Eddie Gabriel (1910-2005) - One of the casualties of Katrina, 67 years at @PatOBriensBar

Liz Stone, Eddie Gabriel and Barbara Bennett
perform at Pat O'Brien's Bar in New Orleans
late 70s, early 80s

"It is home." - Chris Rose

To be engaged in some small way in the revival of one of the great cities of the world is to live a meaningful existence by default.

I'm not going to lay down in words the lure of this place. Every great writer in the land, from Faulkner to Twain to Rice to Ford, has tried to do it and fallen short. It is impossible to capture the essence, tolerance, and spirit of south Louisiana in words and to try is to roll down a road of clichés, bouncing over beignets and beads and brass bands and it just is what it is.

We dance even if there's no radio. We drink at funerals. We talk too much and laugh too loud and live too large and, frankly,we're suspicious of others who don't.

It is home.

-Chris Rose- Author - One Dead in Attic

Tom Piazza on the secret life of live music in New Orleans

“Mac Rebennack, better known as Dr. John, once told me that when a brass band plays at a small club back up in one of the neighborhoods, it's as if the audience--dancing, singing to the refrains, laughing--is part of the band. They are two parts of the same thing. The dancers interpret, or it might be better to say literally embody, the sounds of the band, answering the instruments. Since everyone is listening to different parts of the music--she to the trumpet melody, he to the bass drum, she to the trombone--the audience is a working model in three dimensions of the music, a synesthesic transformation of materials. And of course the band is also watching the dancers, and getting ideas from the dancers' gestures. The relationship between band and audience is in that sense like the relationship between two lovers making love, where cause and effect becomes very hard to see, even impossible to call by its right name; one is literally getting down, as in particle physics, to some root stratum where one is freed from the lockstop of time itself, where time might even run backward, or sideways, and something eternal and transcendent is accessed.” 
― Tom Piazza, Why New Orleans Matters

"... there was something about that city ..." - Charles Bukowski

“there was something about
that city, though
it didn't let me feel guilty
that I had no feeling for the
things so many others
needed.
it let me alone.” 
― Charles Bukowski

"I walked the streets, savoring that long lost perfume." - Anne Rice

“In the spring of 1988, I returned to New Orleans, and as soon as I smelled the air, I knew I was home.

It was rich, almost sweet, like the scent of jasmine and roses around our old courtyard. 

I walked the streets, savoring that long lost perfume.” 

― Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire

"the Beauty of Molly's ..." - Andrei Codrescu

“The beauty of Molly's is that it is not, whether in the daytime or at night, the exclusive preserve of an age or income group. Unlike the sterile night scenes of pretentious San Francisco or New York, Molly's (and most other New Orleans bars) welcomes all ages, all colors, and all sexual persuasions, provided they are willing to surrender to the atmosphere.” 
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

"In New Orleans ... it's ink and honey passed through silver moonlight..." - Andrei Codrescu

“There is a velvety sensuality here at the mouth of the Mississippi that you won't find anywhere else. Tell me what the air feels like at 3 A.M. on a Thursday night in August in Shaker Heights and I bet you won't be able to say because nobody stays up that late. But in New Orleans, I tell you, it's ink and honey passed through silver moonlight.” 
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

" ... we are charged with ... the transfiguration of all things ..." - Rilke

"... we are charged with the transmutation, the resurrection, the transfiguration of all things.  For how can we save what is visible if not by using the language of absence, of the invisible?"

Letter to Sophy Giauque
11/26/1925

"... they swallow ... without thinking ..." - Bukowski

"I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me ..." - Georgia O'Keeffe

"I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me — shapes and ideas so near to me,so natural to my way of being and thinking." - Georgia O'Keeffe

O'Keeffe at Abiqui - Yousuf Karsh, 1956

Here's what ISN'T hunting - from my perspective

What isn't hunting? Sitting in a blind or up in a stand and waiting.  That's not hunting. It's especially not hunting when your stand is heated and enclosed, your fridge serves up cold beer, and you have cell service so you can watch NetFlix and PornHub in your little waiting room. 

At best, you're a very lazy shopper.  I actually have to go up and down the aisles when I'm looking for food, not sit in a little box and wait for the burgers and brisket and bacon to walk over to me.

Mostly, though, this is stalking. You're not a mighty predator, but a stalker. You lure your prey in, then you pop open your window, set down your Cheetos and Weller, sight up, steady your wobbly whiskey aim, then pull the trigger and pop. If you're not too drunk, you drop him on the first shot.  Otherwise, you have to chase after him and do the decent thing at that point and finish him (or her - let's be fair).

By those typical standards, Lee Harvey Oswald was a "hunter." He sat in his perch, sipping his Coca-Cola, then when his prey came into view, he steadied his weapon on a box, and did a little "pew-pew-pew."  Then he scurried downstairs and got another Coca-Cola out of the vending machine and pretended he was innocent. Yeah, no, by legitimate standards, he was most definitely stalker and assassin, not hunter.

I'm not strictly anti-hunting. If you follow and track, if you equalize the technology a little (bow & arrow?), if you eat what you kill, and if you're not paying $50k-350k for the pleasure of snuffing something endangered, then I'm less inclined to diss you. At least you're trying to keep it real.  Your conscience is in the mix somewhere, and I'm not going to pretend I have moral authority to tell you where exactly your line has to be.

My position for myself is this: if I eat meat, which I do, then I must be willing to kill it myself, whether I do it 50% of the time or 1% of the time.  Mostly, though, I'm a killer by proxy. I'm comfortable enough paying others to handle it for me. But if I ever get to the point where I don't have the stomach to even consider doing it myself, then it will have become immoral for me to pay someone else to do it.  I keep my sin and my conscience close to home. I won't pay other people to do what is repugnant to me.

Caution to writers: the prize isn't a flowery paragraph - it's conveying the reader to the end

“In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.” 
― Stephen King