Hello, Wisconsin

I’m off to the badger state first thing tomorrow. I think I’m going to treat this as a real vacation, so I probably won’t be blogging until I’m back next week. Have a great weekend!

Taking the Scenic Route

Several years ago, Pipi and I flew Southwest Airlines from Oakland to New Orleans. It was cheap, but it also took all day, the itinerary involved three stops, and a drunk lady in party seating spoiled a big part of the book I was reading. After the second stop in the state of Texas alone, I vowed never to fly Southwest cross-country again.

That vow held for almost 10 years, but recently, temped by a low fare on the ultra convenient Oakland-Harford route, I broke down and decided to give it another try. The web site promised just one stop each way, which I find acceptable on that route, so I thought it might not be so bad.

And it wasn’t too bad heading east, where I really did have just one stop, in Nashville.

On the way home, I was expecting a stop in Baltimore. The leg between Baltimore and Oakland, however, turned into a frustrating lesson on the difference between a non-stop and a direct flight

Instead of proceeding non-stop from Baltimore to Oakland, the plane traveled directly—we touched down in Chicago, where I didn’t have to get off the plane, but I did have to sit in my seat for an entire deplaning/cleaning/boarding cycle before we were airborne again. I know that’s not so bad, but I found it annoying because I hadn’t been aware of the Chicago stop until I got to the airport in Hartford.

The moral is study your itinerary carefully. When Southwest tells you that you only have to change planes once, that doesn’t mean you’re only stopping once. They don’t actually use the words “non-stop” or “direct,” so you can get tripped up even if you do know the difference between the two terms.

No Place Like Home Part III

I alluded recently to a Mary Chapin Carpenter song where she says that she’d never really seen her hometown until she’d spent some time away. I’m sure some of you are way ahead of me and knew right away that I had the artist wrong. The song I’m thinking of is San Diego Serenade, which is a song written by Tom Waits and recorded by a number of artists. The version I’m thinking of is in fact by Nanci Griffith.

Nanci Griffith and Mary Chapin Carpenter aren’t really all that similar, and you’re probably wondering how I could mix them up. I’m pretty sure it’s because I keep both of their catalogs in the same box in my head labeled “Songs by Women I Like to Pretend Are Not Really Country Artists.” Lucinda Williams, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris have their music in there, too. Iris Dement would like me to put her in this box, but so far I’ve resisted. Michelle Shocked and the Indigo Girls are afraid they’re going to start appearing there. Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies doesn’t really want to be in the box of denial, but as long as she continues to sing songs with titles like Murder in the Trailer Park, she leaves me little choice. The women of the Waifs, on the other hand, probably wouldn’t mind if I put their songs in the box, as long as it meant someone from America was paying attention. My point is, it’s a big bin, and I can see how the contents have shifted over time.

The reason I bring it up at all, really, is just to say that I know what Nanci Griffith means when she sings about distance making things clearer. Almost every time I’m home I notice something that seemed perfectly normal when I lived there, but which after years on the West Coast, has started to look odd. Or at least noteworthy.

This time it was brick. Everything in Northampton that isn’t wood and isn’t made of huge blocks of stone is made of brick--unreinforced masonry brick with no X-shaped retrofitting braces in sight. I love that look—brick, clapboard, and brownstone are God’s construction materials as far as I’m concerned. I just realize now that the architecture is strikingly different from what I’m slowly getting used to in California. Aren’t people in Massachusetts worried about earthquakes? (Hint: no.)

Here is a link to some pictures I took when I was home. (I’m back in California now.)

There’s No Place Like Home Part II

A few weeks ago, Pipi and I were driving through Oakland on Interstate 580, when I spotted a bumper sticker that I was pretty sure referred to my hometown. “Look,” I squealed, “Hamp!”

“What did you say?” Pipi asked me in a tone that said, “I’m trying to work with you, but this conversation has not gotten off to a promising start.”

“Hamp, HAMP,” I repeated, as if volume were the only problem; as if everyone in California knew that old-time Northampton guys refer to the town as “Hamp.”

“How are you spelling this?” Pipi finally asked, and I realized that along with my Northampton pride, I’d also experienced an upwelling of my Northampton accent. This twang, which has more in common with upstate New York and even the upper Midwest than it does with Boston, has a Cockney-like disdain for internal consonants. (Remember the nursery rhyme about the three little kittens? In my childhood, they were called “kih-ins,” and they’d lost their mih-ins.) The accent also strangles “A”s to within an inch of their lives. My “Hamp” apparently came out more like “Heeamp,” confusing Pipi, who’s never known me to be much of a rope-maker.

This kind of misunderstanding doesn’t usually happen when I’m visiting Massachusetts, and that’s one thing I love about it. I don’t have to watch my vowels. No one asks me to repeat myself if I mention a tag (yard) sale, or gets shrill if I utter the phrase “packie store.” (It’s short for “package,” and means a place to buy a six-pack of beer.)

In Massachusetts, I order a grinder and I get a hot sandwich, not a blank look. People here speak my language. And like me, they’re prone to pronouncing it “leeanguage” if they’re not policing themselves.

It may not always sound nice, but it feels like home.

There’s No Place Like Home

Regular readers may have noticed that my postings have gotten slightly sporadic. That’s because I’ve been traveling. I’m currently in Northampton, MA. This, as most of you know--because 99% of you are related to me--is my hometown.

Mary Chapin Carpenter has a line in one of her songs about how she never saw her hometown until she’d been away too long. I feel a little like that right now. I’ll try and see if I can explain what I mean by that another time. I will also try to post some more pictures so that the two of you who’ve never been here can see my hometown, too.

But now I have to reacquaint myself with one of the city’s drinking establishments. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. I will be back in Oakland Tuesday night, and real life will resume then.

A Note to My Kiwi Friends

I hope none of my New Zealand readers are offended by my enthusiasm for a possible trip to Australia. Oz would be a new place for me, and I’m always excited for new experiences.

Please note, though, that as much as I talk about wanting to go to Australia, I haven’t managed to get myself there yet. Whereas I did actually make the effort to get to New Zealand once—and would go back in a heartbeat. (Well, that and if a round-trip ticket fell out of the sky.)

Bridalveil Falls

The waterfall in this picture is called Bridalveil Falls. It does look somewhat lace-like when the wind blows the spray around, but a park ranger also told us that there is a legend stating that if you can stare at the falls for a full minute without blinking, you’ll be married within a year.

One of the members of our party—a wonderful Australian woman named Michelle who has been dating Pipi’s brother Eddie for a few years—confessed to me later that she’d tried this trick, but hadn’t been able to pull it off.

In the end it didn’t matter, though: On Sunday, Eddie and Michelle slipped away from the group for a private hike. When Eddie found just the right spot in the woods, he got down on one knee and popped the question.

Eddie and Michelle were absolutely giddy the whole rest of the weekend. I thought Michelle would hyperventilate when they made the announcement, and already several hours had passed. They’re happy, and I’m very happy for them.

But I confess that some of this happiness is for myself, too. This development means that Pipi is about to have an Australian sister in law. Which means that I practically have an Australian sister-in-law. Which is just about the coolest thing imaginable. Better yet, the wedding may take place in Australia. I’m so excited for that I can’t stand it. Hopefully more details will follow soon.

Fogged In

As I mentioned yesterday, my Frommer’s guide said that 95% of visitors to Yosemite never leave the valley. Having finally been to the park, I realize that’s not as sad as it sounds. The valley is a big place, and it’s where the big sights are, including Half Dome, El Capitan, and Yosemite Falls. It’s also where most of the dining and non-camping lodging options in the park are located.

Still, I don’t like the idea of acting like 95% of any group, so Pipi and I made an effort to head off the beaten path at least once. On Monday, we learned that the road to the Glacier Point lookout had just opened, so we drove up there, feeling virtuous for having gotten wind of this bit of news.

The drive was beautiful, and I don’t regret taking it. The road climbs over 3,000 feet through the woods, with spectacular views. There was a lot of snow by the side of the road, which I enjoyed seeing as well.

Once we got to the top, though, at an elevation of 7,2000 feet, we couldn’t see a thing. Glacier Point was smack in the middle of a cloud, which is its own kind of charming, but left the famous view of the valley almost entirely to the imagination. Every few minutes the wind would blow some of the thicker mist out of the way, and we could catch an eerie glimpse of mountains across the way, or get a flash of the valley floor. I really don’t regret the trip. The atmospheric fog added something to the landscape that you wouldn’t get on a brilliantly clear day. It was just one of those experiences where you have to adjust your expectations.

Yosemite Valley

We are back from a long weekend at Yosemite National Park. The park is every bit as beautiful as I hoped, though it did look slightly different from what I imagined. For one thing, it’s in color. All those Ansel Adams photographs I’ve seen seemed to suggest otherwise.

Also, the weather wasn’t great. It was cool with occasional drizzle and constant mist. That might not sound nice, but it gave the park the look of a Chinese landscape painting, which I really liked. It was a great weekend, full of family and good food. Some really nice things happened and although, like 95% of park visitors, I barely left the Valley, I feel like I had a good introduction to the park.

Here are some more photos.

Another Unusual Souvenir

These are the dyed scales of a fish called the gar. A gar is a scary-looking primordial armored fish that can grow up to nine feet long. A website I found describes them as “America’s toughest sport fish for one hundred million years.” Not only do they put up a ferocious fight in the water, but once you get a gar in your boat, it’s said that the only sure way to keep it from thrashing and attacking with its sharp teeth is to shoot it.

I realize that sounds apocryphal—people really discharge firearms inside their own boats?—but Pipi and I did get the guy who sold us these scales to confirm it. Possibly this story of indestructibility is a rural myth winkingly passed along to impressionable Yankee girls. I don’t know. In the spirit of good fun I’m going to choose to believe it, but you don’t have to.

In any case, as if Louisiana didn’t have enough trouble with alligators and poisonous snakes, the swamps are full of these gilled dinosaurs. There are, however, those who appreciate them. There is a lot to admire about the gar’s longevity, its brute strength, and the fish’s importance to the Native American tribes of Louisiana. The gar are sort of the bison of the bayou—not only is the meat edible, but other parts are salvaged as well. Scales like these, for instance, were used as small arrowheads.

I am pretty sure the guy was joking, though, when he said the pastel colors are an old Indian tradition.

Big Nerd in the Big Easy

Here’s a souvenir of New Orleans that not everyone would bother seeking out: A silver dollar minted in the Crescent City.

There are only a few cities in the country where it’s possible to bring home locally made money. Denver and Philadelphia are the only places where it’s easy—regular-issue coins are still minted there, so you can find souvenirs in your change. In San Francisco, you can buy a current proof set for not too much more than face value, and in West Point, you can purchase a modern commemorative coin that won’t be too expensive.

But New Orleans is harder. That mint shut down in 1909, so any coins made there are collectors’ items. Luckily, they’re not all that rare. This coin caught my eye in a shop window on Royal Street in the French Quarter. There was a whole box of them set out as bait for people like me.

There are several other cities that have extinct mints: Carson City, Nevada; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Dahlonega, Georgia. One day I will get to these places and complete my complete my compulsive coin-collecting tour of the United States.

(New Orleans mint mark is an O, found between and a little bit above the letters "D" and "O" in "Dollar.")

Main Line Clubs

Here is a photo of a member of yet another New Orleans social group. (Pipi swears she saw a billboard advertising a fraternity while we were there—New Orleans takes its clubs very seriously.) I originally assumed this guy was a slightly less flamboyant Mardi Gras Indian, but he’s not. He’s part of a “main line” club called the Original C.T.C. steppers.

The term “main line” originally referred to the core group of participants in a parade—the family of the deceased at a funeral, for example. There would be a second line, too; this would be made up of people who weren’t quite as close to the deceased. The second line often got pretty big as the parade went on attracting spectators from the neighborhood, but the main line was the main attraction.

Now the term usually refers to musical social aid & pleasure clubs. A few mainline clubs were scheduled to march during Jazz Fest and I was lucky enough to catch this performance of the Original C.T.C. Steppers, a relatively new group. Without even understanding the tradition, I became a temporary second liner as I scampered along with a large group of other photographers, trying to get a shot of this colorfully dressed man.

Mardi Gras Indians

Here’s a tradition we just don’t have in the Bay Area: In New Orleans, people dress up as Indians and parade around in feathered outfits.

Not just anyone does this, though. These so-called Mardi-Gras Indians are exclusively African-American. My understanding is that these parades take place with the blessing of the Native American community, because the outfits are adopted in recognition of the fact that both blacks and Indians were treated as second-class citizens in New Orleans, excluded from white traditions like Mardi Gras krewes. It’s also said that the southern African-American collective memory has not forgotten that escaped slaves often were sheltered by Native American tribes, though why this gratitude would be expressed in feathers is not entirely clear. As with a lot of New Orleans legends and traditions, the truth is almost certainly lost to time.

Today Mardi Gras Indian groups are social clubs whose organization mirrors mostly white krewes. Krewes are ruled by kings and queens and named after Greek mythological figures; Mardi Gras Indian tribes have chiefs and are named after local landmarks. At Mardi Gras, tribes dress in colorful, feathery, beaded outfits that weigh 50 pounds and chase each other around the neighborhood in ritualized mock confrontations with dancing and chanting. (Interestingly, the song Iko Iko is about this kind of encounter—the lyrics make a little more sense knowing this, but not a lot.)

Unfortunately, Mardi Gras was long over by the time we got to New Orleans, so we didn’t get to see a real parade. But some tribes did march at Jazz Fest. Pipi and I have half a mind to go to Mardi Gras one year so that we can see this for ourselves. In the Bay Area, you do sometimes get people in feathered outfits, but they’re usually just expressing their appreciation of Cher, and you hardly ever get enough in once place for a parade.

This woman is a part of a tribe called the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian Rhythm Section.

T-Shirts

As I’ve said, I really don’t like crowds, but one fun thing about being among a throng of people is that I almost always see a few funny t-shirts. The jazz festival crowd didn’t disappoint. Here are a few that I saw, some of which I think you would only see in New Orleans.

Here I am. Now what were your other two wishes?
You used to be my type, but I got help.
I like girls who like girls—worn by a man.
Real men marry doctors—worn by a woman.
Louisiana: third-world and proud of it.
I took my Chevy to the levee but the levee was gone.

In addition, two airplanes with banners were circling the fairgrounds on the last day of the festival. One towed a flag saying “Shell: Hear the music and fix the coast U broke.” (A reference to the fact that many think Shell Oil’s environmental practices made Katrina’s impact worse.) The other was advertising Larry Flint’s Hustler Club. Think the two pilots waved to each other whenever their loops brought them close?

Where You Eat?

The second thing everyone asks me—and this says as much about my friends and me as it does about New Orleans, is, “What did you eat?”

Our best meal by far was at a restaurant called Upperline, in the Garden District. Pipi and I both opted for a tasting menu, which was a great idea because of the variety of things we got to try. The first course was two kinds of soups, a gumbo and a turtle soup. Yes, real turtle soup. The turtle meat looked and tasted like ground beef. There was also a duck etoufee with corn cakes. Dessert was a choice of pecan pie, which I had, or bread pudding (a New Orleans obsession), which Pipi tried.

The entrée was roast duck with peach sauce. I did worry that this would be too much duck, but it wasn’t. I had forgotten how good duck can be. It was served with fried green tomatoes and a shrimp remoulade. Photos unfortunately make diner look like a plate with three kinds of brown on it. They don’t begin to do it justice, and neither do words, so you’ll just have to believe me that it was fantastic. (Now you know why I’m not a food writer.) The duck was juicy without being greasy. The tomato was fried to the point of being soft and hot, but not soggily breaded like an onion ring, and the bread pudding, never my favorite dessert, came with a rich, toasty caramel sauce that took it to a new realm.

The beautiful thing about New Orleans is that it’s one of those cities where you can eat well at any price. We both had lots of yummy cheap things at the Jazz festival. Highlights included a great jerk chicken (our Frommer’s guide described New Orleans as the northernmost city in the Caribbean, which made perfect sense to us), a key lime tart, and a spinach-artichoke casserole. I know that sounds boring, but southerners know how to add enough salt and fat to anything to make it decadent. One other discovery was the New Orleans snowball. It’s shaved ice with flavored syrup and condensed milk. It tastes more like Hong Kong than the Deep South, but it’s great on a hot day. And better for you than ice cream, we told ourselves as we tried to ignore the server draining a can of Borden’s on mine.

We also went to a fascinating restaurant in Metarie called Deanie's Seafood Bucktown USA. It was an enormous family restaurant with acres of tables and lots of kids running around. (It didn’t help that the official soft drink of New Orleans appears to be Barq’s, the only root beer I know of with caffeine.) Walking in, I was afraid the place would be an Applebee’s or Olive Garden sort of place, with huge servings of bland, mediocre food. The only thing I was right about was the huge servings. The food was pretty good, and almost everything on the menu seemed exotic from my California perspective. You could get crawfish any which way (I had etoufee) and almost everything seemed to include shrimp, which seems to be the food of the people in Louisiana. In fact, we didn’t get the sense that there was anything at all unusual about taking a station wagon full of kids to eat massive plates of shellfish. Pipi says she left the restaurant feeling like she better understood what regular people eat in New Orleans, and I agree. I can’t help but think how disappointed Louisianans must be when they frequent diners in other states.

In case you missed it the first time, New Orleans photos are here.

Back From New Orleans

The first thing everyone asks me is, “How is New Orleans doing?”

It’s hard for me to answer that because I didn’t know it well before Hurricane Katrina, and of course still don’t. One thing I can say is that the infrastructure is still surprisingly debilitated. There are still whole neighborhoods where hardly anybody lives, where many houses are boarded up or just abandoned, and where the shopping plazas are empty shells. It’s a vicious cycle—who wants to live in a neighborhood with no grocery stores? Who wants to rebuild a grocery store where nobody lives? I can see that it takes time to break out of a cycle like that, but I am a little surprised that more developers haven’t stepped in to make it happen. (I think that’s okay—recovery should happen organically, when people are ready to come home. I’m just surprised, is all.)

One other thing that surprised me is that signs of flood damage are everywhere. I had expected that after two and a half years, people would have moved to put the tragedy behind them by covering up as many visual reminders as they could. But I think that some of these scars are in fact proudly preserved.

When I say that I’m thinking mostly of the X marks that were spray-painted on virtually every residential building in the city in the days and weeks after the flood. Many are still visible. I understand that nobody is going to repaint an abandoned house, but some inhabited homes still have the marks. The home near the fairgrounds pictured above, for example, is definitely lived in (by an older woman I saw rocking on the porch) and otherwise maintained. But the owner still hasn’t painted over the Red Cross graffiti next to her door.

The Xs, by the way, tell very interesting and often horrifying stories. For one thing, if you imagine them being drawn by someone sitting in a boat floating by, you can get an idea of how high the water was. In this case, the boat wouldn’t have been in deep water when the rescuers came by, but look at the date (always in the top quadrant): September 9. That’s 11 days after the storm hit, and more than a week after the flood.

The left-hand side of the X is where rescue crews leave some kind of identifying mark, almost always involving the state they came from—someone from California seems to have looked at this house.

The bottom section is for a body count, the right-hand side usually notes anything else alarming found on site, like gas leaks, animal carcasses, or vicious dogs. Here, though, the story is relatively happy. No bodies were found, and the only warning note, “1 SIP,” stands for “One Sheltering in Place.” That just means that one person chose to stay in the flooded home. A later note, dated Sep. 28, asks that any would-be rescuers not take the pets away, and an addendum elaborates that if anyone finds the house empty, it’s just because the owner is out for a stroll with her dogs.

I’ll say one thing for New Orleans: It may be falling apart physically, woefully mis-managed, and abandoned by a third of its population. But the people who do live there? They’re as tough as nails.

Here’s a link to some of my New Orleans photos.

Going to New Orleans

Pipi and I are leaving for New Orleans tomorrow. We’re going to see the Jazz Festival, which we’ve done once before, but we also hope to see some of the city this time. The last time we went, we almost literally did nothing but attend the festival. This year we’ve allowed a little more free time to be tourists.

I probably won’t bring my computer with me, so I won’t be blogging regularly until I’m back. Have a good week!

What’s Going on Here?

And now Skybus has gone out of business. I wasn’t familiar with them. It’s just surprising to me because it’s the third airline in about a week to cease operations.

Somewhere—I think in a box in my parents’ attic—I have a number of those little plastic pilot wings they give children on airplanes. I know I have several from now-defunct carriers, like TWA and Eastern. I wish I’d been more aggressive about collecting these because I know I’ve flown other airlines that are no longer in business.

Oh, oh. Is it me?

Mahalo to Aloha Airlines

The news of Aloha Airlines’ closing also surprised me. This didn’t feel quite as personal, but Pipi and I have flown Aloha, so I was a little nostalgic.

It was the one time I’ve ever been to Hawaii, which felt luxurious enough. It was also one of the few times I’ve ever traveled in anything other than coach. First class on Aloha was sort of first-class lite, but it was a very enjoyable trip. The attendant in the front cabin was a particularly handsome and charming man who knelt down in the aisle next to our row and introduced himself, whispering like his name was a secret that he was only going to tell the two of us. Ice cream was served during one of the movies, and we got a bottomless container of macadamia nuts to share. (It wasn’t really bottomless, of course; our partner in crime just kept refilling it as fast as we could gobble.)

Later, Pipi and I confessed to each other that as we landed, we’d both been secretly wishing the flight were longer. That’s the only time in my adult life I’ve ever had that thought. So I wish all those Aloha employees well, too, especially our friend who was so generous with the macadamia nuts. I hope he lands on his feet.

And I hope my attempt to eat enough nuts to make up for the cost of the upgrade didn’t have anything to do with the airline’s demise.

RIP ATA

I just saw the surprising news that ATA ceased operations today.

This news surprised me for many reasons. For one, it follows the shutdown of Aloha Airlines so quickly that when I saw the headline about “Major Airline Folding,” I thought to myself, “Why are they still writing about Aloha? That news is so three days ago.”

Another reason I was surprised is that I can’t remember ever seeing an airline shut down so abruptly without being in bankruptcy. ATA had filed Chapter 11 in the past, but came out of it. I have always thought that if an airline was not in the process of reorganizing, you could depend on it to keep running, but clearly I was wrong about that.

The biggest reason this news shocks me is that my father flew for this airline for many years, so ATA feels like part of the family. Luckily for my father, he retired about a year ago, so he at least got to make a graceful, planned exit—no cardboard box full of personal effects delivered by a guard for him. Still, I think a lot of ex-employees are getting these boxes shoved at them today, so let’s take a moment to remember the late, great ATA and its employees.