What's Going on in Eunice, LA?

No one is naughty in Eunice, LA.

I happen to know some of what is going on in Eunice, Louisiana.  "How do you know anything about anything happening in Eunice, LA?" you ask.  "You seem so happy to live in New Orleans, I couldn't imagine you traveling far!"  You are partly right.

It is true that I am perfectly content staying in my neighborhood, but, for whatever reason, I have an itch that only Eunice can scratch.  I visited Eunice recently, and Eunice got under my skin.

I happen to know some of what is going on in Eunice, Louisiana because I have been receiving a one-month subscription to the fair city's newspaper of record, for the past month.  "What is it called?" you ask.  It is called The Eunice News.  It is a paring of words that is that is not mentioned once in the wikipedia.  It is well-known around Eunice, though.  The paper is published every Thursday and Sunday.  The Sunday edition also contains a Parade Magazine.  There are no comic strips.  The children of Eunice don't need any enticements to read the inspirational musings of the current week's Student of the Week.

So, what do I know from reading the Eunice News when it is delivered via USPS every Saturday and Tuesday?  There seems to be a lot of crime in Eunice, Louisiana, but no more than one would find in any other major city.  There seems to be secret sex offender court that keeps all its records sealed.  The Eunice News is trying to inform the public, but is being stymied by the local judiciary.  None of it makes any sense.  The state is auditing the school board for some kind of budget discrepancy.  The editorial page broadcasts very interesting opinions.

Did you know they celebrate Mardi Gras in Eunice, LA?  I read about it in The Eunice News.  Now that I've read about it for a month, I know where I'll be next Mardi Gras: in Eunice, Louisiana.

The hometown favorite, farm team, the Lady Cats are full of pulchritude and spunk.

So, I know a little bit about Eunice, LA.  I know what I read.  I still don't know what it is like to live in Eunice.  I don't know what it is like to wake up in the morning and say, "I'm in Eunice, today!"  I don't know what life is like at the Gateway to the Cajun Prairie, but I'd like to learn on which side I belong.  I suspect a little bit of both.  I've had a taste, now I hanker for a meal.  I have to sample some more of Eunice's famed hospitality.

The sun does not always shine on Eunice, Louisiana, but, when it does, boy! does it shine.  At least that's what I read in the newspaper.  When people are good neighbors, a community has a heart as big as Eunice, LA.  Home is where the heart is.

I have not spent long enough in Eunice's arms, pressed close to her ample bosom.  I am not the first person to say this.  I have not gotten to know Eunice as well as I should.  How many people say that?  More than you would suppose.  Eunice casts a spell.

I have never seen the starry sky above Fairground Park, but I will some day.  I have never chased a chicken.  If Liberty is theater, then I dream of Eunice, a city in which dreams are set free.  No other fair city in LA is more fairly named.  

I'm going to Eunice, LA.

A Very Ninja Christmas

2011 Ninja 250 on Esplanade Avenue, New Orleans, LA

We are talking about motorcycles for no reason except that two wheels set a soul free.  The old, littlest Ninja, with its Reagan-era aesthetics, which carried me from Boston to New Orleans, is retired.  You can read about that trip in the sidebar to your left, fourth item down.

On Christmas Eve Day, the new Ninja 250, will be careening past its 3000th milestone.  That's not bad for two and a half months without a scratch.  A motorcycle provides the best view on a bridge clogged with rush hour traffic.  A working stiff doesn't get many hours to ride, but when New Orleans' streets offer an invitation, there is nothing to do but turn, and join the parade.

The old Ninja 250 used to happily respond to the monniker, "The Littlest Ninja in [whatever city we lived in]."  The chitin of the new Ninja 250 doesn't tolerate whimsy.  No stickers.  No scratches.  One attitude: serious.  I always liked the Littlest Ninja on the East Bank of the Mississippi River.  I like the new Ninja 250, too, but it's not as friendly a companion.

Somewhere, along some bend in the Mississippi River, I am going to pause and smoke a pipe, like Saint Nick.  Man and machine will get to know each other, out in the middle of nowhere, over a smoke.

No matter how you spend your Christmas Eve, a very Merry Christmas to you and to yours.  Even a bicycle has a motor between its wheels.  Two wheels set one free.  Seven days without the wind in one's hair makes one weak.  A world without the lazy play of pipe tobacco would be an unhappy world, indeed.  

Odometer Update: Day 4

I know!  Yesterday, I didn't provide a milage figure from my touring around New Orleans and today I can't even post a fresh picture, recycling one from last summer with at least 5000 miles missing from the Littlest Ninja's odometer.  ...And it is the same picture from Monday!  To rub salt in your indignation, not only did I get sidetracked from reporting about yesterday's journeys in order to talk about my search for turkey cutlets in New Orleans, today, I haven't checked the most recent reading.  This odometer update is turning into something else altogether.

My journalistic skills mimic my driving.  I am easily distracted and led onto detours according to flexible whim.  I have other fish to fry tonight and other concerns that burn my hash (not really, I'm incapable of sustained anger).  I did check my odometer's reading this morning and I drove very little today (all things considered) and I'll detail it all tomorrow, Heaven willing.  In the meantime I have lost one half of two different things.  Let us take a little side trip down the stream of consciousness and focus, magpie-like on the latest shiny facts that hold my attention.

Firstly, I lost one of my gloves at the Bulldog Tavern on Canal Boulevard.  I lose things all the time, but this is particularly irksome.  I found these gloves on the side of the road probably ten years ago.  Good deerskin gloves, well-broken in.  A thumb (on the lost glove) has a scar on it from before it came into my possession.  Anyone finding this glove is encouraged to return it to its rightful owner.  If you are reading this, you know who that is and you can find my contact information easily enough somewhere on this page.  No reward is offered beyond the satisfaction of doing the right thing.  While it may have fallen out of my helmet, or I may have misplaced it (which is often the case and it may turn up later), my preferred explanation is that some lovely lass purloined it as a keepsake after seeing me in full motorcycle regalia strutting through the Bulldog.  Lady, I may be Whalehead King, but I'm no Prince Charming.  I may be a knight on a charger, but I'm no Galahad.  My steed is the Littlest Ninja this side of the Mississippi River, not a white horse.  I may come to your rescue, but it will only be by happenstance, not as the result of a quest.  If you are reading this, I would like my glove back.  Because of my confabulation, this loss is irksome in a good way.  I have a story to tell.  My personal mythology has an addition.  Somewhere, someone is sleeping with my dirty, oily, beaten-up motorcycle glove under her pillow.  Sweet dreams.

Secondly, driving to my current destination, I noticed that it seemed to be raining even though everything was as bone dry as it ever gets in New Orleans.  As it happens, I took off my glasses and noticed something was definitely amiss.  A lens is missing!  Now, I've been expecting this for the past week or so, a vague premonition.  There were no overt signs.  This lens has been cemented onto the frame with Krazy Glue for about three years and has shown no signs of seeking freedom.  This pair of glasses, like my gloves, is about ten years old.  Unlike my gloves, I paid cash money for them.  They are the least pretentious pair of eyeglasses I own (besides my US Navy issue frames which I obtained at no charge), so I've been wearing them often.  I've been noticing how roughly I treat them.  They got pulled off and pushed on willy-nilly every time I donned or doffed my helmet, and I've been amazed at the durability of a drop of glue dispensed from a 99-cent tube of glue.  I can't say I didn't get what I paid for.  Three years of abuse is a long run.

I do not suspect someone stole my left eyeglass lens to be able to see the world through my eyes, but nothing is beyond the realm of probability.  Even this conjecture, though, is more than I can plausibly accept.  That said, if you are reading this and have my left lens in your possession, I would like it back.  As a reward, I will give you 10% of the advertising proceeds from this blog for the month of May 2011. Don't spend it all in one place.

So, I am left lopsided with more equipment on my right hand side.  This seems fitting.  The lady of the house complains that the patches on my motorcycle jacket are all on the left hand side.  While I find this to be a pleasing asymmetry, she thinks they should be arranged more equally along my sagittal line.  My left ear sports three earrings and four holes, while my right ear has none.  Maybe Fate is telling me that it is time to pay attention to the left side of my brain, as if I needed that advice.  I don't know.  All I know is that I am in a conundrum.  I have to pick another pair of daily eyewear (there are plenty of options in my wardrobe) and that I need to make a decision about my gloves.  Should I keep the remaining lucky right glove and just replace the left, or should I wear a coordinated set?  Oh, the troubles I bear.

So what about the odometer update?  Tune in tomorrow to get up to speed, or not.  I fully intend to give a full report on how many miles I've travelled this week.  I'm sure I've burned though a gallon of gasoline.  Some say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but I've never found that to be the case.  I've found good intentions lead me to other roads and scenic journeys.  It isn't the destination that matters, it is how you get there.  Unless the destination is Hell, of course.  So far, I haven't arrived.

Have Ninja, will travel.
Keep an eye on your gear.
With a bare, left-handed, handshake,
WK

I am not curious about the rest of Louisiana.

I moved to New Orleans and I am in love with the place, sinking down roots and drawing sustenance from the landscape and atmosphere.  I must admit, I am not terribly interested in the rest of Louisiana.  I've visited some parts of the Pelican State, admittedly not much, but nothing in I've seen has captured my imagination.

New Orleans is the biggest city in Louisiana.  Baton Rouge holds the number 2 slot.  I've been there and have no plans to go back anytime soon unless I have some business to conduct.  I haven't been to faraway Shreveport, the third largest urban conglomeration.  To my New England honed sense of distance, if I travel as far as Shreveport, I will be in a different country.

People from outside New Orleans, myself included, talk about the place as a world of its own.  It is.  I'm from Connecticut where every town is its own entity, an island in a sea of Connecticut towns, each similar but each unique with history and quirks of charter to prove it.

I figure if a place has a name, it has its own government.  That's not true in Louisiana.  In Connecticut we abolished county government, who needs an extra layer of legislation and paid employees.  If services are duplicated every few miles at least they belong to the people most directly affected.  In Louisiana, they went the opposite route: who needs the lowest denomination of civic administration?  Parish government is the rule of law.  Of course the population of the vast state of Louisiana is roughly equal to the vest pocket area of Connecticut.  Orleans Parish is co-existent with New Orleans city limits.  

If I am not curious about the rest of Louisiana, maybe it's my own fault.  I am too busy learning the ways of my new home city.  Maybe in time, Heaven forbid, I will get bored and jaded about the lifeways that knit New Orleans together.  Then I may head out to Belle Chase or Metarie and think about expanding my horizons.  I doubt it, but anything is possible.

The lights fantastic

Approaching Lee Circle.  The stop light lasted long enough for me to fetch my camera and turn it on.  Of course, once I got the scene in focus, the light changed and the cars behind started honking.  Above is a photo in motion of the approach to Lee Circle.  The real reason for this post are the photos that follow.

Hotel le Cirque at Lee Circle isn't a pretty building during the day.  Once the sun is past the horizon though, it is a jewel.  What follows are some time-lapse photos while I idled my motorcycle in front of the Circle Bar, in the shadow of General Lee's back.  Hotel le Cirque is the highlight of my commute while I live Uptown...

The colors change constantly.  This is urban lighting done right, a jewel on Lee Circle, which is an odd confluence of the hotel, some kind of oil refinery tribute building, the local architect society, the Circle Bar, which looks like a haunted house, a vibrant gas station and a defunct gas station.  All of this is arranged around a traffic circle with a plinth that is home to a statue of Robert E. Lee, the back of the Confederate Civil War Museum building, and where every St. Charles Avenue street car passes.

I wonder at the pyrotechnics of the Hotel le Cirque every evening and every morning I see it.  It gives me pause.  So many interesting things catch my fancy in New Orleans.  This is one of them.

South of the West Bank

Tchoupitoulas Street.

An old friend asked me what it is like to live in New Orleans.  I trust she won't mind if I just post this excerpt of my reply.  It's not like it's a secret:


"Unlike what we are used to, there aren't many incorporated towns in the surrounding parishes (counties).  I still haven't really figured it out,.  There aren't any towns so much as "places."  I find it very disorienting trying to navigate my way around when touring the countryside since I am used to using incorporated towns as a reference point.  There also doesn't seem to be the ingrained animosity between communities that I am so used to in New England.  People live in Metarie but there's no stigma attached to living in the suburb.  People here seem to love their developments and strip malls." 

I was in Belle Chasse yesterday.  If this were in Connecticut, I would expect to find a town green, a city hall, a white clapboard Congregational Church on the green, and a cluster of old commercial building on the surrounding streets.  The center of town would have colonial homes dating from the 1700s and then other eras in a widening circumference from the center of town.  Belle Chasse (pronounced Bell Chase) is not like that.

The center of "town" (it's not a town, it is the seat of Plaquemines Parish, unincorporated without a government of its own or selectmen or town meetings) is where two state roads meet.  All the homes are gated communities of McMansions and then a strip of shopping centers that goes on and on and on.  There is very little eye candy to delight a sensitive aesthetic sense.  Ungated communities of prefabricated homes seemed to be lining the street grid behind the McDonald's.

New Orleans is a different world from the rest of the American cities I've lived in.  Louisiana past the west bank of the Mississippi River (which I traveled south to reach, it's that convoluted) is another world altogether.  I passed a mix of heavy industry, agriculture, and bedrooms interspersed amidst torn up swampland.  I don't know what the residents of Plaquemines Parish do for entertainment or community.

I ride a motorcycle.  I pass through, I observe, I head home to the city I call home.  I don't know a gol-darned thing about anything I've witnessed.

I did order a new fairing for my Little Ninja.  The old one has rattled so loose and developed so many cracks and faults from the abuse of New Orleans's potholed streets that it is beyond repair.  Every time I hear the front end rattle, it pains me and embarrasses me.  The Little Ninja is a sleek machine, as finely tuned and fit as its driver.  The noises it makes is a personal affront, as if I am a rusty Tim Man jangled by my environment so that I sound like I will fall apart the next intersection.  Untrue.  New Orleans is nurturing me rather than killing me.  New Orleans is making me stronger and more open to the cornucopia life offers those with the inclination to swallow whole.  The Little Ninja shouldn't rattle the same way I don't.

I was given a choice of colors.  The Little Ninja is blue (see below).  Now the fairing around the headlight will be red.  I never want to hear someone say, "I didn't see you."  You can't be afraid of color.  This is a doctrine I employ in my shirts and ties and socks.  As I get older, it is a doctrine I employ in my motorcycle gear.  "See me."  Nothing says New Orleans as much as this statement.  New Orleans commands attention.  It's citizens demand to be seen.

There aren't any hills this tall in my part of Louisiana.  Picture taken in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

-WK

Motorcycles are everywhere.

Elvis Presley.

A motorcycle sets a body free.  I’m not discussing a wreck, in which a body can potentially really be set free, soaring through the ether to land tumbling against a rock or a hard place.  I mean that sitting balanced between two wheels spinning at high velocity gives a person the confidence to tackle any of life’s challenges.  Being able to navigate the world on two wheels is something an automobile driver will never know.  The vulnerability paired with the skill it takes to stay upright and in motion inspires confidence in one’s abilities.

I have yet to encounter a hill worth mentioning in Louisiana.  The landscape that stretches from the east and west banks of the Mississippi River is level and flat.  The roads are straight.  I’ve travelled the following parishes on the back roads: Orleans (of course), Jefferson, St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, St. Tammany, St. Bernard, and, today, Plaquemines.  

Leaving New Orleans, a person enters another world in the territory surrounding this great city.  I am not in New England anymore. There is little that is picturesque in the architecture, mostly pre-fabricated homes or housing developments built on spec, strip malls, chain stores, shopping centers out of an corporate architect’s box. It is industrial land full of oil refineries, marine welders, offshore supply outfits, scrap metal yards, quarries, sugar cane plantations, cows(!), shrimp boats, and swampland.  Odd land indeed.    

Driving southern Louisiana’s back roads doesn’t offer much test to a motorcyclist’s skills but the scenery along the roadside makes up for the lull in hairpin turns and need to downshift.  The people who live in this country aren’t necessarily used to an errant traveller gawking about so a motorcyclist is advised to keep his or her senses sharp.  As usual, we are in the minority and often invisible when we aren’t expected.

I never want to hear these words again: “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you.” 

Frank Sinatra.

This is what an automobile driver invariably says after a near miss or a spill.  Both my knees are a mess of superficial scar tissue because I chose to lay my Little Ninja down and take a slide on the pavement rather than collide with someone’s front fender and take a sail over their hood.  I bear no animus against those who drive cars but I wish they would pay more attention.  I’ve sat in cars and I know it’s very cozy to be enveloped in structural steel with a seat belt and air bag at the ready to preserve my life while I listen to the radio and rummage through the glove compartment and have a snack and a sip from the cup holder.  I have no patience of forgiveness for those who are talking on their phones when they pull in front of me, however.

Overall, I can say that within the City of New Orleans, automobile drivers are courteous of those of us on two wheels whether we are driving a motorcycle, a motor scooter, or a bicycle.  The city contains its own challenges, pot holes mostly, but other modes of transportation sharing the roadway aren’t a major concern.  The good citizens of New Orleans, because of the state of most of the city’s roads, move slowly and are just as focussed on moving carefully and strategically as a motorcyclist.  It is a pleasure to drive a motorcycle in New Orleans.  It is only when one travels in other parishes that mind reading and safety become major concerns.

Whenever two motorcyclists encounter each other they part company by saying, “Ride safely.”  No one who has ever steered the handlebars or leaned into a curve needs to be told this.  It comes with the territory.  It is a way of life that lets us arrive in the territory ahead, Heaven willing.  It is a phrase we repeat and offer each other not to remind us to be careful and sharp, we say it as a charm that others will see us.  As motorcyclists, we hope against the odds that someone will see us before they cut us off and bring mayhem to our trajectory. 

Clark Gable.

The freedom a motorcycle grants is the chance to move like the wind through the elements.  When an fluid force like a motorcycle meets a solid object like a car, there can only be one outcome: two wheels will see the sky while four are planted on the earth, bones will be broken, skin will be broken, blood will flow...  A motorcyclist knows whose blood that will be and that is why a motorcyclist has a certain swagger and confidence.  He or she has cheated Death every increment of a mile both through his or her own skill and the providence of whatever angel watches over those who travel on two wheels.

Look twice.  Save a life.  Motorcycles are everywhere.

Thanks to The Selvage Yard for today's illustrations.  "Get yourself a motorcycle.  'Nuff said."

I'll see you on the road with the rubber side down.

I've added a sidebar in the (your) left column of this blog collecting the posts about my motorcycle journey to New Orleans from Boston.  This was a trip I waited all my life to make, all back roads across a part of our great nation.  Rereading these posts makes me yearn to travel other roads I haven't been on yet.  The future holds promise.

Ride safely,

WK

Link is mod

Odds and ends today.  Plenty happened but it was all off the record.  Instead, we bear witness to the Rose Tavern which is no longer in business though it looks like good times were had there for many a year.  I'm not clear in which neighborhood this lies.  I think of it as Broadmore but I only have a vague idea of Broadmore's boundaries.  It is in a self-contained knot of streets hard by Xavier University where President Obama spoke a month or two ago.  It could be part of Hollygrove.

Here's a close-up of the sign:

"Home of the Original Calliope High Steppers."  I don't know if the Calliope High Steppers are still doing whatever it is they did or where they call home now that the Rose Tavern is obviously out of commission.  Odd bits of tantalizing, off-the-record history abound in New Orleans.  

New Orleans is steeped in its own broth.  It is hip in a way Miles Davis was hip, like Louis Armstrong was hip, like William Burroughs was hip.  It is home to a gaggle of hipsters now spread all over the city but concentrated, it seems in the Bywater neighborhood.  New Orleans is not mod.

This picture is a recommended link.

There's been a lot of good writing about the kinds of topics I enjoy.  Here is a Boston-based example.  This is the kind of story I like to tell, a real stinker.  My ears are bent and my eyes are open in the Crescent City on the prowl for material. 

Other places to live.

Sweet Peanut!?!  McClusky, North Dakota!?  Population 500?!

If I needed a change of pace, McClusky would be the place to be.  I recently underwent a change, moving from Boston to New Orleans.  Though New Orleans is a smaller city in population than the Athens of America, it is bigger in spirit and activity.  A move to McClusky?  I don't think I'm ready, even though it's citizens no doubt have heart.  It is the "Heart of North Dakota."

From the town's website: "McClusky North Dakota is a great place to live and work. If you need a change of pace and are tired of the rat race, or you need to relocate to someplace that you can afford to live, then call us and find out how we can help you."


I'm not knocking McClusky.  The city boosters just aren't tailoring their pitch to someone like me.  Perhaps by design.  Other excerpts...
"Our 500 residents are proud of the businesses that stand ready to serve your needs."  Again, I am used to running into more than 500 people in an hour let alone a whole week in town.


"McClusky North Dakota has a fine medical clinic that is served by a neighboring physician twice a week."  I don't think this is anything to crow about, especially when considering the next fact: "McClusky is located just 65 miles from two of the major medical centers..."  Just 65 miles?  That's halfway across Connecticut!  I'm used to a bit more convenience.


Despite my misgivings about the medical care, a salute to McClusky, ND.  The employment opportunities are there, but the descriptions will break your break your heart.   I don't really like to groove on small town America's misfortunes but the story of the 80 year old plumber and the sick butcher surpass boosterism.  I'm not sure what genre this civic writing falls into beyond honest. 

Creole tiki

For reasons that make no sense to me, the main entrance of the old Tulane Medical School is studded with tiki heads.  Its a rather somber art deco building without much ornament except for these.  They are about eight inches tall.

Just another example of the odd bits of eye candy that litter this cityscape.  It's the same building that is home to this around the corner.  Who knows what the architect was thinking.  Perhaps he was drawing up his plans over Sazeracs at the Roosevelt Hotel a few blocks away.

An empire of boulevards.

Now that's what I call a genuine New Orleans Southern Oak.

Somewhere on Esplanade Avenue.

Contrary to what many Bostonians may thing, Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans is pronounced "Esplan-Aid"  not "Esplan-ahd."  The city is full of unfamiliar pronunciations.  Dryades Street is just "Drieds," Clio Street is "Cl-eye-o."  Conti Street is "Cont-eye."  Burgundy is "Burr-GUN-dee."  Chartres is "Charters."  Who said French is alive and well in New Orleans?

I was on Grand Route St. John today.  How's that for a street name?  Nice street.  It intersects with Mystery Street parallel to Ponce de Leon Street.  One of the pleasures about tootling around New Orleans is not the streetscapes themselves, which are lush, but the names of the streets.  Whatever collective, subconscious genius named these roadways did a dandy of a job.

Humanity Street, Desire Street, Law Street, Magazine Street, Coliseum Street, Camp Street, Gen. Pershing Street, General De Gaulle Drive, Barracks Street, Rampart Street (North and South), Music Street, Jewel Street, Warbler Street, Elysian Fields Avenue...a body can get lost in the mind's associations.

Some streets are dull.  Most are interesting.  New Orleans is full of surprises around most corners.  The city is a work in progress, rebuilding itself from the sediment up.  Vast in area and dense in details, wandering New Orleans is an expedition that brings as many rewards as a Kenyan safari.  What should be familiar, disorients.  What seems repetitive is perfected in each, next incarnation.  

Great moments in New Orleans science

While the temperature has dropped in New Orleans recently enough for people to wear winter coats (high 50s before the sun comes up) that's not the kind of freeze I'm discussing today.  These images come from friezes on either side of the former front door at Tulane Medical School.

This neighborhood, the foot of Tulane Avenue at Elk Place and pretty much up past South Claiborne till I don't know how far out, is a desert of anything interesting.  The old medical school building, while no prize, does has some interesting architectural details.  It's the same way with the abandoned Charity Hospital next door.  A lot of art deco at ground level, an imposing silhouette for the skyline, but the neighborhood is pretty much dead and there is no life to speak of.  The 70s era bunker that is Tulane Hospital isn't a peach of an attraction, eyeglass museum or no.

Here's the other side of the old med school doorway:

New Orleans Eyeglass Museum (part 3 of 3).

The New Orleans Eyeglass Museum, as it's commonly known is located on the fourth floor of Tulane University Hospital on Tulane Avenue, right across from the main branch of the New Orleans Public Library.  That mounted and laminated newspaper article comes from a 1978 issue of the Times-Picayune.  It describes the inspiration and raison d'etre of the collection.

As I've mentioned, the "museum" isn't so much a museum as a collection of eyeglasses and eye-related medical equipment, heavy on the glasses.  The glasses are arranged in chronologic order.  If you are interested in examining old things and drawing conclusions about how they were used and why they were designed a specific way, the visit will take 45 minutes or so.  Do not bring a companion who gets bored easily.  There isn't much to do at Tulane University Hospital if you don't have an emergency or an appointment and the cafeteria is nothing to recommend.

Because I take great pleasure in this, here is a clip:



I also enjoy metronomes, the sound of the St. Charles Avenue street car grinding along its tracks, and droning engines.

In other news, Amerivespa is coming to New Orleans next year.  It is a convention of Vespa owners.  That's right, even more motor scooters will be buzzing about the streets.  "La vespa" is the Italian word for "wasp."  Click the picture to see a vesperado popping a wheelie in front of St. Louis Cathedral.

Plantation Tour

Not Laura.

We went to a tour of the Laura Plantation in Vacherie, about an hour toward Baton Rouge.  It was okay.  The cost was $18 per adult and the tour lasted about an hour and forty-five minutes.  You'll learn about the plantation's proprietors.  The tour is a little skimpy on anything else and it was interrupted periodically with spiels for items sold in the gift shop.  Not great but not bad.  The best tourist attraction in Louisiana?  I don't know, I haven't visited many beyond the city of New Orleans.  I can't say I learned much and I can't say I wasted my time.  It was interesting, if thin gruel.

Laura Plantation.

As for Vacherie, we've never seen a place like this.  None of the roads we went down are connected to those that run parallel.  No cross streets.  After about a half mile, you cross the railroad tracks and land in sugar cane fields with small road side cemeteries.  It's all dirt roads on the other side of the tracks.  This isn't affluent or cosmopolitan country.  There's nothing wrong with that, but if you don't have any business there, there's no reason to visit.  I'll stick closer to home.

Back in New Orleans

I haven't lived in New Orleans long enough to be considered an antique.  I've probably moved to late to gain that cachet.

I've been back for a few hours, thank Heaven.  I took the Airport Shuttle, cheaper than a cab, to Lee Circle.    Unfortunately, the driver decided to go to the other end of the French Quarter for his first stop so I knew I would be last.  I was hoping to be first.  I didn't mind much.  I don't visit the Quarter often at night and certainly not from the viewpoint of people getting their first impressions.  Everyone in the van was excited and marveling at the scenery.  New Orleans is infectious.

When the driver found out my plan to be dropped off in Lee Circle rather than at Hotel Le Cirque, he just took me to my street instead so I wouldn't have to walk so far.  We discussed recent news in the Times-Picayune.  He brought me up to speed since I've only been reading hotel copies of USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.  I love to read the WSJ, which I milked for information every day this past week.  USA Today takes about ten minutes to finish for anything of interest.

I spoke with a professional body painter who is in town for a workshop.  I was polite enough not to ask if that is a real career.  We talked about the recent body painting work at the last White Linen Night, which she knew all about.  New Orleans: where body painters come to perfect their craft.  Who knew?  We do now.

She had never been here and she said she had dreamed about a visit for years.  Me too.  She is coming down in March for three weeks with her husband to celebrate her birthday.  He is originally from Slidell.

When the van driver learned I have lived here for a little over three months (!) he welcomed me and said everyone appreciates having new citizens in the city.  I promised to be the best citizen I can be.  I don't know how I am going to accomplish this yet, but it has always been my intention.  The road to New Orleans is paved with good intentions.  I arrived here by motorcycle on all back roads from Boston.  I think I am qualified to comment on the road to New Orleans.

There are many ways to the same nirvana.

New Orleans is a blessing

You may have noticed that the past few day's I haven't been writing up any lengthy reports.  I'm too busy living in New Orleans.  Words can't capture the experiences.  Greater writers than I have tried to describe what it is like to  be alive in this wonderful city and they've failed.  What dram of insight can I add?

I'm not despairing at my lack of ability.  Rather, I am reveling in it.  Bombarded with so many sights, smells, sounds, tastes, changes in air pressure and temperature... Blinkered by sudden shocks and delights and mysteries around every corner...  Besotted by kaleidoscopes and cornucopia and cacophony in the light of day and the dead of night...  I am rendered dumb by the mixture of joy, beauty and resilience that courses through New Orleans' neighborhoods, main streets, side streets, alleys and concourses.  The tap rooms and living rooms, the shops, the libraries, the front porches, the riverfront, the parks, the markets, the offices and their lobbies...all of New Orleans is soaked through with the sustaining ether that pervades every action and every moment.

Rather than write, I live for the moment in the moment.  I am delirious, dizzy and devil-may-care.  If a city can be a sinful place, New Orleans is a blessing.  I am not debauching or pursuing hedonistic, libertine delights.  I am going about my business, running errands and sharing conversations with my fellow citizens in this most delightful metropolis in the whole, wide world, a place where the mundane is magical and the miraculous is more common than pennies on the sidewalk.

If you've never been to New Orleans, everything you've heard, positive or negative, is true but bigger, better, more robust and vibrant.  If you've spent an hour here, you know what I'm talking about.  If you were sitting next to me we'd nudge each other and wink in agreement.

'Nuff said.
WK

A human metropolis

I visited Bayou Bienville again, a melancholy visit.  I've been to this part of the Lower Ninth Ward before but this morning didn't make it any less surreal to see.  I brought company with me this time and while we sat on the levee overlooking the brackish marsh that is Bayou Bienville, my companion could only say, "This is such a lonely place."

Lonely indeed.  Not only is the bayou an expanse of unrippled algae mats punctuated by decades-old, dead cypress stumps; in the other direction are the overgrown, abandoned blocks of the north side of the Lower Ninth Ward.  The land isn't totally abandoned to nature, but the scrub grass and shrubbery are running a slow motion, quiet riot over evidence of civilization.  Bushes overtake half the roadways.  We turned down one street and had to turn back, the pavement had dissolved into muddy, impassable sink holes.  It is quiet in this part of New Orleans.  Too quiet.  There are inhabited homes scattered along the remaining grid of streets but they are few and far between.  It must be lonely to live there, especially if, half a decade ago, you were used to having neighbors.

I stopped for gas on North Claiborne Avenue and found the best price I've had the pleasure to pay in a long, long while: $2.34 for a gallon.  While filling the tank everyone who walked past between pumps and cashier said hello.  Even in this part of New Orleans where the evidence of tragedy is self-evident for anyone with eyes to see, people partake of common courtesy and humanity.  As usual, we chatted motorcycles and weather while the gas pumps filled our tanks, mine much quicker than anyone else's.

"Hope you don't get caught in the rain," one man said.  "No thunderheads yet," I replied, looking up. "Not yet, but they're coming.  Keep dry," he answered.  "Will do.  You too," I said.

We took North Claiborne home.  My companion said, "The Ninth Ward is still devastated so many years after the fact."  I couldn't do anything but agree.  The further you get from downtown in that direction the more proof you see that work needs to be done.  Tourists don't see it.  We don't really see it where we live, but the wounds inflicted on the city remain deep and raw, undressed.  If they are being addressed, it is a slow process and most probably a painful one.  It is a black mark against the federal government's reputation as much as the oil slick currently polluting the Gulf of Mexico.

I have a lot to learn about my new city, the good about it as well as the less so.  I remember my New Orleans moment on the corner of Humanity and Metropolitan Streets.  I hate to keep bringing it up but it cemented my view of this city, one that is bittersweet yet full of hope and the scope of life.  I am a stranger in a strange land yet I feel I'm home even if I don't speak the language fluently.  Sure, I'm part poseur and neophyte.  Sure, I romanticize what I experience.  Struck with so much culture shock traveling from block to block, how can I be anything else?   I cannot apologize for being what I am not.  Like New Orleans, I can only strive to be better than what I am today.  Time will take the measure of this man as it will take the measure of this city in the face of all odds against it.

With Union, Justice, and Confidence,
WK
Qui Transtulit Sustinet.

New Orleans pilgrimage

We are in Mississippi as I write this and it is 5:55 AM Central Time.  There are about 200 miles and change left to travel to New Orleans.  It has been a very different trip in a 17-foot UHaul truck trailing a car than it was on a little 250cc Ninja motorcycle, light as a feather and free as a bird.

I've had chest pangs every time we've stopped for gas.  As usual, I will be doing a tally of miles traveled and gallons consumed.  It will be an interesting comparison.

We'll be in New Orleans this afternoon.  Once things are unpacked a bit and I approach being settled in, I'll share some of the details.  I bet you can't wait, Gentle Reader.  I know I'm ready to write it.

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.

The City Care Forgot

While the moniker "The City that Care Forgot" doesn't really apply to the Big Easy post-Katrina, the atmosphere is very different in New Orleans than it is in Boston, and I don't mean the humidity.  I'm in my third day here and I am naturally living a tourist's life rather than a citizen's but the congeniality is impressive.

I won't say that I find Boston oppressive, weather aside.  I mean that there is an easygoingness in New Orleans that Boston lacks.  I've been here before so I'm not entirely blinkered by the hospitality and I know it's not all pralines on the levee.  The decay on display is not just genteel, some of it is depressingly real.  Despite that, there is joy in the ruins and plenty to savor.

I'm staying in the French Quarter because I got a good hotel deal.  Last night, I walked Bourbon Street taking in the music, popping into one club after another.  No cover charge, the music spills into the streets.  There were some awful cover bands but there was some inspired, traditional jazz.  People were  gathered outside Preservation Hall for a reason.  The trumpeter melded so many triumphal marches into his solo of "When the Saints Go Marchin' In" including the Star Wars theme that people swooned long after the clarinetist took over.

I checked my watch, my internal Boston-based clock was ticking.  The MBTA shuts down at 12:30 and sure enough the clock on my wrist read midnight.  I am used to leaving according to the MBTA schedule; it's ingrained.  No worries though, on Bourbon Street, midnight is the midpoint toward when the night ends.

If I were taking public transportation, I needn't have worried much.  I was on the Canal Street line and a woman asked when the last street car would run.  "2:30 in the morning, ma'am," the driver answered.  Checking the RTA schedule, the first outbound car of the day runs at 4:22 AM.  If I were headed homeways on the St. Charles Line, the last train from downtown would be at 3:07AM with service resuming slightly an hour later.

That's a city that relishes its good times more than its beauty sleep.  

Oh, and the highlight of last night's musical adventure: listening to a nine-piece band blast out a funkadelic version of "Car Wash."  Those horns wailed.