Wednesday in CinCity. Dog Days Edition.

Just to give a brief summary, I did go to New Orleans to see my baby girl and had a great time. It's truly a beautiful city, the food is so unbelievable and there's music on just about every street corner.Trying to coordinate all our days off around September/October and find cheap flights so Hubby can go with next time.

The WWII Museum is there. Bestowed upon the lovely city due to the importance of the Higgin boats--the landing crafts at Normandy--designed and built by Andrew Higgins of New Orleans and originally conceived to traverse the waterways and bayous for the oil companies. Truth be told, MissNewOrleans and I were searching in the corners for crumbs of food got a little hungry around the D-Day invasion and saw the rest of the war fairly quickly. Could certainly go through the museum a time or two more.

Came home for a day and left for the lake. Better planning than I realized since my luggage had lingered in North Carolina. Hot and humid even on the Great Lakes. The yards and trees dry and dusty like everywhere else in the Midwest. We meandered around, read and slept. Found all the new shops and bakeries to be found and listened to bluegrass and jazz at the airport of all places. There's a brand spankin' new multi-million dollar Homeland Security office across from Bergman's fruit and vegetable market that's created some buzz. Three hundred new jobs, none local, but they gotta eat and live somewhere... 

Since we've been home and back to work we've spent most of our days off in our own downtown seeing Porgy and Bess at the opera and attending some of the World Choir Games.

Downtown CinCity was in her glory with hometown people reveling in the music and dozens of cultures and world citizens hanging out with us. Our pigs even got a makeover and some new additions.

Washington Park, across the street from Music Hall, had devolved into a campground for the homeless and a significant breeding ground for criminal activity. It's now been reborn into a jewel of landscaping and planned events for the city. A bluegrass concert tonight.

I've got one more day off work and HoneyHaired and I wanted to check out a consignment shop in Northside or we'll skip out of the heat and see Woody Allen's newest. Though, if we're not home who will let the dog in and out every 5 minutes of the one air-conditioned room we have?



The Poet Visits the Museum of Fine Arts


by Mary Oliver



For a long time

I was not even

in this world, yet

every summer



every rose

opened in perfect sweetness

and lived

in gracious repose,



in its own exotic fragrance,

in its huge willingness to give

something, from its small self,

to the entirety of the world.



I think of them, thousands upon thousands,

in many lands,

whenever summer came to them,

rising



out of the patience of patience,

to leaf and bud and look up

into the blue sky

or, with thanks,



into the rain

that would feed

their thirsty roots

latched into the earth—



sandy or hard, Vermont or Arabia,

what did it matter,

the answer was simply to rise

in joyfulness, all their days.



Have I found any better teaching?

Not ever, not yet.

Last week I saw my first Botticelli

and almost fainted,



and if I could I would paint like that

but am shelved somewhere below, with a few songs

about roses: teachers, also, of the ways

toward thanks, and praise.