Author Archives

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The Lens launches a new event series, Breakfast with the Newsmakers

Breakfast with the Newsmakers will be a regular monthly event presented by The Lens. They will host a guest speaker involved in the day’s news at the historic Basin Street Station on the edge of the French Quarter.

The public is invited to a live interview conducted by award-winning Lens reporters and editors, followed by an audience Q&A.

Each event will be streamed online and stored on The Lens website for readers unable to attend.

Please join them on Thursday, Nov. 21 for the inaugural Breakfast with the Newsmakers, with guest John Barry.

The Lens’ environmental reporter, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Marshall, will talk with John Barry, who is leading the charge to sue the oil and gas industry for damages to Louisiana’s coast. An audience question-and-answer session will follow.

Where: Basin Street Station & Visitors’ Center, 4th Floor, 501 Basin Street

Date: Thursday, Nov. 21

Time: 7:30 – 9 a.m.

7:30 a.m.: Doors open for breakfast and networking

8 a.m.: Bob Marshall interviews John Barry

8:40 a.m.: Audience Q&A

Admission free to Lens members at the Friend level and above.

Suggested donation $10 for non-members.

Basin Street Station meeting facilities are generously donated to our Breakfast with the Newsmakers series by Michael Valentino and Jay Valentino, developers of the cultural website New Orleans & Me.

RESERVATIONS REQUIRED

To reserve your spot, please email Eileen Loh, at eloh@TheLensNola.org.

For information about sponsorship opportunities for Breakfast with the Newsmakers,

please email eloh@TheLensNola.org or give Eileen a call at (504) 345-6789.

The Lens

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New Orleans Fringe Festival is around the corner

Get thee to the volunteer sign up or the ticket site. You’ll thank me.

HOME.

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Garbage in, garbage out: ‘Grand vision’ for French Market junks tradition | The Lens

Local writer CW Cannon defends the vitality of the current vendor base and questions the new French Market director’s understanding of tradition and desired products.

Story | The Lens.

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200 Years of New Orleans Literature

So looking forward to this book coming out. Partly because it’s sorely needed and partly because the author is my pal and I think I know how much critical thinking and good old-fashioned writing was expended to undoubtedly create a cohesive, yet original overview of the best that New Orleans had offered the world in written form.

The blurb , written by her publisher Bill Lavender:

N.O. Lit: 200 Years of New Orleans Literature, edited by Nancy Dixon– Dr. Dixon taught New Orleans literature for more than a decade at UNO before accepting a professorship at Dillard, and she always wanted a single text that she could assign for that course. Well, she has remedied that situation now and put together the most comprehensive collection of the literature of the city ever. This book will be some 550 densely packed pages of poetry, drama, and prose, beginning with The Heroism of Poucha-Houmma, the 1809 drama of Louisiana life prior to the arrival of the French and Spanish conquerors, going through Walt Whitman, Tennessee Williams, Tom Dent, Truman Capote, and about 40 others, up to the present day, with a general introduction and individual introductions all by Dr. Dixon. It should be out this year.

I hear that some early events will happen this year; best way to know is to check the Lavender Ink site regularly.

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New places for locals and visitors alike

Danny and Jerry of Cafe Amelie fame have added another outlet at which to sell their food; a little storefront at the next corner of Royal and Dumaine. A more informal place to drop in with little tables, lovely ambience, sandwiches, drinks AND some local farm goods like the Mauthe’s fresh milk in glass bottles!

Cafe Amelie's new addition- their sandwich and pastry shop at Royal and Dumaine.

Cafe Amelie’s new addition- their sandwich and pastry shop at Royal and Dumaine.

Mauthe Dairy milk available in the quarter- people line up at the farmers markets for this goodness so take advantage of it being here!

Mauthe Dairy milk now available in the Quarter- people line up at the farmers markets for this goodness so take advantage of it being here!

New PJ's in the Upper Pontalba on the Chartres side.

And a new PJ’s in the Upper Pontalba on the Chartres side.

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All Saints Day/Feast of All Souls

With all of the hoopla now surrounding Hallowe’en, many newcomers to New Orleans may not know that today is as important or more to our culture as the ghoulish day before. All Saints Day is done in primarily Catholic places, like New Orleans, and is a day decreed by the Vatican as a catch-all day to pray to your saint of choice.
The day is honored by attending Mass and working on one’s family tomb, cleaning it and making it presentable for November 2 which is the Feast of All Souls or in some Catholic countries, the Day of the Dead. Taking time on All Saints Day is thought to have begun because most Catholic cities like New Orleans would decree the day before a holiday a day off and so people here used it to whitewash and make one’s family tomb presentable.

Today is a day to visit your nearest cemetery in New Orleans, and watch family tradition in action. Tomorrow, take a moment and remember your dead, especially those that you believe might still be in Purgatory…

The modern date of All Souls’ Day was first popularized in the early eleventh century after Abbot Odilo established it as a day for the monks of Cluny and associated monasteries to pray for the souls in purgatory. However, it was only in the Medieval period, when Europeans began to mix the two celebrations, that many traditions now associated with All Souls’ Day are first recorded.

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Unfathomable City

Unfathomable City: A New Orleans AtlasUnfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas by Rebecca Solnit

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I wrote an earlier review of this book ( I keep busy) and have now decided to update it since receiving the actual published book as I used the advanced reader copy for the previous review and now after reading more of it in a different location than the last time and viewing all of the maps that weren’t in the ARC and let me share that I did all of that new stuff all on All Saints Day, no less. Told you: multitudes.

I decided to do it without the cranky insertion of MY New Orleans up front that was in the previous review and to simply state that it’s a well designed, well-edited and at times beautifully written and illustrated homage to our mysterious city.
This book gives credit where credit is due. To the city’s geography, to its outlandish robber barons of bananas and oil, to the nameless and named that have brought us and bring us music, food, and public displays and joy and sorrow and pain and punishment. It neatly shows a number of juxtapositions that may be uncomfortable for some to view and others that are certainly unfathomable, but it does show them. There. credit given.
Now, back to me:
If you look through my reviews, you can spot a certain fondness for maps. I love them and love poring over them before, during or in spite of actually traveling to the place depicted.
If you read my reviews, you will no doubt spot a serious fondness for essayists. I admire what seems to me to be honest human bravery in extending a point or a purpose to a new end. Taking a walk with an author is how I visualize an essay, and yes there are times that I turn back before getting to the end, but I still appreciate the offer. So maps and essays seem like two sides of one coin and when put together well can alter or color each other’s point and purpose.

So that this is a book of illusory and real maps combined with odd and delightful essays, edited by two sensitive writers is enough for me to tell you.

Let me let the writers and artists tell you themselves in essays and maps such as:

Civil rights and Lemon Ice

Hot and Steamy: Selling Seafood and Selling Sex

Ebb and Flow: Migrations of the Houma, Erosions of the Coast

Juju and Cuckoo: Taking Care of Crazy

Stationary Revelations: Sites of Contemplation and Delight

The first essays introducing this book are alone worth poring over and sharing; how often is that true? That should tell you about the care and thought put into this entire work and offer the best reason to plunk down your money, open it and thumb through while having a Pimm’s or a coffee in front of you, tucked away in a shady corner of our shared city. Enjoy it all.

View all my reviews