a note from Dennis

"We really appreciate your considering coming down to help out the city--This city is going to need all the help it can get.

I should be back by the `15th and we should have a room for you without any trouble.

I want you to plan on coming ---and when I get back to New Orleans give me a call so I can put something aside for you---we have some repairs to do and not all the rooms are up and running as they should ---so work with me and we will see what we can do-

We of course always take care of our friends."

so that's next month. this month it's a hotel in the quarter, probably the only time in my life, I fly down on Frday it turns out. So I'll be there to walk around all day saturday and sunday, ellis marsallis is at snug harbor friday night and now I can go after all. Topsy Chapman is there on saturday night, or will i find something else? I really don't know what I'll find, but I think I still have to pack my own towels.

A P.S. (from Dennis): "If you don't mind stop by and talk with John Marshall of Mr. Paul and tell them hello--Let them know that you will be coming back in the middle of December."

I surely will.

redux

the Degas House, featured in posts a few months ago, is listed as closed due to hurricane damage. it's a couple of miles up Esplanade from the quarter, I will see if I can't walk up there on Sunday to see what's become of it. I wasn't particuarly taken with it as opposed to somewhere else, but it would work as a good landmark. I remember the Frenchwoman, Betty, with whom I saw the place, was on her way to Indonesia, I belive it was, to take up a teaching job there. We had lunch afterwards at Cafe Degas (no relation) and we also went to Preservation Hall on Saturday evening, I wonder if Preservation Hall is open, can it be? no, of course not, closed indefinitely, no musicians, they're touring europe--the radio this morning mentioned that NOLA musicians are getting more work than they've ever had in their lives before. well, good on that. and i will see what's left.

this has all happened before. I watched the old Armstrong/Holiday movie New Orleans a month or so ago and there's a particularly moving shot of storyville being closed down, from whence the music goes out into the rest of the world and everybody thrives in Chicago. it's all happened before.

i'm goin' home

i simply cannot stand it, not one minute more, i'm going back to new orleans. Saturday, flying in for two days only this time, found a package, cannot wait for St. Charles to open in a month i'll drive back then, but for now i cannot wait. This weekend I am going home!!

on my way

bright at the top of the stairs


On my way out today. Dennis tells me I should come back in August, there'll be some sort of writer's retreat maybe I can help with. I'm there. I will be there.

doreen

The relics of St. Tootie are a rainforest of multicolored beads, sequins and feathers

Degas House

bed in the box room

the narrow hallway

Impression, breakfast

she was under the staircase

little dancer age 14

l'apotheosis du tootie

Trinity

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madness

Goodby Chief Tootie Montana : NOLA Indymedia: "The destruciton of Iberville would not only be the destruction of desperately needed and disappearing affordable, inner city housing, but the destruction of a neighborhood as well. Originally constructed during the New Deal era, the thick, red-brick buildings represent one of the last, possibly in the nation, downtown African- American neighborhoods that is so close to the vibrant, central economic hum of an American city, This is where the jobs are, not in New Orleans east, no matter how much money is poured there into sagging cinemas that have little chance of recovery"

the one that got away

footish