First day of Jazz Festival 2011: A primer

8th Annual Trip to New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festval

Jazz Fest, 2011!!!

I cannot, will not spend my time in New Orleans on my computer. This is, after all, first day of Jazz Festival. Meanwhile:

  

WEATHER EXTREMES 

AND NOLA

 

The city welcomed me yesterday from the land of EXTREME rain

(20 of 25 days in April) and EXTREME snow (120 inches this winter) 

to EXTREME perfection. 

High 60s, breezes, clear. No humidity, which is virtually 

unheard of in this tropical land 

where bugs are the size of macaws.

But of course that's the day before JF. 

Today is another day, aka the first day of JF, aka I have been to JF when it's 90 and dripping EXTREME humidity. I have been to 
JF when it is torrential EXTREME rain. I have tromped in theEXTREME mud to hear the EXTREMELY sublime 
Stevie Wonder. I am afraid to look at the weather for today.

WATER EXTREMES AND NOLA

I cannot help but think of Katrina, of course, as I am in my Mama's house as I write that was flooded with Mississippi River WATER and now has been renovated under the design hand of Sister Sue.

This time last year,  as I was arriving, the city was dealing with oil in the Gulf WATER. The spill had just happened.

Today, the city, heavily under the influence of PTSD, is kinda panicky, as is everybody up and down the Mississippi about the possibility of flood WATERS and very soon,partly because of rains and snows from Yankees. (See first topic) The state of Missouri has just decided to bust the levee along Missouri farmland so as to save a tiny town upstream called Cairo, in the neighboring state of Illinois, though not before one senator insulted the whole little town.Watch this politically incorrect statesman at work http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQjqjhHAip.

To his credit, the senator has since apologized.

       

EXTREME FOOD AND NOLA

 If you've never been to NOLA, if you are planning to 

come again, please mark on your to-do list "Reconcile Cafe" 

on Oretha C. Haley Blvd. (named after a great 

civil rights activist in NOLA) in a severely distressed 

section of the city. 

Not only can you get the best crawfish bisque ever here, 

the best  bread pudding with banana sauce (might rival mine), the best crawfish salad 

and shrimp on white beans. 

But it's non-profit. AND it's all for at-risk kids. The restaurant

draws in at-risk kids and teaches them about the restaurant business. 

I saw James Carville here. My first celebrity sighting, except for Charles.

Oh, AND the recipes are all on line. Doesn't get much better than this.

Everybody wins, including me who got to eat there yesterday.

And of course, MUSIC!!!!

 Here's how each day of JF goes: Drink Susan's
special green tea with mint. Jabber with Susan wayyy too much.
Look at the clock! Oh no!! Hurry!! Shower. Try on
50 sundresses and 50 different earrings to get it just right.
Pour over the Jazz Fest lineup, to include,
today: Keb 'Mo, Tab Benoit, Jeff Beck, Mumford and Sons,
Avett Brothers AND my sister's husband, Charles and dozens more of all kinds o
different music that is completely impossible to choose from!!! Slather
on the sunscreen. Park.

Laissez les bons temps rouler
with raspberry tea and mango ice and catfish menuire and
crawfish puff and seafood merliton and just when you
can't stand another minute, leave the fairgrounds, go to
the House of Blues for Trombone Shorty tonight. Feets,
don't fail me now.

Bye y'allllllllllll!!!!!!!!!!!!