winding it up

the st charles streetcar, the garden district, magnificent liveoaks and audubon park, lafayette cemetery, and a whole lot of the river --- what a fine town

new orleans --- day 2

a day in the french quarter, checking out the museums, the old mint, and what not --- the katrina exhibit at the cabildon was very hard

canal street is one of the country's great urban thoroughfares, imho

new orleans --- day 1

the city did not disappoint --- a ferry ride to algiers point, which is a swell little place, showed me more of the river than i had ever seen --- we walked decatur street and stuck our heads across esplanade before spending time at cafe lafitte in exile, which has operated continuously since 1933 and has been in the same location since 1953 --- laid back as always

wonderful things

next to the stent, this is the best thing this xmas --- over the years, i have been the lucky recipient of a series of excellent watercolors, like this one, as well as a variety of objects, including an image of rhodes hall done in scrimshaw on a 1" hexagonal porcelain tile, an image of the continents of the earth etched into the surface of a blue marble, and all sorts of other  wonderful things created by one of that handful of friends that support my life --- thank you, angela

well, that was a rush . . . .

"come for the flu; stay for the heart attack," one of the emergency room physicians quipped --- i came home from new orleans on saturday with a lousy cold or flu, i thought, and spent most of sunday in bed --- when my thermometer read 101, i was not concerned, but when it got to 104, i imagined myself becoming delirious or something, and decided to take myself to the emergency room, via the martha train since i am a block from one station and the hospital is a block from another (the 911 option having never crossed my mind for some reason) --- after a 20 or 30  minute wait amongst some people in a much sadder state than myself, i got back to be triaged, as they say --- after drawing bodily fluids for lab work to figure out what was wrong, they sent me out to the waiting room again, where after a few minutes i proceeded to experience what was finally diagnosed as a non–ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI), including awful pain, vomiting, cold sweat, etc, that continued until i got a shot of morphine --- it took x-rays, a CT scan, many needles, much blood work and what not before they decided to do angioplasty sooner rather than later, which is how my big present xmas morning turned out to be a new stent, to replace the ten-yr-old one that had gotten sorta gummed up or something --- turns out my thermometer is messed up, but its failure (or possible operator error) put me in purty much the best place for a cardiac event to occur --- better than the middle of bourbon street or the top of the temple of the sun at teotihuacán anyway --- (the cardiologists assure me that our planned trip to mexico city next week can go forward) --- in the meantime, i am finding this to have been a very centering experience

a week

i've been stuck, but mcphee's "draft no. 4" gave me a kick: how to turn  mountains of data into something useful ---

i love our city wildlife --- i see the hawks circling nearly every day, and we passed this great blue heron perched on a roof in ansley park yesterday

wasting colony square --- i wish they wouldn't --- it's all so misguided

are they a waste of resources?

surely the last remnants of the snow persons

residues

bits of snow lying around here and there, nearly a week later --- john's in the hospital again, and one of these days, he won't get out --- i am trying to make sense of a mountain of notes i've taken for a history of midtown --- a bunch of writing, but it's not coming together yet