Road Tripping, Post III

I got into Chicago tonight, I'll talk about that in a little bit, but I need to, as promised, continue on with my Milwaukee trip. I don't know if anyone has picked up on this, but in this blog I am awful at continuing any topic I say I'll pick up in a later post. It never happens. I remember one of the first, the trend setter if you will, was this story I said I didn't have time to tell, but I'd tell it soon. Then, in a post about a month later, I said something along the lines of "I want to write more in this post, but I'm exhausted now. And I still haven't told my great story." TWICE! I've referenced this story twice, and still haven't told it. Well, six months later, I'm going to tell it now, although the thrill of the moment is gone. Nonetheless,
I
Beatboxed
With
CHARLES BARKLEY!
Who's afraid? Not me, that's for damn sure. My second or so week at Hands-On, Timerbland Clothing Company was hosting a large scale volunteer event with multiple organizations from all over the city helping to clean up a large section of a street in Central City. One of the supports of the event was TNT, who had their basketball analysts (CB being one of them) down there to broadcast the New Orleans Hornets game, but also to do a special on Katrina and the relief effort, on the CB hosted show Inside the NBA.

Lunch is being served in the ground level parking lot of a police station. It's technically underneath the police station, and it's dirty, there are too many echoes, and it's dark. Most people are sitting outside on the grass, eating their hot plates. We had heard that Charles Barkley was coming, but we weren't sure when. We had heard some time during lunch. Sure enough, as I'm getting up to throw out my plate, this hulking black man, followed by a camera, followed by a trail of eager eyed volunteers, walks across the grass and in to the parking lot. I quickly become one of those eager eyed volunteers. He walks with an elderly black woman, who I'm assuming was a homeowner, and interviewed her for a bit. Then, she left, he stood, made no introduction, just waited, knowing throngs of people would want to speak with him. People went up, said hi, said they were a fan, said it was nice to meet him. But no, Mathias Goldstein doesn't get down like that. Mathias Goldstein likes to make a bigger impression. I joked with a friend that I should beatbox for him. She said maybe you should, I said why not. But as I stood in the small line of people to speak with him, I was considering how we generally like to make good impressions with people we respect, how we like to make them like us, how we try to be "cool," and how I was doing everything to go against that. He finished speaking to the person in front of me, turned and looked at me, but also looked through me, like "next. your turn. say your peace so I can move to the next one." I was nervous, and he was large, so I could only refer to him by his full name. However, I said this:

"Charles Barkley? Can I beatbox while you freestyle?"
He paused. "Uh, well, I don't know bout that." This was not a dismissive comment, this was an unconfident comment. Was this DOUBT?! The fact that I suddenly had more ego than a Hall of Fame basket ball player gave me the smooth talking abilities of a used car salesman.
"Oh, no, my man, it's real easy. But if you can't do it, I'll teach you something. Let's do Ladi Dadi. You know Ladi Dadi."
"Ooooh man. I can't remember those words."
"What? You don't know Ladi Dadi? Everyone knows Ladi Dadi!"

And so I coaxed him the first line of the song. It took him a couple of minutes to get the words, especially to get the rhythm. When it was finally showtime, he stumbled and mumbled and sputtered the lyrics, but he got through them. At the end of it he laughed, although it's not unimaginable that he was thinking about how he'd like to whoop me, but we hugged. And that was it. My 5 minutes of fame with CB.


Anyway. I digress. Milwaukee. Great place. I left La Crosse in the morning, said my goodbye's with Shelby, and headed off. I drove past a few bars, a few chain stores. This was really the only bit of La Crosse I got to see, although the drive towards Milwaukee steers you along these beautiful bluffs that are, apparently, amazing for hiking, and made the drive as pleasant as driving on the interstate could ever be.

I was driving to meet Danielle Maltby. I met her at Hands-On, and she was from the same school group as Shelby, though they really couldn't be more different (except that they're both good people). Shelby graduated High School in 2000, waited six years before going to college, working in between, getting her own place. She's the self-proclaimed atheist at a Christian University. She has multiple piercings. She's bad ass. She's a brunette. Danielle is blond, she's 21, she just got her ears pierced (er, re-pierced, but that means she wore earrings so infrequently the wholes closed up. You get my point). She was the youngest one from her class to graduate. She was a nursing major and is now working for a Milwaukee hospital in the Neonatal unit. She's incredibly sweet and warm and extremely charming in a very Midwestern way.

But I learned all these things since my time staying with her. At Hands-On, I barely knew her. I gave my first orientation to her group. She was tall and very pretty and, therefore, noticeable, and she was one of the first people from her group I talked to, but she didn't seem to be particularly interested in any of the questions I had for her, and that was that. Hands-On is a busy place. But we kept in touch a bit after she left, first online, then on the phone, and as my road trip plans started to materialize, I asked if I could stay with her in Milwaukee en route to Chicago. She said of course.

Now here's where having a public journal gets tricky. My emotions are my emotions, faithful reader, and I'll leave it at that. But we care about each other, a lot, and it's fun to experience all that summer romance at such a quick pace. Hands-On is a terrible place for organic relationship development. It's very crowded and very public and very gossipy. This was the first time in about six months where I'd been able to have something like that. We reunited. I met the dog, the brother, got a tour of the house. We went to Madison, an awesome little northeastern college town dropped in the middle of Wisconsin. We had a fun lunch at a Sushi restaurant, we found a little park and lounged for a bit. But all of it, the introductions, the small talk, the first date, the being flirtatious and charming, the romantic spot, and the first kiss, these were all things, wonderful and positive things, that simply aren't possible at HONO.

But anyway, I can't talk this stuff on Blogger. Jeez. It's already inappropriate. But, well, I just gotta add this. Danielle, I'm sorry. But don't worry, my grandparents are my most consistent readers, and I don't think they'd care. I'm starting to laugh, by the way. I'm not chewing, or something.


Anyway, I left Milwaukee this morning. Wasn't particularly happy to be going, but hey, I said I'd be back home by the 26th. I'm getting home by the 26th. I had an uneventful drive into Chicago tonight, and that's where I am now. I had a terrific conversation with my family. This is my first and only stop where I'm not staying with fellow volunteers, but my cousin, Debby, her husband, David, and their two adorable children, Sophie and Jacob. I'll get on to that in a later post, but for now, I depart.

Whoever you are, thanks for reading.

Road Tripping, Post II

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Wisconsin has been wonderful.

A few of the places on the road trip have been fun mainly because, had it not been for this trip, I don't know if I ever would have made them destinations. I've never told myself that one day maybe I'd want to vacation out to St. Louis, Missouri, or La Crosse, Wisconsin, or Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but these are all places I've seen on my road trip so far. Everyone knows that when they go to Chicago or Los Angeles or New York they will be impressed. Those are cities with clout, with reputations, with expectations. But it's been exhilarating to enjoy a place you weren't expecting much from. I had a wonderful time in St. Louis, even though my stay there was brief. The weather was beautiful, the arch was impressive, and the people were friendly. After Shelby and I finally woke up, we lazily exited our car in search for a coffee shop. We both looked grungy, but I particularly so, having not showered in a couple of days wearing a stretched out wife beater and jeans I had basically worn for the past week and a half straight. But we found a Starbucks, and despite our appearances, I was greeted at the door.

"Hey, my man, how you doin? Look, can you help me out for a sec?" There was a very friendly employee at the door with a propped up cardboard display for a new drink. He seemed to be placing it.
"Yeah, what's up?"
"This ad, can you see it as you walk in?"
I thought for a minute. "Yeah, it looks pretty good there, but, I mean, the window frames here blocks it a bit." When you approached the Starbucks you actually walked through a glass vestibule, and the framing prevented seeing the ad until you walked through the door.
"So I should move it to the right a bit, right?"
"I would say it wouldn't hurt."
"Hey, thanks my man. Hey, you ordering something?"
"I was planning on it."
"Yo, Frankie. Frankie! Whatever this guy wants, it's on me. Thanks a lot my man."
All I had was the cliche, "No. Thank you."

I help place a sign, I get a free drink. Things like that don't happen very often, and it made me feel like I was somewhere different. The rest of the day was essentially the arch. We lounged around the grassy park around it, beat the heat in the shadow under it, and then went in it for a ride to the top. The lifts inside are very small and metal and white, but managed to sit five people, and look like some sort of ejection pods from a 60s sci-fi flick. These stupid things were shaped like those ridiculous egg shaped chairs. Any chair that makes you sit forward is not a chair; it's a torture device, and that's a bit how I felt in this. After that, though? What can I say? We got up, we got down, and I took a couple pictures in between.

We left St. Louis around 5: 30, which towards the end of the drive turned out to be a mistake. The problem with getting in late is that you want to spend most of the next day in the city, since you hadn't had the time the night before. But, friends, it's easy to see the problem in this logic. The few hours of light we had showed more of the beautiful farmland that I'm so unused to seeing, but after about three hours it was dark, and I saw nothing, and I knew I had a long drive ahead. My directions, I knew, were somewhat incorrect. Around midnight I was driving through Illinois, approaching the Wisconsin boarder, my directions told me that once I crossed the boarder, I got onto I-90 and only had forty miles to go. I knew this had to be wrong, but stopped at a gas station to fuel up and see what the clerk in the convenience store had to say.
"Five hours"

"Excuse me?" I told him I didn't think this was possible. He was a big man, older, with a kind face and a Greek accent. He walked over to the selection of maps and pulled one out, then opened it.
"I drive from Arlinton, this is near us, to Rochester, to Hospital, across the river, in Minnesota. This take me six (seex) hours."

I told him that, though I don't think he's lying, the mileage looks less.
"Yes, well, maybe it will take you three or four, but either way, you will be burning the night." He smiled at me. I smiled back, then headed over to the Energy Drink isle of the refrigerated section and got the 24 oz "triple strength!" Rockstar energy drink.
"Guess I'll need it," I said.
"Drive carefully, my friend."
Shelby had driven about an hour today, but I had wanted to do almost all of the driving. I was at the end of a six month stint at Hands-On, and had curved my partying considerably at the end of the trip. She was there for a week, and tried to make the most of it; when I went home at two in the morning, she went home at five. She had carried on this pattern the entire week, and I didn't want someone with that little rest driving on what are basically completely straight roads for a couple hours at a time. She was sleeping when we pulled in to the gas station, and she continued to sleep most of the way to La Crosse, Wisconsin, which is where she lives. I found, however, that her being asleep kept me alert; I felt like a responsible father driving his sleeping daughter through the night.

The gas station clerk estimated five hours, we got there in three and a half. At three thirty I unloaded her stuff and we headed inside. I was on a caffeine overdose, exhausted but completely jittery. I was trembling a little bit, had a bit of a headache, but a bit of water at hitting the sheets and I was out. This was really all I would see of La Crosse, Wisconsin, the view of the pavement in the headlights and a single, two bedroom house.

I'm writing from Milwaukee right now. It's close to five in the morning, and I'm exhausted. I have so much more to talk about in my Wisconsin trek, but it will have to be for later. All I'll say is it's been a wonderful part of the trip, and I'll get in to it. I left in the morning, said my goodbye's to Shelby, and headed to Milwaukee to see another friend, Danielle. She is marvelous, she will be the majority of the next post, and she deserves it.

Farewell

Road Tripping, Post I

It's Monday afternoon right now. I'm sitting in a Panera Bread in St. Louis using their wonderfully free wireless Internet, trying to update all of you on my road trip as I leave New Orleans. This is my first post outside of the city since November, when I hadn't arrived yet.

The beginning of the road trip has been going well. It was rough leaving New Orleans yesterday, and particularly the first hour of the road trip was uncomfortable. I feel sorry for my fellow road tripper Shelby, who probably got a short and sullen answer to any question she asked in that time. It just felt weird to be driving through the city knowing it was going to be the last time I would see it for a while, and the last time I would interact with it extensively for a long, long while. After a couple of hours though, the terrain changes from Louisiana Bayou to the rural south of Mississippi to the fertile fields of Tennessee and Missouri. The change of scenery made a real difference in my mood.

I've never been through the Midwest, and barely through the south. With the exception of Mississippi, where I did work last March, every state on this road trip will be a new one for me. I imagine this was a good thing for me, because even though I was told constantly before I left that driving through hundreds of miles of flat farmland is mind numbing, I found it rather beautiful. We didn't really hit much of it until Tennessee (which we really just clipped) and Missouri, but green field after green field and farm after farm did a lot to lift my spirits. It was the time and place to roll down our windows, stick out our arms, and let the wind blow through our fingers. Shelby and I talked a bit the first couple hours of the drive, but it seemed that when we got to all that farmland we became quiet, save the sound of the air around our car and the cassette in the stereo.

We were heading for St. Louis. We had planned on leaving around 12:30 to git in by 10, but (unsurprisingly) the final goodbyes and a little last minute packing shipped us off just after 3 30. I got lunch with Abby Sartor, a girl who went to school with me for the first school year after Katrina before heading back to NOLA. This girl is funny and charismatic, and she was often a life raft when the Hands-On atmosphere was, if i may continue this metaphor, drowning me. We got lunch, talked about the future, said our "see you later"s, and I headed back in to Central City to make one last goodbye, this time to Ty Shon.

Ty Shon didn't want me to go. Of course, he didn't tell me this, but it's always been that body language is more telling than his words are. Ty Shon has always put on a front of apathy and a small front of toughness, even if sometimes when you look in his eyes you can see a twinkle of irony. When I knocked on his door and told him I was leaving and that I'd miss him, he didn't say it back. He didn't say he'd call me once a week, or that I was a good friend, or that he was glad to have met me. But the ultra confident, charismatic showboat was unusually quiet. He was fidgety and he was pacing and his eyes were darting, and that was good enough for me. I knew then that he would miss me. Even if this borderlines on the vaguely sadistic, it feels good to know that he will miss me. It feels good to know that I will be missed.

I dapped him off (which, for all you non slang speaking sophisticates, would be the arm-wrestling-position handshake that frequently leads into a hug), and he said alright, and I told him I would see him later. Then I decided to give him a hug so I said "come here, man." And wrapped my arms around him. "Alright, bruh!" "ALRIGHT, BRUH!" he said and pushed me off with a big smile. I'm glad my last memory of Ty Shon was the confident, smooth talker that he normally is.

And then, not long after that, I headed off. I went over most of the action earlier in this post. We got in around one in the morning, a consequence of embarking on a 10 hour drive in the late afternoon. Our lodging accommodation, a friend of a friend, fell through when we called him and told him how late we were coming in, so we ended up parking in a downtown residential neighborhood and sleeping in our car. We slept in (which feels strange to say when your bed is a car seat) and then headed off to the only tourist attraction immediately noticeable, the arch. I have pictures of all of that, and those tell a better story than my words. But we're heading off to La Crosse, Wisconsin this afternoon, and since we probably won't be leaving till about 5 PM, it looks to be another late night. But I'll keep you posted!

Mathias

The Last Moments of the Last Night

Ladies and gentlemen, my time at Hands-On, my time in New Orleans is coming to a close. The past couple of weeks have been a love affair with New Orleans, filled with great music, and spending time with my close friends. In the past three weeks, Hands On has changed a lot. My three best friends here, Aaron Carlson, Allan Rey, and Jon Edwards, have all left. Multiple staff members have left. This place is changing, and I'm leaving at the end of an era.

All day has been a pensive day. I didn't work today. I did morning wake up, lounged around base for a little bit, and then headed off to meet my Rabbi's wife, who's down here interviewing New Orleanians compiling information to a play about post-Katrina New Orleans she's writing. I introduced her to Miss Antoinette K Doe, widow of late, great Ernie K Doe, social figure of New Orleans, and patron of Hands On. I set them up for the interview at Antoinette's bar, the Mother in Law lounge, and was curious to here her story, cause it's an interesting one. But rather than sit and listen, I opted to sit in a side room and think about what I was going to say tonight at community meeting, when all leaving volunteers are given the option to stand and speak about their experience. I'd been thinking about this, in bits, since I first saw someone give the speech, but the past few days, naturally, I've been thinking about it more.

It's been difficult to balance the ways in which I want to spend my last time in New Orleans. My New Orleans expereince has been broken up into three circles: my friends at Hands-On, my friends in New Orleans, and the city of New Orleans itself. I haven't found that balance very easily. A friend from Wisconsin bought a one way ticket down to New Orleans as a returning volunteer, but in a large part to see me in my last week. To be fair, I've been a pretty lousy host. All of my closest friends at Hands On have left already, so the people I'm most interested in seeing are my New Orleans friends. I don't think they realize their importance to me, but it's been appreciated beyond words to have friends to go to when the claustrophobia of Hands-On became overwhelming. It was harder to say goodbye to these folks than Hands-On friends. Having friends come and go at HONO is the nature of the beast, and you take it as a given that you won't really be seeing them again. But these weren't my Hands-On friends, these were my New Orleans friends, and so it's no longer saying goodbye to friends as I leave my volunteer organization, but more like I'm moving, and saying goodbye to my next door neighbors.

Of course, on top of all this, a topic on my mind the entire day was what I was going to say at my last night speech. This is a tradition at Hands-On, where at the end of community meeting, all leaving volunteers are asked to stand and, if they wish, say some parting words. Hands-On offers this to any volunteer, but people expect long termers to say something longer and, usually, more poignant. I had a few ideas rattling in my head but nothing really profound, nothing to connect to the greater picture of the big world. All I felt I could do well, and all I really wanted to do, was talk about my Hands-On experience.

I had spent the day with my Rabbi's wife and got to Hands-On late, right as dinner was being served. I had been stuck in obnoxious French Quarter traffic, and though the stress of potentially missing my last community meeting caused to yell "fuck" more than Scarface, at the end of it i was so drained that it mellowed me out when my time for the speech actually came.

It came quicker than I anticapted. I think TV and film have warped me in to believing that all goodbye speeches should have a quiet, tense build up, a powerful delivery, and a climactic burst of applause and tears. The build up was quiet, but really because I think everyone was tired from a hard day of gutting. But it did finally get to me, and the host of the meeting asked if it was my last night and I stood and started speaking. I realized that I still hadn't thought of how I was going to start or connect the loosely connected thoughts I had on Hands-On, so I decided to start by saying how I felt.

I told the volunteers that as I was waiting for my chance to speak I was feeling nervous, and I was curious as to why that was. I've spoken in front of large crowds there before, and generally public speaking is something I can do rather comfortably. So why nervousness, and not just sadness? I told them that I think it was because my body was telling me I was making a mistake. Not that I think I am making a mistake leaving Hands-On (I've been there long enough), but I could understand why my body would think that, because Hands-On is a beautiful place with amazing people and, more importantly, is in a city that is, at this time, incredibly dynamic. It's a beautiful to be in a place that is changing so quickly, in a city that will be completely different two years from now, even different two months from now. I told the volunteers that what attracted me to the organization so strongly was the fact that it was this small, intensified microcosm of all experiences. I have lived at Hands-On, obviously, but I have lived here, loved here, fought here, succeeded here, failed here, been happy, sad, frustrated, energized, burnt out, overwhelmed, and overjoyed. You feel it all at Hands-On, and you feel it strongly, and you feel it quickly, and it's an amazing thing to be thinking about and feeling so much in such a short period of time. And finally, I ended by telling them the things that I would miss. Before my part of community meeting, announcements were being made about frisbee in the park on sunday, a crawfish boil later that week, all things that I would miss. And I told them that it was really the first time in almost six months that I would be missing out on Hands-On experiences. For the first time in six months, volunteers at Hands-On would be experiencing New Orleans without my influence. I told them that I knew this was the nature of the organization, people coming and going, experiences constantly rotating, the feel of the organization constantly changing, but being there for so long, you being to fee like Hands-On doesn't just evolve with you, but it evolves around you (this is a point I made in a previous point), and that when you leave, that spot where you were is empty, and the whole organization is a little less effective, slightly incomplete. And I said I knew that this wasn't the way it worked, but that that's fine, even exciting, because it means Hands-On is so dynamic. And I finished by saying how much I would miss my friends here, how my best friends at Hands-On are my best friends everywhere, how proud I was of any volunteer who walks through the keypad guarded door of Hands-On, and how very, very much I will miss this place.

And I sat down feeling a little exhausted, a little embarrased, until Emma came over and presented me with my shirt, a customized, drawn-on T-Shirt that's hung on the long term volunteers "wall of fame." The shirt read "Mathias Goldstein: Classying up HONO since December 06'. Emma presented it and started tearing up, not looking at me and telling everybody if she did she would start crying harder. She said wonderful things about me, things that make anyone feel like a million bucks while hearing them, but finally she did look at me and really did start crying, and gave me a big kiss and a long hug. And witht that everybody started clapping and aww-ing.

I think that large scale public displays of affection can feel staged. But this was so genuine I didn't care I was hugging with 80 pairs of eyes on me.
And I knew that I'd be missed.

A little note for a previous post dated March 3rd

I just now, immediately after writing the post just before this one, decided to also post a blog i had started to write March 3rd. It has a few pictures of some of my friends from the NCCC team. This was the first post i had started to write after my epic mardi gras post, but i stopped mid way through, promising to return to it later, but never did. You'll notice that when in the beginning i say "i have an awful lot to talk about" but then stop after i mention the NCCC group. I wasn't going to go back now and write the completion of the post two months later, pretending i had written it then.

I should also note, with more than a bit of irony, that my original Title was going to be, before i just changed it to "Goodbye NCCC," "The Beginning of More Frequent Posting."

Sigh. Maybe this post really will be.

A Late Night Post

It's late night in New Orleans right now. I've been quietly browsing the Internet in the bunk room on one of the community computers. It's fun being up and about while everyone else is asleep in the bunk room, similar to waking up and having a midnight snack in your sleeping household.

I was just looking through the blog of a former hands on volunteer, a writer for the Virginian-pilot who came down a couple of weeks ago, and reading his words on Katrina and Hands-On motivated me to write something of my own. The man's name is Tris Wykes; he's a mid-thirties sports writer for the Virginian-Pilot, but decided to come down to volunteer at Hands-On during his vacation time with another VP writer, a guy by the name of Kyle Tucker. Tris kept a blog and updated it daily while he was down here for eight days, and his consistency and passion motivated me to write a little bit tonight. On his last day at Hands On, Tris spoke at community meeting and told his audience that he generally describes himself as a rather grumpy and cynical individual. That being said, his eight days in New Orleans were some of the best and most life changing moments of his life. People say that somewhat frequently at Hands-On, but it seems to have more gravity coming from a 36 year old pessimistic news journalist than it does a does a hair-twirling, "oh my gaaawwwdd" college girl. He was a guy that really connected with Hands-On. I'm glad for him, and I think Tris' initial pessimism is what allowed him to have such a moving experience. Anyone that comes down to do volunteer work expects it to be grueling and tiring, and expects their time there to revolve around the work itself. What I think is special about Hands-On, and what I think Tris found rather disarming, was how important the community was. That's what prevents burnout at Hands-On, a strong group of friends, a strong sense of community.

That community certainly has been heavy on my mind recently, because I'm leaving fairly soon. Solely from the perspective of this Blog, the number of posts wouldn't indicate that. I wrote fairly regularly up until February, than stopped writing until mid April on a post that wasn't even about New Orleans, and now here I am, finally, almost two and a half months later, returning to the subject of the Big Easy. And I imagine in time one of my regrets will be not writing about the period at Hands-On where everything stopped becoming foreign and exhilarating, and the city started feeling more like home. My inhibition to write, I think, stemmed from the fact that my New Orleans trip was intended to be a learning experience, and this blog a kind of tool to process and explore my ideas. But there came a point when I lost that wide eyed curiosity for this city and it began to feel familiar. Writing about regular things is a lot harder than writing about extraordinary things, and I kept telling myself in that period "What is there to write about?" Well, looking back on it now, a lot. In the time between Mardi Gras and now I parted ways with my first group of substantial friends, an Americorps group based out of South Carolina. I met an amazing group of actors, dancers, and musicians from Juilliard. I went home for ten days and got to see friends, family, and appreciate more distinctly the uniqueness of New York city. I went up to Boston for passover and spent some time at BU, sampling what will by my college experience for the next four years. And I said goodbye to more long term volunteers, as well as met some new volunteers who will, for the first time, continue to be volunteers here after I'm gone. I've been here long enough that some selfish part of me wants to think that when I leave, this place will struggle, that yes I have grown in to this place, but this place has grown around me as well, evolving like a jigsaw puzzle with a single piece missing, a space just for my niche, a space that will be empty once I leave. But it doesn't work like that, does it. The nature of a volunteer organization is far too dynamic to allow that. People cycle through so quickly at Hands-On that in a few months, who will be there to tell my tale? I'm speaking epically only with a hint of self irony, because seriously, I've never been so emotionally invested in anything my entire life, and I'd like to leave having left my mark in some substantial way. Call me selfish, but the one reward a volunteer receives is the recognition that he or she is doing something important. That is what I want at Hands-On, the memory that I did something important.

And, well, I was planning on talking about all the music I've been seeing, French Quarter Fest, and Jazz Fest, and the blind pianist Henry Butler, and I was going to talk more about the Virginia Tech shootings, but at this point anything I wrote would become an anti climax. So I'll end here. But anyone reading should know that it feels good for me to be writing again, and I appreciate the audience. New Orleans is in my heart and soul, and I'm finally, again, putting that onto this page.