner.  Everyone is a pilgrim.  Tying a bow tie is like tying a shoe.

An orca can devour a giant squid.  I saw it in a diorama in a museum.  I saw it in a movie.  I saw it in a dream.

If you are going to walk like a man, come out swinging.  If you are going to talk like a man, make it good.  If you get better than you give, the taste of a split lip is worth it.  War is a kind of poetry, and, needless to say, war is hell.  When a howling commando fights the good fight, he or she earns a medal forged from the alloy of a nation's gratitude.

When you’re bowling candlepins in a private, automated, basement bowling alley on State Street, the champagne factor can go to your head.  When you are rolling the bones on the bar at the veterans' club, the commotion at the shuffleboard table drowns out everything else.  This is what it sounds like when gulls cry.  


You can count bats in the jungle, but you can’t do it after dark.  Sometimes, home ways is best ways, even when the drinks are on the house and you have two on the bar.  Home is where the heart is.

A whale swims deep.  A pilgrim travels far.  Both play for keeps, doubling down on themselves, collecting the winnings, sharing the wealth.  

Fairfield County is one part of Connecticut.  New London County is its opposite.  The geographic center of the Constitution State is in Berlin, Hartford County, Connecticut, USA, the Provision State.  Ever heard of it? 

Whatever swamp or jungle a pilgrim finds himself or herself in, there is a way to go about things.  It is easy.  It isn’t a secret.  It is as easy as tying a shoe.  

Qui Transtulit Sustinet.  Who Transplants Sustains.  Everyone goes where they come from.

A revision under advisement

New London's Poetry War Continues Halfheartedly.

Regular readers may recall that I published a "poem" about New London recently.  A passenger pigeon arrived on my porch with a slip of paper tied around its left leg.  "WK- We have to talk."

I dialed up a certain, reserved frequency on the shortwave, and an interesting tete-a-tete ensued.   Never one to engage in fisticuffs or foul language, and certainly not the kind of gentleman who would do anything untoward to a lady's reputation, I decided to let revision be the better part of valor.  Every hint of incriminating evidence has been removed.

With a tip of the fedora to the stars in New London's firmament.  If there is a spirit to New London, it plays the harpsichord in a Bank Street basement, telegraphing its intent across the cosmos.  A rising tide raises all schooners, no matter which way the flag blows.

Mare Liberum,
WK

Another link to the original post in question.

New London State of Mind.

A Drinking Town.  12 x 24.

[Ed.: What appears below is a revision, made after professional advisement regarding what constitutes the "official" New London State of Mind.  An old orca still has teeth.  WK will continue to abide by the rulings of higher authority until the next succession.]


New London thinks about change the way a cat looks at a guinea pig.

New London starts in a fog, then it ends in the dark.

New London bulges in the middle with a belly full of gas.

When whales show their flukes, they salute the moon, the stars, and the sun.

Entrepreneurs sniff around New London the way tigers lick a carrot.  

Lazy tides push New London out of Ocean Beach.

From Bank St. to State St, to Apple St. to Snake St., New London’s streets are a tangled weave away from Paradise.

A witch with a buggy whip could be hiding in the hedge next to the Pausipeg.

Where is John Winthrop, Jr.?

Food for the worms, and the subject of a statue overlooking urban renewal in perpetual motion.

Where is Samuel Saltonstall?

His family plot and limestone-carved coat-of-arms are the site of Wiccan rituals in Ye Towne’s Antientst Buriall Ground about a hundred yards to John Winthrop, Jr.'s left, and behind his back. 

Where is Nathan Hale?

On a pedestal from which his history sheds one more bronzed letter after another until his reputation finally disappears for lack of support.

Despite his noble bearing, he will stand on his plinth as an anonymous poor sap who was unfortunate enough to have his hands tied behind his back.

A hero.

Is this the New London way?  
To fight with both hands tied behind one’s back?    
New London, small in area, dense in population, is a microcosm of macroeconomics.  
When you get one, you forget the other.

New London is contentious.

It has its share of partisans who love it for different reasons.

It is a seductive, little city.

If wishes were fishes, Connecticut’s Thames River would be awash with whales ripe and plump with sperm.

  

Those who love New London vote with their feet and with their pledge to honor its motto:

Mare Liberum.

God bless New London, Conn.

Why am I posting this picture this morning?  Because I can; because I am.  I am Whalehead King. Yippee the Whale is my totem, my guiding spirit.  While I am not him, I am of him.  We are kindred spirits.  He is New London, Conn.  I carry a kernel of Connecticut's Whaling City in me every day in every way.  It informs my sensibility.  It makes waking up worth doing.

I first painted Yippee's portrait many years ago in a fever dream.  When I was finished, I called an acquaintance and said, "You have to come over to see this.  I've cracked New London's code."  I had.  We both agreed as we gazed at this masterpiece, awestruck at its majesty, of all it said and all that it implied, that I had summed up the New London State of Mind.

The image above is not that original oil painting.  That resides in a safe place.  I see it very infrequently.  When I do, I am struck by how crude it is compared to how streamlined and cheerful depictions of Yippee became.  I can draw him without sketching a single line.  Put a magic marker in my hand and, without thinking, I can give you Yippee's portrait in any pose.  That original is powerful beyond words.  New London: an ample parking city where the sun always shines even when it's raining.

He originally didn't have a name. I just referred to him as "The New London Whale."  During one of the many festivals that take place in Connecticut's Whaling City, someone had a large piece of cardboard and a can of paint.  "You're the guy who paints the Whale?" he asked.  "Can you do one for me?  I want it for the backdrop of play we're putting on.  I always call him Yippee because he seems so happy.  What would a whale jumping out of the water like that say?  He'd say, 'Yippee!'"  I agreed.  I painted the picture on the spot and since then The New London Whale had a name to go along with his face and his spirit.

I am not a cartoonist.  I am an artiste.  It was never my intent to make a joke unless it was a serious joke.  If Yippee is a cartoon, it is because he distills what living in New London is like, stripped of details, full of joy.

What does someone say when he or she moves to New London, Conn. and finds themselves home?  They say, "Yippeeeeee!"  I know I did.  I still say it, no matter where I happen to find myself.  Though I bear a serious demeanor, I am happy to be alive, flashing my flukes in the sun.  New London taught me that.

God has blessed New Londoners, every one.

The Whalehead King method

An old chum is visiting me soon and I mentioned that, while I am still writing daily, I am no longer engaged in the stream of consciousness type of prose that was my stock in trade in the city where I earned my moniker, Whalehead King.  I thought I would see if I still had that old WK magic when it came to writing about Connecticut's Whaling City, a place without peer, where you can raise a family and make a good life.

There is no shame in loving New London, common sense to the contrary.  New London has always been very kind to me from the first day we made our acquaintance.  The city has woven its identity into the matrix of my bones.  It is why I still refer to myself, a few years after I regretfully moved away, as Whalehead King.  New London remains my paramour.

So, off the cuff, without revision, in the way I used to pen my fever dream essays about my former home, I came up with what follows, written with typical, trademarked, WK panache.  I don't think I've lost my touch.  Let me know if you disagree.

Read this like I would, aloud with a serious, sonorous voice in front of an audience.  Every sentence a distinct thought.  Enunciate.  Savor the vowels and let them roll off past your teeth.  It helps if you are little bit tipsy with poetry.  Take your time, pause after periods to let the words hang in the air.  Keep a straight face through it all.   When you are done, go out on patrol, wherever you live, and keep your eyes open and ears bent for the delights that lie in your path...

New London: a nightmare more soothing than a daydream.  New London: placental and nourishing in its abundance, as supportive as an amniotic bath.  A burp, a hiccup, the contented smile of a babe that follows the release of a bit of gas: New London. 

When you cut the cord, there’s no going back, there is nothing to rope you in.  Untethered and grounded at once, what lies past the horizon is the limit on a wild, New London sleigh ride.  Indian corn pops.  Nameaug hops and bops, hip to its own groove, busting its own moves.  History books are written by the victors.  Stumblebums and hoboes make their way along aimless, nameless paved-over cow paths, bumping into bankers.  New London is a place in which a person can be wide awake and never be sure what, exactly, is going on.

There is a nick on Connecticut’s belly.  There is a damp scab that demands to be picked.  There is an itch, an urge, a pang, and a gnawing.  There is a city that sings itself a lullaby.  It is the same city that shoots itself with epinephrine to get a jump on the jive and forgets the sting that made it lurch.  History has an episodic memory.  Loll away your days in New London.  There are worse ways to spend your time.  If time unfolds like flower petals on a spring day, New London blooms like an flaming, sea green orchid unconsciously attracting passing bees tempted by the flavor of its nectar.  There are no dead leaves in New London, only mulch.

Time is not money in New London.  It is gilded with filigreed zinc and asbestos, vinyl clapboard and weathered brick, ornate with the curlicues of Victorian gingerbread from better days past and more better days to come.  History is etched in moss on slate tiles heaped for a landfill.  Ashes to ashes, oil to lamplight.

Hope and manna steam in New London’s porridge bowls.  Lights dot the harbor.  The tide washes in and the tide washes out, anything clean is the stuff of pure spirit.  You can count the new bucks and thin dimes in New London on both hands, and take off your shoes.  A Hindu statue doesn’t have enough hands to grasp the fruits that spill out of New London’s fishy cornucopia.  Slippery as an eel and doubly elusive, New London can be put in a pot, but it cannot be stewed.  Any simmering is under the surface.

A city of sperm and baleen is founded on dreams.  There is bedrock under the banks and states of New London’s streets.  Pick an intersection, walk one way, find yourself where you began.  In a New London state of mind, angels gather in barrooms and discuss the news of The Day.  The best news remains unreported.  There are things in this world that cannot be put into words.  Shylocks wink to each other.  New Londoners shake hands.

If anyone reckons the span of New London’s five square miles of land, remind them the city contains an unrivaled harbor.  Look upward at the stars and say there is no limit to what a thoughtful, sentient soul can aspire toward within New London’s borders.  Scuff your boots at New London’s neck if you wish.  If wishes were fishes, New London’s dreams would be bigger than whales that tack starboard through the depths of uncharted oceans.  If wishes were fishes, the catch in New London would flood the market, lowering the price of aspirations.

To all the girls I loved before... To the city that still haunts my slumber...  To the good citizens of New London, Conn., who continue to fight the good fight, come what may.

Best wishes,

WK

Confabulation

The art of confabulation is a tricky thing.  It is the discipline of inventing memories based on reliable fact.  In New London, Conn. and in New Orleans, Louisiana, it isn't difficult to make more of things than they seem on the surface.  It is often hard to keep everything straight.  Life in both places is like a fever dream.

Life is more than what you make it.  It is what you remember after you live to tell the tale.  It takes independent study, a lot of time in the library, a lot of time on the street, many bleary-eyed sleepless hours meditating while stumbling through a city and taking whatever comes your way to craft flights of fancy informed by hard knocks.

Have I mentioned before that it is good to be Whalehead King?  Have I mentioned before that it is good to live in New Orleans?  I would like to reiterate both facts and hammer them home, like tacks mounting a butterfly.

I don't find I need to fill in too many details or conflate the absurd.  If life is a conundrum to be recollected fresh, it is also a dish best served chilled after introspection and after a point of remove.  I was stumbled into a second line parade under the Claiborne Avenue overpass today.  The Rebirth Brass Band was blowing loud.  Later, in the dead of night while I was snug in my bed, three teenagers marched up my street apropos of nothing blowing a trombone, a trumpet, and the third was shaking a tamborine.  What was the occasion?  We were all in New Orleans on an early February night and the weather was balmy, just like the city.  I heard their approach and sat on my front porch.  As they passed, I blew a kazoo to accompany them though I didn't join the march.

Happy Carnival!
WK

Alice Cooper's Birthday

Alice Cooper turned 63 today.  Good for him.  I don't think he realized he would be peddling the same goods after all this time.  I hazily recall the time that the illustrious Mr. Cooper entered into a yodeling contest with the equally illustrious, if somewhat less internationally-famous, Paul Brockett in New London.  Man, that was a night, even if it is confabulated.

Well, we wish many more happy birthdays to Mr. Cooper who has brought us so much pleasure over the years.  In a past life, I made carpets for a living and knew someone who sold Mr. Cooper the carpet for his Greenwich, CT mansion.  Small world.

Cheers, Alice.
WK

PS: In Italian, the word alice (pronounced "a-LEECH-ay") means sardines.

Banking on the New Year in New Orleans.

It's not where you live that matters, it's what you make of your life.

I found the sign above laying on the side of the road.  I DID NOT BREAK IT OFF ITS POST!  That said, it is one of the few things I have kept since leaving Olde New London.  Naturally, I couldn't leave it there for someone else to pinch.  I carried it home on my motor scooter and it has become one of my prized possessions.  It is now on the mantle in a place of honor next to my pipe rack.

Bank Street is the most interesting and busy of New London, Conn's streets.  State Street (nee Congress) is stately, but all the real action happens on Bank.  I spent many hours over the course of a decade on this cluttered rattlebag of a thoroughfare.  Good times.  Good people.  Little traffic.  A vesperado's paradise.

If you ever find yourself in New London catching a ferry or a train, check out Thames River Wine and Spirits.  Don't stay on the ground floor.  Visit the cellar.  It will take your breath away.

Where am I going with all this?  We'll find out when I'm finished.  At the eve of the New Year, I am reminiscing.  I enjoyed my stay in New London, it made me Whalehead King.  My time spent afterward, in Boston, was less rewarding.  Dorchester, Mass. is a helluva town, but the rest of Bean Town and I didn't mix so much as mingle and the tingle that I felt when I first moved there didn't linger.

New Orleans...well, that's another story.  Like many people, I suppose, I feel home in New Orleans.  I don't understand much of what goes on around me but I'm sure I will in time.  I just spoke with a transplant from Worchester, Mass. (pronounced "wooster") and he said, "See you later, babe," when we parted company.  I don't foresee myself calling anyone babe anytime soon, but you never know.  It's happened to other yankees who came before me.

I've made some hard decisions and some resolutions for 2011 and beyond.  I didn't move 2000 miles on my little motorcycle (details of the trip in the sidebar to your left) to stare at a computer screen for eight hours a day.  I came to New Orleans to live, to be a productive citizen, to add my dram of whatever it is I've got to the cocktail.  Sink or swim, I'm here to stay, come what may.  So far, New Orleans has been as good to me as New London ever was.  Not better, but certainly  not worse.  It's up to me to make it better and, from what I survey, I'm on a level playing field ripe with possibility.

This post will be the last I'll subject you to maudlin introspection.  Beginning January 1, I will be up to my some of the more usual shenanigans long time readers are used to.  I'll be reporting on the subjective facts of what I encounter, but there will be more spirit of play and whimsy.  I have my bearings and I know my course.

Best wishes for a Happy New Year and best wishes to you and yours.
With a handshake,
WK

Smart women prefer to live in New Orleans rather than read about it.

With more adventures to follow.  Let the games begin!

New Orleans, Excelsior!

George' Bank herring from off the coast of Canada...

George's Bank is located off the coast of New England.  It is a fabulously fertile fishing ground that gave the Commonwealth of Massachusetts one of its symbols, the Sacred Cod that hangs in the Statehouse.  Can a cold water fish really be at its best when dressed in Louisiana spices?  Some would say yes.  I like to think so.

I was born and raised in Connecticut, a small state many people confuse with a city in Ohio when I travel cross-country.  Whether they it is Cleveland or Cincinnati or whether they there really is a Connecticut, OH, I've never bothered to ask.  Ohio was once a part of Connecticut's Western Reserve, but that is a story for another day.

As I discussed yesterday, I have lived in a number of cities and I would like to spend today's post discussing why I feel New Orleans is best.

Culture clash in New Orleans

When worlds collide...

I've lived in New Orleans since June 9th this year.  That makes four and a half months.  I can't say anyone has been anything but gracious and welcoming.  I can't say anything but that I find New Orleans the most wonderful city I have ever lived in.  To recap my history, I have called the following places home:

Good customer gets feather in cap

I went to Meyer the Hatter at lunch yesterday.  I have enough hats, so I wasn't in the market for another proper topper.  I just needed some new feathers for my fedoras.  The South's Largest Hat Shop has a box on the counter toward the back with a selection of feathers for sale at 35 cents each.  They are a three feather affair, wide in the back, more narrow in the middle, and the front feather is a little, flourish-y tendril in a contrasting color.

I went in and there were five other customers and three staff.  The customers were trying on hats and asking questions.  The youngest of the hatters asked me if I needed help and I replied, "No, I'm just here for feathers."  I pawed through the box, careful not to crimp the merchandise and picked two hand-bound feather confection as artful as a trout fly and as dashing as one of Fred Astaire's handkerchiefs.

When I made my way to the register, a hatter was waiting for me with a small paper bag.  "That will be 70 cents plus tax," he said.  I apologized for my "whopping purchase."  "You came in and you knew what you wanted, knew where it was, and bought it.  That kind of customer is a luxury we don't often have here.  Come back anytime," he replied.

Being right off Canal Street, I suppose the staff at Meyer's is used to gawkers who take up their time without spending any money.  The staff is gracious and attentive regardless though they aren't quick to make eye contact.  They've been around a long time and know that sales will be made for their specific niche products eventually.  The same was true of the curmudgeons at L.J. Piretti in Boston.  The same was true of Parade News at 68 State Street, New London, Connecticut, about the only shop of interest that sold sundries and magazines and cigars a block from the ferry and train station.

What?  No Magazine Street photo?  Pshaw.  Here you go:

We've got one more sign to go until this series crosses the street and doubles back.  Pshew!

New Orleans heatwave

My old chums from the Northeast were complaining about a heatwave recently.  Looking at my New Orleans thermometer, I don't see what they were complaining about.  I wonder what I'll be thinking come winter.  The coldest month I've spent in New Orleans was a few weeks this past March here, here, here.  I didn't find it chilly in the least, but then it was in the low 40s back in Boston when I left.

I wonder if I will ever have to use all the sweaters, coats, scarves and long underwear I brought down to New Orleans.  I couldn't bear to throw them away on the chance I would just need to replace them.  

As much as I've grown to hate winter, as my October through March posts from the past few years will attest (no links, you'll have to skim the archives yourself), I do enjoy winter clothes.  I love long coats and I love to wear hats.  When I was packing prior to the move, I did donate a few hats to Goodwill.  I didn't think I'd need all the toppers in my collection.

I did keep my trusty tricorner, a hat I love very much though in the past I haven't had much cause to wear it except while I participated in reading the Declaration of Independence while living in New London, and on Patriots' Day, a holiday unique to Massachusetts.  While it may seem an impractical hat, one that attracts stares and calls of "Hey, pirate!" on the street, I figure I can wear it for Mardi Gras.

At least one piece of winter gear will be put to use.  

A busy port in any storm

We went to the Riverview Park and watched the barges go up and down the Mississippi.  It's amazing how busy the river is.  I normally don't see it, so today was a nice respite.  It's supposed to rain for the next three days.

One tug was pushing five barges.  Others were shorter trains.  Speaking of trains, the Public Belt railroad pulled through.  They have an exceptional logo and the corporation itself is a good idea.  I don't know much about it and how it affects commerce but, from their website at least, they seem to be beyond political manipulation in favor of commerce.  I don't understand the ins and outs of port operation.  I've never seen a port as busy as New Orleans.

Both New London, Conn. and Boston, Mass. are port cities that I've spent considerable time in.  They don't seem to handle a fraction of the traffic that plies the Mississippi up to New Orleans and beyond.

A man's life

Harvey Pekar is passed to the great beyond.  From the streets of Cleveland to Heaven's gate.

He wasn't a fascinating man but he was a man you could respect.  I always have.  A nice quote in his obituary in the Cleveland Plain Dealer is by R. Crumb (in the link above): Pekar's material was so mundane it verged on the exotic.

New Orleans is a city so colorful that to outsiders it can't be anything but exotic.  Spend a few years here and I'm sure the flourishes blend into the background: static, white noise, distractions that lead a wayward soul to the empty perdition of ennui.  It is a place of great beauty, of magic, of the exuberant excess that joy and sadness exude when pressed against the humdrum reality of getting by against all odds.  New Orleans, LA is no Cleveland, OH and vice versa.  It is the same way no two people are alike.  You make the most of the gifts you are given or you squander them.  New Orleanians, not a swimmer in the bunch, bathe in the luxuriant atmosphere their city unconsciously exhales.

"From the streets of Cleveland...."  This epigraph has always stuck with me.  From the streets of Cleveland came an American splendor.  That same splendor can come from the sidewalks of Ophelia Castle Haley Boulevard, nee Dryades Street.  It can come from Dorchester, Mass. the biggest and best of Boston's neighborhoods.  It can come from New London, Conn., a city in which you can't swing a broom without hitting an artist.  All it takes is the person with the eyes to see and the will to craft his or her surroundings into the material that paints a perfect poem of the universal human condition.

Harvey Pekar was such a person.  Every metropolis, every community, deserves such a bard who wields both pen and imagination with either broad strokes or spidery crow quill scratches.  New Orleans, the Sodom of the South, the Wet Grave, the City Care Forgot, the Big Easy, the Flood City, can nurture such a person if there is an audience to hear, respond, and add to the chorus the artist inspires.

It can take two to tango.  It can take one to sing.  It can take a million to make an event.  It only takes a few hundred thousand to make a city for the future that will last a millenium and more, inspiring generations, keeping the flame of love of place aglow in hearth and heart.

Don't believe me?  Well, while I don't approve of the language, I agree with this sentiment.  Ashley Morris seems to have been the kind of man who translated and focussed the communal viewpoint like a half full glass in the sun.  The world needs more people like this.  Where there is devotion to a place, there is a reason to live there.  There is American splendor.

I'm a new New Orleanian so I can't really claim any genuine post-Katrina outrage except from a distance of 2000 miles via television and newsprint.  I'm here now in the flesh and I'm here to stay, witness to the wreckage that is still unsettled and ready to put my shoulder to the wheel to push events forward toward a better tomorrow.  I can't claim to be a native or even to know what's going on most of the time.  It's too soon.  I am sinking my tap root though, ready to join a coalition of the willing.

As we like to say in Connecticut, Qui Transtulet Sustinet.  He who transplants, sustains.  I'm home.

New Orleans Tourist Board needs a spokesperson

Short post today.  My afternoon was taken up with motorcycle maintenance, and it wasn't a zen experience even though there were plenty of tests for my patience.

I'm working on a small project employing my trademark, drifty prose that readers from New London, Conn. and my earlier days in Boston may be familiar with.  Call this an impressionistic prose poem, short on details while pregnant with how I experience my new home after two weeks....

New Orleans, if the humidity doesn’t kill you the heat will set your sweat glands free to do as they please.  The air, redolent with decadent scents and enticing promises, hangs like tinted gauze over the parti-colored tapestry of a metropolis woven with dreams and small scale miracles.  New Orleans, robust and sultry, seductive and forthright, is a city plump with secrets that wears its passions for all to witness.  When New Orleans winks, wise folk smile and exchange knowing glances.  

Have you been to New Orleans?  If you’ve been once, you’ll want to go twice.  New Orleanians are among the most blessed of Americans; they daily sup on cream and spice.  A meal in New Orleans is food for the soul.  A day doing nothing in New Orleans is better than a day at work.  The play’s the thing and, in New Orleans, Play is king.  

Fortune and Fate conspire in the best of unexpected ways.  Common courtesy and uncommon revelry hold sway over the multitude of events that unfold in a day.  West Bank, Uptown, Mid City, Riverbend, in all the faubourgs and all the corner grocery shops, where the levees meet the sky and the oaks knurl the ground alongside sidewalks, time spent in New Orleans is better than best.

That's it for tonight.  I'll be back on schedule tomorrow with a story about dueling clarinets.  I never got a chance to write about that in Bean Town!

New Orleans coffee

If you are from New Orleans, you may not have heard of Dunkin' Donuts, a chain that has virtually conquered Boston.

DD has been around for decades, but its creep has increased as the years go by.  When I lived in Connecticut, and earlier in Rhode Island, I watched it fill available corner lots and storefronts with alarming  determination.  There are still local shops that will brew you a cuppa joe, but I suspect by century's end DD will dominate the field even more than it does now, if corporate HQ has their way.

Common chicory in flower

The Crescent City coffee scene seems more varied.  Community Coffee and PJ's are easy enough to find and there are a few Starbucks, but the little guys still have clout in their neighborhood niches.  I've been to Cafe du Monde once as a tourist, but I haven't been back.  I'm no coffee connoisseur and I'm content with pretty much anything that's hot.  This may be why I haven't noticed the chicory that is supposed to be the hallmark ingredient of New Orleans coffee that separates it from all other blends.

Chicory coffee may be a myth used to lure tourists, another legend like voodoo that helps cement New Orleans' reputation as a unique place on the globe.  I know it's an ingredient in the Cafe du Monde blend and I've seen it listed on the sides of cans in the supermarket.  I just don't know how common it is.  My unsophisticated palate may never know the difference.  The issue bears further investigation.

With all its experiments over the years, I don't recall Dunkin' Donuts test marketing a cajun blend of coffee featuring chicory.  Of course, Boston did recently acquire two Popeye's Chicken outlets so it may just be a matter of time before DD starts selling this combination of two natural diuretics in a brew.

Goodbye Jacob Wirth

 Boston isn't known for it's cuisine.  Please don't send me emails about baked beans, toll house cookies, parker house rolls, boiled pot roast, cod or white clam chowder.  I'm from around here and I know all of these things but except for the clam chowder, none of these things is really succulent.  There are good restaurants in Boston but, needless to say, most of them don't capitalize on the "New England" aspect of their kitchen.  Durgin Park is an exception, but they are in the middle of a tourist destination (the soundtrack of their website is worth the click).

Jake's Black Label Sausage.   This should be the title of this post because this is what I ordered at Jacob Wirth for lunch.  Whatta wurst!  The sausage and a pint of Narragansett left me full as a tick the rest of the day.  This was one nice grilled sausage served on a toasted bun with sauerkraut but I don't go to Jacob Wirth for the food.  I go for the atmosphere.  The place has changed little over a century.  I like that.  I like looking over bygone momentos and looking at the scrollwork that supports a pressed tin ceiling.

I like it as much as I like my 'Gansett, Neighbor.  I wholeheartedly agree that you're not from New England if you aren't drinking the Official Beer of the Clam (this digression, including illustration, is copyright Narragansett Brewing Co. PR)

I love old things that have withstood the test of time.  I'm no Renaissance Faire aficionado or colonial re-enactor but I like anachronisms.  I liked the Dutch Tavern in New London.  I love Boston's landscape and I look forward to participating in the ongoing traditions that make up New Orleans.

Some comparisons

Beautiful and bustling downtown New London, CT

I'm from New England, a land of small states packed with plenty of people.  Here are some comparisons:

Connecticut (where I'm from originally):  Area: 5,543 square miles.  Seems like a lot of space, doesn't it?
Massachusetts (my current legal residence):  Area: 10, 555 square miles.  Even bigger.
Louisiana (where I'm moving to): Area: 51,885 square miles.  Whoa, Nellie!

Population (as of 2008):
Connecticut:  3.518,288 or 703 per square mile.
Massachusetts: 6, 593,587.  It's got twice the space, after all.  That's 809 per square mile.
Louisiana: 4,410,796 or 102 people per square mile.  That leaves a lot of elbow room.

Let's look at the cities I've called home since I find this interesting....  The area is for land only.
New London, CT: 5.5 square miles, 26,174 people which comes to 4,725 people/square mile.
Boston, MA: 48.43 square miles, 620,535 people which comes to 12,813 people/square mile.
New Orleans, LA: 180.6 square miles, 336,644 people which comes to 2,518 people/square mile.

I don't want to say New Orleans seems like a ghost town, because it doesn't.  You'll excuse me though if I don't find it particularly crowded.  There are plenty of people and there's plenty of activity so it doesn't seem as empty as these statistics suggest.  Once I take a tour of the rest of the Louisiana though, I don't know.  I imagine it will seem like the Moon compared to the quiet corners of Connecticut.

Of course, the New Orleans numbers don't include all the tourists and conventioneers that visit the city on a regular basis.  Boston also has its share of visitors.  They tend to come in the summer when all the college students (which these figures include, about a quarter of the total) vacate the city.  Few people stop in New London unless they are lost, so it's numbers are pretty stable.