Dearest Readers,<\/p>\n
The City of New Orleans is real. I’m here. It sounds arrogant but I don’t mean it to be. How do you know a place really exists until you’ve been there?<\/p>\n
After leaving the ashram<\/a> on Paradise Island I flew from Nassau to Miami where I overnighted in a hotel in Coral Gables, The City Beautiful<\/a>.The hotel was full of immigrant men from South and Southeast Asia waiting to start their jobs as “crew.” I assumed that meant for the cruise ships but I didn’t get a chance to find out.<\/p>\n Next morning I was on a bus heading here, to the city of Mardi Gras and Katrina, a place that makes me think of movies I loved growing up: Easy Rider<\/a>, Angel Heart<\/a>, The Big Easy<\/a><\/em> Along the way we stopped in all kinds of wacky places. Ask me about Tallahassee sometime.<\/p>\n After arriving in the early dawn to a sun rising on the magnificent Lake Pontchartrain Causeway <\/a> that traverses Lake Pontchartrain<\/a> I grabbed a taxi outside the Greyhound Station and headed for this fabulously historic B&B, Terrel House.<\/a><\/p>\n This is the Deep South. What I came here to experience. And I am. The Bush-hatin’ cabbie I flagged told me it never used to be this hot in New Orleans but it was getting hotter all the time because the Bible said it would. A kid serving me in a grocery store called me Ma’am. Much of the architecture in this city recalls days when parasols and fans would have been used to survive the heat. Now air-conditioning is ever-present everywhere.<\/p>\n I’ve got it turned off. I came to experience the heat, too.<\/p>\n