From Birmingham, Alabama, I drove up to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I stopped briefly to have a look around. It was a much larger city than I thought it would be, and far more pleasant. The most important thing – the indicator of health – was that there were real, live pedestrians. A fair amount of […]
Category Archives: Travels
Second Stage.
14-May-09In Charlottesville again.
06-May-09I have made my way back to Charlottesville – one of the stops on the way down – after having seen, en route, Birmingham, Montgomery, Selma, and Chattanooga. Highlights: Vulcan in the “Magic City,” doing the whole Selma-Montgomery highway, camping out in the Cherokee National Forest, hiking in Great Smoky National Park, seeing the minor […]
A fair number of problems on the road. The oil-pressure gauge started convulsing wildly while driving on I-12 not that far from Baton Rouge, and I pulled into a gas station and added four quarts of oil before I got a reading on the dipstick. The oil started dripping out everywhere. I went to a […]
Gospel Music, inspired by Jazzfest
29-Apr-09All good Gospel music is the same; all bad Gospel music is bad in its own way. Great experiences in the Gospel tent at Jazzfest led me to do some online investigation. One of the best churches for the whole experience is that of Noel Jones in Los Angeles. For the music try: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_BxswCQRtU&feature=related This […]
The artist Kreg Yingst was at Jazzfest, with his block prints generally related to Blues music. I was very impressed at how he had extracted lines from these Bluesmen which basically indicated a thorough experience-based Christianity. One of Reverend Robert Wilkins, with the inscription, “Well Father said, ‘See my son coming home to me.’ Father […]
Language.
26-Apr-09One musician on a style of music: “Afro-Latin Boogaloo Funk.”
Jazzfest and the Blues.
26-Apr-09This evening at Jazzfest, I listened to Wynton Marsalis and his band play Duke Ellington’s “New Orleans Suite.” It was a fine moment in every way – not only a superior performance, but the piece had been commissioned for Jazzfest forty years ago, by the man who apparently got it all started, George Wein, who […]
The Angola Rodeo.
21-Apr-09On Sunday I took a trip up to the maximum-security Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. The prison is located on 18,000 acres along the Mississippi River and is often called “The Farm.” It is apparently a lineal descendant of a plantation called Angola whose owner leased convicts from the state to till his land; […]
One country.
06-Apr-09Just back from five days in Wyoming. It was completely shocking. It snowed the whole time (the old Wyoming joke is “If summer falls on a weekend this year, we’ll go to the park and have a picnic”). I was building snowmen just a few days after hanging out with alligators and sleeping with the […]
Last Night in New Orleans.
29-Apr-09The last page of a very nice chapter. As always, it’s hard to know what I’ll be taking from here until I’ve arrived at the next place. But I know I’ll know what it means to miss New Orleans.