New Orleans Sayings Quotes

Everybody here has a story. New Orleans was always a place where people talked too much even if they had nothing to say. Now everyone's got something to say.

This has been one seriously fucked-up day, huh? (Wren) You might say that. This morning it was 2005 in New Orleans, I was staring at you wondering what it would be like to have the ability to change into a tiger. Now it’s the day before I enter the world in 1981 and I can turn into a tiger. Yeah, just your average day...if you’re in a Ted Raimi production. (Maggie)

There is a velvety sensuality here at the mouth of the Mississippi that you won't find anywhere else. Tell me what the air feels like at 3 A.M. on a Thursday night in August in Shaker Heights and I bet you won't be able to say because nobody stays up that late. But in New Orleans, I tell you, it's ink and honey passed through silver moonlight.

When I am introduced as someone from New Orleans, people sometimes say: "I'm so sorry." New Orleans. I'm so sorry. That's not the way it was before,not the way it's supposed to be. When people find out you're from New Orleans, they're supposed to tell you about how they got drunk there once, or fell in love there, or first heard the music there that changed their lives. At worst people would say: "I've always wanted to go there." But now, it's just: "I'm sorry." Man, that kills me. That just kills me.

The sun’s going down and there’s nothing like a sunset in New Orleans. They say every woman looks beautiful by candlelight, and I say every city looks beautiful by sunset. This one’s glorious.

The boy from New Orleans laughs and says, “Tell me anything.” I smile and tell him everything.

Then I guess we cannot miss the famous festival in New Orleans," he found himself saying, just to take the shadows from her eyes. She was silent a moment, her fingers twisting in the blanket. "Do you mean it, Gregori? We can go?" "You know how much I love crowds of humans," he said, straight-faced. She laughed at him. "They don't bite." "I do," he said, the words low and soft, his silver gaze at once possessive.

The workman cut to the left, still laying on his horn, and roared around the drunkenly weaving limousine. He invited the driver of the limo to perform an illegal sex act on himself. To engage in oral congress with various rodents and birds. He articulated his own proposal that all persons of Negro blood return to their native continent. He expressed his sincere belief in the position the limo driver's soul would occupy in the afterlife. He finished by saying that he believed he had met the limodriver's mother in a New Orleans house of prostitution.

It’s time to make much of time, to gather the rosebuds while we may, like the poet says.” Thurston grabbed Jackson’s arm. His face lit up, as if he’d just had a brilliant thought. “Yes, that’s Robert Herrick. ‘And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.

Jean Laffite was a sexy bad boy with a gentleman's manners and an air of barely suppressed danger. Every girl's secret dreamboat in other words. We always say we want a nice, hardworking, decent guy but we're lying to ourselves. - DJ Jaco

Mac Rebennack, better known as Dr. John, once told me that when a brass band plays at a small club back up in one of the neighborhoods, it's as if the audience--dancing, singing to the refrains, laughing--is part of the band. They are two parts of the same thing. The dancers interpret, or it might be better to say literally embody, the sounds of the band, answering the instruments. Since everyone is listening to different parts of the music--she to the trumpet melody, he to the bass drum, she to the trombone--the audience is a working model in three dimensions of the music, a synesthesic transformation of materials. And of course the band is also watching the dancers, and getting ideas from the dancers' gestures. The relationship between band and audience is in that sense like the relationship between two lovers making love, where cause and effect becomes very hard to see, even impossible to call by its right name; one is literally getting down, as in particle physics, to some root stratum where one is freed from the lockstop of time itself, where time might even run backward, or sideways, and something eternal and transcendent is accessed.

Sydney dearest, excuse me for saying so, but are you fucking crazy? Kade is going to go ballistic when he discovers you just left without telling him. Hell, even if you told him, he’d freak out. You do get that he claimed you? And then there is the whole completing of the blood bond, not to mention he keeps telling everyone that you are freakin’ his! My God, woman, have you lost your ever-lovin’ mind?

You the drunkest white man I
ever seen!” one says, which you take as high praise,

I guess us folks in California are kind of straitlaced and old-fashioned." Hahaha, I thought on the way downstairs. I never thought I'd say those words with a straight face...

Stop calling me resilient. I’m not resilient. Because every time you say, ‘Oh, they’re resilient,’ you can do something else to me.” –Tracie Washington, New Orleans-based civil rights attorney, 2010

This city has more history than hauntings,” he says. “For one, it’s the birthplace of jazz.” “And home to voodoo and vampires,” says Mom. “And real people, too,” presses Dad, “like Pere Antoine and Jean Lafitte—” “And the Axeman of New Orleans,” adds Mom brightly. Jacob shoots me a look. “I really hope axe is a kind of instrument and not—” “He went around chopping people up,” Mom adds. Jacob sighs. “Of course he did.

He expressed his sincere belief in the position the limo driver’s soul would occupy in the afterlife. He finished by saying that he believed he had met the limodriver’s mother in a New Orleans house of prostitution.

He invited the driver of the limo to perform an illegal sex act on himself. To engage in oral congress with various rodents and birds. He articulated his own proposal that all persons of Negro blood return to their native continent. He expressed his sincere belief in the position the limo driver’s soul would occupy in the afterlife. He finished by saying that he believed he had met the limodriver’s mother in a New Orleans house of prostitution.

The president can say we’re a country at war all he wants. We’re not. The military is at war. And the military families are at war. Everybody else is shopping….

You pay your money and you takes your choice.

As they say in New Orleans, “Laissez les bon temps rouler.” Let the good times roll, baby.

New Orleans humidity is like a mood. TO say to someone "It's humid today" is to comment on the mind-set.

So are you saying I’m your Superman?” --- Josh Copeland

He was fully anticipating her lips being bright red to go with her toenail polish. Damn, he loved red lipstick. But before he could get to those lips, she used them, to say, “Oh, dammit, it’s you.” Owen’s gaze bypassed her mouth to fly to her eyes. Because he’d know that voice anywhere. Madison Allain was home. A day early. Not that an extra day would have helped him prepare. He’d been thinking about her visit for a week and was still as wound tight about it as he’d been when Sawyer had told him that she was coming home. For a month. Owen stood just watching her, fighting back all of the first words that he was tempted to say. Like, “Damn, you’re even more gorgeous than the last time I saw you.” Or, “I haven’t put anyone in the hospital lately.” Or, “I’ve missed you so damned much.” Just for instance. He wiped his hands on his jeans. Okay, he was supposed to be nice to her. That meant treating her like she was one of the tourists who frequented this dock. Polite. Friendly, But not I’ve-known-you-my-whole-life-and-kissed-you-a-whole-bunch friendly. Just mildly hey-how’s-it-goin’ friendly. Nice. Polite. A little friendly—but not too much. He could do that. Though it probably meant not saying things like, “I still remember how your nipples taste.

The boys were tumbling about, clinging to his legs, imploring that numerous things be brought back to them. Mr. Pontellier was a great favorite, and ladies, men, children, even nurses, were always on hand to say goodby to him. His wife stood smiling and waving, the boys shouting, as he disappeared in the old rockaway down the sandy road. A few days later a box arrived for Mrs. Pontellier from New Orleans. It was from her husband. It was filled with friandises, with luscious and toothsome bits--the finest of fruits, pates, a rare bottle or two, delicious syrups, and bonbons in abundance. Mrs. Pontellier was always very generous with the contents of such a box; she was quite used to receiving them when away from home. The pates and fruit were brought to the dining-room; the bonbons were passed around. And the ladies, selecting with dainty and discriminating fingers and a little greedily, all declared that Mr. Pontellier was the best husband in the world. Mrs. Pontellier was forced to admit that she knew of none better.

..I began speaking.. First, I took issue with the media's characterization of the post-Katrina New Orleans as resembling the third world as its poor citizens clamored for a way out. I suggested that my experience in New Orleans working with the city's poorest people in the years before the storm had reflected the reality of third-world conditions in New Orleans, and that Katrina had not turned New Orleans into a third-world city but had only revealed it to the world as such. I explained that my work, running Reprieve, a charity that brought lawyers and volunteers to the Deep South from abroad to work on death penalty issues, had made it clear to me that much of the world had perceived this third-world reality, even if it was unnoticed by our own citizens. To try answer Ryan's question, I attempted to use my own experience to explain that for many people in New Orleans, and in poor communities across the country, the government was merely an antagonist, a terrible landlord, a jailer, and a prosecutor. As a lawyer assigned to indigent people under sentence of death and paid with tax dollars, I explained the difficulty of working with clients who stand to be executed and who are provided my services by the state, not because they deserve them, but because the Constitution requires that certain appeals to be filed before these people can be killed. The state is providing my clients with my assistance, maybe the first real assistance they have ever received from the state, so that the state can kill them. I explained my view that the country had grown complacent before Hurricane Katrina, believing that the civil rights struggle had been fought and won, as though having a national holiday for Martin Luther King, or an annual march by politicians over the bridge in Selma, Alabama, or a prosecution - forty years too late - of Edgar Ray Killen for the murder of civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, were any more than gestures. Even though President Bush celebrates his birthday, wouldn't Dr. King cry if he could see how little things have changed since his death? If politicians or journalists went to Selma any other day of the year, they would see that it is a crumbling city suffering from all of the woes of the era before civil rights were won as well as new woes that have come about since. And does anyone really think that the Mississippi criminal justice system could possibly be a vessel of social change when it incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than almost any place in the world, other than Louisiana and Texas, and then compels these prisoners, most of whom are black, to work prison farms that their ancestors worked as chattel of other men? ... I hoped, out loud, that the post-Katrina experience could be a similar moment [to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fiasco], in which the American people could act like the children in the story and declare that the emperor has no clothes, and hasn't for a long time. That, in light of Katrina, we could be visionary and bold about what people deserve. We could say straight out that there are people in this country who are racist, that minorities are still not getting a fair shake, and that Republican policies heartlessly disregard the needs of individual citizens and betray the common good. As I stood there, exhausted, in front of the thinning audience of New Yorkers, it seemed possible that New Orleans's destruction and the suffering of its citizens hadn't been in vain.

When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and then in New Orleans—and you say, 'What, again?—no, I've had enough;' the other party says, 'But just this one time more—this is for lagniappe.' When the beau perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too high, and sees by the young lady's countenance that the edifice would have been better with the top compliment left off, he puts his 'I beg pardon—no harm intended,' into the briefer form of 'Oh, that's for lagniappe.' If the waiter in the restaurant stumbles and spills a gill of coffee down the back of your neck, he says 'For lagniappe, sah,' and gets you another cup without extra charge.

His day is done. Is done. The news came on the wings of a wind, reluctant to carry its burden. Nelson Mandela’s day is done. The news, expected and still unwelcome, reached us in the United States, and suddenly our world became somber. Our skies were leadened. His day is done. We see you, South African people standing speechless at the slamming of that final door through which no traveller returns. Our spirits reach out to you Bantu, Zulu, Xhosa, Boer. We think of you and your son of Africa, your father, your one more wonder of the world. We send our souls to you as you reflect upon your David armed with a mere stone, facing down the mighty Goliath. Your man of strength, Gideon, emerging triumphant. Although born into the brutal embrace of Apartheid, scarred by the savage atmosphere of racism, unjustly imprisoned in the bloody maws of South African dungeons. Would the man survive? Could the man survive? His answer strengthened men and women around the world. In the Alamo, in San Antonio, Texas, on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, in Chicago’s Loop, in New Orleans Mardi Gras, in New York City’s Times Square, we watched as the hope of Africa sprang through the prison’s doors. His stupendous heart intact, his gargantuan will hale and hearty. He had not been crippled by brutes, nor was his passion for the rights of human beings diminished by twenty-seven years of imprisonment. Even here in America, we felt the cool, refreshing breeze of freedom. When Nelson Mandela took the seat of Presidency in his country where formerly he was not even allowed to vote we were enlarged by tears of pride, as we saw Nelson Mandela’s former prison guards invited, courteously, by him to watch from the front rows his inauguration. We saw him accept the world’s award in Norway with the grace and gratitude of the Solon in Ancient Roman Courts, and the confidence of African Chiefs from ancient royal stools. No sun outlasts its sunset, but it will rise again and bring the dawn. Yes, Mandela’s day is done, yet we, his inheritors, will open the gates wider for reconciliation, and we will respond generously to the cries of Blacks and Whites, Asians, Hispanics, the poor who live piteously on the floor of our planet. He has offered us understanding. We will not withhold forgiveness even from those who do not ask. Nelson Mandela’s day is done, we confess it in tearful voices, yet we lift our own to say thank you. Thank you our Gideon, thank you our David, our great courageous man. We will not forget you, we will not dishonor you, we will remember and be glad that you lived among us, that you taught us, and that you loved us all.

My places were emotional, primarily. I wrote of locales in which I had lived, or in which I imagined I could live, but the topography was primal and sexual and terminal. It bore no distinct architecture or design or dialect. It was merely human and in peril, which is to say universal. But on Royal and Coliseum and Vista--streets I cannot relinquish--I found my places and I dreamed a narrative. Can I go there and find it again?"--Tennessee Williams

We all have battle scars," she says. "People in our past." "You too?" he asked, and for a moment, she is in New Orleans, the room in disarray, those green eyes black with rage as the building begins to burn. "Yeah" she said softly.

No matter what we’re doing, he won’t miss a phone call. He’ll never let the answering machine take a call. Even if we’re making love! He’ll conduct conversations with, say, his mother or his golf buddies, right in the middle.” —Kerrie, New Orleans, LA

When you go from the fake New Orleans of Disneyland to the real one, where the captain of the paddle-wheel steamer says it is possible to see alligators on the banks of the river, and then you don't see any, you risk feeling homesick for Disneyland. -'City of Robots',1986

I have a great idea, Gregori," she told him wickedly. "Let's take a commercial flight." "What?" He was staring at her mouth. She had a great mouth.A perfect mouth. A sexy mouth. Mon Dieu, he wanted her mouth. "Doesn't a commercial flight sound fun? We could take a night flight, mingle with people.It might even throw off the reporter." "Nothing is going to throw off the reporter.He is tenacious.And there will be no commercial flight.There will be no discussion on this,either. None. If we go to New Orleans,and I am not saying we will, commercial flights are out." "Oh,Gregori,I was only kidding. Naturally we'll do things your way," she added demurely. He shook his head,exasperated at himself. Of course she had been teasing. He wasn't used to anyone treating him as Savannah did. Outrageous woman. "I need to go out and talk with Wade Carter." She stood up instantly, expectantly, her blue eyes wide in anticipation. "Tell me what you want me to do. I can probably manage mist.I'm stronger now,using your blood.I can back you up." Amusement warmed the cool silver of his eyes. "Mon Dieu, Savannah, you sound like a cop movie.

One night two years later, without saying good-bye, Jake left before dawn, taking with him as many fine clothes and family treasures—including his great-grandfather’s gold pocket watch and his grandmother’s diamond ring—as he could carry. He hitchhiked to New Orleans and found Maria

I just turned sixteen last week,” she said. “But I don’t have my license yet.” “You sound like you’re from New Orleans,” Debbie told her, doing her best to pronounce it N’Awlins. Whoadie nodded. “I live in the Ninth Ward,” she said. “That’s actually where my nickname comes from. Whoadie is how the locals say wardie. That’s a person who lives in the same ward as you,” she explained. “My parents called me Whoadie ever since I was a baby. I didn’t always like it, because there were some boys at school used to call me Whoadie the Toadie all the time. But then I punched their fucking lights out and they stopped.

Anybody could rise above anything in America. ... No, they can't, Marie said, from the backseat. How was I supposed to break out of there? What were my people going to say? Uppity. That's what. 'Cause if I can, why can't they? But I tell you what, I don't even know how it's done. I never seen nobody do it.

I am going to hate New Orleans," he whispered against her silken hair before she began lowering her head. Her breath warmed the velvet tip of him, sending fire racing through his blood. "Maybe we can think of something interesting to make it more enjoyable for you," she ventured. Her mouth was satin soft, moist and hot. Gregori pressed his hips forward, forcing her back on the bed, his knees on the thick blanket above her. She was so beautiful, her flawless skin like cream, her thick hair spilling around her slender shoulders. Sitting up, she slowly peeled off the cotton shirt, baring her full breasts to his silver gaze. She looked lush and sexy in the dark of the night, a mysterious,erotic gift to him. "You think you might make New Orleans more bearable for me then?" His eyes were saying more than his mouth, touching her here and there, dwelling on every curve of her body. Her hand spanned his flat stomach and lingered there. "I'm sure I can be inventive enough to make you forget your dread of crowds. Take off my jeans." "Your jeans?" he echoed. "You put them on me, and they're definitely in the way. Take them off." Her hand was wandering lower, her fingeres walking lightly over his clenching muscles, a deliberate persuasion. His hands made quick work of unfastening her jeans and tugging them down her legs. She kicked them aside and leaned forward to press a kiss onto his stomach. Her hair slid over his heavy fullness, a silken tangle that nearly drove him out of his mind. "Sometimes your orders are very easy to follow,ma cherie," he murmured, his eyes closing as her mouth wandered lower.

Then it was horn time. Time for the big solo. Sonny lifted the trumpet - One! Two! - He got it into sight - Three! We all stopped dead. I mean we stopped. That wasn't Sonny's horn. This one was dented-in and beat-up and the tip-end was nicked. It didn't shine, not a bit. Lux leaned over-you could have fit a coffee cup into his mouth. "Jesus God," he said. "Am I seeing right?" I looked close and said: "Man, I hope not." But why kid? We'd seen that trumpet a million times. It was Spoof's. Rose-Ann was trembling. Just like me, she remembered how we'd buried the horn with Spoof. And she remembered how quiet it had been in Sonny's room last night... I started to think real hophead thoughts, like - where did Sonny get hold of a shovel that late? and how could he expect a horn to play that's been under the ground for two years? and - That blast got into our ears like long knives. Spoof's own trademark! Sonny looked caught, like he didn't know what to do at first, like he was hypnotized, scared, almighty scared. But as the sound came out, rolling out, sharp and clean and clear - new-trumpet sound - his expression changed. His eyes changed: they danced a little and opened wide. Then he closed them, and blew that horn. Lord God of the Fishes, how he blew it! How he loved it and caressed it and pushed it up, higher and higher and higher. High C? Bottom of the barrel. He took off, and he walked all over the rules and stamped them flat. The melody got lost, first off. Everything got lost, then, while that horn flew. It wasn't only jazz; it was the heart of jazz, and the insides, pulled out with the roots and held up for everybody to see; it was blues that told the story of all the lonely cats and all the ugly whores who ever lived, blues that spoke up for the loser lamping sunshine out of iron-gray bars and every hop head hooked and gone, for the bindlestiffs and the city slicers, for the country boys in Georgia shacks and the High Yellow hipsters in Chicago slums and the bootblacks on the corners and the fruits in New Orleans, a blues that spoke for all the lonely, sad and anxious downers who could never speak themselves... And then, when it had said all this, it stopped and there was a quiet so quiet that Sonny could have shouted: 'It's okay, Spoof. It's all right now. You get it said, all of it - I'll help you. God, Spoof, you showed me how, you planned it - I'll do my best!' And he laid back his head and fastened the horn and pulled in air and blew some more. Not sad, now, not blues - but not anything else you could call by a name. Except... jazz. It was Jazz. Hate blew out of that horn, then. Hate and fury and mad and fight, like screams and snarls, like little razors shooting at you, millions of them, cutting, cutting deep... And Sonny only stopping to wipe his lip and whisper in the silent room full of people: 'You're saying it, Spoof! You are!' God Almighty Himself must have heard that trumpet, then; slapping and hitting and hurting with notes that don't exist and never existed. Man! Life took a real beating! Life got groined and sliced and belly-punched and the horn, it didn't stop until everything had all spilled out, every bit of the hate and mad that's built up in a man's heart. ("Black Country")

There can be no discredit to a conquered people for accepting the conditions offered by their conquerors. Nor is there any occasion for a feeling of humiliation. We have made an honest, and I hope that I may say, a creditable fight, but we have lost. Let us come forward, then, and accept the ends involved in the struggle....Let us accept the terms, as we are in duty bound to do. -- JAMES LONGSTREET, Letter to New Orleans Times, March 18, 1867.

Remarkable, if for nothing else, because of this, that all of those men and women who stayed for any reason left behind them some monument, some structure of marble and brick and stone that still stands; so that even when the gas lamps went out and the planes came in and the office buildings crowded the blocks of Canal Street, something irreducible of beauty and romance remained; not in every street perhaps, but in so many that the landscape is for me the landscape of those times always, and walking now in the starlit streets of the Quarter or the Garden District I am in those times again. I suppose that is the nature of the monument. Be it a small house or a mansion of Corinthian columns and wrought-iron lace. The monument does not say that this or that man walked here. No, that what he felt in one time in one spot continues. The moon that rose over New Orleans then still rises. As long as the monuments stand, it still rises. The feeling, at least here...and there...it remains the same.

The workman cut to the left, still laying on his horn, and roared around the drunkenly weaving limousine. He invited the driver of the limo to perform an illegal sex act on himself. To engage in oral congress with various rodents and birds. He articulated his own proposal that all persons of Negro blood return to their native continent. He expressed his sincere belief in the position the limo driver’s soul would occupy in the afterlife. He finished by saying that he believed he had met the limodriver’s mother in a New Orleans house of prostitution.

When the music stopped, the curtains to their booth flew open. Jax, the devastatingly handsome Nordic wolf, leered down on the lovers, who smiled up at him in amusement. “I said pretend to be her mate. At any point, did you hear me say, ‘Come up to New York and fuck my sister in public…during one of my company events?’ Did I say that? I really don’t recall saying that.” Jax scrubbed his fingers over his tightly cropped hair. He moved to the balcony, overlooking the patrons who were shuffling into the lobby for the intermission. “Sorry.” Dimitri laughed. He knew that they should have been slightly less conspicuous but the draw of his mate had been too much to resist. “Sorry? Really? That’s all you’ve got?” He turned to Gillian, who scrambled up to her feet, adjusting her dress. “And you? What’s your excuse, little sister? Seriously, every shifter in the room could hear you.” “Um, well, yeah, sorry about that. But technically this is your fault. I mean, what did you expect? You asked Dimitri to come here…to pretend to be my mate.” Gillian reasoned that her comeback sounded solid, inexperienced in dealing with her Alpha brother.

Jesus . . . Tom . . . this is reallyfuckinggood,” Prophet breathed in a rush of words. “Really fucking good, baby,” Tom echoed, smiling, the way he always did when Prophet was losing control. Prophet had lost it a long goddamned time ago when it came to Tom, but he’d be damned if he’d admit it. Out loud. Again. “Tommy . . .” And then Tom murmured, “Lije,” in his ear, his voice raspy and desperate, and Prophet shuddered, suddenly as desperate as Tom sounded. Of course, Tom noticed. And that’s when he began fucking Prophet in earnest, saying his name like a cross between a chant and a prayer, and Prophet was damned sure no one had made it sound better. No one had ever shortened it like that, but back in New Orleans, Tom had taken it and made it his own, using it every time they fucked. Like he was proving he knew Prophet, reminding Prophet that he’d let Tom in and there was no backing out now. Prophet

The analogy that has helped me most is this: in Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of boat-owners rescued people—single moms, toddlers, grandfathers—stranded in attics, on roofs, in flooded housing projects, hospitals, and school buildings. None of them said, I can’t rescue everyone, therefore it’s futile; therefore my efforts are flawed and worthless, though that’s often what people say about more abstract issues in which, nevertheless, lives, places, cultures, species, rights are at stake. They went out there in fishing boats and rowboats and pirogues and all kinds of small craft, some driving from as far as Texas and eluding the authorities to get in, others refugees themselves working within the city. There was bumper-to-bumper boat-trailer traffic—the celebrated Cajun Navy—going toward the city the day after the levees broke. None of those people said, I can’t rescue them all. All of them said, I can rescue someone, and that’s work so meaningful and important I will risk my life and defy the authorities to do it. And they did. Of course, working for systemic change also matters—the kind of change that might prevent calamities by addressing the climate or the infrastructure or the environmental and economic injustice that put some people in harm’s way in New Orleans in the first place.

The teachings of impermanence and lack of independent existence are not difficult to understand intellectually; when you hear these teachings you may think that they are quite true. On a deeper level, however, you probably still identify yourself as “me” and identify others as “them” or “you.” On some level you likely say to yourself, “I will always be me; I have an identity that is important.” I, for example, say to myself, “I am a Buddhist priest; not a Christian or Islamic one. I am a Japanese person, not an American or a Chinese one.” If we did not assume that we have this something within us that does not change, it would be very difficult for us to live responsibly in society. This is why people who are unfamiliar with Buddhism often ask, “If there were no unchanging essential existence, doesn’t that mean I would not be responsible for my past actions, since I would be a different person than in the past?” But of course that is not what the Buddha meant when he said we have no unchanging atman or essential existence. To help us understand this point, we can consider how our life resembles a river. Each moment the water of a river is flowing and different, so it is constantly changing, but there is still a certain continuity of the river as a whole. The Mississippi River, for example, was the river we know a million years ago. And yet, the water flowing in the Mississippi is always different, always new, so there is actually no fixed thing that we can say is the one and only Mississippi River. We can see this clearly when we compare the source of the Mississippi in northern Minnesota, a small stream one can jump over, to the river’s New Orleans estuary, which seems as wide as an ocean. We cannot say which of these is the true Mississippi: it is just a matter of conditions that lets us call one or the other of these the Mississippi. In reality, a river is just a collection of masses of flowing water contained within certain shapes in the land. “Mississippi River” is simply a name given to various conditions and changing elements. Since our lives are also just a collection of conditions, we cannot say that we each have one true identity that does not change, just as we cannot say there is one true Mississippi River. What we call the “self ” is just a set of conditions existing within a collection of different elements. So I cannot say that there is an unchanging self that exists throughout my life as a baby, as a teenager, and as it is today. Things that I thought were important and interesting when I was an elementary or high school student, for example, are not at all interesting to me now; my feelings, emotions, and values are always changing. This is the meaning of the teaching that everything is impermanent and without independent existence. But we still must recognize that there is a certain continuity in our lives, that there is causality, and that we need to be responsible for what we did yesterday. In this way, self-identity is important. Even though in actuality there is no unchanging identity, I still must use expressions like “when I was a baby ..., when I was a boy ..., when I was a teenager. ...” To speak about changes in our lives and communicate in a meaningful way, we must speak as if we assumed that there is an unchanging “I” that has been experiencing the changes; otherwise, the word “change” has no meaning. But according to Buddhist philosophy, self-identity, the “I,” is a creation of the mind; we create self-identity because it’s convenient and useful in certain ways. We must use self-identity to live responsibly in society, but we should realize that it is merely a tool, a symbol, a sign, or a concept. Because it enables us to think and discriminate, self-identity allows us to live and function. Although it is not the only reality of our lives, self-identity is a reality for us, a tool we must use to live with others in society.

On the train I had a lot of time to think. I thought how in the thirty years of my life I had seldom gotten on a train in America without being conscious of my color. In the South, there are Jim Crow cars and Negroes must ride separate from the whites, usually in a filthy antiquated coach next to the engine, getting all the smoke and bumps and dirt. In the South, we cannot buy sleeping car tickets. Such comforts are only for white folks. And in the North where segregated travel is not the law, colored people have, nevertheless, many difficulties. In auto buses they must take the seats in the rear, over the wheels. On the boats they must occupy the worst cabins. The ticket agents always say that all other accommodations are sold. On trains, if one sits down by a white person, the white person will sometimes get up, flinging back an insult at the Negro who has dared to take a seat beside him. Thus it is that in America, if you are yellow, brown, or black, you can never travel anywhere without being reminded of your color, and oft-times suffering great inconveniences. I sat in the comfortable sleeping car on my first day out of Moscow and remembered many things about trips I had taken in America. I remembered how, once as a youngster going alone to see my father who was working in Mexico, I went into the dining car of the train to eat. I sat down at a table with a white man. The man looked at me and said, "You're a nigger, ain't you?" and left the table. It was beneath his dignity to eat with a Negro child. At St. Louis I went onto the station platform to buy a glass of milk. The clerk behind the counter said, “We don't serve niggers," and refused to sell me anything. As I grew older I learned to expect this often when traveling. So when I went South to lecture on my poetry at Negro universities, I carried my own food because I knew I could not go into the dining cars. Once from Washington to New Orleans, I lived all the way on the train on cold food. I remembered this miserable trip as I sat eating a hot dinner on the diner of the Moscow-Tashkent express. Traveling South from New York, at Washington, the capital of our country, the official Jim Crow begins. There the conductor comes through the train and, if you are a Negro, touches you on the shoulder and says, "The last coach forward is the car for colored people." Then you must move your baggage and yourself up near the engine, because when the train crosses the Potomac River into Virginia, and the dome of the Capitol disappears, it is illegal any longer for white people and colored people to ride together. (Or to eat together, or sleep together, or in some places even to work together.) Now I am riding South from Moscow and am not Jim-Crowed, and none of the darker people on the train with me are Jim-Crowed, so I make a happy mental note in the back of my mind to write home to the Negro papers: "There is no Jim Crow on the trains of the Soviet Union.

Without warning, he fingered the small, black tattoo on her lower back. “What does this script mean?” She did gasp then, as much from the shock of his touch as from her visceral reaction to it. She wanted to arch up to his hand and couldn’t understand why. She snapped, “Are you done groping me?” “Canna say. Tell me what the marking means.” Mari had no idea. She’d had it ever since she could remember. All she knew was that her mother used to write out that mysterious lettering in all of her correspondence. Or, at least her mother had before she’d abandoned Mari in New Orleans to go on her two-hundred-year-long druid sabbatical— He tapped her there, impatiently awaiting an answer. “It means ‘drunk and lost a bet.’ Now keep your hands to yourself unless you want to be an amphibian.” When the opening emerged ahead, she crawled heedlessly for it and scrambled out with her lantern swinging wildly. She’d taken only three steps into the new chamber before he’d caught her wrist, spinning her around. As his gaze raked over her, he reached forward and pulled a lock of her long hair over her shoulder. He seemed unaware that he was languidly rubbing his thumb over the curl. “Why hide this face behind a cloak?” he murmured, cocking his head to the side as he studied her. “No’ a damn thing’s wrong with you that I can tell. But you look fey. Explains the name.” “How can I resist these suave compliments?” He was right about the name though. Many of the fey had names beginning in Mari or Kari. She gave his light hold on her hair a pointed look, and he dropped it like it was hot, then scowled at her as if she were to blame.

Above the list of children she read: Mister Jackson Henry Clark married Miss Julienne Maria Jacques, June 12, 1933. Not until that moment had she known her parents’ proper names. She sat there for a few minutes with the Bible open on the table. Her family before her. Time ensures children never know their parents young. Kya would never see the handsome Jake swagger into an Asheville soda fountain in early 1930, where he spotted Maria Jacques, a beauty with black curls and red lips, visiting from New Orleans. Over a milkshake he told her his family owned a plantation and that after high school he’d study to be a lawyer and live in a columned mansion. But when the Depression deepened, the bank auctioned the land out from under the Clarks’ feet, and his father took Jake from school. They moved down the road to a small pine cabin that once, not so long ago really, had been occupied by slaves. Jake worked the tobacco fields, stacking leaves with black men and women, babies strapped on their backs with colorful shawls. One night two years later, without saying good-bye, Jake left before dawn, taking with him as many fine clothes and family treasures—including his great-grandfather’s gold pocket watch and his grandmother’s diamond ring—as he could carry. He hitchhiked to New Orleans and found Maria living with her family in an elegant home near the waterfront. They were descendants of a French merchant, owners of a shoe factory. Jake pawned the heirlooms and entertained her in fine restaurants hung with red velvet curtains, telling her that he would buy her that columned mansion. As he knelt under a magnolia tree, she agreed to marry him, and they wed in 1933 in a small church ceremony, her family standing silent.

A pair of shots rang out from outside, near the front of the house, followed by shouting. A sudden flood of adrenaline doused my fatigue and political confusion. Jean’s posture straightened, and he rose quickly. “That is Dominique, whose men were watching the transport. Something is amiss.” Ya think? I ran for my bag and pulled out the staff. Jean slipped a triangular-bladed dagger from beneath his tunic, wrenched open the door to the study, and strode out ahead of me. As always where the pirate was concerned, I trailed along, a step behind. I edged around Jean in time to see his older half-brother and fellow pirate captain Dominique Youx dragging a stumbling, bleeding man into the front hallway from outside and shoving him to the floor. I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t Alex, followed by a chaser of disappointment that it wasn’t Alex, topped by a dollop of concern that our friend Ken Hachette had been shot. Ken, a human NOPD detective who’d recently been clued in about the big bad world surrounding him, had missed all the recent events due to a family emergency that had taken him out of town. Why would he be coming to Old Barataria alone via Jean Lafitte’s private transport unless Alex sent him? My adrenaline jump-started my heart to another race, this one fueled by worry. Something bad had happened; it was the only explanation. Jean and Dominique exchanged a rapid-fire torrent of French that went way past my abilities to interpret. “He claims to be a friend to her,” Dominique finally spat out, and I could tell by the way he said her, much as one might say flesh-eating maggot, that he referred to me. He’d never liked me; he considered me a bad influence on his baby brother the immortal pirate. As if.

I have talked to many people about this and it seems to be a kind of mystical experience. The preparation is unconscious, the realization happens in a flaming second. It was on Third Avenue. The trains were grinding over my head. The snow was nearly waist-high in the gutters and uncollected garbage was scattered in a dirty mess. The wind was cold, and frozen pieces of paper went scraping along the pavement. I stopped to look in a drug-store window where a latex cooch dancer was undulating by a concealed motor–and something burst in my head, a kind of light and a kind of feeling blended into an emotion which if it had spoken would have said, “My God! I belong here. Isn’t this wonderful?” Everything fell into place. I saw every face I passed. I noticed every doorway and the stairways to apartments. I looked across the street at the windows, lace curtains and potted geraniums through sooty glass. It was beautiful–but most important, I was part of it. I was no longer a stranger. I had become a New Yorker. Now there may be people who move easily into New York without travail, but most I have talked to about it have had some kind of trial by torture before acceptance. And the acceptance is a double thing. It seems to me that the city finally accepts you just as you finally accept the city. A young man in a small town, a frog in a small puddle, if he kicks his feet is able to make waves, get mud in his neighbor’s eyes–make some impression. He is known. His family is known. People watch him with some interest, whether kindly or maliciously. He comes to New York and no matter what he does, no one is impressed. He challenges the city to fight and it licks him without being aware of him. This is a dreadful blow to a small-town ego. He hates the organism that ignores him. He hates the people who look through him. And then one day he falls into place, accepts the city and does not fight it any more. It is too huge to notice him and suddenly the fact that it doesn’t notice him becomes the most delightful thing in the world. His self-consciousness evaporates. If he is dressed superbly well–there are half a million people dressed equally well. If he is in rags–there are a million ragged people. If he is tall, it is a city of tall people. If he is short the streets are full of dwarfs; if ugly, ten perfect horrors pass him in one block; if beautiful, the competition is overwhelming. If he is talented, talent is a dime a dozen. If he tries to make an impression by wearing a toga–there’s a man down the street in a leopard skin. Whatever he does or says or wears or thinks he is not unique. Once accepted this gives him perfect freedom to be himself, but unaccepted it horrifies him. I don’t think New York City is like other cities. It does not have character like Los Angeles or New Orleans. It is all characters–in fact, it is everything. It can destroy a man, but if his eyes are open it cannot bore him. New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it–once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. All of everything is concentrated here, population, theatre, art, writing, publishing, importing, business, murder, mugging, luxury, poverty. It is all of everything. It goes all right. It is tireless and its air is charged with energy. I can work longer and harder without weariness in New York than anyplace else….

I would say Randolph's a horse's ass, but that would be unfair to the horse.

JACKSON HAS NEVER stood apart from the rest of Mississippi the way Atlanta has stood apart from Georgia, say, or New Orleans from Louisiana.

You Never Can Tell" It was a teenage wedding, and the old folks wished them well You could see that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle And now the young monsieur and madame have rung the chapel bell, "C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell They furnished off an apartment with a two room Roebuck sale The coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale, But when Pierre found work, the little money comin' worked out well "C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell They had a hi-fi phono, boy, did they let it blast Seven hundred little records, all rock, rhythm and jazz But when the sun went down, the rapid tempo of the music fell "C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell They bought a souped-up jitney, 'twas a cherry red '53, They drove it down New Orleans to celebrate their anniversary It was there that Pierre was married to the lovely mademoiselle "C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

Separate but equal” has become an awkward issue for the “historically black colleges.” Plenty of blacks oppose integrating them, claiming that this would halt the special nurturing they give blacks. Unlike white colleges, they have therefore not been forced to integrate. The state of Louisiana appointed a commission to study the problem and came up with a plan for integration. Virtually all-black Southern University promptly went to court to fight the plan. It is not as though Southern was going to be swamped with whites; the plan required that it set aside 10 percent of its openings for whites.779 Another solution the commission has studied would be the merger of black colleges with nearby white colleges. One commission member, a black New Orleans lawyer named Norbert Simmons, says that black students would find the postmerger environment “devastating.

can’t say I mourned my failure overmuch, as it meant I’d get a free trip to New Orleans out of it, and that would rock be most excellent. I DROVE BACK to the office late in the day to find Tristan collapsed on the couch from exhaustion.

I’m mesmerized by the way he speaks—New Orleans is pronounced N’awlins. When he says backyard, it’s backyaaad. It’s the kind of voice that makes you feel instantly at home, like you’re a close friend or part of the inner circle. —SINGLE-MINDED

Is it the size of my wand? She did say she’d like to make it shoot sparks.

If our people had not gone to war without counting the cost, they were, nevertheless, involved in it without means of providing for its necessities. It has been heretofore stated that we had no powder-mills. It would be needless to say that the new-born Government had no depots of powder, but it may be well to add that, beyond the small supply required for sporting purposes, our local traders had no stock on hand. Having no manufacturing industries which required saltpeter, very little of that was purchasable in our markets. The same would have been the case in regard to sulphur, but for the fact that it had been recently employed in the clarification of sugar-cane juice, and thus a considerable amount of it was found in New Orleans.

The image of that confident, camera-ready woman slipped away from her like a rogue spirit escaping its temporary host. Another ghost haunting the streets of New Orleans.

If humans do not belong in California or Arizona, where do they belong? In Reisner's native Minnesota where there's many lakes? Of course, this is absurd. Very few people could survive in Minnesota without the energy that is produced there from fuel brought from elsewhere without rapidly deforesting it and belching the pollution of numerous wood fires. So what about further south? Just about everywhere you go, humans are out of their "natural" element—which is some place in Africa. Even where they are in their element, they are there in numbers that are unsustainable based on using only very local resources. (Unless we allow trains, trucks, ships, and planes into our "natural" world.) Indeed, most human habitations make little sense in some way, just as Speaker Hastert said of New Orleans. But, yet, there they are. Hastert's remark was just one comment made in the wake of terrible suffering, and was probably driven by his human sympathy, not wanting to see this go on again. But it was insensitive on another level and he was criticized for it. Reisner's whole book is basically saying the same thing about the entire Southwestern United States. The irony is that this book was largely written at a time when it was abundantly clear than energy, not water, was the common denominator in resource policy. A few short years after the oil shocks, the Iranian revolution, during the Iran-Iraq War, and revised months after the First Gulf War, Resiner and other water conservationists must realize they are the junior varsity. This is before all of this activity unleashed the events of the Bush era.

On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City Is where your speech alone is understood

All there really is to do in New Orleans, it seems, is walk, eat, drink, look, and listen. This is basically what we do on every trip, but the fact is underscored here by the hundreds of restaurants and bars sitting shoulder to shoulder on every slender street. And the thousands of people milling through the city with tall neon novelty cups and mismatched straws. Every block or so the smells of the city switch from fried and delicious to stinking and rotten, the humidity trapping the sewage and putting it on display. Compared to most American cities, everything looks so old that I imagine we’re smelling waste from the 1700s, which miraculously makes it more bearable. “It feels like we’re walking around inside someone’s mouth,” Alex says more than once about the humidity, and from then on, whenever the smell hits, I think of food trapped between molars. But the thing is, it never lasts. A breeze sweeps through to clear it out, or we wander past another restaurant with all its doors propped open, or we round the corner and stumble onto some beautiful side street where every balcony overhead is dripping with purple flowers.

In the late summer of 2010, I visit Nowak at his home in Falls Church, Virginia. He is soft-spoken, slightly built, and a little stooped with age. Nowak has a cerebral demeanor, and in a Louisiana accent that softens his r’s, he might tell you he was born in the “fawties.” We sit in his living room, which is decorated with tiny statues of forest animals. Every few minutes, he darts down the hall to his desk - above which hangs a famous photo of a black-phase red wolf from the Tensas River - to retrieve books, graphs, and papers for reference. More than a decade after his retirement, Nowak remains engrossed by discussions of red wolf origins. Deep in conversation about carnassial teeth, he dives to grab his wife’s shitzsu, Tommy, to show me what they look like, then he thinks better of it. (Tommy had eyed him warily.) He hands me a copy of his most recent publication, a 2002 paper from Southeastern Naturalist. “When I wrote this, I threw everything I had at the red wolf problem,” he says. “This was my best shot.” He thumps an extra copy onto the coffee table between us. After a very long pause, he gazes at it and adds: “I’m not sure I have anything left to offer.” This is hard to accept, considering everything he has invested in learning about the red wolf: few people have devoted more time to understanding red wolves than the man sitting across the coffee table from me, absentmindedly stroking his wife’s dog. Nowak grew up in New Orleans, and as an undergraduate at Tulane University in 1962, he became interested in endangered birds. While reading a book on the last ivory-billed woodpeckers in the swamps along the Tensas River, his eyes widened when he found references to wolves. “Wolves in Louisiana! My goodness, I thought wolves lived up on the tundra, in the north woods, going around chasing moose and people,” Nowak recalls. “I did not know a thing about them. But when I learned there were wolves in my home state, it got me excited.

Scarlett Mistry supposed there were natural disasters everywhere. But it was all so very inconvenient. When she was a child, her father had gone apoplectic over a hurricane that had flattened one of their multi-million-dollar high-rises in Miami Beach. A landslide in Vail had once collapsed the roof of a Mistry Hotels chalet. And her mother was constantly threatening to sell off the property in New Orleans before the levees gave way for good. Even in her family's native Gujarat, India, there were terrible floods when the monsoons came. Property was a risky way to make a living, in Scarlett's opinion - not that she'd ever say as much to her parents. She'd long ago decided on an alternative route to fame and fortune, one free from the uncertainty of climate change and its unpredictable effect on the real estate market. Unfortunately, she hadn't factored in power outages. So instead of being able to check any of her feeds, she was stuck sitting in a wingback chair, her phone as dead as a brick in her hand, and listening to Orchid pepper the townie with questions about how bad the storm had gotten. He wasn't big on details, that Vaughn Green. Not that Scarlett needed Vaughn's opinion on how screwed they all were. After all, she was spending the afternoon sitting under a quilt by a fire like some sort of pioneer girl.

Don’t write about the bodies. It’s not safe. “Maybe I never wanted to be safe.” It felt good to say it out loud. She didn’t want safety. She wanted truth. For once, she wanted truth. Nothing lasted forever, so why should she try to fight her own end? Phoenix would fall as surely as New Orleans and Miami had done. Just as Houston and San Antonio and Austin had fallen. Just as the Jersey Shore had gone under for the last time. Everything died. Places were blown away, or drowned or burned, and it just kept happening. The equilibrium of the world was shifting. Whole cities were losing their balance as the ground they’d taken for bedrock shifted beneath them and knocked them right on their collective asses. Maybe it would just keep happening. Maybe it would never end. So why run? If the whole world was burning, why not face it with a beer in your hand, unafraid? For once, unafraid.

I didn’t confront the Dominionists directly, instead choosing to minister to the sick and hungry New Orleanians who arrived in DeQuincy in Katrina’s wake. But inside, I fumed at the Dominionist faction at Grace. Katrina was not about God’s judgment; it was about a storm that started as a low-pressure zone that slowly, dangerously grew into a tropical wave of low pressure. Katrina had a natural cause, not a supernatural cause. What flooded New Orleans and sent its citizenry into exile was not, as the Dominionists at Grace argued, God running spiritually corrupt, lost souls out of town but rather a catastrophically flawed levee system constructed by human hands. Besides, I believed that what we did to help those affected by the storm—not why the storm or its destruction happened—was what mattered. My Katrina-era messages were just blandly positive—I preached that the storm was a moment to prove to God just how loving we could be to one another—but the Dominionists at Grace were furious nonetheless. “Are you really saying,” they chided me after Sunday services, “that it doesn’t matter how people in New Orleans live? That they can be saved if they’re alcoholics?” I was unflinching in my answer. “Yes, “ I replied sternly, “that’s exactly what I’m saying.” The Dominionists simply shook their heads in disgust at my apostasy.

Eddie Grace's buick Got four bullet holes in the side Charley Delisle is sittin' at the top Of an avocado tree Mrs Storm will stab you with a steak knife If you step on her lawn I got a half a pack of lucky strikes man So come along with me Let's fill our pockets With macadamia nuts And go over to Bobby Goodmanson's And jump off the roof Hilda plays strip poker When her mama's across the street Joey Navinsky says she put Her tongue in his mouth Dicky Faulkner's got a switchblade And some gooseneck risers That eucalyptus is a hunchback There's a wind down from the south So let me tie you up with kite string I'll show you the scabs on my knee Watch out for the broken glass Put your shoes and socks on And come along with me Let's follow that fire truck I think your house is burning down Then go down to the hobo jungle And kill some rattlesnakes with a trowel And we'll break all the windows In the old Anderson place We'll steal a bunch of boysenberrys And smear 'em on your face I'll get a dollar from my mama's purse Buy that skull and crossbones ring And you can wear it round your neck On an old piece of string Then we'll spit on Ronnie Arnold And flip him the bird Slash the tires on the school bus Now don't say a word I'll take a rusty nail Scratch your initials in my arm I'll show you how to sneak up on the roof Of the drugstore I'll take the spokes from your wheelchair And a magpie's wings And I'll tie 'em to your shoulders And your feet I'll steal a hacksaw from my dad Cut the braces off your legs And we'll bury them tonight Out in the cornfield Just put a church key in your pocket We'll hop that freight train in the hall We'll slide all the way down the drain To New Orleans in the fall

Where does the word cocktail come from? There are many answers to that question, and none is really satisfactory. One particular favorite story of mine, though, comes from The Booze Reader: A Soggy Saga of a Man in His Cups, by George Bishop: “The word itself stems from the English cock-tail which, in the middle 1800s, referred to a woman of easy virtue who was considered desirable but impure. The word was imported by expatriate Englishmen and applied derogatorily to the newly acquired American habit of bastardizing good British Gin with foreign matter, including ice. The disappearance of the hyphen coincided with the general acceptance of the word and its re-exportation back to England in its present meaning.” Of course, this can’t be true since the word was applied to a drink before the middle 1800s, but it’s entertaining nonetheless, and the definition of “desirable but impure” fits cocktails to a tee. A delightful story, published in 1936 in the Bartender, a British publication, details how English sailors of “many years ago” were served mixed drinks in a Mexican tavern. The drinks were stirred with “the fine, slender and smooth root of a plant which owing to its shape was called Cola de Gallo, which in English means ‘Cock’s tail.’ ” The story goes on to say that the sailors made the name popular in England, and from there the word made its way to America. Another Mexican tale about the etymology of cocktail—again, dated “many years ago”—concerns Xoc-tl (transliterated as Xochitl and Coctel in different accounts), the daughter of a Mexican king, who served drinks to visiting American officers. The Americans honored her by calling the drinks cocktails—the closest they could come to pronouncing her name. And one more south-of-the-border explanation for the word can be found in Made in America, by Bill Bryson, who explains that in the Krio language, spoken in Sierra Leone, a scorpion is called a kaktel. Could it be that the sting in the cocktail is related to the sting in the scorpion’s tail? It’s doubtful at best. One of the most popular tales told about the first drinks known as cocktails concerns a tavernkeeper by the name of Betsy Flanagan, who in 1779 served French soldiers drinks garnished with feathers she had plucked from a neighbor’s roosters. The soldiers toasted her by shouting, “Vive le cocktail!” William Grimes, however, points out in his book Straight Up or On the Rocks: A Cultural History of American Drink that Flanagan was a fictional character who appeared in The Spy, by James Fenimore Cooper. He also notes that the book “relied on oral testimony of Revolutionary War veterans,” so although it’s possible that the tale has some merit, it’s a very unsatisfactory explanation. A fairly plausible narrative on this subject can be found in Famous New Orleans Drinks & How to Mix ’em, by Stanley Clisby Arthur, first published in 1937. Arthur tells the story of Antoine Amedie Peychaud, a French refugee from San Domingo who settled in New Orleans in 1793. Peychaud was an apothecary who opened his own business, where, among other things, he made his own bitters, Peychaud’s, a concoction still available today. He created a stomach remedy by mixing his bitters with brandy in an eggcup—a vessel known to him in his native tongue as a coquetier. Presumably not all Peychaud’s customers spoke French, and it’s quite possible that the word, pronounced coh-KET-yay, could have been corrupted into cocktail. However, according to the Sazerac Company, the present-day producers of Peychaud’s bitters, the apothecary didn’t open until 1838, so there’s yet another explanation that doesn’t work.

The purpose of grouping these drinks together, though, is not merely for the sake of giving them somewhere to hang their hats. In many cases, listing these drinks and their ingredients one under the other—as you will see in the various charts beginning on this page—makes whole strings of drinks far easier to memorize. Once you know the formula for, say, New Orleans Sours, the family in which you’ll find the Margarita and the Sidecar, you will understand that the Kamikaze is just a vodka-based Margarita and that the Cosmopolitan, using citrus vodka as a base, follows the same formula, with just a little cranberry juice thrown in for color.

You know, Mother, there are other reasons that I have chosen to remain in America. None more important than Tiana, of course." "Of course," she said. "But I like the person that I have become over this past year. I learned that I'm really good at selling things and helping others," he said with a laugh. "See Lisette over there? I just helped broker a deal for her to sell her homemade medicinals in the biggest department store in New Orleans. "I like my job. It feels good to know that I can make my own way in this world, and do some good in it, too." Naveen shook his head. "I never thought I would say this, but I want to thank you and Father for cutting me off. It turns out that is exactly what I needed." His mother cupped his cheek. "I am proud of you, son. I always knew you could accomplish anything once you discovered your true heart's desire. Well, at least I'd hoped that would be the case," she amended with a laugh. "Just know there is always a place for you here. You can always come home." Naveen caught sight of a sparkling blue dress out of the corner of his eye. He looked over and saw Tiana walking toward them. "I have found my home," Naveen said.

This is one of those rescues I'll never forget," recalls Troy. "Like everybody else, I had my own stereotypes about Pit Bulls, so I was a little nervous when we saw these two on top of an almost fully submerged car. And then one of them jumped into the water and started swimming right at us. You could tell by his eyes that he was a little confused, but he definitively wanted to get to us. I didn't know if he was coming to say, Get out of my territory, or if he was coming for help. I took a picture of him as he swam toward me, and then this big old pit bull head is staring up at me, on my side of the boat. I put down my camera, took a deep breath, then reached down and just grabbed this dog and pulled him up into the boat." It was an anxious moment for Troy, but his fears were soon allayed. "He was just nuzzling his head into my neck, and his tail was just thumping against the side of the boat, just thumping so loud, bam bam bam. He would have climbed right inside of you. This dog had been trapped on the roof of a car in his own driveway, no clean water, no food, waiting for his owners to come back. He's sunburned. He's sick. But the most important thing in that dog's life right then was being loved. He couldn't get close enough to me.

Before the Best Friends team got out on the water on their own, they spent several days ferrying already-rescued pets from the Jefferson Parish shelter, an official city facility, to the St. Francis Animal Sanctuary in Tylertown. It was clear to Troy that most of these animals had never seen the inside of a shelter before: "Their eyes seemed to be saying to me, 'Where am I? And where are my people?

I had killed people before, in war and as a member of the New Orleans police department, and I know what it does to you. Like the hunter, you feel an adrenaline surge of pleasure at having usurped the province of God. The person who says otherwise is lying. But the emotional attitude you form later varies greatly among individuals. Some will keep their remorse alive and feed it as they would a living gargoyle, to assure themselves of their own humanity; others will justify it in the name of a hundred causes, and they’ll reach back in moments of their own inadequacy and failure and touch again those flaming shapes that somehow made their impoverished lives historically significant.

In financial terms, slaves in the South had become the stuff that dreams were made of. More than land, cotton, rice, or sugar, owning slaves came to be considered the standard measure of prosperity, the safest investment, and the most profitable commodity for speculation. “This alliance between Negroes and cotton, we will venture to say, is now the strongest power in the world,” wrote James De Bow, editor of the widely read De Bow’s Review in New Orleans, “and the peace and welfare of Christendom absolutely depend upon the strength and security of it.

Why is Brennan Manning lovable in the eyes of God? Because on February 8th of 1956, in a shattering, life-changing experience, I committed my life to Jesus. Does God love me because ever since I was ordained a priest in 1963, I roamed the country and lately all over the world proclaiming the Good News of the gospel of grace? Does God love me because I tithe to the poor? Does he love me because back in New Orleans I work on skid row with alcoholics, addicts, and those who suffer with AIDS? Does God love me because I spend two hours every day in prayer? If I believe that stuff I’m a Pharisee! Then I feel I’m entitled to be comfortably close to Christ because of my good works. The gospel of grace says, “Brennan, you’re lovable for one reason only — ​because God loves you. Period.

An old French saying that goes, ‘The heart has reasons of which reason knows nothing’.

Tommy . . .” And then Tom murmured, “Lije,” in his ear, his voice raspy and desperate, and Prophet shuddered, suddenly as desperate as Tom sounded. Of course, Tom noticed. And that’s when he began fucking Prophet in earnest, saying his name like a cross between a chant and a prayer, and Prophet was damned sure no one had made it sound better. No one had ever shortened it like that, but back in New Orleans, Tom had taken it and made it his own, using it every time they fucked. Like he was proving he knew Prophet, reminding Prophet that he’d let Tom in and there was no backing out now. Prophet

Cultural Diplomacy—and an Accolade Among Piazzolla’s tasks during his first summer at the Chalet El Casco was the composition of “Le Grand Tango,” a ten-minute piece for cello and piano commissioned by Efraín Paesky, Director of the OAS Division of Arts, and dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, to whom Piazzolla sent the score. Rostropovich had not heard of Piazzolla at the time and did not look seriously at the music for several years.7 Written in ternary form, the work bears all Piazzolla’s hallmarks: tight construction, strong accents, harmonic tensions, rhythmic complexity and melodic inspiration, all apparent from the fierce cello scrapes at the beginning. Piazzolla uses intervals not frequently visited on the cello fingerboard. Its largely tender mood, notably on display in the cello’s snaking melodic line in the reflective middle section, becomes more profoundly complex in its emotional range toward the end. With its intricate juxtapositions of driving rhythms and heart-rending tags of tune, it is just about the most exciting music Piazzolla ever wrote, a masterpiece. Piazzolla was eager for Rostropovich to play it, but the chance did not come for eight years. Rostropovich, having looked at the music, and “astounded by the great talent of Astor,” decided he would include it in a concert. He made some changes in the cello part and wanted Piazzolla to hear them before he played the piece. Accordingly, in April 1990, he rehearsed it with Argentine pianist Susana Mendelievich in a room at the Teatro Colón, and Piazzolla gently coached the maestro in tango style—”Yes, tan-go, tan-go, tan-go.” The two men took an instant liking to one another.8 It was, says Mendelievich, “as if Rostropovich had played tangos all his life.” “Le Grand Tango” had its world premiere in New Orleans on April 24, 1990. Sarah Wolfensohn was the pianist. Three days later, they both played this piece again at the Gusman Cultural Center in Miami. [NOTE C] Rostropovich performed “Le Grand Tango” at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, in July 1994; the pianist was Lambert Orkis. More recently, cellist Yo-Yo Ma has described “Le Grand Tango” as one of his “favorite pieces of music,” praising its “inextricable rhythmic sense...total freedom, passion, ecstasy.

It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see.” “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” “How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.” —and now picture me nearly two decades later: in my pajamas, in New Orleans, reciting Thoreau’s words over and over as Abe gave me the address. What would Henry say? He’d say, Get your ass to the Funky Butt. (Except he probably wouldn’t say ass.)

The Trooper pauses for a long moment to control the anger you can see boiling just under the surface. His next question seems somewhat off topic. “How many people will you be at your table for Thanksgiving?” The women looks at him equally as confused as we are. She finally says seven people will be at Thanksgiving dinner. In a dead pan voice the Trooper looks right at her and says “You can pick one of those place setting up. Juniors dead.” My jaw falls open. My partners jaw falls open. The women faints and falls back onto the floor.

It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen… New Orleans. Mark Twain

Whites may be surprised by the strength of black voter solidarity. Chris Bell, a white Democratic congressman from Texas, was redistricted into a largely black area and promptly crushed in the 2004 Democratic primary by the former head of the Houston chapter of the NAACP. He felt betrayed: He said he had spent his entire career “fighting for diversity, championing diversity,” and was dismayed that “many people do not want to look past the color of your skin.” This only demonstrated how little Mr. Bell understood blacks. As Bishop Paul Morton of the St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church in New Orleans said of black voters, “I’ve talked to some people who say, ‘I don’t care how bad the black is, he’s better than any white.’” Many blacks also expect all blacks to vote the same way. Jesse Jackson criticized Alabama congressman Artur Davis for voting against Mr. Obama’s signature medical insurance legislation, saying, “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.” Racial consciousness explains why President Barack Obama drew support even from blacks who ordinarily vote Republican. No fewer than 87 percent of blacks who identified themselves as conservatives said they would vote for him. In the three states that track party registration by race—Florida, Louisiana, and North Carolina—blacks were dropping off the Republican rolls in record numbers and rallying to the Democrats. As one GOP black explained during the primaries, “Most black Republicans who support John McCain won’t tell you this, but if Barack Obama is the nominee for the Democratic ticket, they will go into the voting booth in November and vote for Obama.” “Among black conservatives, they tell me privately, it would be very hard to vote against him [Obama] in November,” said black conservative radio host Armstrong Williams. During the campaign, former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown said, “I think most white politicians do not understand that the race pride we [blacks] all have trumps everything else.

The Nation of Islam is the best known Black Muslim group, though its actual numbers may be no more than 100,000. However, many blacks who are not, themselves, Muslims have great respect for the group’s leader, Louis Farrakhan. Users of the Internet arm of Black Entertainment Television, BET.com, chose him as the black “person of the year” for 2005. Mr. Farrakhan was elected over Oprah Winfrey, then-Senator Barack Obama, Robert L. Johnson, who started BET, and the victims of Hurricane Katrina. “An overwhelming percentage of our users agreed that Minister Farrakhan made the most positive impact on the Black community over the past year,” explained a BET spokesman. What did Mr. Farrakhan do to deserve that honor? He received heavy news coverage twice that year. Once was when he promoted the theory that whites blew up the New Orleans levees to destroy black neighborhoods. The other was when he organized a “Millions More Movement” on the National Mall to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Million Man March. On that occasion, Michael Muhammad, National Youth Minister for the Nation of Islam declaimed: “We want to say to our young brothers of the Crips and the Bloods that we are one family. The real enemy doesn’t wear blue, but white, even when he’s butt naked.” Ayinde Baptiste of the Nation of Islam added: “We are at war here in America. . . . We need soldiers now. We need black male soldiers, we need black feminist soldiers, we need Crips and Bloods soldiers . . . soldiers in the prisons, soldiers in the streets.” The Congressional Black Caucus endorsed the event, and five black congressmen attended it.

Back then they put opium in everything. Cough drops, baby formulas, even the products for a lady’s time.” She gave a curt nod. “You know what I mean.” “You’re dead, mama. And I’m menopausal. You can say ‘period.

Serendipitous,” the driver, a sturdy young woman with short blonde hair and a quick smile, repeated the word. “That’s what my papa would call a ten-dollar word.” She laughed. “I guess I’d just say it was lucky I was passing.

Oh my,” she whispered. She turned her face toward his and before she could say yes, his lips were on hers. His kiss alone made her wet, her panties drenched with need. She pressed her thighs together in hopes to keep herself from catching fire. Heat coursed through her body and Ethan pressed her back to the bookcase.

I don’t know, but why wouldn’t she? She didn’t say she did, but she didn’t say she didn’t either, only that she aimed her negative energy at her after a bad day of work.

He took her mouth in a deep kiss. Finally he let her up for air. Don’t propose. Don’t propose. Don’t propose. He repeated the words until he was sure he wasn’t going to say something crazy.

Annis, my Arese,” she says, her voice fluttering. “I love you. I love you, my little one.” One of the Georgia Man’s men walks toward us and grabs my mother by the same soft meat of her arm as I have done so many times. Cries rise from the people around us; a bolt of summer lightning flashes in the distance. The Georgia men are grabbing men and women and children on their way to their labor. The Georgia men are separating those to be sold. They have come for their goods to march to New Orleans. There is a sinking at the heart of me, a whirlpool sucking down and down. Surely the earth is opening to us. Surely this terrible world is swallowing me. I grab my mama’s wrists, sinewy as corn sheaves, and howl. “Mama,” I say. “I always be with you,” my mama says, and No she not, I think, no she not, as the closest Georgia Man, broad armed and dirt faced, wrenches her away. Pulls her back. My sire done chose her for the markets.

You’re wrong about one thing,” he says, his voice rich in the humid air. “New Orleans has something good to offer me. It has you.