Left hotel at 12:15 -- heading for Chalmette and Jackson's Battle of New Orleans. Lafitte. Lapinto's Seafood Restaurant -- a delicious meal like tempura, but a surprising $22. In Arabi, of course. One mile from Chalmette.
Groovy place. Incredibly small, flat field. Huge blinding booming thunderstorm! Crash! British rockets! Boom! Frenchies -- a good place for gumbo, much better than our little restaurant fiasco. . . . .
[Chalmette: Battle of New Orleans, ca. 2,000 British casualties to fewer than 100 American, January 8, 1815; in 2005, Chalmette was completely flooded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina].
. . . At Gail Lynch and John Rouse's place -- a neat 1/2 shotgun with fireplaces and ceiling fans. . . thick chicory coffee. Really nice people, Richard Dreyfus and company. "Don't drink the water here," travel, John is [anthropologist] Irving Rouse's nephew! Topics included: war, [Israel and Lebanon], unnecessary attacks on civilians, schools, humidity, travel, the South, San Francisco, Berlin, women, school, crime, American Civil War, Irving Rouse and a little on other family. [John Rouse -- Joke about AMOK-O for Amoco; his specialty at Tulane -- theatre, Bertolt Brecht, non-Western influences, etc.].
Today's Rune: Partnership.
3 comments:
I've been to that battlefield, but not since Katrina. I wonder if much has changed. The dead are still dead, whether underwater or not.
We were just at the battlefield in March. It looks about the same and is open again. It was under about 15' of water after Katrina, for about 2 weeks or so.
When we went down in April 2006 to gut houses in St Bernard we stayed in a tent city right next to the battlefield.
When battlefields are plowed under and turned to food production it is the best of tributes to the blood spilled there. Can we eat food fertilized by the dead?
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