From north to south...

My writing colleague Judy Howard, whom I met at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and who blogs at http://judyhowardandsportster.blogspot.com, has written a book called Coast to Coast with a Cat and a Ghost. With apologies to Judy, I've just done North to South with Three Cats in a Tahoe. Four days and three nights, 1,676 miles, from Plattsburgh, New York, to New Orleans, about a thousand of it on Interstate 81, paralleling U.S. 11 all the way from Binghamton, New York to Slidell, Louisiana. The directional indicator on my mirror read "SW"-- Southwest -- pretty much the whole way. We drove through New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and finally Louisiana. Stayed overnight in Binghamton, Roanoke/Salem VA, and Birmingham. A big "Thank you!" to LaQuinta and Candlewood Suites for their pet-friendly policies.

I left a few days ahead of Papacat, who stayed with the dog to see the moving van off and to shampoo the carpets of the house that was about to go on the market. The weather was mostly good all four days of our trip, but he hit heavy snow going over the Adirondacks in his first hour out of Plattsburgh, a little goodbye present from the Frozen North.

As I journeyed southwest, traveling four to five hundred miles a day, I noticed that each day the temperatures rose about ten degrees and the price of gas dropped. The temperatures went from the forties to the fifties to the sixties to the seventies, and the price of gas went from $3.60 in Plattsburgh to under $3.00 by the time I got to Mississippi. Good deal.

On the second day of our trip, we went through five states, all on I-81: New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia. When you cross into Maryland, you cross the Mason-Dixon Line. Even the geography looks different. And suddenly you start seeing signs for Waffle House.

The mountains are beautiful. In central New York, there are hills running north to south, and it's clear they were left behind by the glaciers. In central Pennsylvania, maybe they were glacial mountains also, but they're much steeper; I'm not sure. But the broad valleys of Pennsylvania with lovely towns and cities spread out over them are awesome.

In Virginia it's the Shenandoahs. More incredible beauty. The autumn leaves in New York were finished by the time I drove through, the first full week of November. In Pennsylvania they were rust-colored. But by the time I got to Virginia, they were peaking, all shades of red and gold and brown.

In Tennessee, it's the Blue Ridge Mountains. Again, gorgeous colors in the leaves, and sunny warm daytime temperatures when I'd stop for gas, food, or to clean cat carriers (the less said about that the better).

The longest leg of the trip was Roanoke to Birmingham, 515 miles. That last stretch from Chattanooga to Birmingham took about two hours, and night fell as I drove. In the west, just after sunset, bright Venus was in conjunction with a sliver of crescent moon, a little like this *  ). Lovely.

Traveling with three cats (and a lot of worldly possessions) in a Tahoe: oh my. The cats are the Ponchatoula boys, all rescued from various situations in my first parish. Each cat has his unique challenges: Sweetie has diabetes and needs insulin every 12 hours. 'Teebie has liver disease and is in failing health. And Little Bit can find the darndest places to hide in a hotel room. No cat left behind, Little Bit. But his "I ain't going!" routine in the mornings delayed our departures and did not-so-good things for my blood pressure. 

The first night's hotel had open area under the beds, so of course he went to the middle of "under the full-size bed" and wouldn't budge. I  managed to crawl under and drag him out, mother-cat style, and of course he was not pleased. The next two nights had real pet-friendly platform beds with no way to get under them. (Thank you, hotels!) Yet I was using wastebaskets, pillows, cat carriers, etc. to try to block Little Bit from getting behind the head of the bed, but of course he found a way. Again, I did a mother-cat "drag him out" in the morning.

That third morning was the worst. All three of them disappeared. I finally found Sweetie, all twenty pounds of him, on top of the kitchen cabinets in the suite. He had jumped from chair to table to countertop to top of refrigerator to top of cabinet. Sweetie's diabetic neuropathy must be doing a lot better since we upped his insulin!

It took awhile, but I finally found a black tail ('Teebie) sticking out under the bedskirt. And Little Bit was there, too. I was terrified they had managed either to crawl up into the mechanism of the reclining chair or jump behind and under the refrigerator, but apparently even Little Bit was not that suicidal. And so I put them into their cat carriers, loaded them onto the luggage cart, and wheeled them to the Tahoe.

Among the gazillion things in the back of the Tahoe was the huge spider plant from my office in Plattsburgh. That first night in Binghamton, the predicted low was below freezing, so I brought it into the hotel room. Did I mention that Sweetie loves to eat spider plants? So it hung from the shower rod that night and the bathroom door stayed closed. Fortunately, as we traveled south, the nighttime temperatures rose and I could leave it in the car overnight. It arrived in New Orleans with some leaves slightly bent, but it has a happy new home in the conservatory off the dining room and seems to be recovering just fine.

We arrived in New Orleans at rush hour on a Thursday afternoon, and of course there were accidents that had the interstate tied up, and don't you just love having to pull over for emergency vehicles when there is no place to pull over? Back to life in the big city. We made it home safely, just before sunset. As I unloaded the car, I saw Venus and the crescent moon appear in the west. A good sign. Welcome home.

The big four-oh

I thought hitting the big four-oh was traumatic. Now I have hit the big four-oh of my graduation from Syracuse University in 1973. It was great to go back to campus for reunion last weekend. Didn’t see anyone I knew, but I had my main man with me, and that made it all worthwhile.

The homecoming game, Syracuse vs. Clemson...well, we knew going in it wasn’t going to be pretty. We won’t discuss the score, except to say we were not shut out. We had seats near the end zone where SU scored its two touchdown runs, which was pretty exciting. And the stadium was almost at capacity, nearly 49,000 -- and everybody in orange! I have never seen so much orange in my life! The tailgate party at the Sheraton (one of many going on before the game) was fun, too. The alumni were all friendly and a lot of them were older than we were – so maybe there’s hope that I’ll make it back for the big five-oh in ten years. Although going up those hills and stairs is going to be a real challenge.

The Dean's Breakfast for alums of the Newhouse School of Public Communications – Newhouse was the reason I went to Syracuse – was great. Lobster quiche, anyone? There were three presentations by faculty from the magazine department (my major), the television, radio and film department, and the broadcast and digital journalism department, the successor to the television-radio department, or TVR – I think. A lot of high-tech, really cool stuff going on. Magazine students can now take a course on developing smartphone and tablet apps that add content and whiz-bang graphics and video to the magazine experience. (Afterward, I checked the curriculum on the website and found that magazine students still take many of the same classes I did 40 years ago in an introduction to the industry, writing, and editing – although the graphic design class would be dramatically different in the digital age.)

We all were invited back next year for the dedication of the Dick Clark Studios. (More about that on the website, http://newhouse.syr.edu.) They have knocked out an imposing back wall of concrete/stone of Newhouse II on the Waverly Ave. side (described as "fortress-like") and are putting in a beautiful glass-walled addition for the studios. I think there will be five small studios that can be used for all sorts of projects.

A lot of new buildings have gone up on campus in the last 40 years. The old Victorian houses on University Ave. are gone, replaced with modern brick structures from the 1980s. In retrospect, Newhouse I and II and Bird Library seem really ugly to me, products of the 1960s and 1970s, and out of place on a campus with grand old buildings dating from the 1870s. The newer buildings try to bridge the gap between the Victorian elegance of the Hall of Languages (pictured above) and Crouse College and the utilitarian style of the present day. There’s lots of glass and a very open feel to Newhouse III.

News flash: You can now buy Clinique products in the Bookstore! And there is a cafe in Bird Library! Back in the day, the very idea of having food and beverages under the same roof as a library was heretical. Thank you, Barnes and Noble, for the cafes in your bookstores that prompted university libraries to create spaces to hang out during those long study and research sessions.

The alumni association ran free shuttle buses from the hotels to campus, so we didn't have to hassle with trying to find a legal place to park on campus. Thank you, alumni association. I owe you a big donation for that one.

Our hotel was in East Syracuse, actually northeast Syracuse, not too far from the airport, in a cluster of hotel chains and extended-stay places. But the rest of East Syracuse was shocking. It looks like New Orleans East post-Katrina. Abandoned manufacturing plants, employee parking lots with crumbling concrete and grass growing in the cracks, boarded-up gas stations, vacant lots overgrown with weeds. I asked a waitress at Denny's what happened. She told me Carrier pulled out two years ago (their world headquarters was right there), Chrysler shut down its plant, and GE shut down its plant. It's pretty grim. I guess a lot of these manufacturing jobs have gone overseas.

At one time Syracuse University was the largest employer in the area. I wouldn’t be surprised if it still is. The university and the adjoining medical complex are booming.

All in all, I'm glad we went to my big four-oh. I have a deep and abiding love for the place, even after all these years, and I was sad to leave at the end of the weekend. Syracuse University was a young girl’s ambitious dream for preparing for a future in the magazine business. It didn’t let me down. I treasure the years I spent there, and I treasure the memories of wonderful friendships made. Today I see other young people coming to campus with dreams just as ambitious as mine were all those years ago. They are being challenged to think, to create, to imagine new possibilities. I am proud of them. I am glad to call myself one of them.

And here I am with SU mascot Otto the Orange at the alumni barbecue. Why yes, it was raining, and yes, my hair is plastered to my head.

Back to the future?

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was a new college graduate working in my first job as a magazine editor in a place called Norcross, Georgia, in what was then a rural area northeast of Atlanta. I was a "junior" editor on a magazine called Industrial Engineering, published by an engineering trade association. I worked there four years, with a wonderful editorial staff led by a man named Bob Rice, who invited me to his church, which started a long chain of events that led to my changing careers twenty years later to go to seminary. But I digress.

Industrial Engineering was printed at a company called The Lane Press in Burlington, Vermont. Some time ago it dawned on me that I was living just across Lake Champlain from Burlington, and I wondered if The Lane Press was still in business. It is. It has moved to larger quarters since the days when my magazine was printed there, but the company is now more than a hundred years old and still turning out small to medium press run magazines, many for trade associations and college alumni groups. It has been printing an incredibly beautiful magazine called Vermont Life at least since 1947. In the early 1970s, when Lane was publishing Industrial Engineering, our customer service rep used to send us copies, and we would ooh and ahh over the gorgeous photos of the famous Vermont fall foliage.

And this is what Vermont really looks like. At least it does from South Burlington, at the offices of The Lane Press. Imagine seeing this every morning when you drive to work.

Today we visited The Lane Press and got a tour from a very helpful and friendly lady named Erin, who took us through the plant. Much has changed in publishing from the days when we used to send them typewritten copy and they would typeset it and send us galleys. We would paste up "dummies" on 11 x 17 layout sheets, from which they would make camera-ready copy. After several rounds of proofreading, they would print the magazine.

By the time I left the publishing world in the mid-1990s, magazine staffs were preparing digital layouts on computers using a program called Quark XPress. Today it's even more complex. Back in the day, the one thing that got us home at night was that the last FedEx pickup in Atlanta was around 9:00 p.m., so whatever we were trying to get to the printer the next morning had to go out by then. Now, with the ability to send files back and forth over the Internet, who knows how late we would be at the office. Or maybe we could do this stuff on a computer at home.

Here I am at the headquarters of The Lane Press. It only took me 40 years to do a plant visit.

Next week, we go to my 40th class reunion at Syracuse. I am so excited! I look forward to the Dean's Breakfast at the Newhouse School to hear the latest in the world of public communications. I remember an afternoon I struggled in the graphic arts lab to get the type perfectly straight on a mechanical I was doing for a class project and just couldn't get it straight enough for the professor's standards. By the time I attended my 20th reunion, the graphic arts lab was full of Macs, and not a single drawing board (a slanted graphic artist's work table) was left. (So much for the phrase, "back to the drawing board." A what?)

Time marches on. I can't say I miss the old ways of doing things. Forty years ago, we didn't have blogs, either. But if they had been around, I would have had one.

Memories of Santa Barbara, 2013

The 2013 Santa Barbara Writers Conference ended three weeks ago, but I still have a photo of the hotel up on my laptop background to keep a little bit of the conference with me. What a great time I had! I so look forward every year to my week of a writing retreat and the great workshops and speakers and panel discussions.

I enjoyed going to some workshops taught by favorite leaders. I enjoy Wylie Wisby Dunbar's fiction workshop, and also Lisa Lenard-Cook's (got her new book on memoir; I have her book on The Mind of Your Story, highly recommended). Someone recommended to me Jerry Camarillo Dunn's workshop on travel writing, which turned out to be a great workshop for anyone writing articles; the latter part of the week he focused on interviewing. I was quite surprised to discover he uses the same tape recording method for phone interviews that I was using 20 years ago when I was writing some very complicated technical pieces for specialized publications. (I was also surprised to discover how well my iPhone records an interview, even from a distance away from the speaker).

Learned that literary agents are still alive and well, although some of them are a little bit behind the times (that would be the agent who sniffed, "When did the vanity press become entrepreneurship?" Five to ten years ago, actually, with the advent of e-publishing.) Agents can still do a lot for a writer in this day and age if they are willing to change with the times and offer clients services they can't get elsewhere.

The discussion on social media (i.e., promoting yourself and your writing) was interesting. Some panelists said they spent as much as 3 hours a day on social media. The older members of the audience (like me) muttered that social media was a "time suck." Marla Miller, who is my go-to person for such things, advised us to spend at least an hour a day on social media. I went up to her afterward and said, "Marla, for those of us who have fulltime jobs, we're lucky to get in an hour a day to write!" She quickly backtracked and agreed that writing was always priority number one. Thank you, Marla!

I haven't tried Twitter yet but I guess I should. And I guess I should get myself a domain name, website to come. O brave new world... I considered myself pretty au courant just starting this blog. NINE years ago. Eeek. Much has happened in technology-land since that time!

But the big lesson from Santa Barbara was, as always, write well. Practice your craft. Be the best you can be. And come back next year with that manuscript finished!

Hello, I'm still here

For all intents and purposes, I brought this blog to an end when I moved from New Orleans to northern New York State two years ago and started a blog titled New Life in the North Country. But now I am hearing of blog managers (whatever the correct term is) that are removing blogs that have been inactive for a certain length of time on the grounds that they have been abandoned, or perhaps their creators have died. I'm not dead yet, folks. And Cattown really is a state of mind. So I may continue to post here from time to time.

Five years

This Sunday, August 29, is the five-year anniversary of Katrina. For those who have survived the last five years, any of us can tell you exactly what we did during those days before, during, and after. The memory is burned into our brains forever, and I doubt that even dementia can take it away.

By some strange quirk, perhaps a gift of God, I was out of town when it happened. I was on my way to a conference in North Carolina when the little nothing storm that was supposed to turn and go in around Appalachicola, Florida, decided not to turn, swelled up to blanket most of the Gulf of Mexico, and set out on a collision course for New Orleans.

It was a nightmare for those who scrambled to get out, and a worse nightmare for those who stayed. It was a nightmare of its own kind for me and others like me, who for days didn't know what had happened to our homes and loved ones, with all communication out.

Earlier this month I was back at that conference center in North Carolina, my second visit since "it" happened. I was still more than a little bit uncomfortable to be in the conference room where I had spent that nightmare week, to walk outdoors to see people in the driveway trying to get a signal on their cell phones -- in the same spot where I had frantically done the same thing, five years ago. The memories were like faint ghosts, just real enough to be disturbing.

Five years later, for a whole region, the memories are still with us. For the last five years, wherever I have traveled, people have asked me how New Orleans is doing. It's such a complex question to try to answer in a few sentences. I say now, as I have said for the last few years, "Some areas have come back, and some haven't, and some probably never will."

I was fortunate to live in a neighborhood that didn't flood. It was up and running again in a matter of months: the fallen trees cut up and carted off, the roofs replaced, the interior water damage from the ruined roofs repaired, the stores and restaurants reopened. For the areas that flooded, it's been much harder.

A neighborhood called Broadmoor had six feet of water. It had roughly as much water as Lakeview, but Broadmoor came back more quickly, largely through the efforts of a strong neighborhood association -- and people like my friend Cliff and his wife Nieta, who lived in a trailer on the property of First Presbyterian Church and encouraged the people of the area to return and rebuild.

But there are other neighborhoods where you still see abandoned houses and high weeds, where homeowners have died or moved out of the area and there is no one left to take care of the properties. I hear so many stories of people who say they "want" to return, but after five years, the truth is, they have settled elsewhere and made lives for themselves in different places.

I read about young entrepreneurs who have moved into the city since the storm and are starting new businesses. This is good news. The bad news is that most of the national corporations that had offices in New Orleans have moved out. They can't take the risk of again having their businesses shut down by government order for a month as happened after Katrina, when no one was allowed back into the city for weeks. Young entrepreneurs and startup businesses are good, but they can't replace the jobs lost when big companies moved out.

As for me, after the Saints won the Super Bowl, I did indeed get married -- a wonderful celebration in the spring, attended by friends and family from near and far.

And then we moved away.

This year, we will remember the five-year anniversary of Katrina from a far distance. God has called me to a new ministry in a new place. I am happy to be here. It is a very different land from the one we left. We live in a beautiful valley nestled between lake and mountains.

This August 29 I will remember friends in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast: friends who have gone home to be with the Lord, and friends who remain. I will never forget what happened on that day five years ago. It is a part of me forever.

This blog, for the last five years, has been a story of life in New Orleans post-Katrina. And now it is time for a new blog. I think I will call it "New Life in the North Country."

See you soon.

Only in New Orleans

It was just above freezing this morning and raining. Nasty Friday morning. I would not have been going into Wal-Mart had I not been in desperate need of kitty litter. (My slogan, coined back in the day when Busch had a similar one -- "When you're out of Busch, you're out of beer,"
is "When you're out of kitty litter, you're out of kitty litter.")

So I push my cart in out of the near-freezing rain, throw back the hood of my coat, and blink. Right in front of me, a band is parading down the main aisle of Wal-Mart to a familiar Mardi Gras tune. Drums, brass, the whole nine yards. Behind the band is the school mascot, dressed as a Revolutionary War patriot. And then the girls in their dance outfits, and then the cheerleaders. And following them, several Wal-Mart associates with strings of Mardi Gras beads looped over their arms, tossing beads to the customers.

I have to wait for the parade to pass to enter the store. The band circles the main aisles of the store twice. Did I mention the weather? It wasn't very crowded in Wal-Mart this morning. But everyone who was there was smiling. And, like me, calling someone on their cell phones so they could hear the band too.

It's not just any Friday. It's the Friday before Mardi Gras. In an ordinary year, this is the day when work in the city slams to a halt and the partying begins. But, as you know, this is no ordinary year. The partying in New Orleans started last Friday, and it hasn't stopped since. The Saints have won the Super Bowl!

Only in New Orleans. A Mardi Gras parade in Wal-Mart.

P.S. The mid-South and the mid-Atlantic have been slammed with snow for the last week. New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Charlotte, Atlanta, even Mobile have seen snow -- and some cities have set records for overall snowfall. Why are you surprised? When hell freezes over, there's going to be a little overlap!

Boudreaux goes to heaven!

The Saints have won the Super Bowl! 31 to 17! People are screaming in the normally sedate streets of Uptown New Orleans, fireworks are going off everywhere, and car horns are blaring!

Hell froze over when the Saints went to the Super Bowl. Now the devil has been vanquished, hell is destroyed, and Boudreaux has been promoted to the Church Triumphant!

And we're getting married in seven weeks. Don't pinch me -- if this is a dream, I don't want to wake up!

It's really happening!

I was so excited Sunday night, and it was so late, that once more I got the name of a Saints player wrong! (Don't ask about the last time. It was 40 years ago.) It was Garrett Hartley, not Hartman, who kicked that 40-yard field goal and changed history.

Long, long ago, long before I was a minister, I was in a study group that was pondering the kingdom of heaven. As we considered different metaphors for the kingdom, I blurted out, "The kingdom of heaven is like the Saints going to the Super Bowl, and having the game played in New Orleans!"

My pastor and mentor, Ed Gouedy, grinned and began a parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who had a football team..."

Ed didn't live to see this day, but he would have loved it. So would the late sportswriter and broadcaster, Buddy Diliberto, who once declared he would wear a dress if the Saints ever went to the Super Bowl. With his family's permission, on Monday the Times-Picayune ran a full-page photo, courtesy of Photoshop, no doubt, of a man with Buddy D's head, prancing around in a beautiful gown. They added a little halo on top of his head.

For all those who didn't live to see this moment, this one's for you. For all those who have lived to see it, savor every moment!

The other thing that's really happening is what I am calling My Big Fat Presbyterian Wedding. I bought The Dress yesterday. The Saints, the wedding...it's the fullness of time. Wow!

Dateline:Hell. With Boudreaux.

A favorite joke I first posted to this blog on Jan. 19, 2007:

Boudreaux the Cajun lived down the bayou (Bayou St. John, maybe?) and he led a less than holy life. When he died, alas, he didn't get into heaven. He ended up in the other place. The devil made sure he kept hell good and hot, but when Boudreaux arrived, it didn't bother him a bit. He settled into a hammock and said, "Ah, just like the old days before we had air conditioning, back home on the bayou." The devil was more than a little annoyed, so he cranked the heat higher. Boudreaux poured himself a glass of lemonade and said, "Oh, jes' like the old days when we used to go crabbing on the Mississippi Gulf Coast." The devil cranked the heat all the way to the limit, so that hell started to melt, but Boudreaux just smiled and said, "This is just like back home when my mama used to fix a big pot of gumbo in the kitchen."

Finally the devil couldn't take it any more. "All right, Boudreaux," he said. "If you like it hot, then I'm going to fix you." And the devil turned on the air conditioning, and it got reaaally, reaaally cold, way beyond cold, colder than you can possibly imagine. With a big grin on his face, the devil went to check on Boudreaux.

He found Boudreaux dancing a second line and laughing and shouting and leaping for joy. The devil was astounded, outraged. "Boudreaux! I thought you liked the heat, so I made it so cold down here that you wouldn't be able to stand it! What is with you, anyway? Why are you dancing around like that?"

Boudreaux could hardly contain himself for joy. "Hell's freezing over!" he cried. "The Saints must be in the Super Bowl!"

Hell-o, hell! Darn, it's cold down here!

Boudreaux, you did it! Hell is really freezing over!

When Hartman kicked that field goal through the goal posts, I started screaming and couldn't stop, even though I already had a sore throat. When I finally paused to catch my breath and hit the mute button on the television, I could hear my neighbor on his back porch, screaming something unintelligible. I went out on my own porch, and I could hear it: people screaming in the streets all over Uptown New Orleans, and more fireworks going off than on New Year's Eve. It was a little like the Sunday before Mardi Gras, when I can hear the crowds at the Bacchus parade from my porch, only much louder. And after a little while the car horns started, as people headed home from all the parties at friends' houses. Later I could hear sirens, lots of sirens. Either the city was burning down or Saints owner Tom Benson and perhaps some of the players were getting police escorts home. I'd like to think it was the latter.

Forty-two years! I was here in 1967, and I remember that first season and how excited we were to have an NFL franchise in New Orleans. We had named the team the Saints even before we HAD a team.

Also in that fall of 1967, I started dating a boy who was my lab partner in chemistry class. This spring, forty-two plus years later, we are getting married.

And the Saints are in the Super Bowl! There has to be a connection!

I hope they have cable in hell. Boudreaux needs to see the Saints in the Super Bowl!

I bet a LOT of people in New Orleans are going to call in sick on Monday...

Eeeeeeee!

Epiphany, 2010

You know, just a few years ago, I was shocked – shocked, I say! – to find king cakes in the grocery store before New Year’s Eve. When I was growing up, you had king cake on January 6, the day known as the Epiphany of the Lord in the church year, more commonly called the Twelfth Night of Christmas – easier to pronounce and easier to spell. But that was then, and this is now. I’ve been seeing king cakes in the grocery for the last several months, only they aren’t decorated in the traditional purple, green, and gold. There are purple and gold LSU cakes, gold and black Saints cakes, red and green Christmas cakes, you name it. If I were dead, I’d be rolling over in my grave! What happened to the tradition of having king cakes only between January 6 and Mardi Gras?

And for those who are counting, Mardi Gras comes on February 16 this year, and as far as I am concerned, six weeks is quite long enough to eat king cake, especially if you work in an office where whoever gets the baby has to bring another one the next day. But some savvy marketer must have decided that there are people out there who really like king cake, so I guess we’ll be having king cake all year long now. I suppose there is some theological merit to celebrating the Epiphany all year long, but something tells me that’s not what the marketers had in mind. Or the people who like to eat king cakes.


And just for the record, when I was in my neighborhood Rouse’s yesterday, I checked out the stack of king cakes at the front of the store, and they were purple, green, and gold, as God intended. My soul is at peace.

Christmas 2009

Happy 100th birthday to my mother this Christmas! She was born December 25, 1909. Noella, you may be gone from this earth, but long may you wave!

Journey's end

Kitten-Boo died yesterday morning. She had been in remission for four weeks, far more than the 48 hours or so the vet and I had expected after her last crisis. I could see her getting a little bit stronger every few days, doing a few more things that she hadn’t done before. It was a small blessing that I knew was going to be temporary, but I was grateful for every day we had together. Over the weekend I noticed a small bulge in her lower abdomen that grew larger every day. I suspected it was fluid, which meant she had a tumor, probably malignant, and I was right. When I brought her to the vet Monday morning, he drew a syringe full of reddish liquid out of her abdominal area. It was time.

This morning, a little more than 24 hours later, I brought her ashes home. When her lifelong companion Morris reaches the end of his journey, which I hope won’t be any time soon, I’ll scatter their ashes together. In the meantime, the lovely wooden box with its tree-of-life design on the lid can sit on top of my computer desk. As Kitten-Boo was my muse, sitting in my lap or close by, keeping me company over the last fifteen years as I wrote newspaper and magazine articles, seminary papers, sermons, and blogs, her ashes and a photo of her can sit beside my computer as I work.

About two hours after I came home, I was sitting at the kitchen table finishing lunch when I heard a crash upstairs. I ran up to my bedroom to find a mockingbird on the ledge of the fanlight above the french doors, frantically beating its wings against the panes, trying to get out. It had fallen down the chimney and through the fireplace into the bedroom. It had to fly through an opening at the top of a metal covering over the fireplace to get out into the room, which probably was part of the crash I heard. The other part of the crash was my hunting cat, ’Teebie, in hot pursuit.

I had to lock ’Teebie in another room, because he just wasn’t giving up on that bird, even if it was eight or nine feet above him, beating on the fanlight. It took a broom, a bird net (this is by no means the first time a bird has fallen down a chimney of this hundred-year-old house), and a six-foot ladder to get the bird to safety. Birds have this instinct to go to the highest point where there is light, whether it’s actually a way out or not. I’ve had to swipe them with a broom to get them to go under a glass transom and out an open door when they would prefer to keep beating against the glass until they died, and this one was no different with the fanlight. I opened the french door and the screen, managed to scoop the frantic bird into the net, and lowered the net through the door. It took off into the early afternoon sunlight and was gone.

Afterward, as I reflected on it, I thought what an odd coincidence it was that the bird should fall down the chimney just two hours after I brought Kitten-Boo’s ashes home. Did that mockingbird carry her spirit, free at last of her earthly body, off into the sunlight?

There are spiritual things that defy reason and dead white male theologians. On the other hand, some of the women theologians I have read might say, "Hmmmm." All I know is, this afternoon I helped a lost bird find its way to freedom.

Kitten-Boo, you are free now. I love you and I miss you.

The fourth anniversary

It's a quiet Saturday afternoon in New Orleans. Sunny, scattered clouds, temperatures in the 80s. Last year on this Saturday I was packing up to evacuate for Gustav, and the following morning the cats and I set out in the Evacumobile for Atlanta, a trip that took 17 1/2 hours that I hope I never have to do again. This year I am spending a peaceful afternoon in my kitchen, making seafood gumbo to take to a Katrina anniversary party this evening. I suspect this will be the last year we do the Katrina anniversary party. People are weary of the whole thing. It's time to move on.

The Times-Picayune ran a page one editorial yesterday criticizing President Obama for not coming down here to speak on the Katrina anniversary. Even as they published it, the paper was well aware that the president would be in Boston today delivering the eulogy at Sen. Ted Kennedy's funeral. (I watched the service on CNN, and a wonderful funeral it was. I suppose only people in my line of work would describe a funeral as "wonderful.") The president has promised to continue to fight for us, to get the help we still need for the rebuilding that still needs to be done. That's good enough for me.

I give thanks for an El Nino year and those high-level wind shears that are tearing the storms apart and keeping them out of the Gulf, so far. We have another month to go before we can start to breathe again. That's the legacy of Katrina for us. From here on out, for six weeks from mid-August to the end of September, we watch and wait. It's how we live now.

Happy birthday to my favorite curmudgeon

Happy birthday, Uncle Norman. Today would be your ninety-fifth birthday. That’s a bit of a milestone, isn’t it? The world has changed a lot since you died thirteen years ago this fall, and I doubt you would like much of it.

Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of The Big One that you had prepared for, but never lived to see. You had four-by-eight sheets of plywood (to fix the roof afterward) and rope stout enough to tie up a boat (not sure what that was for), all stored in the laundry room. Those were just a few of the things I had to figure out what to do with after you died.

Actually, I think you might have gotten a kick out of the excitement of the big storm finally coming, after your years of anticipation. The neighborhood was one of the few that didn’t flood, and the house you lived in from the age of five had only minor damage. You, of course, would never have evacuated. But you would have had to leave afterward, with no electricity, gas, or water. Getting you out of that house to safety would have been a struggle, because even then you wouldn’t have wanted to go. Well, maybe you would. With congestive heart failure, you were well aware that you couldn’t survive very long without air conditioning.

Classical music was your life, and J. S. Bach was your idea of perfection. In your last years, you were just starting to warm to the idea that maybe your beloved old records did sound clearer when the analog recordings were converted to digital and recorded on those newfangled compact discs. I wonder what you would think of my iPod and the idea of downloading music off a computer connected to the Internet. I suspect you would be curious about it but not curious enough to actually get one for yourself – pretty much the way you felt about those compact disc players.

If I set flowers out at the family tomb on this late summer day, they would be wilted in the heat in a matter of hours. So today in your honor I’ll play your favorite piece of music: the 1955 Glenn Gould recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (not the 1981 recording he did shortly before his death, which disappointed you terribly). You used to play the vinyl record for me and point out where Gould would hum along with the music and drive the audio engineers crazy. When you gave me the compact disc version and I played it, you were tickled that the clearer sound of the digital conversion made Gould’s humming even more pronounced.

So here’s to you, Uncle Norman. Happy 95th birthday. And thank you for leaving me the house. You probably wouldn’t like what I’ve done with it, either. You always thought the old was better.

Hanging in there

It's Sunday afternoon, and Kitten-Boo is holding her own on day seven after coming home from the hospital. We managed to get the three kinds of meds down for four straight days, which is some kind of record, but by Friday night she was fighting those pills big time. Possibly because she was upset, she threw up a few hours later -- food, pills, and all. So, now she's just getting the once-in-the-morning dose of a liquid med. She's eating, albeit only a tablespoon or so at a time, so I offer her food every few hours. She's drinking water, using the litter box, grooming herself, and now doing stretches on her favorite wicker laundry hamper (that she and Tip pretty much destroyed when they were young, but what's a home without a few trashed-out pieces here and there?) and sitting in my lap as I type at the computer.

I have to go out of town this week -- out one morning and back the next afternoon. I have someone who comes in to feed the cats, but giving meds is not part of the deal. I'll talk to her doctor tomorrow, but I think she just might be all right without the meds for 36 hours. If not, she can go back to the vet for a couple of days. But she's doing so well right now that I don't want to stress her out with a trip to the vet.

I'm glad we opted not to do the exploratory surgery. I found a website an owner put up about a beloved cat who did have surgery for liver cancer. Husband and wife cared for the cat 24/7 at home after surgery -- feeding tube, IV liquids, round the clock intensive care -- and the cat died less than two weeks after the surgery. The vet bill was $4000. We're not going that route.

Kitten-Boo is one tough little kitty, even a Katrina survivor. She and the others were alone in the hot house for a week after the storm -- I don't know when the food and water ran out. I fully expected to find her dead, as she was the oldest and the most frail of the cats. After seven days I was able to elude a National Guard blockade and got them all out safely. My Kitten-Boo has always lived on her own terms, and she'll die on them too.

Cattown, August 2009

This is the summer that Cattown has become a feline hospice. First we lost Tip, on June 4. I brought him home after he had been hospitalized for several days, and he spent his last days on the screened front porch, watching the activities of the neighborhood as the life of the household went on around him. Now my baby girl, my Kitten-Boo, is dying of liver failure. She was hospitalized over the weekend and given IV fluids and had an ultrasound that displayed the cavitation, or hole, in her liver, that is probably cancer. After discussions with veterinarians about quality of life and just how much we might expect to gain by doing exploratory surgery on a cat who is almost fifteen years old, I brought her home on Monday afternoon with three medications and special food -- no surgery. Now, hospice care. She spends her days in her two favorite places -- in my lap or on the porch. She's getting her meds down with a good slathering of whipped Parkay -- messy but effective. I bought her a can of her favorite treat, known in this household as Fhhtt-fhhtt but known to the world as Reddi-Wip (the real stuff, not that fake Cool Whip), and she had a couple of fingerfuls this evening, licking it up just like she did in the old days when she was feeling good. (I'll put an occasional fhhtt-fhhht in my coffee cup, just like they do in those $5 cups of coffee at the coffee houses.)

I brought three cats with me when we moved from Georgia in 2000; I call them the Georgia Gang. Tip, who died at age 13, and Kitten-Boo were two of the three. Morris, at age 14 and a retired barn cat, is holding his own. When he came to New Orleans he got a new addition to his name: Morris, the Magnificent. Those who are from New Orleans will get the pun. Those who don't, well, do a search for Morgus the Magnificent or Dr. Momus Alexander Morgus and maybe you'll get a link to a song about him ("Morgus, the Magnificent"). Morgus was a New Orleans TV personality back in the 1950s through 1970s who is still living today and whose shows now run on a public access cable channel. But I digress. Morris the Cat is still with us and in apparent good health. Long may he wave.

It's been a very strange summer, with one celebrity death after another: David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Walter Cronkite, and others. I leave it to you to figure out which of these people I, a longtime journalist, miss the most.

We persevere through the long, hot summer here in New Orleans. The peak of hurricane season is almost upon us, as is the fortieth anniversary of Hurricane Camille, which I believe made landfall either August 16 or 17, while the rest of the world was going to Woodstock. Camille was a small, intense storm that did very little damage in New Orleans but just about wiped the Mississippi Gulf Coast off the map. Yet it was nothing compared to Katrina (aka She Who Must Not Be Named), which DID wipe the Mississippi coast off the map. And four years later they still have a long, long way to go.

As we await The Peak Season (and thanks be to God, the high altitude wind shears have kept anything from forming in the Atlantic basin so far), I take care of my beloved Kitten-Boo in her last days, here at the Cattown Hospice. I don't think she will make it to evacuation season, and perhaps that is a blessing.

I thought I was in Philadelphia

I was in Philadelphia on business, but my meetings were over and I had a few hours to kill before I had to go to the airport. A friend and I set out on foot from our hotel to tour the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We never got there.

We got as far as the science museum known as The Franklin – my Fodor’s calls it The Franklin Science Institute. In front of the building a huge banner proclaimed, "Star Trek: The Exhibition." If my friend is as big a Trekker as I am, she hides it well, but she saw the look on my face and knew the art museum was going to have to wait for another day.

If I had known this exhibition was going on just blocks from my hotel, I would certainly have seen it at least twice. But I was a good camper – I went to all my meetings and never knew...until those last few hours before my flight home. Now I have to find a way to go back – or make a trip to see it at the Detroit Science Museum – sometime before September.

Awesome! Absolutely awesome! The exhibition covers the entire forty-plus year saga, from its debut on NBC in September 1966 to the current Star Trek movie that opened in May. There are costumes from all the series and all the movies: Kirk’s uniform from the first season of The Original Series (TOS). Uniforms worn by Deanna Troi and Dr. Beverly Crusher in The Next Generation (ST:TNG or Next Gen). A 19th-century dress worn by Guinan (Whoopie Goldberg) in the ST:TNG episode "Time’s Arrow." A costume worn by the Ferengi Grand Nagus in Deep Space Nine (DS9). Khan’s costume from the movie "The Wrath of Khan." Shinzon’s costume from "Nemesis." Models of all the starships and of the space station DS9. A dabo wheel from Quark’s bar! B-4's head! Many panels of narrative, explaining the storyline of the Star Trek saga.

And, because this was a science museum and many of the young visitors weren’t alive at the dawn of the space age, panels of information about John F. Kennedy’s commitment to put a man on the moon in the 1960s and the early history of space flight. There were also models and photos of two real aircraft carriers and a space shuttle, all named Enterprise. As we walked through the exhibit, the theme songs of all the shows swelled around us. It was a dream come true.

But the biggest thrill for me of the whole exhibit was to be able to walk onto a mockup of the bridge of the Enterprise-D from ST:TNG. I stood at the science station, I stood at the weapons station, and, and, and!

In my first pastorate in a small town, I spent more evenings than I will ever admit to, watching ST:TNG on the cable network formerly known as TNN (later SpikeTV). I confess: Jean-Luc Picard is my favorite captain of the Enterprise. I told myself (as a justification) that I was watching all those Next Gen episodes to learn lessons in leadership from Cap’n Picard.
But to sit in Picard’s chair on the bridge of the Enterprise-D was a moment I had never dared to dream...until suddenly, as I was standing at the weapons station, I realized that the woman in front of me with the camera was taking photos of people sitting in the chairs on the bridge. And the next thing I knew, I was sitting in Captain Picard’s chair having my picture taken.

What can I say? Oh, that’s easy. "Make it so!"

So if you are the tiniest bit of a Star Trek fan and your travels take you anywhere near Philadelphia or Detroit this summer...go see this exhibit.

Or, as Picard would say, "Let’s see what’s out there!"

Cattown goes to Tennessee

Over Memorial Day weekend I took a trip back in time to a place I never thought I’d see again: a magical place where, long, ago, beginning at age ten, I spent four incredible, formative summers. The place is a girls’ camp in the gently rolling countryside of middle Tennessee, nestled between green wooded hills and a swiftly flowing river. Every summer the owners of a riding stable in New Orleans would load up the horses and go to the relatively cooler Tennessee hills for two months, and the little girls who loved the horses (for example, me!) would follow. Although I wouldn’t have used those words at the time, the place was – and still is – a spiritual home for me. I wept when I drove through the stone gates and found the place pretty much as I had left it in 1965: the cabins, the stable, the tennis courts, the gathering places. I walked into the dining hall for supper and asked, "Does everybody cry when they come back here?"

Not everything is the same. In 1969 the Tennessee Valley Authority dammed the river and created a reservoir that is used today for hydroelectric power but is best known as a recreational lake. Sections of the hillsides had to be removed and some of the camp buildings were taken down; the places where they stood are under water today. The lake has been there for forty years now, but to my child’s eyes it just isn’t right not to have the river any more. But the camp survived, and I marvel at the dedication of a passionate band of women who love this place, by whose efforts it is still here. The original owners and founders have passed away, but a new generation has been working hard to restore the property and operate it as a camp once again.

The camp dates from the early 1920s. One of the traditions was (and still is) for campers to write their names on the cabin rafters, usually in white shoe polish. The cabin where I first stayed as a child had dates beside the campers’ names going back to the 1930s. The cabin is still there today. Incredible.

In 1962 or 1963 I wrote this article for the camp literary magazine:

Woodslore and Cricket have been very busy lately, with snakes. It’s a - ugh! a very nice setup. Cricket kills ’em and Woodslore identifies ’em. We all admit Cricket is very brave.

As an example, let’s take the case of the snake by Double-Up. Early one morning, soon after the bell had rung, we heard shouts of "Go get Cricket!" Getting Cricket could only mean one thing – a snake. In p.j.’s we went flying to Double-Up. There he was, a brownish snake, and there was Cricket with her hammer. The rest is almost too gross to mention. Cricket kills ’em and Woodslore identifies ’em. We like the setup, but I doubt if Cricket does.

On Friday evening, the first adventure of our reunion weekend was the snake in the bathroom on the lower level of our cabin. A group of our intrepid alumnae campers determined that the little brown snake, approximately 18 inches long, which was curled up between a screen and a wooden support and had a lump of a meal slowly passing through its body, was probably poisonous (wedge-shaped head) and likely a copperhead. So they decided they had to kill it. The idea of finding this snake coiled around a toilet on one of those two a.m. forays was not very appealing, so whether it was poisonous or not, the snake had to go, permanently. Someone ran to the barn and got a shovel and a hoe. Someone else procured a hammer. When I realized that they planned to squoosh it between the screen and the wooden support, I excused myself and went upstairs. I could hear screams, some that were wordless and some that sounded like "It’s still alive! Get it!" There was a crash and the tinkling of glass, not once but twice. The first casualty of the encounter with the snake was the mirror on the bathroom wall. (About half of it survived. During the course of the weekend, I was able to set my makeup on the water heater and apply it by the remains of the mirror.)

That night, as I looked at these women in their forties and fifties eagerly gathered just outside the bathroom, developing a plan of action to deal with the snake, I saw them as girls again, the campers of long ago, fourteen or fifteen years old, brave, independent, far more mature than many of their non-camper peers, faced with a critical situation and dealing with it fearlessly. Just for a few days, we were all girls again, living in the cabins, swimming in the lake, playing basketball and tennis, and hiking the trails across the hills. Only the SUVs parked outside the cabins gave us away as grown women with adult lives and careers and spouses and children.

Over the course of the weekend, I was able to help get a bird out of the cabin (living in a old house where birds occasionally fall down the chimney – to the delight of cats – has made me somewhat of an expert on getting them out). I was the first to spot the bat in the stairwell leading down to the bathroom, and I helped persuade the others not to kill it (bats eat mosquitoes, and they’re not likely to fly around as long as you leave the light on). Some of us spotted a creature, not far from the little stream, that was probably a beaver. On a just-before-dawn walk Saturday morning, I thought I saw a skunk ambling down the path to the barn and decided to give it a wide berth. Just before dawn, everything appears to be black and white. As it grew light, I discovered I had actually seen the fluffy-tailed orange barn cat. Thank goodness.

Disclaimer: the folks who put on the camping program for the children each year pointed out that we were the first humans on the property since last year, and the wild creatures had had the run of the place in the absence of people. So, yes, we first-comers were likely to see a few of them around. Yes, I agree, by the time all those squealing young girls arrive later in the summer, bustling about and making noise, the wild things will retreat far back into the woods.

And then, later on Saturday morning, as I was in the dining hall, I saw a face I hadn’t seen in more than forty years but who looked to my eyes like the woman in her twenties I had known so long ago: Cricket Crockett, our head counselor, the woman I had written about in the camp literary magazine. Killer of snakes, defender of children, brave, strong, role model Cricket. She is just as ramrod-straight, thin and athletic as ever. At least in my eyes.

We had a good time talking that day, as she told me of her life and shared photos of her family. She talked to the current generation of leaders of the camp and shared her management style in working with the counselors and planning camp events – a side of her I had not been privy to as a young camper. She spoke of her fierce, passionate love for the children she had been given charge of, and she told me a story of how she had protected them one night from a creature much more dangerous than a snake. All I will say is, do not mess with a direct descendant of Davy Crockett! She really does know how to use that shotgun and won’t hesitate to do so if necessary!

By the end of the weekend, I had a new appreciation for the influence my years at camp had on me later in life. I give thanks for brave, strong women role models, and particularly the ones I came to know at camp so long ago. My fellow campers grew up to be strong women themselves. I am glad a group of them had the determination to start up the camp again after the previous generations of owners had passed on.

Young girls today still need brave, strong role models. I marvel that the camp roster will be full this summer, in a season of economic difficulties. I also marvel that in an age where children are surrounded by electronic gadgets and creature comforts, there are still those who are eager to live in a rustic setting in the Tennessee hills with no air conditioning, television, or Internet – and thrive!

A day of grace moments

Some days are tough, and yesterday was one of them. Tip, the alpha male of my cat family and boss cat of the house, had come to the end of his earthly journey, and I was going to take him to the vet to be put to sleep. It all started when Tip developed a rare cancer at the site of a vaccination injection, a grape-sized tumor that was removed 23 months ago. The information I found from the American Veterinary Medical Association suggested the survival rate after surgery was 2 to 24 months, so Tip did very well in that regard. He actually had a long remission where he seemed in normal health. Late in February of this year he developed a cancer in his jaw that at first looked like an infected tooth. He had surgery to remove the cancer on March 17 and seemed to do well with that, too. But I returned from a trip over Memorial Day weekend to find him looking awful. His sides were caved in and his pink nose was very pale. It turned out he was dehydrated and severely anemic. Numerous tests ruled out infectious diseases. The doctor believed he had some sort of bone marrow disease, some sort of myeloma. Tip had the distinction of being the first cat I have ever owned to have a blood transfusion. But none of this helped. I brought him home from the hospital for a few days so he could spend his last days in as normal a setting as possible: days out on the screened porch watching the neighborhood go by, surrounded by the other cats.

But then he started vomiting. He lost everything he had eaten for the last several days. I knew this was the end. So I made plans to bring him to the vet Thursday morning.

I woke early that morning to the sound of thunder. An ominous line of dark gray clouds was rising over my neighbor's house across the street. I hurried to get Tip in off the porch, where he had spent the night, and into a cat carrier inside.

I went into the kitchen to try to catch a weather report on TV. It was 6:45. As I sat at the kitchen table, there was a sudden, tremendous crash and I knew instantly that the house had been hit by lightning. At the same moment, the fire alarm went off upstairs. My greatest fear about this hundred-year-old house I live in is a fire caused by a lightning strike. The beautiful old sturdy cypress timbers with which this house was built are as dry as hundred-year-old wood can be. I've seen a couple of houses in the neighborhood burn, and they will go up in a matter of minutes.

I called the alarm company and they called the fire department. I scrambled to get dressed and catch all the cats and put them in their cat carriers. When there is a fire alarm going off and the cats are terrified of the cat carriers under normal circumstances, this is a little bit like trying to drain the Mississippi River with a teaspoon. I was thinking grimly that if the house burned down, the only cat I might save would be the one already in a carrier, the one I was going to bring to the vet this morning to have put to sleep. But I managed to catch all but one of the cats and get them downstairs before the firemen arrived.

The firemen were great. They went upstairs and went up into the attic to see if it was on fire. (The only time I smelled smoke was when they passed me in the hall. Their yellow slickers were reeking of smoke. These guys had seen a lot of fires.) No fire. They checked twice.

God bless the man whose hat said "Captain." He, the tech support guy from the alarm company (on my cell phone, because the fire alarm had the land line tied up), and I had a heck of a time trying to get the fire alarm to shut up. When we finally did, the silence was truly wonderful.

All the firemen found was a ridge tile on one of the dormers that was out of place. So perhaps the lightning hit the dormer or the nearby chimney. They told me to get a roofer to fix it, which I can do fairly easily. Later in the day, I walked around the block to try to see the roof from all angles, and I can't even find a scorch mark. This is truly one of those "grace of God" moments.

When the firemen left, I looked at the clock. It was 7:17 a.m. The whole episode had lasted about half an hour. It was one of the longest half hours of my life.

A few hours later, I brought Tip to the vet. It was hard, and I cried a lot. I had had Tip for 13 years. He did have a happy life, and I'm glad his days of suffering were few. That, too, was a moment of grace.

The last time I lost a cat was in 1996, during the Atlanta Summer Olympics. A lot has changed in those years. Pet cremations are not uncommon today. So I will be able to bring Tip's remains home in a few days. I have such a sense of peace about this that I have never had before.

This morning the neighborhood is very quiet except for the birds. A cool front has come in and it's about 70 degrees on the porch, which is really rare for this time of year in New Orleans. I am hoping for a better day today.