An incurable disease

Our Lady of Prompt Succor, hasten to help us.

New Orleans' good cheer is infectious.  This is why everyone is welcome to spend some time in the Crescent City.  New Orleans matters.  There is nowhere else like it on earth.  The more people catch this contagion directly, the happier everyone will be.

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.

Carriage Ride Through The French Quarter.

Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.

“I need to have a car,” she says.

I ask why.

“I need to pick my granddaughter up from school” she says, “then I need to pick up my son from his school.  Then I need to pick up my daughter when she gets off work.  Then I need to take her to babysit her boyfriend’s children.  After that’s all done, I have to get here, to work.”

She is telling me this as we take a carriage ride through the French Quarter.  She is driving the mule, so she is in charge.  It was quite the tour.  We passed by the statue of Saint Joan of Arc.  I don't remember much else.

Welcome aboard, it's New Orleans!

I don't understand the backgrounds in this video clip..

I used to watch the show every Saturday night before Fantasy Island and it never occurred to me then.  Older and wiser now, why didn't the Love Boat pull into the port of New Orleans?  Why isn't the ship pulling past St. Louis Cathedral?  Imagine the adventures the crew and guest stars would have had.

My theory is that Isaac may have been a good shipboard bartender but he couldn't keep up with the concoctions conjures by New Orleans' mixologists.  Doc certainly had nothing to worry about.  He was as competent as most Crescent City physicians.  Cruise director Julie could run a tour.  She was conscientious and would do her due diligence to get the facts straight after obtaining her mayoral permit to conduct tours in city limits.  Congressman Fred Grandy would fit right in with both the political class and the concierges in the city.  Captain Stubing could navigate the Pacific Princess up the the Mississippi River from the Gulf guided by tug boats.

Why not New Orleans?  The same question over and over again.  Why not New Orleans?

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.

Frost on the zucchini

Who is this angry man?

It seems odd to feel chilled and wear a woolen coat in a city where palm trees and banana trees still have green leaves.  It seems odd to look serious in a city that is so overflowing with happenstance joy.  If a New Englander frowns, it is because he is disturbed to fetch a heavy sweater out of the bureau drawer to insulate his skinny bones when 50 degrees at the end of November should seem like a lark in the park.

We refuse to turn the heat on in our apartment.  One: it is electric heat and everyone knows electric heat is the most expensive form of all, over oil and natural gas.  Two: it's just not that cold.  Is it?

I woke up with frost on the end of the old schnozzola and when I pressed it into the nape of my wife's neck she yelped as if someone had dropped an ice cube down her bra at a bar-b-que.  Has New Orleans made us so soft already?  I am a flinty New Englander, of good, honest, Housatonic Valley Connecticut stock, used to shoveling snow and withstanding wind chills that would make a southerner wither from frostbite.  I have all my toes despite miles spent marching through slush and snowdrift with inadequate footgear.  50 degrees gives me the shivers.  I must be acclimating.

One thing I can't acclimate to is having a regular 9-5 job.  I can only go to Parkway Tavern and Bakery for lunch on the weekend now and the line for a po' boy stretches a hundred people deep.  On a weekday, it is more tolerable, maybe twenty people, maybe fifteen.  If you time it right on a Thursday, there's no line at all.   I miss being devil-may-care.

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.

Molly Marine

A little early to be thinking about Veterans' Day perhaps, but I don't get the day off so it doesn't seem like much of a holiday as much as a day to rue the fact that I don't work for the government.  That Veterans' Day is not a universally recognized holiday stirs up my bile and not just because I am a veteran who doesn't get a paid day off.

November 11 was originally Armistice Day, a day to celebrate the end of the War to End All Wars.  That didn't last long, obviously, but the day had a historic footprint.  Not that I'm against reserving a day to honor veterans but it seems to get lost in the slurry of other government holidays that aren't really observed.  Memorial Day is meant to honor the war dead but aside from members of the American Legion diligently placing flags on graves, you don't see much honor.  At least veterans have a better reputation are held in more esteem than when I was growing up.

They aren't all heroes and what they do is often the ugliest kind of work anyone would wish on another human being.  We should remember that.  It's not all all guts (courage) and glory.  It is just as often guts (entrails) and blood.  It is a profession I wish on no one no matter how vital it may be or pointless it may seem at its worst.

I don't speak from experience.  My time in the service, even during war time, was much like now.  I commuted to an office and typed for much of the day while staring at a computer screen.  Important work that needed to be done but not one requiring much sacrifice on my part.  This is why I dislike being perfunctorily thanked for serving my country as a veteran.  As Americans, we all serve our country in our own way just by being citizens.  We all free a marine to fight for good or ill, come what may.  This is what makes America great.  Even the bankers responsible for the current recession are add to the nation. What doesn't kill us will make us stronger (In God We Trust).

The statue of Molly Marine stands on Canal Street in the neutral ground that bisects Elk Place, a one block street named after an Elks Lodge of which there's no trace beyond the lingering name.  The neutral ground is also home to a walkway with commemorative plaques that are falling apart from the nation's bicentennial (1976, for those who don't know).  There is also a statue of a head lying on its side that was moved here from the 1984 New Orleans World's Fair, for those who remember that.

That's enough musing for one day.  I have to run.  I am meeting someone in the French Quarter for a nip and a bite before heading out to catch a show.  I can see her anxiously awaiting my arrival now....

You wouldn't want me to keep Mrs. King waiting too long now, would you?

Have a good night, and don't do anything I wouldn't do.
With a handshake,
WK

PS: It's been awhile since I plugged an Amazon product.  Give this a try.  There's no doubting where this patriot stands:

Every day a New Orleans Adventure

A New England Fisherman cuts the New Orleans fog.

Isn't every day an adventure in New Orleans?  Especially for those unfamiliar with the lay of the land and the ways of the city?  To most visitors, New Orleans must seem like a spermatozoa in profile: the blocks of the French Quarter and the long tail of the St. Charles Avenue Streetcar Line.  When I look at the map of the city that is hung on my wall, it is much bigger.  It resembles a pair of testicles, with Algiers and New Orleans East stretched out and cradling big, fertile balls.

It's not an accurate anatomical comparison.  Unless you live in Algiers or New Orleans East, those parts of the city are the furthest thing from your mind.  They are there nonetheless, part of the citizenry and fabric of this wonderful place.  They are, in fact, as mysterious and chemically influential as actual testes are to a male body.  New Orleans is not male, however.  It is the most seductive and sensuous of cities, a courtesan among the metropolises of the world akin to Venice in its charms and wiles.

If New Orleans can be compared to any part of the human anatomy before it is a zygote, it is more egg than sperm.  It is fertile, waiting to hatch.  New Orleans is a womb in which adults are born to their true natures, becoming more human in the process of self-discovery.  The humidity during a New Orleans summer is an amniotic bath.  You cannot know New Orleans by only knowing the French Quarter, the Vieux Carre, and the Garden District.  There are many, many more districts than those, each with its own flavor and patter and patois, each with its own creeds and conundrums and contradictions.

I watched a jazz funeral down North Broad Avenue today.  I thought it was a second line until I saw the pall bearers marching with their hands pressed to the side of a hearse, three to a side.  What's the difference?  I cannot tell you yet.  Both employ brass bands and colorful dress and a sense of celebration.  The funeral had an obvious purpose, to accompany the dead to his or her final resting place, while a second line parade is held for no other reason than being alive.  What is the difference?  I cannot tell you yet.  It is November and I have only lived here since June.  When I discover it, I suspect I won't have the words to express it.  You'll have to find out for yourself if you care.  You should.

This is New Orleans.  There is nowhere else like it that I've ever encountered.  I'm from New England.  Every town and city is pretty much the same except for the fact that they all hate each other and perceive differences in the layout of the town green, the civic administration, the number of Congregational churches vs. the number of Catholic churches vs. the Unitarians vs. the Baptists.  If you aren't from one New England town or city, you are from no where.  You may as well be from the moon or from Brazil or from Texas or from some other far flung place that has nothing to do with the square miles that make up this particular place.

New Orleanians don't hate anyone.  They welcome them, invite them for a drink, a meal, a dance, a good time.  Like an egg in a uterus, New Orleans' barrier is permeable.  I'm from New England and I find New Orleans like nothing I've ever encountered.  People from elsewhere in Louisiana say the same thing: "New Orleans may as well be its own country."  It is its own country, I think.  It is an Eden in its way where sin is conceived but carries no taint.  It seems impossible to do wrong in New Orleans.  Every avenue leads to adventure and discovery.

When I typed that last word my finger slipped and I wrote 'dixcovery.'  That's what New Orleans is, the land of Dixie, Dixieland, a country known to all with borders that can't be located on any map but the one a person carries in his or her soul.  

I am happy to live here and call it my home.  I cannot imagine ever being unhappy in New Orleans.  The good outweighs the bad in ways so that the bad doesn't seem all that bad at all.  It is.  Everything is.  Everything is good.  Everything is New Orleans: potholes, mold, moss, lichens, lizards, roaches, termites, aches and agues, stagnant water, midges, mosquitoes... Brilliance and transcendence all; motes, like us, in a gracious God's beaming eye.  If anything is corrupted, it is a parcel of the city's effervescent jigsaw, harlequin, unwritten yet implied, parti-colored constitution.

Stars shine over New Orleans and they are lucky stars.  They beam and smile bemused at the all the fertile activity they witness.  Heaven is not blind to human genius.

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:

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!

America's second-dirtiest city

Sophie Wright,  New Orleans educator.

Travel and Leisure Magazine ranks New Orleans as America's second dirtiest city.  I'm not going to say New Orleans is April fresh and clutter-free.  It isn't.  I've passed through clouds of questionable smells while walking through the French Quarter and other neighborhoods.  They are the kinds of smells you can't put your finger on and wouldn't want to if you could.  These are organic smells, not the industrial or chemical scents that define other cities I've visited.    

Canal Street is clean.  Magazine Street is Clean.  Prytania Street is clean.  Banks Street is clean. There isn't an inordinate amount of litter that I see.  I think the impression of dirtiness comes from the state of disrepair that afflicts the city's architecture.  I can't say that St. Claude Avenue is dirty.  It just doesn't sparkle.  I feel this way about St. Bernard Avenue and Washington Avenue and Freret Street, the whole St. Roch neighborhood, Treme, heck, even the Vieux Carre itself.  It isn't litter, it's just disrepair.  In an old, moist city the decay and peeling paint are inevitable.  Some would say this is part of New Orleans's charm, others would say it indicates a lack of civic pride.

If New Orleans lacks anything, it isn't civic pride.  This is a place that inspires fervent love in its inhabitants.  It does in me and I'm new here.  I'll take any street in New Orleans warts and all over the prim, manicured vistas of Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.  Plop me on Jefferson Davis Parkway or any stretch of Broad Street or Chef Menteur Highway and I will find something to catch my eye and someone to talk to.  An entirely different city, New Orleans has the vibe of New York (the dirtiest city on the list).  Everyone is up to something.  They may not be chasing a buck but New Orleanians are engaged with their lives and their surroundings, working to make a mark.

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.

New Orleans Eyeglass Museum

Not advertised.  Not a real tourist attraction.  Not much a museum either so much as a display of eyeglasses styles over the centuries and some vintage opthalmologic surgical instruments mounted behind glass.

Any guesses where this is?  

New Orleans' eyeglass museum

New Orleans has a wax museum, a pharmacy museum, a Civil War museum, the National WWII Museum, and the Great American Alligator Museum (which seems to be closed but is gorgeous to imagine being open nonetheless based on the sign and window display), as well as two art museums, Louisiana's state history museum and who knows what else.

I know another.  It is the eyeglass museum.  It's not an eyeglass museum in the sense that this place is, but I spent a half hour today examining the collection.  I'll try to stop by tomorrow and take some pictures for the big reveal.  It will be posted on Saturday, I'm afraid.  We are going to the opera tomorrow night: Porgy and Bess at the Mahalia Jackson Theater.  Gershwin.  I love Gershwin.

I've seen Hershey Felder play George Gershwin twice on stage in Hartford, Conn.  If he comes to New Orleans I'll see him again.  If you think that's improbable, I'll tell you otherwise.  The two gents I saw in "The Mystery of Irma Vep" in Hartford are in town at Le Chat Noir at the moment performing the same exact script.  They are great and the play is great, bawdy, quick-costume-changing fun.  Recommended.  We are going to see that too.  See you there.

-WK

A different video version featuring Gershwin on the ivories once removed.  Fascinating stuff.  Don't complain about hearing Rhapsody in Blue more than once in a day.  There's no such thing as too much goodness in the world....

New Orleans movie theaters

The back of Jazz Po-Boys on Magnolia Street

Caught the noon show of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at the Prytania Theater this afternoon.  Great on the big screen.  I wonder what Gene Wilder is up to now?  He is wonderful in this movie.

Whatever you think about Tim Burton, I don't think this movie needed to be remade.  Or Planet of the Apes for that matter.  Neither of the new versions was any good.  Of course I know they had to be remade for money and I was foolish enough to waste mine when they came out.  Fool me three times and shame on me.  I have no plans to see Alice in Wonderland or anything else he directs.  I did enjoy Edward Scissorhands and that was about it.

The Prytania is a gem of a place and thank Heaven there's a good theater in New Orleans.  We went to see Inception last week and I'll take Willie Wonka any day.  I think the New Yorker review nailed this one.  I've never seen any of this director's other films but, may I say, fool me twice and shame on me.

Earlier this week we went to see the Joan Rivers movie at the Cinemas at Canal Place.  I'll take the Prytania any day.  When you buy your ticket you have to choose your seat.  We didn't like what I'd chosen.  Now that I know what the theater looks like inside, I'll pick better if we go again.  In order to change our seats we needed new tickets issued from the "wait staff" and had to sign for them.  You can eat a real meal in your seat if you like and there's a button to summon the staff so you don't have to leave your seat.  Whatever.  I just want to go to the movies.  It doesn't have to be classed up to justify spending ten bucks on a ticket.

Films seem to have extended runs at Prytania so it's nice to have a little variety within bicycle distance but, as usual, I prefer a smaller, neighborhood locale.

I've finally figured out how to download pictures from my camera.  Instead of the tenuously thematic illustrations that have been my schtick for the past year or so, I'll be posting pictures I take around New Orleans from now on.  Sometimes they'll be random, like my days, and sometimes they will be the subject matter.  I'll post the other pictures I took of Jazz Po-Boys tomorrow.  Unfortunately, I tend to take a lot of pictures of signs.  I find them interesting.

Till tomorrow then,
WK

Catholic Sunday

Every Sunday at 9:30 AM, St Patrick's Church holds a mass in Latin.  The church is at 724 Camp Street in the Central Business District if anyone is interested in attending.  I wouldn't normally recommend religious sight seeing but the church is a registered historic landmark and the interior is beautiful.

In a mood to experience more things Catholic in this most Catholic of cities, we visited the Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos shrine on 919 Josephine Street.  Besides the remains of Father Seelos in a reliquary, there are a number of saints' relics on display and an interesting history of this beatified Redemptorist known as the "Cheerful Ascetic."

The Seelos Shrine shares space in Saint Mary's Assumption Church, technically at 2030 Constance Street.  We thought St. Patricks was beautiful but the architects of St. Mary's Assumption pulled out all the stops.  It is an awe-inspiring space of multiple dimensions with statuary everywhere.  I'm not up on my hagiography, so there were more saints present than I could identify.  Magnificent.

Illustration courtesy of the Seelos Shrine.

The bright lights of Mission Hill

I was in the Walgreen's at Brigham Circle on Thursday to buy a roll of cinnamon Mentos.  The guy in front of me in line struck up a conversation with the cashier, who is a friendly, chatty chap to begin with, just the kind of upbeat person you would want manning a cash register.

"It's been a while since I've been here last," the customer said.  "It looks a lot brighter.  You didn't change the fluorescent lights did you/"

"Yessir," the cashier answered, "The company changed all the bulbs about five weeks ago.  They came in and replaced all the fixtures.  The electricians told me they're using a new kind of bulb."

I thought so...I thought so," replied the customer, "It really looks good; brings the color out on the labels.  I noticed it as soon as I came in; the store seems so much brighter.  I was thinking that the last time I was here was a month and a half but you're probably right, it probably was only five weeks."

The cashier remarked that Walgreen's is always trying to improve the shopping experience while the man in front of me was counting out exact change for thirty-nine cents using the smallest denomination coins possible.  When the two of them had concluded the transaction, the customer left on his way telling the cashier, "Tell your manager I really appreciate the effort.  The lights look great."  The cashier said he would.

I don't visit this Walgreen's very often but I didn't notice anything except that the Valentine's Day merchandise had been replaced by beach-themed, summer toys.  The man in front of me must have been particularly attentive to his surroundings.  I noticed that he was wearing sunglasses indoors.  Perhaps he is photophobic.  That would explain his attention to ambient light, but not why he thinks brighter lights are better.

Why I want Walmart

Dorchester lacks two things: a Walmart and a comic book store.  It lacks some other things too but I notice these two most often and for opposite reasons.

Walmart would mop up the competition in Dorchester the way it has killed innumerable small downtowns across the country.  Whatever snob appeal not having a Walmart lends to Dot, and there aren't a lot of snobs to appeal to, the combination of low prices and exhaustive selection would satisfy a need that is  only partially met by local, vest pocket storefront merchants.  Make is a Super Walmart with the supermarket/department store combo including organic produce...Dorchester doesn't have enough empty land for the parking lot to serve this big box.  That's probably part of what keeps America's biggest retailer away.

Say what you will about supporting Chinese industry, selling ticky-tacky crap that falls apart ,and undercutting small business people; the latter are doing the former two things but without economies of scale.  I'm know I wouldn't mind cutting out my trip time and/or gas expense to buy a shirt and tie in one box for $10.

The lack of a Walmart is a mystery.  The lack of a comic book store is a relief.

The nearest real comic shop is at Coolidge Corner as the crow flies, the kind of shop that has old issues for a dollar in boxes and offers last month's comics at half price, the kind of shop that sells nothing but comics, the kind of shop where the conversations are about whether Batman could beat Spiderman.  Dorchester doesn't have that kind of shop because Dorchester doesn't have a critical mass of fanboys with disposable income and nothing better to do than hang around the comics store speculating what the touch of a woman may be like.

There are college students in Dorchester and there are arrested adolescents, there are plenty of dreamers and there are plenty of readers.  What there aren't is many people who live odd niche hobbies that are supposedly cool.  There aren't a lot of people with too much time to fritter away.  There is room for fun and games in Dorchester and there is room for frivolity, but most of it is of the home grown sort, the communal sort: porch front conversations, stickball in the street, street wide snow shoveling parties, barbecues.  I don't want to paint it to Norman Rockwell, but it is family friendly.  

Coolidge Corner has a comic shop.  Harvard Square has two.  Allston Village has one.  Kenmore Square has one.  Newbury Comics is a different kind of store.  No real fanboy goes there for comics except as last resort, though it is good for collectibles.  Dorchester isn't like those places.  It's demographic skews older and harder working.

If Walmart did decide to locate a store in Dorchester I would welcome it with the caveat that a comic store would open next door to mix the good with the bad, and I'm not hinting which I think is which.  I plead neutrality to gentrification in whatever form it takes.  That said, I can't imagine a photo like the one above being taken outside the McDonald's in Codman Square.  That's pure Walmart and pure comic book fan convention.  I can imagine it being taken in front of the Corita Gas Tank, however.

Put Dot in your pipe

If you wanted to mix a fine tobacco and give it a name that conjures contemplation and reflection, what would you call it?

If you wanted to brand a lifestyle that commends thinking deep thoughts while getting one's hands dirty not only in the realm of ideas but in the real world of rusty sewer pipes, what word sums that all up?  I've got a ready-made label for you, Buster.  Where I live, we call practical philosophers 'Dot Rats.'  If Voltaire were alive, he would agree.

Thinking deep thoughts, dreaming big dreams, wrestling joy from the barbs lobbed by ill-tempered slingers and archers, hearing God Himself call out in the rumble of the last train of the day headed back to the yard an hour and a  half after midnight, finding joy in the details that pile up to make a passing day...Buddy, that's the Dorchester way.  It may be esoteric to some but to Dorchesterites, that's how they get along.  You don't have to be religious to catch Dot spirit.  You just have to have an open eye, an open heart, and an open mind while you trudge down the slushy, gritty, January sidewalk that borders Dorchester Avenue and Washington Street and Geneva Avenue and Morton Street and Morrissey Boulevard and Gallivan Boulevard and Norfolk Street and Talbot Avenue and Columbia Road and Blue Hill Avenue and River Road.

You'll get your questions answered in Dorchester, Bub.  We're talking about Dorchester, Mass.  It's a part of Boston.  It's Boston's guts.  It's the part of the city where Boston keeps its nuts.  Two-fisted poets call Dorchester home, the kind of of fellows who can argue you out of a debate and knock some sense into your thick skull at the same time.  They will drink you under the table while sharing their lunch bucket packed at home with an extra slice of humble pie in case they meet somebody like you.

Pipe smokers say it isn't the nicotine that makes their tobacco worth smoking, it's the flavor.  Dorchesterites say something similar about their neighborhood.  It isn't the kicks that make Dorchester memorable, it's the nuances and top notes that make living here something to savor.  You can have your cake and dottle in Dorchester.  You can put it in your pipe and smoke it.  Sitting on a bench in Dorchester, the world is a wonder to contemplate, all the pieces in place, all the world a stage, all the gears meshed in perfect alignment, no thread out of place, a matrix...a darned Dot Matrix.

Rough and tumble, hale and hearty, Dorchester perseveres.