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and last updated April 14th., 2000.
WELCOME TO MY DAY..
IT IS NICE TO HAVE YOU SHARE IT WITH ME...
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NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, US OF A !!,
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Friday Morning.....writing this at sunup,watching the lights come on up and down the river, though the river never sleeps; the barges continue after the pleasure craft have long been tied up for the night, wending their silent way past the casino and the sleeping Riverboats.
Bourbon Street is still magnificent, of course, and tourists mill there in their thousands , wandering open-eyed and openmouthed up and down the street. We did it too, in a group after the big social event , the Louisiana Langniappe, on the Monday night, nice, ordinary, middleaged folk each of us, gawking unashamedly at some sights not to be found in our hometowns.
..or styrofoam cups in the bars.....
This is my last day here on the river.
At noon I catch a cab across to Metarie, industrial suburb with the bleakness of airport proximity, yet full of historic significance, with those unique above-ground burying places. Filled too with eating places to suit every ethnic or religious requirement, and some of the BEST shopping malls!!
Home, too to the spectacular Landmark Hotel, a great blue cylindrical highrise which quite dominates its surrounds, this to be my home for the last 5 days of my USA stay, comfortable enough, I am sure,witha lot to recommend it, but a full ten miles from the excitement and contrasts that are life in Downtown and the French Quarter! .
But by the day, Bourbon Street loses some of its magic...and one notes contrasts again.. I cannot help wondering what my Dad, the muso, for whom Bourbon Street was Mecca, would have thought of televising sport to pass the time between sets....
And open-air jazz in Jackson Square still flourishes.
The Casino rules the Riverwalk, of course, and never sleeps, but, even here, the emphasis on jazz is prominent, with Satchmo greeting gamblers, approving, no doubt of the free nature of some of the best live floorshows around..and some great local-produce eating places..
I took the Professor, himself a Greenwich Village muso back in his student days, to hear the jazz in Jackson Square yesterday, his last day here, when we finally had time for an uninterrupted excursion, even if not to really EXPLORE...
But I remembered the way there, and it was the same lady bandleader whom I had photographed six months earlier, and whose CDs I had taken home, and played often, still blowing her heart out for the crowd, a much bigger crowd, now, in these cooler months, and the band more warmly clad.
The Professor will be back at work in his own city in a couple of hours. .
Yet he had managed to cram a lot into his five and a half days,proving a very visible presence at all his conference obligations, meeting and greeting and buzzing about, gradually losing that TIE, as he found time for walking, talking, even watching the Hilton's hairdresser take the dry end off my hair, that cut I had THOUGHT to get at La International Airport, so sure to have a hair salon!
He left last night to catch an 8.30 flight, his commitments here completed, but regretting his prior decision to schedule vital meeting for today, especially once he realised so many of his colleagues were staying until, or through, the weekend.
And he must have been very disgruntled, indeed, to find himself deplaned having been already seated,
for a further hour and a half while a fuel line was repaired...almost long enough for that dinner he had been trying to ease into his crowded schedule!!
"He's an artist, Robin" he pronounced, visibly relaxing, having been been so sure I would emerge severly shorn. and that he would not be able to take me ANYWHERE!
And, not normally a social animal, he surprised himself, I think, by actually enjoying some very crowded social venues, even going out to dinner in a group, (though he didn't enjoy THAT as much as I had hoped, and I had MADE him go)...and actually managed to sleep rather a lot, he who had told my husband he is a "definite type A, who cannot sleep more than a few hours at a time...."
"Robin will tell you I am not at all like that!" was my husband's wry reply, and when I reported with some amusement that I was working on my website at night because the Professor seemed about to sleep the clock around, (he DID..from 6pm Wednesday until somewhere after 8am on Thursday when he needed to be woken for a meeting!), the husband said, "Oh dear, Robin, not another SLEEPER?"...since it seemed my uncanny talent for relaxing men friends to the point of coma had, once again, not failed me...or STRUCK again, whichever way one likes to think of it...
And so it was that we never did get to eat the perfect dinner-for-two the Professor had been promising...
That will have to be set aside for another time, another place...
And I like to think he might learn to leave the tie off a little more often in the future, work a little less and enjoy himself a little more....and sleep more, of course, of course!
But I'll keep you posted!
Love to everyone ,and everyone on our side!
-from
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©Robin Knight, 2000.
