Jazz Festival, Here We Come!

Last night, we had six college-age kids over for dinner: Sons and friends of sons. They are terrific company and certainly appreciative of Premium T.'s considerable kitchen talents. Also, one son discovered last night that he made the (school) President's List. Yahoo!

Yesterday, I made the rounds at Elliott Bay Book Company and the Seattle Mystery Bookshop. We are off to New Orleans tomorrow, and I wanted to get some good Louisiana fiction. I settled on Walker Percy's The Moviegoer (one of those books I've always meant to read), James Sallis' Eye Of The Cricket, and a collection called New Orleans Noir.  We're going to Jazz Festival on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, Midcity Lanes Rock 'n Bowl on Sunday night, dinner at Antoine's on Monday, and hopefully the Ponderosa Stomp on Tuesday. (We'll see what these middle-aged bones can tolerate.) We're staying at the Bourbon Orleans, on Bourbon Street a block from St Louis Cathedral.

We'd also like to witness the Katrina neighborhoods. There's a Grey Line bus tour, the idea of which is entirely too weird and creepy -- we'd feel like gawkers at a traffic accident. I contacted WWOZ; they encouraged us to visit the neighborhoods but stressed the desirability of taking a tour. It looks like there are some small operators that can get to some of the areas where buses are not allowed. We just don't want to go to New Orleans and look the other way. Most of the city remains devastated, and a big part of the problem is pretending it never happened.

After New Orleans, it's off to Kingsville and my father's 80th birthday. Five sons, three daughters-in-law, and at least seven of thirteen grandchildren will be there.