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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Castle Beach
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Castle Beach Sunrise
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Christian and Tails
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Boomerangs

Just got back into the sport of tossing boomerangs. I started doing it back in 1984 when my marriage was breaking up. I found it was good therapy and exercise at the same time. I even got my 4 sons interested in the sport. Over the next 20 years, I would throw only occasionally, sometimes going several years without touching a rang. A lot of my boomerangs I distributed amongst my kids. They continued an interest in the sport over the years, and during my most recent visit with two of my son's in Louisiana I went out with them to throw. I'd forgotten how much fun and also what a physical workout it was ,which my body quickly reminded me over the next day or so. I purchased a few new rangs and renewed my acquaintance with Rich Harrison, The Boomerang Man. I've never met Rich in the 21 years since my first purchase, but consider him a friend and very generous human being.

A month and 5 new boomerangs later, I was back in Hawaii, in Kailua on the island of Oahu. Now Hawaii, although a beautiful place and having comfortable temperatures all year, is in many ways not the ideal place to toss boomerangs. There are strong tradewinds a lot of times, and when tossing boomerangs, no wind to medium wind is best. One also needs a big, deserted field to have room enough to allow for an occasional, or in my case, quite a few wayward tosses. In Hawaii, finding such a field is almost as impossible as trying to find a surf spot where you're the only surfer. Oh, there are quite a few large ball/soccer fields around town, but with the year round, almost perfect weather, there is usually some event taking place on them all the time.

I made several attempts to find an ideal place, including a little used, three tennis court area (Where I could only throw one of my plastic short distant rangs) and a small field bordered on one side by a highway and the other by a sawgrass covered hillside. A bad toss, with my newest and smallest rang, had four of us looking in the serrated edged, chest high weeds for fifteen minutes. Three of us, including myself, abandoned any hope of ever finding it and went back on the field to collect the rest of my boomerangs and leave. Fortunately, my girlfriend, an intensive care nurse in the newborn unit of a local hospital, did not want to give up quite yet (Which is why she's probably such a great nurse) and a few minutes later emerged; scratched and itching, like the rest of us, but with boomerang in hand (I fell in love with her all over again!).

I have now had to resort to getting up at 5 am on the weekends and going to the baseball and soccer field at the elementary school near my home, to get 2 hours of clear air space, before baseball practice or all day games start. But, it's enough for now, and it does have an unexpected benefit. I now get to "sleep in" Monday through Friday because I don't have to get up for work till 6 am on weekdays. God truly does work in mysterious ways.

Great Quotes

If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.

Chinese Proverb

Great Quotes

Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?

-Sai Baba