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Tucked away in New Orleans East is Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, just a stones throw from the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility. Every year this close knit community of Vietnamese people celebrate their New Year by holding Tet Festival on … Continue reading
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Southeast Louisiana’s winter weather is so fickle. One day it’s cold, damp and gray and the next is sunny with blue skies and mild temperatures. During Christmas break from work hubby and I decided to go looking for pelicans in … Continue reading
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We (myself, hubby and Deuce the pup) are spending this week at Dauphin Island Alabama. We have spent two previous Thanksgiving weeks here pre-Katrina and it feels really wonderful to return. For those who are not aware of this jewel in … Continue reading
Happy Independence Day! I’m posting this slap dab in the middle of the 2011 July 4th Weekend and am hoping that the two readers of this post are enjoying themselves. 
We spent our “celebrating America’s Independence” Day in one of my favorite cities, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
Located about 40 minutes from our home in Slidell, Bay St. Louis epitomizes the “comeback city”.
On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina made her final landfall at Bay St. Louis. The little town was flattened and it still working on her rebound. In the past six years she’s done well.
click on picture for full size version
My husband and I take pleasure from our trips to Bay St. Louis, especially when we want a fantastic burger. We either go to the Mockingbird Cafe or the Buttercup Restaurant. Both restaurants are on the same street. The joys of small town America.
About four years ago we attended the Crab Festival put on by Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church in Bay St.Louis and appreciated the atmosphere, food, music and breezes from the Bay. So we decided to revisit the fest this year and were not disappointed.
While we truly love the French Quarter, PoBoy, Oyster and countless other Festivals in New Orleans, the ambience and down home comfort of a festival away from the Crescent City is a welcome hot weather diversion. The OLG (Our Lady of the Gulf) Fest is well done and small enough allow us park our chairs in a shady spot and take off for a few hours of eating and photography and return to find our chairs still there, unoccupied.
There were more than 50 dishes offered, a good deal of them containing the subject of the Festival.
Here is the food we sampled and savored:
Boiled shrimp (very tasty) and Lake Pontchartrain Crabs (sweet crabmeat)
Fried Catfish with fries, hush puppies and coleslaw
Crabmeat pie and fried softshell crab with cole slaw and seafood smashed potatoes
In between stuffing our faces we took walks and pictures. Our first foray was thru the arts section of Bay St. Louis.
This sweet little courtyard is dedicated to Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, a colonizer in the Gulf Coast region.
Here is a closeup of the plaque in the opening of the courtyard. Apparently Bay St. Louis was originally named Shieldsboro after Thomas Shields, a ship’s purser.
Main Street is the section of town that I love to haunt. It has shops and galleries that beg to be discovered.
This building is one of the few that survived the 30 foot storm surge of Katrina.
One of the tenants of this building, Bay Breeze, rents bikes and kayaks. It also sells home furnishings.
A little watering hole on Main Street by the Bay.
One of the art galleries we visited was Maggie May’s, a purveyor of local art.
I asked the owner if I could take pictures inside and she said as long as it’s not of the artwork. So I took a picture of this nifty glass block window:
There were some very nice pieces and paintings in the gallery which takes up a city block. Plus it has air conditioning, making it a perfect spot if you’re visiting BSL in the summer to take a break from the heat. Attached to the gallery is Lulu, a great little spot to catch a bite to eat. .
Moving across the street we found one of our favorite bread baker Serious Bread. We went inside and got a lovely, crusty loaf of bread and two craisin scones along with a complementary bottle of water from the owner himself! Mr Jensen makes fantastic scones, not dry like most that I’ve sampled.
Fueled up for another leg on our jouney around downtown Bay St. Louis, we carried on and soon discovered the sweetest little community garden which seems to be doing well despite our dry conditions this summer. Here are some pictures of their crops:
This old place is right next to the Mockingbird Restaurant on 2nd Street.
In the garden outside the Mockingbird is this very cool bottle tree.
On the other side of the Mockingbird Cafe is The Shops at Century Hall. Originally built by the Woodmen of the World for fraternal functions, Century Hall now houses an art gallery and many rooms of vintage antiques and one of a kind items. It’s a great place to spend an hour or two.
Here are some of the sights we found interesting:
I found this piece to be rather spooky.
I love this stained glass. Unfortunately, my little tiny house has no room for it.
There is a room devoted to old kitchen tools.
Another room is filled with folk artist and Bay St. Louis resident Alice Moseley’s work, including this video of Alice explaining her art. In another part of BSL you can visit Miss Moseley’s home, which is now a museum.
This plaque depicts the story of BSL’s “angel tree”. The background to the story is here..
Century Hall’s next door neighbor is an ancient cemetery, which I found fascinating.
Doves carved into a tree that died from the saltwater intrusion from The Storm seem to flutter among the graves.
some graves were behind old gates like this one
This angel, most likely carved from a Katrina tree, presides over the small cemetery.
Back at the Crab Fest they were still boiling crabs and shrimp
Ceiling fans and the breeze from the Bay kept it tolerable in the afternoon.
We decided to catch some of the more unique and patriotic outfits at the fest
One of the bands that played early in the day was the 41st National Guard Army Band They rocked.
Toward the late afternoon, we took a walk toward St. Stanislaus College and chilled out on the bench, watching the Bay and the crowds.
Seeing the beach being restored six years after the storm is very heartwarming .
All in all it was a relaxing and enjoyable trip. One that assures us that we will
I just got back from 6 days in beautiful North Carolina. The weather was cooler, but spring had begun with the Bradford pear trees in pristine white bloom everywhere and the grass beginning to turn shades of bright green. It was a regular work week for everyone in North Carolina unlike south Louisiana where everyone is off and enjoying our version of spring break. Because of that, it was quiet everywhere and the throngs of people rushing around trying to enjoy their time off during holiday was non-existent.
I told everyone I was leaving town for Mardi Gras and people were incredulous – why leave this is the best time of the year? Aren’t you going to miss all the fun? How are you going to blow off the proverbial steam? Well, I did get to blow off steam, but not by being raucous and inebriated like many do during carnival season. This trip did a world of good, and from the pulse of many here in New Orleans, I’m not the only one that left town for quieter destinations. Many people leave, maybe for warmer sandy climates, others to sink their feet and skis into powder, and still more head out to camp and commune with nature.
Having been born and raised here, I was paraded out in costume as an infant, rode in truck parades as a toddler, and was hoisted up on many a shoulder as a child. I remember going to parades ambling down St. Claude Avenue and parades that marched through the French Quarter, trying to dodge the dripping kerosene that flowed from the flambeaux while illuminating the architecture of the Quarter and the underbellies of majestic oak trees. Those images are burned in my brain, and when I am feeling left out of the Mardi Gras spirit I can always look at them in my mind reminiscing on all the fun and merriment. But for now I am creating new images as I travel and am taking advantage of the time off to do something new and different. I do however take comfort in the fact that when I do want to get down and dirty in the streets of New Orleans, Mardi Gras will always be there, waiting…
Mardi Gras – the biggest free show on earth – is truely a remarkable event. In New Orleans the season starts on Twelfth Night, aka Kings Day (January 6th) and runs through Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras day.
This year we are experiencing the longest Mardi Gras season in our lifetimes. I can’t complain, because that means a longer period to eat King Cake!
Come midnight this coming Tuesday there are going to be some people who feel as if they’ve partied since January 6th. The out of towners who come here to lose their identities for a weekend . And the young kids, like my 22 year old daughter, who want to be in the heart of it all, breathing it all in and hoping the drinks and parades don’t end early.
I used to be like that. I used to get up early and leave the house in Slidell by 6 a.m., come rain or shine to make sure we secured a spot on St. Charles Avenue. We sipped our spiked coffee, our coolers were full of beer and sandwiches, snacks and drinks for the kids. We were prepared for a day of fun. Mardi Gras music evokes such good memories of those days.
I’m happy to have made all of those memories. I have seen Mardi Gras from balconies on Bourbon Street, I’ve been in the crowds on Bourbon Street.
I’ve done Mardi Gras in Metairie and from the stands of Gallier Hall. I love the traditions of the Krewes of Zulu and Rex . The chance of seeing marching Bands like St. Aug’s Marching 100 and Southern University will always excite me.
I even withstood and entire truck parade……once.
I’ve been to the Krewe of Dreux but haven’t made it to the Krewe du Vieux .
I’ve never “shown my tits”. That’s for drunken tourists.
Now I am at the point in my life where I can let Mardi Gras go on without me. Not unike NOLA blogger Cliff. I can leave the parades and balls to the Carnival enthusiasts and celebrate the season in my own way. At home with a King Cake, Abita Beer, Zapps Chips and Popeyes chicken. No worries about traffic and DWI’s, trying to find a place to pee on Mardi Gras Day.
I wouldn’t ever move away from here, because Mardi Gras is only a small piece of the beauty and culture there is available in this tiny speck in the world.
Love is so fleeting and fickle and must be nurtured. It is like the flower: without sunlight and warmth and water and fertile soil it will wither and die. And that is what happened to mine.
Blame it on my ambition, my drive to get to a place where the last 20 years of my career will be smooth. But at what cost? What if I don’t live past 50, or 60, then what? Why is it I am unable to roll with fate, to trust that things will simply fall into place? No, that is not how I was raised – study hard so you will be a success. Sacrifice will lead to riches and not necessarily of the monetary kind. Apply yourself because you are smart and you always want something to fall back on. I guess those that were guiding me never thought that I would amount to becoming a “kept” woman: one that would marry a husband that had a great career, have children, live in the house with the white picket fence, and on and on. But isn’t that just a fantasy anyway?
The quest for self-education took me away from love. This quest, coupled with working full time, left me nothing else in the tank to nurture love. School was stressful, shortening an already miniscule fuse in my psyche which before labeled me feisty, but now just labels me on the edge. I am patient, I can see the eventual payoff: patience is a virtue that one cultivates with time. I didn’t have the patience to do this at an earlier point in my life, so it is happening now. And once I commit, I follow through, so this is my path, my shackles for a little while longer. I cannot, nor should not have expected anyone to go down this path with me, it is a grueling one to navigate.
So in the days that compressed together and are now a blurry memory, that love set wing. Another came along, another who gave water, gave light, and gave warmth to my love and the wings set flight. I was blind, content within the false sense of commitment of love that in reality slipped through my fingers. And in the space of a few weeks it was gone. I guess you didn’t have it in you – it is way too difficult to put in the work needed to salvage what we had instead of fleeing to the fresh, new, exciting and unknown. I was in denial, anxious with the mundane tasks of the path I chose, and now there is a vast emptiness which no amount of tasks I take on can fill. There is no one there to share, no one there to hold my hand and say its going to be OK, no one to put their arm around me and fill me with the pleasure that only the touch of a loved one can bestow.
A tequila fueled conversation with a dear friend has given me new insight. In vino veritas was the beacon towards my enlightenment. I had been so hurt, so betrayed, so angry, my heart broken and could not see clearly until our discourse. And that is what good friends are for, to shine the light on our faults, on our hurt and help us find another way to move forward. After our conversation, I came to the realization that I have loved and lost, but I have known love. And in the comfort of that knowledge, I am secure, because I know there are many who never know true love. This will be what gets me through this day.
So on Valentine’s, bring close to you the one that you love, nurture that love by feeding it and caressing it and placing it in the sunlight like the flower, making sure the vulnerable petals of love feels safe and secure. Because it may not be there tomorrow.
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