Why We Are Here

While resting between sets of my workout today, a thought just popped into my head. "We are here to give love not to receive it". How much unhappiness, addictions, suicide and violence would be avoided if people just took that statement to heart. Such a simple statement and yet so profound.

Who is a Hero?

I really think the term hero is thrown around way too much. 
Seems like anyone in uniform (military or civilian) are 
given carte blanche hero status, just because they wear 
a uniform. They are NOT all heroes, and it lowers the 
meaning of the term hero when used so easily. Even some 
sports and entertainment figures are given hero status just 
because of their social status and popularity, not for any 
really heroic thing they have done. 

Being killed on duty or on the job, does not automatically 
make someone a hero. Not all people put on a uniform for 
some higher purpose. I know I didn't join the Navy out of 
some high calling. It was just plain practical. I knew I 
wasn't going to college right out of high school, 
and didn't want to be drafted into the Army. I joined the 
Navy for 3 reasons. First, I thought it was one of the 
safer military branches to be in during the late 60's while 
the Vietnam war was being fought. Second, I was hoping to 
cruise to places/countries I'd never been before and third, 
I needed the GI bill to go to college when I finished 
my enlistment.

I still ended up going to Vietnam, but I was on a 
destroyer off the coast. We also came under fire twice 
from shore batteries off the coast of North Vietnam, 
but even if I'd been wounded or killed I still was 
not a hero. I actually took "home" movies of the shells 
landing all around our ship. Nothing heroic about that. 
I just wanted a memory. I did pray the whole time asking 
God not to let me die though, so I could eventually see 
the results of my filming. 

When my ship ended it's tour of duty and went back 
to Florida, I volunteered to go back to Vietnam on shore 
duty, but that was because of curiosity and I wanted to 
see what all the fuss was about first hand, since I 
only saw Vietnam from a ship the previous tour. 
It definitely wasn't because of a some higher call to duty. 
I also had developed an affinity for underage drinking 
(I was only 18) and Asian women, having stopped in Japan, 
Taiwan and the Philippines on the way to Vietnam. 
Don't see any heroics there either.

People become soldiers, firemen, policemen, etc. for a 
multitude of reasons, and some of those people are not 
even NICE people, much less heroes. I ran into a surprising 
amount of those, both enlisted and officers while serving 
on ship and shore duty, Probably MORE percentage wise than 
you'd find in the general civilian population.

We need to stop lumping everyone in a certain occupation 
as a hero just because they were killed doing their job 
and/or who killed them as the only requirement for 
hero status. Not all the people that were killed by the 
terrorists on 9/11 were heroes. Many were in the wrong 
place at the wrong time, though there were indeed 
many heroes who showed more concern for others than 
for themselves on that day. I just think the term hero 
should be reserved for those who have actually shown 
heroism in some way in everyday life or in a war or crisis.

I know people want to give some kind of meaning to 
senseless deaths, especially when it happens at the same 
time to a lot of people in a war or terrorist attack, 
but every day, people are senselessly killed in shootings 
and accidents and I don't see them all being called 
heroes in the news.

What makes the person killed during a terrorist attack more 
of a hero than kids killed in a school shooting, or a family 
killed by a crazed gunman in a fast food restaurant? 
If two people were killed in a restaurant by a 
distraught former employee and one was in a military uniform 
and the other was a shabbily dressed homeless person, 
would they both be called "fallen heroes"? 
Now what if the person doing the shooting was a 
Muslim terrorist? Would both of the deceased now 
be elevated to hero status?

The term "Hero" should be reserved for those who 
go above and beyond their duties in a job or in their 
everyday life during an exceptional moment or through a 
lifetime of selflessness, compassion and unconditional love. 
They should be called a hero for who they are or were as a 
person and not because of a particular uniform or membership 
in a particular organization or group.

Bud's Broiler Memories

Reading an article by Errol Laborde , editor of New Orleans Magazine brought back memories of my favorite hamburger place, Bud's Broiler.

I had my first Bud's Broiler hamburger at their Pelopidas St. location in Gentilly. My parents had just rented a house at 4206 Pauger St, second house from the corner of Pauger and Pelopidas. Bud's Broiler was just a half block from my home. I probably ate there several times a month. My favorite burger was their #4, with chili, chopped onions and grated fresh cheddar cheese about 1/2 inch thick, along with a chocolate shake and one of their fried pies for desert. Errol Laborde rated the #4 as the #1 burger of choice, though he preferred it with their special hickory sauce instead of chili.

As the years passed, I graduated from high school and joined the Navy, but whenever I was home on leave the first "fast food" restaurant I visited was Bud's. I eventually moved to Hawaii, and the Bud's Broiler on Pelopidas eventually closed. I would have liked to think it was because I was no longer a regular customer, but I believe the actual reason was the increase in crime in the neighborhood resulting in several robberies at the restaurant.

Bud's Broiler and the #4 burger were never out of my memory though. I would extol the virtues of the restaurant and the #4 to Sharon, my girlfriend, just about every time we ate a burger at a restaurant in Hawaii. On one of our trips to New Orleans, while visiting my mom and sister in Chalmette, we passed a Bud's Broiler that I believed had recently opened on Judge Perez Drive. Taking her there, for me, was probably equivalent to someone who had grown up in a more affluent neighborhood and lifestyle taking an out of state visitor to Galatoire's in the French Quarter for the first time.

My last visit to a Bud's Broiler was a few years before Katrina, at their original location on City Park Ave, near Delgado Community College. I had gone with my son Taylor, to the school to pick up some transcripts. Since it was around lunch time he suggested we go to the Burger King near the college. On the way, I saw the Bud's Broiler and told him we HAD to go there instead. I was dumbfounded when he told me he'd never eaten there the whole time he attended Delgado (in the culinary arts program no less). Taking him there for the first time, was just about as memorable for me as when he took his first steps or riding his bike without training wheels for the first time. Only in New Orleans can a meal evoke that kind of emotional experience.

More Hypocracy by Catholic Church

Today, two priests visited suspected Nazi Guard John Demjanjuk, who is accused by the German government of assisting in the murder of 29,000 Jews and is being deported by the U.S government.  Yet,  the Catholic Church, represented by Bishop John D'Arcy and the Cardinal Newman Society are protesting the guest speaker appearance of President Obama at Notre Dame University, because of his view on abortion.  Bishop D'Arcy is planning on boycotting the event in protest.  It makes me wonder if the Catholic Church still harbors animosity toward Jews since it is offended by the appearance of  the President of the U.S. because he has a different opinion or belief than that of the church, but consoles and has no problem being in the presence of a likely, mass murderer, of thousands of Jews. 

Missing Mass, a Mortal Sin....Still? How About A New Inquisition Too!

My son's stepdaughter just had her First Communion on Sunday. My son and his wife don't attend Mass as far as I know, and I began to wonder if the Catholic Church still considered missing Mass a mortal sin. According to the sites I've googled, apparently it does. Now I don't think his stepdaughter will be attending Mass on her own and I seriously doubt her parents will start attending services. Anyway, I began to think, for this one reason alone, I don't know how anyone can seriously follow a Church that is still stuck in the Middle Ages.

I was a Catholic until I began to think for myself and not allow the Church to govern my relationship to God. This was a gradual awakening. One of the things that led to my awakening was the fact that I found myself more compassionate than the "God" of the Catholic church. God "sent" people to Hell because they ate meat on Friday, or missed Sunday Mass, hand in hand with murderers, etc. How could I be more compassionate than God was. God is nothing but compassion and love. We are His creation and our real self embodies all that God is. God is everywhere. The very ground on which we walk is holy. There is no place that God isn't. In reality, we can't be separate from God. We might think we are separate, because we were taught that by the Church, but where ever we are, God is. So, how can attending church on Sunday or not attending have anything to do with sin. I don't know for a fact, but I suspect the Church declared attending Mass a mortal sin in order to "keep the troops in line" and to continue to finance Church operations.

I also found my spiritual beliefs more in line with the teachings of Jesus than that of the Church. A spiritual master once said Jesus was killed twice. First by the Jews, but only his body was destroyed. It did little damage. The second more damaging killing occured in Rome.

P.S. If the church ever finds it's way out of the Middle Ages and decides that missing Mass is no longer a mortal sin, than what happens to all of the souls who went to Hell for it? Do they get a free pass out?

Fear Of Big Government

Why do so many conservatives fear big government? Isn't the government "we the people"? The government is not separate from us. The government represents the people. "Big Government" to the super rich and powerful means they don't want "we the people" to have any control or regulations, to restrain what they do. Now almost everyone is suffering because of this lack of restraint. The state of the economy can't be blamed entirely on the the rich and powerful though; the continued "having" way of living, a life dependent on having much more than necessary has brought us to the economic condition we now find ourselves.

Eric Fromm's book To Have Or To Be? published in 1976 was very prophetic in it's prediction 33 years ago of economic disaster, if we did not change our attitudes from a "having" society to a "being" society. In it he writes, "Even authors whom one cannot call radical humanists, since they hardly transcend the transpersonal, mechanistic attitude of our age....do not fail to see that a radical inner human change is the only alternative to economic catastrophe. Mesarovic and Pestel demand a "new world consciousness....a new attitude toward nature, based on harmony rather than on conquest....a sense of identification with future generations... For the first time in Man's life on earth, he is being asked to refrain from doing what he can do; he is being asked to restrain his economic and technological advancement, or at least to direct it differently from before; he is being asked by all the future generations of the earth to share his good fortune with the unfortunate--not in a spirit of charity but in a spirit of necessity. He is being asked to concentrate now on the organic growth of the total world system. Can he, in good conscience, say no?" They conclude that without these fundamental human changes, "Homo sapiens is a good as doomed."

I don't know if the new administration will be able to fix the economic mess we find ourselves in today, but even if it succeeds in the short term; unless society becomes less greedy in its consumerism, and more open to living in harmony with all people, all nations and with all of nature, and to look for happiness within our selves instead of in our possessions, the world condition can only get worse.

Great Quotes

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.

Charles De Gaulle (1890-1970)

Great Quotes

It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness, but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes are within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn(1918-, Russian Novelist)

Great Quotes

"He who perceives me everywhere and all things in me and never loses sight of me I never lose sight of him."-- Bhagavad-Gita

Thank You Ray Stevens

I heard a song on the radio several weeks ago. The song was Louisiana (1927). I was familiar with the tune because I have a version of it sung by Aaron Neville in my CD collection. It’s an old Randy Newman composition, about the 1927 Mississippi River flood. I didn’t recognize the artist singing this new version, until the DJ said it was Ray Stevens, and it was a cut from a new tribute album to New Orleans, titled New Orleans Moon. My first thought was I had misheard the name of the artist or it was a different Ray Stevens. I mean I didn’t think it could be the Ahab The Arab singer, the country performer who wrote and sang a lot of parody songs that I listened to as a teenager!

I searched for the album on Amazon.Com and couldn’t find it. If Amazon didn’t have it, I had no idea who might be selling it. I Googled "Ray Stevens New Orleans Moon" and learned it was indeed, The Streak, Ray Stevens. The album was being released by Ray’s own record label, Clyde Records, and was currently being sold only as a download from the Itunes store. The CD would not be released until July 10.

I downloaded the eleven songs from the album. Ten of the songs were old New Orleans and Louisiana standards. They were songs I heard so many times growing up in New Orleans that they had really lost any emotional impact on me. They were background music, and only songs that tourists requested, but after listening to the first cut, I knew this album might be something special, and I was not disappointed.

I would never have imagined that Way Down Yonder in New Orleans, could bring me close to tears. It just wasn’t that type of song….that is, until Ray Steven’s version proved me wrong. The second cut, was a new song and the title cut, New Orleans Moon, composed by Ray and Chuck Redden a Gulf Coast DJ, famous for his Governor Edwin Edwards impersonation. It should easily become a New Orleans standard similar to Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans, which by the way is also on the album.

I love everything about this tribute album. I have Harry Connick’s CD, My Nola, and it doesn’t come close to the emotional impact New Orleans Moon has on me. I’ve listened to this album at sometime just about every day since I downloaded it a month ago. I’ve never done that with ANY other album. It still has not lost it’s magic.

The album paints a picture of New Orleans and Louisiana in music. The musical arrangements, the backup musicians and singers, even the order in which the songs were recorded are perfect. If you are not hooked after the first two songs you don’t have an ounce of red beans and rice flowing through your veins. (The only problem with downloaded albums is there or no liner notes, so one doesn’t know the story behind the album and the names of the back up performers. You will have to purchase the CD version to get that.)

New Orleans Moon pays tribute to Dixieland music with Basin Street Blues, as well as in Way Down Yonder; Gospel and Dixieland in When The Saints Go Marching In; Brass Band, Blues and Gospel in the St. James Infirmary/Just A Closer Walk medley and Cajun music in Jambalaya and Louisiana Man. In the Randy Newman composition, Louisiana, the choir singing the refrain “Louisiana…Louisiana” will give you goose bumps. The ninth and tenth cuts, New Orleans, a 1960 top 40 song by Gary U.S. Bonds and The Battle Of New Orleans, a Johnny Horton tune from 1959/60 are more in the “novelty” class of songs, but definitely fit in this New Orleans tribute album. Ray does a great job with them. Even if those two songs bring the emotional level of the album down a notch, the last cut, Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans, quickly brings you back to the misty eyed level of emotion and could not be a more fitting ending to the album.

What impressed me so much about New Orleans Moon is that these new versions of old standards, done with such heartfelt emotion, are not different from the originals, they are just better.

Thank You Ray Stevens!!!

Great Quotes

Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.

St. Francis De Sales
(1567- 1622, Roman Catholic bishop, writer)

Great Quotes

Peace is not God's gift to his creatures. It is our gift to each
other.

Elie Wiesel

Great Quotes

When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to
be free.

Charles Evans Hughes

A Visit Home 10 Months After Katrina

I went back to New Orleans a couple of weeks ago for a wedding. I hadn't been there since May of 2005. I knew the city was devastated, but the actual experience of it was surreal. Coming from Florida, Interstate 10 passes through New Orleans East.




The 12 miles, from the now closed Six Flags Amusement Park to the Vieux Carre exit off I-10 resembled the typical ghost town in a science fiction Doomsday movie.

We stayed in the French Quarter, which experienced only minor physical damage, but has a noticeable amount of businesses that have yet to reopen; for various reasons, including a shortage of employees due to lack of housing.

The food and drinks at places like Coops on Decatur, Court of Two Sisters (Jazz Brunch), Cafe Du Monde, Pat O'Briens, etc., was still great, but there was a difference in the mood of the city. I don't mean the people. We had good and bad service (mostly good) at restaurants and other establishments, but the city seemed a living entity, in a state of shock, or depression. It wasn't just the usual New Orleans sweltering summer heat, it was more intense than that, weighing one's own mood down.

The obvious areas of devastation look as if the storm hit just days
ago instead of 10 months ago. Even the lightly damaged areas like the Garden District had a depressed look, or feel, like the city's physical exterior was expressing what its residents are experiencing emotionally. If New Orleans was admitted to a hospital it would be on the critical, but stable list, barring any more complications, like getting hit by another large storm.








In the past, New Orleans survived yearly, yellow fever epidemics that decimated the population. At the Battle of New Orleans an overwhelming, elite military force of British regulars, was defeated with an unusual, but typically New Orleans gumbo, of soldiers, pirates and civilian volunteers of mixed racial and social status. We can only hope the overwhelming forces currently confronting New Orleans, will also be defeated, with the help of all those who truly care for "The City That Care Forgot".

Mardi Gras And A Pair Of Beads On The Ground

As I watched CNN's all day coverage of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, I wondered where the reporters got their info about why parade watchers didn't pick up beads or other Carnival throws that missed their hands and fell to the ground. They kept referring to it as if it was some philosophical tradition of New Orleaneans; that the thrill or challenge was in the “catch”, not in the item itself. Wrong!!! I can only think they spoke with people from "uptown", like lawyers, or other "high society" types, who grew up in the Garden District, or 30 something and younger individuals who didn't experience Mardi Gras back in the 50's and 60's. During those years, people would scramble for beads that landed on the ground, like fans at the World Series diving for a baseball that lands in the crowd.

There were a couple of reasons why this "diving for trinkets" died over the years. Older and taller parade goers would often attempt to step on beads they missed catching in their hands, called the “stomp and retrieve” maneuver, with the result being that a lot of kids, lacking the height for catching in the air, but the advantage of being closer to the ground, had their fingers crushed. I think New Orleans lost a lot of potential piano and guitar players during that era.

The second reason we no longer “fought” for grounded beads, is parade krewes started to throw a lot more stuff than they use too. As a kid, if I went home with a handful of beads and a few "crappy" plastic trinkets, I considered it a decent haul. Now you can often fill a large kitchen garbage bag full of beads, doubloons, stuffed animals,plastic cups, etc. from one average size parade. In other words, as the rich got richer, besides being able to buy a bigger home in the Garden District, they could also purchase more junk to throw to the masses during Mardi Gras; known as the trickle or “trinket” down effect by those who support huge tax breaks for the super affluent. Also, as the years progressed, a lot of Carnival parade krewe members, now came from the working class, and they remembered what it was like down on the streets. So, they too, increased the amount of "throws" to the crowd. With bead sacks now filled to the bursting point there is no need to scrounge for anything that hits the ground.

I was also surprised none of the CNN reporters, or any of the local news or celebrity personalities that appeared on the all day broadcast used or mentioned the term “a pair of beads”. True New Orleaneans don't refer to Mardi Gras beads as “strands of beads”. Even one strand of beads is called a “pair of beads” I don't know how or why we came to use that term. In fact, up until about a month ago, I never realized there was anything peculiar or wrong, mathematically speaking, in the expression. It wasn't till I read a novel by Julie Smith “New Orleans Mourning” that she brought up this particular quirk in the New Orleans vocabulary. Because this expression, was such a subtle deviation from the norm, unlike “banquette” which is what we still called a “sidewalk” back in the 50's (Rarely heard nowadays) that I never realized this was another one of those typical New Orleans lexicons that unfortunately, may be passing out of the city's culture. Thank God we still have our neutral grounds!

My New Orleans

"Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans", a song written back in 1946, is having a rebirth with Post-Katrina New Orleaneans. The song never actually faded away. Someone would usually request it at a local piano bar, like Pat O'Briens in the French Quarter. Hearing it nowadays, though, the tune has a much more melancholy effect on me than it ever did before. I also find my self singing it just about every time I break out my guitar.

I grew up in the Ninth Ward and later the Gentilly section of New Orleans. My Aunt lived in Lakeview. All three of these places were devastated by Hurricane Katrina. They were old neighborhoods, each one having a different "feel". They all had their own neighborhood grocers, bars and restaurants. When the white population began to move out of the Ninth Ward, many of them migrated to newer homes and subdivisions in St. Bernard Parish, to communities like Arabi and Chalmette, and there too, the neighborhood family owned establishments were the "heart" of the community.

That's not to say we didn't love the French Quarter or Garden District. If not the heart of New Orleans, the French Quarter and Garden District are where you find it's history and spirit. I think major damage in those areas would have truly meant the ultimate demise of New Orleans as the world knew it.

My last visit to the New Orleans area was just 5 months before Katrina. I still had family living in Chalmette. I would stay with them when ever I came back for a visit, which was every year, usually in the Spring...crawfish season! There were several seafood markets and restaurants within 5 minutes of their house. I could also walk just a few blocks to Tony's Po'boy restaurant, as well as Vincent Brocato and Daughter's Italian Ice Cream and Pastry shop, tucked in the middle of a residential block of older homes. All of these places are gone, along with the crawfish (at least for this season) maybe never to recover. My sister and her family along with my mom are also gone, having evacuated to Florida a day or so before Katrina hit. The damage to their homes was so bad that my brother-in-law sold both homes, and they have re-settled in Florida. This is the scenario that has been repeated with the majority of the New Orleans population. Neighborhoods gone, family and friends gone, not just those that died, but those that moved away and won't be coming back.

I have no doubt that New Orleans will survive as a city. It's too important as a national and international port and its most popular tourist attractions, the French Quarter and Garden District, survived practically unscathed. I can't help but wonder, though, if the old neighborhood communities in New Orleans and St. Bernard... my New Orleans... is gone forever.

Great Quotes

Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money.

Johnny Cash

Closed Minds

In Life, no matter what the circumstances,
If your mind is closed to all possibilities,
Then your mind is closed to God.
God IS all possibilities!

Koi Pond "painting"
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Oahu Rainbow
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