A personal journal about teaching the Bible and ancient Near Eastern history/theology/religion/archaeology to university students in New Orleans, and whatever else happens to be on my mind.
Here is a picture of my 17-year-old daughter Kalypso.
For wearing this outfit, she was pulled out of all of her classes at Lusher Charter High School and she spent the day in the dean's office doing nothing but sitting in a chair and contemplating her poor behavior. She was also prevented from attending her college credit French class at Tulane University. She was supposed to go to detention this afternoon and again miss her French class. I told her to skip the detention and go to her class. I'm fully aware that there is value in learning to navigate through situations where difficult people throw up hurdles. So there are three months left in her senior year, and she has learned a valuable lesson in that someone at Lusher prefers jeans. This all reminds me of why I hated high school. I loved college though. Hope she does too.
Every February my university gets together to celebrate Black History Month. Here is the cover of the program:
Malcolm X, MLK, Rosa Parks, the Obamas, Louis Armstrong, Maya Angelou, Frederick Douglass, all great choices. Even the speaker, Congressman Cedric Richmond, good choice, though I was confused with his speech about the difference between thermometers and thermoses.
But Oprah (TM)? Really? For putting her face on her own magazine? For unprecedented narcissism? For her forgettable role as Sofia in The Color Purple? For crying when authors she blessed with sales lie to her? For killing her dogs? For her bizarre relationship with Stedman? My school must be hoping that they can cash in on some of that sweet Oprah (TM) money like Spelman. Anyway, nothing against Oprah (TM) as a human. I don't view her as a person, but as a corporate entity that will by nature do anything it can to promote itself and gain more money and fame.
We had a great time at the Muses parade last night. It reminded me of how much I love living in New Orleans. Thanks to archnemesis Adrastos and his lovely wife Dr. A for hosting the annual shindig. After much screaming and general shoe whoring, I was the fortunate recipient of these three beauties:
This one in particular is my favorite.
It shows a demonic Ozzy Osbourne dark lording over the fiery pits of shoe hell. So you're thinking it was my general good looks that scored this prize? Nope. It's a strange story actually. I went to high school in Omaha with someone named Greta Olson, now Greta Olson-Landis. I last saw her 30 years ago. Through facebook she mentioned that she had an artist friend in New Orleans named Erika Goldring, and that Erika was riding in Muses. Greta said that Erika makes awesome shoes that are musician themed. So I set it up where I am going to scream "GRETA!" a la Stanley Kowalski at float seven, sidewalk side, to the last rider. And it all paid off. Sure, through this networking I have sunk further then imaginable into the bowels of shoe whoredom, but I think in the end the incredible awesomeness of said Muses shoe outweighs all of the moral issues.
We are excited to announce that we have a Little Free Library in front of our house. People are free to take a book or leave a book. Neighbors have been great about keeping it stocked. Many thanks to Mark Gstohl for building and installing it. Therese now is looking for an alligator to adorn it, as the library sort of looks like a Cajun Cabin.
Today I am 47-years-old. To take advantage of spousal birthday guilt I bought a freezer. Therese hates it because we have no good place to put it, but it's my birthday. I also bought an analog refrigerator thermostat. Why? Well for the first time in my life I am going to brew a Bohemian Pilsner beer. To do that I need to be able to ferment the beer at a constant 50 degrees. Brewing in a controlled colder temperature was one of my two brewmeister goals this year. My second is to switch from bottles to kegs, but I'll do that later.
The Super Bowl will be played in New Orleans in a couple of weeks. Nobody I know is that excited. Quite the opposite, as never before has a Superbowl been held in a city that has so much hatred and anger towards the National Football League. It's not because of the construction and sign police and all of the other nonsense, but it's because of Roger Goodell and "bounty gate." His unprecedented suspension of coaches and players crushed this city. I think there is a good chance that Roger Goodell will get punched, and I'm hopeful that he gets booed loudly during the game. But at least the Atlanta Falcons lost in the NFC Championship game. It was a nightmare to think about Goodell handing the Falcons the Lombardi Trophy inside the Superdome. I believe that Goodell's suspensions cost the Saints several games, and that they would have been in the playoffs again without that draconian punishment. This also hurt the value of my season tickets. But today Sean Payton was reinstated as coach, and the Saints should be pretty good next year, if they can fix their defense.
This past football year overall was the worst one I can remember. My favorite college team, Nebraska, did what they always do under coach Bo Pelini. They have at least 9 wins and four losses each of the five years he's been coach. They lose big games. They haven't played in a BCS game since 2001. While it wasn't nearly as bad as the 2007 Bill Callahan season, it was painful. Hopefully a playmaker will emerge on defense, and QB Taylor Martinez will continue to improve for his senior year.
The Replacements' song "I Can't Hardly Wait" has a special meaning to me. It was the closing track to one of my favorite albums: Pleased to Meet Me. But my connection to the song was solidified back in the summer of 1999, when I said goodbye to my wife and daughter who were soon to be living more than 7,000 miles away from me. The song spoke sadly about being apart, and states "I'll be home when I'm sleeping, I can't hardly wait." That simultaneously made me feel both pain and hope.
Therese, Kalypso and I had been living in Amman Jordan at the American Center for Oriental Research. It was an amazing year. For the first and only time in my life I was able to visit the remarkable countries of Syria and Lebanon. I traveled to Egypt with Kalypso and my birth mom. In Jordan we attended the funeral of King Hussein. I remember Kalypso saying in a crowd "I am so sad that King Hussein died." Many people nearby were touched and came up to see her, and as often happened then, to touch her hair. The nostalgic mood ended when Kalypso said "I get boogers." The magic died. At the close of the my fellowship in June of 1999, Therese and Kalypso were heading back to UCSD in San Diego, and I was heading to south Jordan to excavate Jebel Hamrat Fidan. It was very hard to say goodbye, knowing I would miss Kalypso's 4th birthday and so many other things. I played the song "I Can't Hardly Wait" repeatedly. I cried quite a bit when their taxi drove away.
I've always been a sucker for sad songs about being apart. Songs such as "How I Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd, "A Few Hours After This" by The Cure, "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by John Denver, and "Homeward Bound" by Simon and Garfunkel come to mind as some of my favorites.
Today I was surprised and interested to learn that originally the song "I Can't Hardly Wait" was about suicide. The character in the song was going to climb a water tower and jump. So instead of "Can't Hardly Wait" to dream and be with someone he loves, he "Can't Hardly Wait" to be dead. This grim version of the song was left off the album Tim. The change in the lyrics appears to be because the following album Pleased to Meet Me already had a controversial song about jumping off of a building called "The Ledge."
Here's the original version of the song about suicide, it was an outtake from the album Tim. Notice Bob Stinson rocking out on guitar, the song is far less poppy than the later more famous recording:
Finally, here's the homesick version from Pleased to Meet Me. I also learned today that Alex Chilton played guitar on this version. That's cool:
Lately, my curiosity about Scottish Ales has increased. They are less hoppy, more malty, and I'm told they are great to use in cooking. I just brewed the following recipe in an attempt to create a 70 shilling ale similar in color, taste and strength to Belhaven:
4 lb. Warminster Maris Otter Pale Base Balt
.5 lb Cargill Munich Malt
.125 lb Muntons Roasted Barley
I steeped the above grains at 150 degrees for 3 hours
Then after sparing, I used a 3.3 lb can of Muntons Maris Otter Light Malt and .5 oz of Fuggle Pellet Hops (4.3%) for a 120 minute boil. For the last half hour I added .35 oz Kent Golding Hop Pellets.
In a couple of weeks I'll use Edinburgh Scottish Ale Liquid Yeast.
My heart goes out to all of the people on the east coast who are about to be learn that their insurance won't cover their wind and water damage. My advice, after three hard years of rebuilding following the failed levees in New Orleans, is to keep a detailed journal. You will likely have many different insurance adjustors, countless meetings, phone calls, and emails. This will include government agencies as well as your insurance company. Keep a detailed record of the time, topic, and people involved. Insurance companies often times will wait until just prior to the court date and then settle. They are more likely to settle in your favor if you keep arduous records.
My other advice is that rebuilding takes much longer than you would expect. I very much wish that my father, who passed away in 2007, could have lived another couple of years. He worried about our situation, and couldn't believe what the insurance industry was doing. I really wish I could talk to him and let him know that we made out OK, and we and his grand kids are doing great.
But I'd estimate and hope that most people will be treated fairly by their insurance companies. It's just about 20% of cases that have problems. But that is still way too many of course.
Today for the first time in my life I read The Advocate. It's a Baton Rouge newspaper that is attempting to break in to New Orleans now that the Times-Picayune isn't publishing daily. The Advocate has a New Orleans edition, so there were many good stories that pertain to New Orleans. However on the back page of the sports section was a long article entitled "Squirrels plentiful this season."
There's a picture of some guy in camouflage holding the tails of approximately 8 dead squirrels. In the article I learned that 2012 will be a great year for squirrel hunters. That's because last year was a bumper crop for nuts, and with the rains we've had lately the acorns stay on the trees and get plump, so those gluttonous squirrels have plenty to eat. Hunters usually go after the fox squirrels, as they have the most meat. Then there's this club called EASL: East Ascension Sportsman's Club, and every year they have a "squirrel rodeo." Unlike the more common rodeo with cowboys riding broncos and bulls, at a squirrel rodeo you get a large gun and hunt squirrels. I don't know the rules but I imagine you could rope the squirrels to make it seem more in line with the traditional rodeo. You get a prize if your bag of dead squirrels weighs more than other people's bags. I wonder if the bags are camouflaged also? The article doesn't say, but I don't really see a need for camouflage. Here in the city squirrels seem bright enough to see me coming no matter what I'm wearing. And they get pretty close to me, probably because we don't shoot them and put their carcasses in bags. The squirrel rodeo is this Saturday but you can't participate unless you pay the $10 to become an EASL member. Other big news: it used to be illegal to hunt squirrels with air rifles, and now it is legal. I'll bet that was a huge victory for the NRA. My favorite paragraph follows:
"The only other squirrel species seen in Louisiana's woods is the black squirrel, a species that isn't all that common and is highly prized by hunters. More often than not, taking a black squirrel means taking a trip to the taxidermist."
Truer words were never written. I don't think I've seen a black squirrel in New Orleans, but they are plentiful in Nebraska. I'm thinking about trapping a few and letting them loose at the 2013 squirrel rodeo. Oh to see the never-been-to-the-dentist smiles on those camouflage wearing squirrel eaters hootin' and a hollerin' and shootin' their guns in the air. Ayyyyyeeeeeeeee!
So, The Advocate, thanks for sharing with us city folk in New Orleans what life is like in Baton Rouge.
