Gumbo and Sunshine

The weather has been stellar for the past week, so we put aside our chores to spend the whole day outside on Saturday. As luck would have it, there was a Gumbo Cookoff going on in Olde Towne Slidell. What to do for lunch: solved!

Click on pictures for larger versions.



Olde Towne Slidell was pretty much swamped by Hurricane Katrina. Up to a few months ago the city had been working out of trailers while the new City Hall was being built. What's great about the new city complex is that there is a lot of room to support venues like the Gumbo Cookoff.



For $10 each we could sample all the gumbo we wanted. Some were good, a few others were downright nasty. I can honestly say I got my gumbo fix. Here are a few pictures of what we shared.







While we ate our gumbo we were entertained by this man playing a dulcimer. Combine the beauty of his music with the sun shining, a mild breeze, good eats and being with my best friend and I call that a perfect time.









After eating five or six samples we were in dire need of moving around. We decided to walk around Olde Towne to see what was going on.



Slidell is a small, quiet city. She's been around a few hundred years and has some interesting sites. Right around the corner from the City Hall complex are a series of murals painted by local artists.





In this area we found the remains of the Club Phoenix lounge which suspiciously burned down last week in a four alarm blaze.





As we passed up the charred hip hop club, we were drawn up by the architectural details of some of the neighboring buildings.





The neighborhood in Olde Towne has a quiet charm.













Does anybody out there want to open an ice cream shop? This one's been for sale since the storm.



We found our way back to the cookoff for another beer before heading home.



Once home I discovered one of my cats on the back porch who promptly took off when I started to water my herbs.





It was a beautiful day topped off with a viewing the "Super Moon".

eternal scuzzbucket

Who else but that bastard Rush Limbaugh. From gawker dot com at this link an excerpt:


A caller asked Limbaugh, "If these are the people that invented the Prius, have mastered public transportation, recycling, why did Mother Earth, Gaia if you will, hit them with this disaster?"

Limbaugh called this an "interesting question," and played a clip of ABC's Diane Sawyer reporting from a shelter in Japan. In the clip, Sawyer is surprised that the refugees in the shelter have maintained a recycling program. Limbaugh first mocked Sawyer, doing an impression of her and saying that "she sounds like she saw her husband for the first time in six months." He then turned to his caller's question.

"He's right," Limbaugh said. "They've given us the Prius. Even now, refugees are recycling their garbage." Here, he began to laugh, continuing, "and yet, Gaia levels them! Just wipes them out!"

And yet Gilbert Gottfried is the one who loses his job.

A Crown Jewel in New Orleans

It has been close to ten years since I ventured to City Park in New Orleans. Since then the park has recovered from Katrina and is looking as beautiful as she can. Hubby and I had business to do in "Kennah" and chose City Park to kill some time; we were happily surprised in the beauty that the park offers. If you're interested, this site Offers the history of the Park. I never knew it was once the site of a plantation.

Here are the pictures, in no particular order.

Click on pictures for larger versions.


the sundial




Popp's Bandstand


Called the "Colombier de Carol", this building is also called City Park Pigeonierre, or a dovecote.


This is the plaque for the Colombier . Designed and dedicated by former City Park President and New Orleans barrister Felix Dreyfous.

Speaking of signs and plaques, City Park has so many plaques throughout its 1,300 acres and you can find them and their history at this website.









There are so many bridges crossing the Lagoon at the Park. I fell in love with each and every one of them, as none of them are the same.




The Peristyle, built in 1907.



One of the lions outside the Peristyle


I spotted this very beauty at a ticket window just outside the kiddie playground.

After walking the length of the lagoon, we decided to cross the street into another fenced in portion of the park and were extremely happy to discover that it was the Bestoff Sculpture Garden!



A coworker told me about this garden several years ago and I'd been meaning to find it. Glad we did today. What a tremendous place to spend some time.

Described by goneworleans about dot com as follows:

It's a 5-acre garden under cypress and magnolia trees, as well as, centuries-old oak trees laden with Spanish moss, in the heart of City Park. It is beautifully landscaped. The garden contains several water features including a small cascading garden pool with stepping stones to cross. A lagoon that bisects the garden empties into two large basins, each containing a large sculpture. A sculpture pool cascades down into one of the lagoon basins. The lagoons are filled with fish and turtles. Herons and swans inhabit the area as well. Pathways wonder through the garden and lead to the larger sculptures. Because these paths were designed to preserve the extensive root patterns of the over 200 year-old live oak trees, they wonder through the garden in a design dictated by nature. Smaller sculptures are exhibited in the elliptical Sculpture Theater.

For a dollar you can obtain a guide to the sculptures, which I highly recommend.


Entitled "Mother and Child (1988) by Fernando Botero





Tree of Necklaces (reminded me of Mardi Gras) (2002) by Jean-Michel Othoniel


"Window and Ladder - Too Late for Help" by Leandro Erlich




This one is called "Monkeys" by Rona Pondick and it's really disturbing when you look closely.




"Travelin' Light" by Alison Saar



Pablo Casals' Obelisk (1983) by Arman







One of the strangest things we discovered was what appears to be a grave between the sculpture garden and the botanical garden.





We only could spend three hours at the park today, so we agreed that our next trip in two weeks we will visit the Botanical Gardens and the NOMA. Pictures to follow.

Chewbacchus

Chewbacchus 2011! from Milo Pinkerton on Vimeo.

Eris Parade details from one of the arrested...

ReX DINGLER: Eris Parade details from one of the arrested...: "Original article is at http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2011/03/15776.php Arrested at the Eris Parade by Anonymous by request Wednesda..."

another post at this website

Another eyewitness report is here

NOLA dot com's take on it at this link.

Caught on a phone

Banksy: World’s top street artist takes on the BP Oil Disaster (PHOTOS)

Banksy: World’s top street artist takes on the BP Oil Disaster (PHOTOS)

Discovery's Wakeup Call - March 7, 2011

Space shuttle Discovery's crew started its last day at the International Space Station with a special wake up call. The "Theme from Star Trek," performed by Alexander Courage, served as the wake up music for Discovery's crew at 2:23 a.m. It received the second most public votes from a Top 40 list in a Space Shuttle Program-sponsored song contest. The top two songs with the most votes from that list earned the right to be played as wake up music for Discovery's crew during its final mission. As a bonus, actor William Shatner recorded a special introduction to the song: "Space, the final frontier. These have been the voyages of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Her 30 year mission: To seek out new science. To build new outposts. To bring nations together on the final frontier. To boldly go, and do, what no spacecraft has done before."

from <a href = http://nasawatch.com/”> nasawatch dot com </a>

Just Because

For Mardi Gras, y'all

Carnival Time

Mardi Gras - the biggest free show on earth - is truely a remarkable event. In New Orleans the season starts on Twelfth Night, aka Kings Day (January 6th) and runs through Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras day.

This year we are experiencing the longest Mardi Gras season in our lifetimes. I can't complain, because that means a longer period to eat King Cake!



Come midnight this coming Tuesday there are going to be some people who feel as if they've partied since January 6th. The out of towners who come here to lose their identities for a weekend . And the young kids, like my 22 year old daughter, who want to be in the heart of it all, breathing it all in and hoping the drinks and parades don't end early.

I used to be like that. I used to get up early and leave the house in Slidell by 6 a.m., come rain or shine to make sure we secured a spot on St. Charles Avenue. We sipped our spiked coffee, our coolers were full of beer and sandwiches, snacks and drinks for the kids. We were prepared for a day of fun. Mardi Gras music evokes such good memories of those days.



I'm happy to have made all of those memories. I have seen Mardi Gras from balconies on Bourbon Street, I've been in the crowds on Bourbon Street.



I've done Mardi Gras in Metairie and from the stands of Gallier Hall. I love the traditions of the Krewes of Zulu and Rex . The chance of seeing marching Bands like St. Aug's Marching 100 and Southern University will always excite me.



I even withstood and entire truck parade......once.

I've been to the Krewe of Dreux but haven't made it to the Krewe du Vieux .

I've never "shown my tits". That's for drunken tourists.

Now I am at the point in my life where I can let Mardi Gras go on without me. Not unike NOLA blogger Cliff. I can leave the parades and balls to the Carnival enthusiasts and celebrate the season in my own way. At home with a King Cake, Abita Beer, Zapps Chips and Popeyes chicken. No worries about traffic and DWI's, trying to find a place to pee on Mardi Gras Day.



I wouldn't ever move away from here, because Mardi Gras is only a small piece of the beauty and culture there is available in this tiny speck in the world.

On Being Reclusive in a Social Town

Glenn over at Bigeasy Bear makes me feel less alone in his post "On Being Reclusive in a Social Town", about those of us that don't "do" Mardi Gras.