Saturday in the Park

After a rain soaked Labor Day weekend , we were very happy to be given a picture perfect Saturday. We headed out to Lafayette Square in New Orleans to attend the 5th Annual New Orleans Seafood Festival.



We got there right when it opened so we could enjoy looking around without a large crowd. I think the park was a great location to have this small festival. It provided shade and lots of green space.




All of the food vendors were lined up on one side of the park in the shade.










Mr. B's Gazpacheo was refreshing



Remoulade's meat pie wasn't really spicy but it was tasty.


We never did make it to the Luke booth. This picture was taken early and they weren't ready to serve at that time.


Cafe Giovanni's Shrimp and Grits where a huge disappointment. Instead of the expected rich, spicy flavor we found this dish to be too sweet (?)


The fried shrimp and bacon poboy was very, very good!


We sampled the bread pudding and it was delicious.

By this time we were extremely full and needed to move around. We decided to walk around the block from Magazine to Julia and back up St. Charles. There is so much to observe in this area of the city that we played tourist, stopping every few feet whenever something caught our eye.



















I have a slew of other pictures and I plan to do a post on some of those, especially the variety of window styles, in the near future.

Back at Lafayette Square, the crowd at the Festival was growing



and it was almost time for Amanda Shaw to perform.



We first witnessed Amanda's incredible talent 8 years ago when she was 11. At that time she was relatively unknown and her playing blew us away. She has matured since that performance and in my opinion she gets better and better. She sounded fantastic at the Seafood Festival and she got the crowd dancing.










You gotta love being in a place where a busload of tourists drive by a festival and wave at the festival goers!

After Amanda finished we followed our stomach's advice and got in line at Drago's char-broiled oyster booth.




They were worth the wait!!


Drago's was going thru french bread to fast, they had more delivered by cab. LOL




Kermit Ruffins followed Amanda Shaw with his Barbecue Swingers. They played for more than 90 minutes and the crowd loved them.
















Kermit's 19 year old daughter Neshia performed and she has a very sweet voice.


You can tell who her Daddy is, can't you?

We left about 4 and the people were still streaming into the park. It was a fantastically fun day, but it was good to get home, sunburned and full of good memories of a day in New Orleans. We are truely blessed to live here. See you next week!

Scuzzbuckets of the Week

TUCSON, Ariz (Reuters) - The Republican Party in Representative Gabrielle Giffords' home county is raising eyebrows by raffling off a Glock handgun -- the same brand handgun with which Giffords, a Democrat, was shot through the head in January.

"When I first heard about this last week in an email, I said 'That's a joke, a sick joke. Nobody could be doing that,'" said Pima County Democratic Party Chairman Jeff Rogers.

"This is like tearing the scab off a wound. This community is still healing."

The county Republican organization announced the fund-raiser in its online newsletter, Tracks, on August 26.

"Get yourself a new Glock 23 .40 cal handgun for just 10 bucks -- if your name is drawn," the newsletter reads.

A picture of the handgun, being raffled with three 12-round magazines and a case, also appears in the newsletter. The Republicans are selling 125 tickets.

Mike Shaw, chairman pro tem of the Pima County Republicans, and Frank Antenori, a Republican state senator who has filed paperwork for a potential run against Giffords, did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

Jared Lee Loughner, 22, who has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia, is charged with shooting Giffords and 18 others with a Glock 19 handgun during a shopping center meet-and-greet January 8.

Six people died in the rampage before bystanders tackled Loughner, preventing him from reloading.

Giffords supports the constitutional right to keep and bear arms, said her spokesman Mark Kimble, though he could not confirm media reports that the congresswoman has owned a Glock handgun.

A Wet Labor Day Weekend

September is the high point on the tropical activity calendar. We who live on the Gulf Coast accept the fact that our Labor Day weekends might possibly be hampered by tropical activity. And this year we have Tropical Storm Lee.

What follows are my pix taken on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain (approximately 30 miles away from the French Quarter). The pictures are not as sensational as the Weather Channel would have you believe about Lee's intensity. Lee is more of a slow moving storm than a powerful one. As I type this (Sunday at 8 AM) it's still pouring outside.



This was taken from Lakeview Drive, better known as Rats Nest Road in Slidell. The old piers destroyed by Katrina are in the foreground and the new Twin Spans can be seen in the background.


This train was moving slowly across the submerged marshland heading towards Lake Pontchartrain.


Six years Post Katrina, St. Genevieve Catholic Church in the Bayou Liberty area of Slidell (my neighborhood) is finally rebuilding.



I like this shot of the crosses of the chapel and church.


Bayou Liberty boat berths. Those poles in the foreground represent sunken boat slips.





Swings and benches submerged in Lee's flood waters.


This is what this area normally looks like.


Hubby pointed out the beauty of the Spanish Moss and the waters of Bayou Liberty.


This crazy truck driver drove through the flood waters to drop off a friend.



The "new" Bayou Liberty Bridge taken from the Church side of the Bayou.





A view of the piers on the St. Genevieve grounds.



A bright spot in all of this wet windy weather is that our 6 month old lab discovered how much he LOVES water!

Labor Day Weekend - Friday

Hello T.S. Lee.

Baboons?

 

The English language has some wonderfully anthropomorphic collective nouns for the various groups of animals.

We are all familiar with a Herd of cows, a Flock of chickens, a School of fish and a Gaggle of geese.

However, less widely known is a Pride of lions, a Murder of crows (as well as their cousins the rooks and ravens), an Exaltation of doves and, presumably because they look so wise, a Parliament of owls.

Now consider a group of Baboons. They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive and least intelligent of all primates.  And what is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons?

Believe it or not ....... a Congress!

I guess that pretty much explains the things that come out of Washington !