The Strawberry Blog

Prepping the house and heading to Mississippi. Will write soon, when I can get a connection there. Let’s all pray that New Orleans is still here, still electrified, still dry (-ish). And to everyone staying (you know who you are; you have multiple generations on me and a certain pathological lack of fear of catastrophe), should be great weather tomorrow. Just hold down the fort, will you? We shall see you in a few days to help clean up debris.

My shock was difficult to conceal yesterday when a young Englishman (and I stress young) announced to our small assembled group that New Orleans has…too much culture for him. Yes, that’s right. Too much. Apparently we are surfeiting here on something that in many American towns and cities is eroding at an alarming rate. Perhaps we should start giving it away. Here, have a secondline, Rockville! Take a cobblestoned street, Fresno! We got so much we can hardly stand it. We’re culture-distended, simply fat on the stuff.

Ah, Culture. A friend said recently, if you want to completely wreck someone, annihilate his culture. If you want to wage war on a truly personal level, destroy that which completes him: obliterate his culture, be it museums, social aid and pleasure clubs, opera, or chess games at the coffee house.

And this protestation from an Englishman of multiple cultures himself no less: Guyanese, Anglo-Saxon, West Indian. But we have too much of that darned culture for him here in the Crescent City Centrale. The young Englishman began his American odyssey in Orlando, Florida–which, I suppose, was right up his neon beachfront–but, having landed on Iberville some months ago, he has suffered a veritable deluge of the deeply southern–and deeply vexing–mix of the stuff. He and his sweetheart are off to Southern California soon and I will miss his vieux Creolisme, his Windsorian pomp, his boyish circumstance.

But I left him with this: beware of San Diego, kid. Lots of mole.

August 1st, 2005

Welcome to the Hummer Report, tucked depressingly inside the otherwise ebullient strawberryblog. This week’s Report was trumped by senses other than Appalled (namely, Touch, Feel = musings on heat). However, I am afraid to say that I now must report yet another sorry sign of the Rapid Decline of Western Civilization: two nasty metal mutations in New Orleans. That’s right. The H2 has careened its way to the Crescent City.

To examine just how misguided this influx is, and to what effect its assault produces on the senses and sensibility of this town, I refer to a song penned by beloved New Orleans son, trumpeter Kermit Ruffins.

It’s a song well known here for elucidating the downhome simplicity of our fair city; in short, it is a paean to aspects of community socializing and to New Orleans’ environmental beauty. Called “What Is New Orleans?” Kermit doesn’t so much sing his responses to the title mantra as recite gleefully the things that make living here great. From memory, here are some paraphrased examples: What is New Orleans?/New Orleans is red beans and rice on a Monday night/ What is New Orleans?/ New Orleans is Joe’s Cozy Corner/BBQing chicken [at somewhere or another…] etc. etc.

I have listened to the song many times and know personally many of the attributes to which it pays a joyful homage. Which is why I know that it doesn’t say, nor will Kermit or anyone else ever sing in future renditions, What is New Orleans?/ New Orleans is a camouflage painted Hummer on Baronne Street saying ‘Army of One’/What is New Orleans?/New Orleans is a bright orange H2 cruising St Bernard Avenue/ What is New Orleans?….

The H2 fits here in this high water-tabled, tall fabled, craftsmen-built town about as well as a polyester three-piece in summer. If you wish to hit town in style, whether visiting or staying long enough to question your grammar, please don’t arrive in an H2. That ain’t it, kid. That just ain’t it.