City Park Eel Expose, New Orleans, LA

City Park eels.

An excerpted preview from a profile I'm writing after spending a lot of time in City Park on assignment...

How does one eel man let another know that trouble may be afoot?  

Marcel explains. “We’ve got a system for ourselves.  See this here?  This ain’t no dog whistle.  It’s a penguin call.  You know there aren’t any penguins in City Park, right?  If you ever hear a penguin, that means an eel man has spotted a park ranger.  All spears are hidden.”

Using my new power.

So, based on the epiphany I had yesterday, I tried out my new attitude and show of strength.  I took the motorcycle up to City Park this morning where I careened along the pathways.  On approaching one of the lagoons, I saw my opportunity.  I parked the Littlest Ninja and approached a group of ducks who were sleeping in the shade of one of the oak trees.  They sensed my presence and awoke, stirring to their feet and then waddling to the safety of the nearby lagoon where they assumed I would not follow.

It isn't that I couldn't follow them.  I chose not to.  Instead, I stood on the shore and declared "Baleana Rex!" to the ducks and any other bird within earshot.

I felt rather proud of myself.

Now I am off to a dental appointment.  "I'm here for a cleaning.  Baleana Rex!"

This is not me:

(photo courtesy of this site)

Storyland in City Park

This is the 900th post on this blog.  That's a lot of bytes. 

With the amount of ink that's been spent trying to describe New Orleans, you would think the whole city would be referred to as Storyland.  In fact, Storyland is a special nook in City Park dedicated to bringing children's stories to life, or at least to three dimensions.  It is full of whimsical statues brightly painted.  Today's photos were taken the other night during Celebration in the Oaks.  There are twenty-five exhibits.  

Pinocchio atop the whale, a particular favorite of mine.

Though I am 45 years old and have little patience for children (though that's changing the older I get), I have a fascination for toys and cartoonish things.  I have no patience for Sponge Bob or whatever is popular now but, as someone who loves old things, I find a stroll through Storyland charming.

I may be crotchedy but I am also whimsical, subsisting on a steady diet of daydreams and poppycock (a word with very off-color Latin roots).  I am an honorary citizen of the Land of Cockaigne, having spent many an idyll on Rock Candy Mountain.

 Of particular interest to me was this frog.  An exact replica of the one in the Ryan Playground in my beloved Dorchester, Mass. the biggest and best part of Boston.  

I spent many a moment with this frog's Bay State twin.  It was the only sculpture in the park, tucked away in a corner painted an identical shade of green.  When I eventually move into my new home I hope to find two siblings to guard my front door.  I will call them Patience and Fortitude in honor of a couple of lions I know.  

Speaking of moving, there seems to be some kind of snafu (another word with off-color roots, these an acronym) at City Hall.  I read about this in the paper a week or so ago, so I expected it.  No one knows when the closing will take place because there is some trouble researching the deeds and conveyances.  I'm told few things go smoothly in New Orleans unless you get involved with your City Councilperson.  I don't know about that and I prefer to think things will work out for the best.  After all, I'm a citizen of Cockaigne, expecting freshly baked pies to fall off of trees and fully cooked pigs running around with a knife in them, offering an easy slice of ham as they pass.

Celebration in the Oaks

We went to Celebration in the Oaks last night in City Park.  The website doesn't do it justice.  Neither do my pictures.  Naturally, my camera battery went dead while I was taking a picture of the pink elephant (totem of New Orleans?) so this article is illustrated with pictures from my phone.

What is nice about this X-mas light celebration is that you walk through it rather than drive.  It isn't a solitary event with piped in carols over the radio.  In true New Orleans fashion, a visitor is pressed in with the rest of humanity to enjoy and participate in the show.  Price:  $7.00 admission, $3.00 extra for a train ride.  $17.00 buys you a wrist band entitling you to unlimited amusement park rides if you choose to stay that long and get nauseous on the Tilt-a-Whirl.  

The amusement park is lit up and Storyland is lit up, but the main attraction is the chance to walk through the Botanical Gardens which are strung with lights.  What's a X-mas celebration without a salute to vegetables?!!  Or nuts and city wildlife....

I'm not trying to be facetious.  It really was a glorious display.  The old southern oak in the center of the gardens was jaw-dropping:

Not only is the tree draped with lights, they drip off the branches in real time, so convincing that a mother had to convince her daughter that she wasn't seeing water, only an illusion.  Next I'll find out Clement Moore cribbed the Cajun version of "'Twas Night Before Christmas" to write his famous poem.

The Botanical Garden is a glorious place during the day and well worth the trip.  The chance to walk its landscape at night, lit by millions of diodes, is a treat.  I recommend it.

And for our last memory of last night, Mother Goose sailing over Storyland, the best part of City Park in my humble opinion:

We took the little train around the riverside of the park.  The overhanging trees are strung with decorations accompanied by lots of oohs and aaahs from the passengers.  It's just as rumbly and screechy as the St. Charles Avenue streetcar and moves about as slowly even though there are no stops.  There are just as many oohs and aaahs too but these are uttered by New Orleanians gasping at the beauty of lights in the oaks rather rather than tourists gasping at the beauty of St. Charles Avenue.  Same play, different players.  New Orleans is beautiful.

At night, City Park is a different place.  It's great during the day and it's great at night in a different way.  A good night was had by all.

New Orleans municipal bird

A blast from the past.  I let you guess who is your humble narrator.

I was in City Park this morning watching the geese.  There were a few Canadian geese, like I'm used to seeing, but there were also the more humdrum, farmyard variety that seem more exotic to me since I've never lived on a farm.  

I am moving soon to another part of town.  I am in the process of purchasing a house to call both home and headquarters since I moved to New Orleans with every intention to stay.  I told the mailman the other day and he declared it was good news.  "That makes it official," he said as he shook my hand.  Everyone says that and thanks me for making my permanency a little more permanent.  "We need everybody we can get," they say with what sounds like faint praise.

I know New Orleans zoning is fairly lenient about keeping chickens at home.  I wonder how the regulations regard geese.  I was pricing X-mas goose this weekend and, much like in Boston, a goose goes for about forty bucks.  It had better be a fine bird.  If I kept a goose at home, assuming I could find someone to butcher and clean it for me, that would be a $40 savings if I didn't mind eating a pet at Yuletide.  

I have to admit, I am surprised I don't see more of another kind of bird either in City Park or anywhere else in New Orleans.

In a city that is always on display I would think a peacock is a natural fit for the Crescent City.  I see their human equivalent parading up and down Canal Street and Magazine Street and Decatur Street every day.  I am sure they are South Carrollton Avenue, Jefferson Davis Avenue, Robert E. Lee Boulevard, and St. Claude Avenue as well.

I don't have any recommendations to make New Orleans a better place but one:  More peacocks!  I happen to know where you can buy them.  If a tenth of the population raised a peacock and set it free, New Orleans would be a more beautiful place.  A royal bird befitting a royal city.  A peacock should be on the city seal.

Exceslior New Orleans

So, I’ve decided on a new name for this blog.  I know it’s probably not the best idea for continuity’s sake.  I find it on google listed as Whalehead King, which was it’s first incarnation, and as The Dot Matrix! which was it’s second.  For the past few day’s I’ve reverted back to Whalehead King because my ties to Boston’s biggest and best neighborhood, Dorchester, affectionately known as “Dot”, have been fading over the past few weeks as I live longer in New Orleans.  The matrix I navigate is no longer Dorchester’s but New Orleans’ tangled skein of bumpy streets.

This isn’t to say I won’t still be comparing New Orleans to Boston anymore.  In fact, I have a comparison on tap of Nola’s Mayor Landrieu to Bean Town’s Mayor Menino.  I’m a native New Englander after all and, though I only spent three long years in Boston, it is the capitol of that region that affected me most of my life and shaped my sensibility.  I remain a cranky Yankee.  

While Boston in the flesh and mortar was nothing like I imagined, New Orleans is everything I dreamed about and more.  The comparisons won’t always be weighted in favor of one city over the other, but I suspect as time passes and memory fades, they will become more infrequent.  Direct, positive experience will always overwhelm the past in the end.  

This blog’s new title is Excelsior New Orleans.  I think it’s always nice to mix a little Latin into things to keep them high falutin’.  Look at Boston’s city seal.

Excelsior is the motto of the great state of New York.  It is also how Stan Lee signed off his letters (and probably still does) while penning them in the Silver Age of comic books.  It means “Ever upward.”  I feel that by moving to New Orleans, I have moved up in the world.  I see evidence all around me that New Orleans is on an upward trajectory.  I find myself in a community supported not only by centuries of river silt, but buoyed by an interconnected, interdependent hope and drive for a better tomorrow and respect for what came before.  New Orleans is like nowhere on the globe.  I am happy and privileged to make my home here.      

This is not New Orleans’ golden age or silver age or bronze age or dark age.  It is a period of transition.  I don’t sense that worse is in the wings.  If there will be rebirth, and there will be, there will be platinum leaf on the next chapter of New Orleans history.  I am humbled to think I have a part to play in this great, shared undertaking in a great metropolis.

Fountain in Coliseum Square.

Audubon bubbler

We call a water fountain a bubbler where I'm from.  The naval term for it is a scuttlebutt.  As this sign states, the bubbler in the middle of Audubon Park next to the golf course maintenance building is only for two legged patrons of the park.

Slow week

Slow week on the posting front.  Apologies.  It isn't that nothing is happening.  Quite the reverse: so much is happening I don't have time to write it all down.  Like the Dos Equis billboard on Tulane Avenue tells me every time I drive by, "Most of your life should be off the record."  That doesn't make for very interesting reading for you though.

I'm taking an all day class at Delgado Community College tomorrow so I don't think I'll have time to type up any kind of report.  Wish me luck and I'll see you Friday!

Cheers,
WK