Front Door to D.L. Menard

More touring photos taken at the Big Easy and Cajun Country.

29 April 2011, D.L. Menard at the La Maison de Begnaud, Scott, LA
D.L. Menard et al.
"The Back Door"
Click here to view this 29 April 2011 L'Envoi YouTube.

A Tara Replica House, St. Charles Ave., LA

Rip Van Winkle Gardens, Jefferson Island, LA

Shadow-at-the-Teche, New Iberia, LA

A Place in the Sun

More pictures taken today in N'awlins.

St. Peter Street, French Quarter

Her Place in the Sun - On the Middle of Royal Street

A View of the MS River

Street Jazz Tonight

Here in the Big Easy

I am in N'awlins. My second day. Balmy weather here in the Big Easy. It looks like the annual Jazz and Heritage Festival will not be dampen by the stormy weather being felt in other states farther up. I am staying in the area for a fortnight, and am looking forward to the annual Jazz and Heritage Festival starting on 29 April.

Various Katrina Flood Level Damage Display (Blue), Lower 9th Ward

Conti Street, French Quarter

Hotel Monteleone, French Quarter

Archie Manning's House, Garden District

The French Market

Am I a Stone, and Not a Sheep

Good Friday
Christina Georgina Rossetti
(1830-1894)

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon--
I, only I.

Yet give not o'er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

You Are the Angel Glow

The MP3 below expired on 05-08-2011.
Click here to play the current selection.

Helen Forrest
with the Artie Shaw Orchestra (1940)
- All the Things You Are (Kern & Hammerstein)

This is the best ballad ever written, in my opinion.

All The Things You Are (1939)
Music: Jerome Kern
Words: Oscar Hammerstein II

You are the promised kiss of springtime
That makes the lonely winter seem long

You are the breathless hush of evening
That trembles on the brink of a lovely song
You are the angel glow that lights a star
The dearest things I know are what you are

Some day my happy arms will hold you
And some day I’ll know that moment divine
When all the things you are, are mine

An Old Soul's Questions Entertained

George MacDonald was a venerated literary giant and Christian preacher of the Victorian Age. He mentored and influenced later scholars such as Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tokien, and others. Here is a MacDonald journal entry that would fit extrapolatively well as the lead-in quote to the opening chapter of 'The Golden Age'.

"April 2

Some things wilt thou not one day turn to dreams?
Some dreams wilt thou not one day turn to fact?
The thing that painful, more than should be, seems,
Shall not thy sliding years with them retract-
Shall fair realities not counteract?
The thing that was well dreamed of bliss and joy-
Wilt thou not breathe thy life into the toy?

- George MacDonald
A Book of Strife, in the Form of the Diary of an Old Soul (1880)"

This short prose-poem and its four inquiries are prophetically entertained in John C. Wright's 'The Golden Age' trilogy. This reader is deliciously tempted to conclude Wright derives his story line from these seven verses.

Our manor borne/created Phaethon, telepresenting himself across the holodecks of the conquered Solar System, searching for answers. He needs to know why he had voluntarily redacted two-hundred-fify years of his immortal memory. The protagonist is a mere three-thousand-year old engineer. He is the heir to a noble house known for its wonting the Victorian Age mores and social refinements.

This first book of the trilogy is not only a novel par excellence, it also serves to reawaken thematic questions on perfecting civilizations. Questions such as: If utopia is desired or to be attained, who should decide and by what means? How does one know when utopia is attained, and for whom? Could utopia encourage, tolerate, or accomodate individual pursuits?

After reading 'The Golden Age', one will want to hitch a ride on 'The Phoenix Exultant'. More kaleidoscopic realities lie doggo in book two of this utopian quest saga.

2011 National Cherry Blossom Festival

A YouTube for the National Cherry Blossom Festival Week (or Two) at Washington DC:

Emile Pandolfi, piano (2005)
Adagio by Tomaso Albinoni
Click here to view this L'Envoi YouTube.

The Month of March 2011

"Winter is long in this climate
and spring—a matter of a few days
only,—a flower or two picked
from mud or from among wet leaves
or at best against treacherous
bitterness of wind, and sky shining
teasingly, then closing in black
and sudden, with fierce jaws.
...
March,
you are like a band of
young poets that have not learned
the blessedness of warmth
(or have forgotten it)."

-- William Carlos Williams
Excerpts from the poem, 'March' (1921)

Google Eyes

"What in the world you doin, Google Eyes?
He sang, very slowly, while he and the child looked at each other...
What in the world you doin, Google Eyes?...
His eyes slowly closed, sprang, open, almost in alarm, closed again.
Where did you get them great big Google eyes?
You're the best there is and I need you in my biz,
Where in the world did you get them Google Eyes?"

-- James Agee, "A Death in the Family" (1938)

With the completion of two major landscaping projects, the lawn and garden are ready to welcome spring. The only thing left to do now is acquiring new lawn and patio furniture. That could wait. In the meantime, I have my google eyes on some books.

In-progress (possible book review candidates):

1. Elvi Rhodes - A House by the Sea
2. John C. Wright - The Golden Age
3. James Agee - A Death in the Family
4. Dorothy Dunnett - Queen's Play

Bolero at Tiffany's

Joseph Maurice Ravel
French Neo-classical composer
(7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937)
"Bolero," Ravel once said, "is seventeeen minutes of orchestra without music." After all, he further qualified, this piece was "an experiment in a very special and limited direction." To the contrary, the musical society and public have deemed it a great favorite piece of all time.

Tomorrow, 7 March, is Ravel's 136 birthday anniversary. For this occasion, I thought you might enjoy listening to a three-minute jazz version of "Bolero" interlaced with Henry Mancini "Moon River".

The MP3 below expired on 04-11-2011.
Click here to play the current selection.

The Opera Swing Quartet and the Philharmonie Merck (2008)
- Bolero at Tiffany's (after Ravel and Mancini)