So I left the café and took another right turn toward the river. I find that being around water always comforts and calms me and there’s this cool place nearby. You go over the railroad tracks on a bridge and drop into a long walking trail along the Mississippi River. At the bottom of the stairs is a huge covered space (4 basketball courts?) where people gather to play music, skateboard, roller blade, do yoga, hang out…From this covered space you walk on to catch the trail. Today, as I was heading to the stairs, I saw this message on the sidewalk. I stopped to take a picture of it because I love a good message.

A few steps further, I came upon this beautiful woman who stopped as I came up to a second message. She told me that she was the artist behind the messages. (I should have known based on her t-shirt, the paint-stained gloves, and the spray paint in her basket.) I chatted with her for a minute and asked if I could take her picture. She happily obliged and told me her IG tag. She said to keep looking – that I’d find more messages.

And sure enough…I did…

And then I walked on

So…just when I needed the message to “turn that frown upside down”…it happened. Isn’t it weird how that happens? Or maybe there’s a bigger plan…

Give @ceedamessenger a follow if you’re on Instagram!

Tomorrow I’ll post some pics of the rest of my walk and maybe tell you an embarrassing story…if I’m brave.

I work hard at being an optimist in a world that does not, at least outwardly, reward such naïveté.

While walking this morning I came upon the situation represented by the image above. My heart sank. While here was this very bright red recently opened watermelon, it lay on the sidewalk having been “discarded” and left to waste. No, not from what it represents as part of the WONDERFUL urban grunge I find energy giving. That would be “noise” to me. And remember, I love NOISE!

I was disturbed by the wasteful act. My mind tried to reconcile this. It created a scene where a loving family of four had visited the park in the background (quite lovely, more below), dropped it and had left it. BUT! Why would they leave it? OK, they must not have noticed it “dropping”. BUT! How could they not notice? ? ? My mind went on creating increasingly less likely scenarios to try to reconcile what I believe REALLY is a symbol of wanton waste.

The more I think, the more I live in a place, the better I am at getting out into “it”, the better I am able to connect dots. At least MY dots. At the top of the image is a fence. Mostly decorative, yet also quite sturdy. The more JDT and I (mostly JDT) walk around the city, the more we notice the parks. NOLA has a reputation as a city high on the grunge factor. Some might even call it filth. Good? Bad? That is just a values based assessment that I find a bit trite. Frankly each of us as citizens or visitors to the city contribute. AND its presence isn’t much debated. In striking contrast to this are the parks. It is almost universal. Why? Hmmmm?

Homelessness is a thing here in NOLA like it is in much of the country. It can not be escaped. Much like filth, the conversations about solutions have evolved very little in my life. Yes, we have evolved past simply buying them bus tickets to send a problem from one city to another (yes SF I am shaming you for years of “shipping” the problem to Sacramento). But, real solutions seem to always be beyond our grasp.

You know I like to connect dots? AND, what is the line connecting all of the above. Here is what it is for me. The fact that the parks are very nice and clean, while certainly mostly pleasing to see and absolutely wonderful to be in, they are a representation of waste. We Not due to what they are, but due to them being so much less than they could be.

Another, earlier part of my walk this morning was adjacent to Louis Armstrong Park (LAP). It is but a few blocks from us and lies nearly on the border of the French Quarter and Treme. Treme (if you are as big an HBO fan as me, you’ll recall) is a lower socio-economic neighborhood than “The Quarter”. And it contains a fair amount of homelessness. As I walked adjacent to LAP I came upon three homeless men that were just rousing and beginning their day. I wished I’d the courage or insensitivity to take a photo. The image will not leave my brain soon. In the foreground, them on the benches AND in the background, this beautiful park that they were locked out of, at least for the evening.

DOES IT HAVE TO BE THUS?

PS

This is Joyce, tagging on to Glen’s post with a flipside. After Glen came home and told me about the watermelon, I walked by the park that is literally along our back fence and came up this lampshade and container of Tide. Someone no longer needed these items so they left them out for someone to use. I’ve also seen “soccer” chairs left by trash cans for others to pick up. So there is waste…lots of it and then there are examples of people thinking about how others could use their leftovers. And the unhoused…I have been thinking how I could address that topic in a blog. It’s so complicated and so prevalent here.

First, a bit of context –

I think I have mentioned, I rarely post when I am defending into struggle or at its depths. My evolution has been to “move the needle” a bit “backward”.

In the depths of my struggle with cancer, I was forced to listen to my body. When your journey tangles with your own existence, it becomes a requirement. Either one embraces (including a form of submission to complete vulnerability) or one perishes. At least, it felt such to me. My evolution has been to incorporate this “listening” to my body as part of my healthy routine. Mind you, I tend to not go half way with things (think a pendulum swinging wildly to the extreme opposite) and I am so grateful that I have JDT and a specific friend (hi Mike) to call bullshit on me.

Randy (JDT’s youngest cousin) and wife Allison (R&A) visited and stayed with us for a couple of days earlier this week. I LOVE THEM. We do not spend enough time with them. I truly appreciate their perspective on things and the way it challenges my perspective. I hope this is ok (I am after all a “beg for forgiveness” guy). In a specific way, I am Randy’s ying to his yang. Randy is quite noise sensitive. This typically makes cities, or highly urban areas, highly challenging for him. AND both of his wonderful daughters live in NYC. I can only imagine the struggle this created internally for Randy. Yet . . . R&A are great as parents, you can tell by the young women their daughters have become.

I love noise. It gives me energy. My first real remembrance of this was when Joyce and I were on our honeymoon in Paris. We slept with the window wide open and the 24/7 nature of the street noise was soothing for me. While the evidence of this has been around me all along, it is just recently I’ve connected the dots.

The last context? Well, I struggle with breaking tendencies. I love sports and how they are a metaphor for life AND how life and sports inter-connect to teach me so much. You know I am, at my core, a Raider and A’s fan. This emanates from the early to mid 70s. At that time both were almost always favorites in every game they played. As such, it was mostly about creating an environment where those tendencies would prevail. Not complicated. The fun was watching the struggle. Later, the A’s were rarely the favorite. AND in that case, the desire is to create an environment to disrupt those tendencies. This is really what Money Ball was all about. I am a tendency machine! Prop me up in the corner and I am incredibly reliable to exhibit specific tendencies.

Lately, oh I don’t know, a week, a month, maybe a few years? I’ve had this lack of “ease”. Jim Kelley always called it “the ease band”. I’m still not 100% certain I know exactly what this means. Perhaps it correlates with harmony? Perhaps . . .

Listening to my body. It was telling me to get up and move. My tendency was 100% opposite. Struggle. Here is my morning – wake up (hopefully there is at least a 5 in the hour), make myself coffee, get caught up on my sporting interests through the BR app, drink my Citricell (this is an insert encouraged by the same Mike as above, and you are correct Mike, it has helped tremendously), prep my water for the day (hydration has become fundamental for me) and finally log onto this device. All without moving more than 50 feet . . total. Listening to my body! Finally this morning, I got up and moved. I headed (mostly aimlessly) out on a stroll. 7:00 AM. NOLA is mostly asleep at that hour. And my tendency was to go left, so I went right. My tendency was travel familiar streets, I veered to the unknown. I departed at 7:05 and returned at 7:25.

AND MY BODY SMILED!

Restlessness is not foreign to me. It’s connected to anxiety. And the feeling certainly doesn’t feel “easy”.

And with that thought I’m going to head out the door for a meander. Do I take my headphones and listen to a podcast? To upbeat music? To calming music? To the news? Do I head to Tremé? To Marigny? Into the French Quarter? To the Mississippi River? Left? Right?

So I went left then right and I find myself at a cafe I’ve been to a few times, but I always grab and go. Today there was an open table by the open door and Dug could sit with me so I decided to stay. I’ve been here at times when there is a large group of unhoused people on the corner and sitting to relax in that environment isn’t really a possibility for me. Today is quiet, though I do hear a man shouting unintelligible words nearby.

So restlessness As I look around the cafe I feel a restless energy. There is a long-haired gentleman (think Neil Young), I would guess around my age, sitting near the front window. He seems to just be enjoying his coffee and observing the action. I noticed he had a camera and he not-so-surreptitiously took a picture of Dug and me while we were waiting in line. There is a couple and their pink-haired maltipoo eating breakfast at a table near me. A woman just set up her laptop at a table and is beginning her work? Or maybe she’s writing a blog about her mood of the day 😉 ? The loud shouting man just came by shouting in the café. People at the counter – an older, nicely dressed tourist couple just came in. She’s wearing jeans? In this climate? Two women at two different tables writing in journals. Me typing on my phone with Dug at my feet. Three men in a business meeting, but definitely not in business attire? “Neil Young” is still here. He’s not eating or drinking. Just looking. Some sort of a cop just came in. Plain clothes with a gun on one hip and a walkie-talkie on the other. Or is it an open carry state? Nope he has a badge on his belt. Two firemen ordering breakfast. Neil Young is now reading a banged up old paperback. Fireman just commented on Dug’s good behavior. (Proud mom moment.) Woman/writer over my right shoulder…very close to me actually, has not acknowledged me. Seems like a little “good morning” might have been appropriate when she sat down. There were other seating options with more space. Just had a little chat with the NOFD about the virtues of male dogs over female dogs. Morning caffeine seems to be the theme here…be it coffee, tea or Coke. Someone’s phone keeps ringing. Trash truck outside banging trash cans causing Dug to get nervous. Another reader enjoying his breakfast. Another writer. Another dog. Tourists. Locals. Young. Old. Human. Canine. Always changing. Always moving.

The cafe itself is a nice-looking old bar. It’s on a corner so on the long side the doors are all open for indoor-outdoor seating. Seems like a good thing, but have you ever smelled all the smells of NOLA? Trash, urine, smoke, weed, fresh paint, mold, sweat and some other smells I can’t identify. Have you heard all the hears? Trucks, shouting, ranting, music of all sorts, car horns, birds, ferry horns, train whistles, seagulls squawking, barking…(On cue as I typed “barking”, a woman walked by barking like a dog. Which is another topic for another day.)

So as I sit here thinking about my own restlessness, borderline anxiety, I think about this complicated city – itself an highly restless place. So “Big Easy”? Not so much. And yet. As all things are and as a recent post said…it’s complicated because as I’m writing this paragraph, enjoying the gentle breeze, I look up at the blue sky with puffy clouds and notice a pigeon nesting in the edge of the brick building. Nothing more natural and right than a mom nesting for her young.

I thought I was done with this post and then I decided to continue our walk to the river…

#NOLA #FrenchQuarter #MississippiRiver

Last Thursday (I know, as this is part of what I do) marked our halfway point here in NOLA. Interestingly, to me, I felt much differently at the halfway point in NOLA and NYC. In NYC, there was a real flow of sadness. A real sense of impending loss. Her in NOLA a sense of calm, or as my life coach Jim Kelley would say, EASE. As with many emotions, I reach inward to inquire.

Yesterday, JDT and I “started” our day by making the short walk to the edge of Jackson Square and Cafe Du Monde (BTW, in many ways my relationship with the “institution” is a microcosm for my relationship with the broader NOLA). On the way, early for NOLA (it is a late city), we passed any number of people out on the street. One way JDT and I are quite similar is our need for human interaction. Or as I like to say, inter-connectedness. This usually presents itself quite different, yet it is true. In this case, very similarly. We both like to make eye contact with people as we pass and put out a warm “morning y’all”. Yes, the phrasing is region specific, put the sentiment the same. AND it occurred to me, I think I “found” something.

NYC is not much for politeness. It certainly doesn’t value its importance and it resides clearly way down on the scale of priorities. The South? OMG, if not everything, it would reside very near the top. Yet!

Contrary to most held beliefs NYC is an incredibly friendly place. Once you get inside that often times gruff exterior, it is incredibly friendly. The South, a bit less so. While we have found nearly everyone exceedingly polite and have found many people that bring helpfulness, truly friendly is a different matter. We’ve both posted about Mike in Brooklyn. He was but one example. By the 3rd conversation with Mike, I had a sense of the essence of Mike. And, by the 6th or 7th, I knew things about him and his history that really revealed parts of who he is. Yes, the nature of the neighborhoods contribute; without a doubt.

As we were walking back from Cafe Du Monde we agreed it was undoubtable we will return to NYC for another bite of the Apple. AND quite likely we’ll feel satiated with our experience here in NOLA.

And YET!?!

Mom. Mother.

As Glen would say…it’s complicated. We are both at that age where our parents are in the last years, maybe months of their lives. And both of us only have our moms still “with” us.

I read Dorie Greenspan’s blog today. She’s a “culinary guru” according to the NYT and a James Beard award-winning cookbook author. She shared her memories of her mom related to food and cooking. It got me to thinking about my mom in those terms.

My sisters and I have long disparaged my mom’s cooking. Our memories are of meals that included a plate with beef, a vegetable, a potato and a green salad. The meat was always overcooked, the vegetables were frozen and boiled beyond recognition, the potato was baked and the salad might have had a few tomato pieces with the iceburg lettuce and ranch dressing. Now truth be told, this was as much a result of what my dad liked to eat as it was of what my mom liked to cook. It was a different era.

I remember that we NEVER had rice because my dad had eaten it with catsup three meals a day for weeks on end when he was at sea in the Pacific during WWII. “Ethnic” food meant spaghetti and ground beef and that was a treat! We might have had “pepper steak” which was sliced and sauteed round steak with green peppers and served on noodles. This would have been a meal for a Sunday dinner. We had a HUGE treat on Friday nights when my dad worked till 10:00 pm. There was a new McDonald’s around the corner and Mom would buy us each a 25 cent hamburger and fries for the four of us to share. (Thus for $1.25 she fed a family of four.) My sister Chris, says that we watched Rawhide while eating. That was living! (Chris may correct my memory of these much loved Fridays.) Since my dad worked late and we’d had our treat, my mom made my dad his favorite meal when he got home. It was white bread (think Weber’s) slathered with margarine and peanut butter served with a cup of hot cocoa made with Nestle’s powder. He ate this meal every Friday promptly at 10:30 pm. How he didn’t end up with horrible cholesterol, I’ll never know!

Dorie wrote about all the years that she tried to think of even ONE recipe that she got from her mom and she couldn’t think of a single one. She said her mom didn’t cook. She remembered that she served tv dinners like “she was serving us caviar”. (I have a similar recollection. I LOVED the salisbury steak tv dinner or a 10 cent Swanson’s chicken pot pie.) And then poof, one day she remembered…baked apples! Her mom made baked apples for her dad. Her story got me to thinking about my mom. What do I make that I learned from her?

My kids will tell you that a fried hamburger patty, mashed potatoes and a green vegetable is comfort food. I just try not to burn them all. Did I mention that my mom would open the bag of frozen green beans and put them in the pot on the stove with water? She’d turn on the stove and then become distracted until she smelled the burnt beans. We couldn’t afford to throw good food away so she’d pull out the sugar jar and sprinkle sugar on the beans and serve them with a shrug. I can’t eat green beans to this day.

But I digress…I have Mom’s recipe box. It’s full of clipped recipes that I don’t think she ever made. Or recipes carefully written with “Rose” or another friend’s name in the corner. I don’t think she made many of these recipes either. I do make Mom’s Hello Dolly cookies and I have that recipe that she got from the church youth group. They were perfect for her because she just had to open and layer the ingredients. I also make a version of her “tamale pie”. Again, her recipe involves buying frozen 10 cent tamales and layering them with corn and cheese and tomato sauce. I still don’t make beans. I do make rice, but I detest catsup. (Ask Niels about the time he got me a hot dog at an A’s game and put catsup on it. Poor kid is permanently scarred from that experience. It’s a bad-mom-moment story.) And as I am a daddy’s girl…I love peanut butter everything.

And finally, Glen’s mom was a great home cook so I’ll nudge him to write about his memories of his mom’s recipes. While my mom always wondered why her three daughters ended up being decent cooks, Glen absolutely gets his interest and skills from his mom… instead of in spite of her! I can’t wait to hear what my kids say about my cooking…or maybe not!

Mom. Mother. It’s so complicated!

True to my word…next post…photos.

Well – If you didn’t read the previous post (Glen’s) you should.

Weird. This blog writing thing is weird. There are times where I’m rolling ideas around in my head and I think…that could be interesting, at least to me. Then there are times when I think…I don’t have a cogent thought in my head or I don’t have anything meaningful to say. Maybe just some photos? Or…really? More drivel?

And I also think…is this a travelogue? A diary? A letter to myself and/or others?

I often think about purpose. When I retired I knew that I had to find purpose in my life. My career and motherhood had provided obvious opportunities to feel purposeful and fulfilled. Retirement created the need for me to seek purpose. We are lucky to be able to travel in this extended way. Yes, we worked hard, made our sacrifices, had our difficulties, and yet…this life is a privilege. (I’ve written about my conflict with this before.) I could easily fall into this life and live just for “me”. But that’s not me.

I’ve tried to stay away from politics on this blog, but as Glen alluded to in his previous post, I get a bit emotional (I like to think of it as passionate) about certain aspects of our political and societal circumstances. So here comes my politics. (I prefer to think of it as my philosophy of how humans should treat humans.) Trump provided me with plenty of purpose at the beginning of my retirement. I was all on board and very busy doing whatever I could to make sure that he was not re-elected. (And on a personal level, I also found great purpose in becoming healthier.) So I guess I’ll have to thank him for that transition to purpose without career or kids. In the ensuing year plus since Biden’s election (fair and legitimate, I might add), I have remained somewhat active in doing small things to make sure we actually have a democracy in our future.

And last night’s news rocked my world. Yes. I knew it was highly likely, but the reality of it hit me hard. And I’m emotional about it. I was one of those people who while not thrilled with the prospect of Hillary as president, I gladly voted for her over the alternative. AND THE EMAIL LADY WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING. Also, YEARS ago, (pre-Trump), I remember Glen commenting that the real danger to our democracy and to our constitutional rights came with the Supreme Court being commandeered by the Republican Party (via the Federalist Society, et. al.). I poo-pooed the idea. Well. He was right. And here we are.

So purpose? I am ALL in. I will be texting. I will be writing. I will be calling. I will be marching and I will be doing whatever else I can to elect people across the country who do believe in science. Who do believe that we need some common sense gun laws. Who do believe that voting rights are essential to a democracy. Who do believe that women should have autonomy over their own bodies and their own lives. I remember being questioned years ago about being a “one issue” voter – meaning abortion rights – and I may have had that at the top of my priority list then. I have taken it for granted for these last many years that that right was a given. Well, I may be a “one issue” voter again. Okay – maybe three issues – sensible gun safety is right up there with voting rights and abortion rights.

But I digress…back to the news from last night. I have family members who have had abortions. I have friends who have had abortions. I drove a friend to her abortion appointment in the early 80s. That is their business. Not mine. Not the government’s nor the court’s. My sister told me that my mom told her that when she was 43, she was terrified that she was pregnant and of what that would do to her and her family. She would not have had the option of doing what she felt was best for us all. That’s when she understood that abortion rights are essential. (And she remains a staunch Reagan Republican.) I became a teenager at a time when abortions first became legal. I never lived with the fear of becoming pregnant and not having autonomy over my life. I didn’t live in a time when women couldn’t open their own credit or bank accounts. I have two credit cards that I’ve had since before I met Glen. There have been times over the years when he has suggested that we really didn’t need them, that we don’t use them. I argued that they were in my name, they were mine and I wasn’t going to close them. (So far, so good!) My career was highly female so I didn’t experience discrimination professionally. I have been fortunate NOT to experience a life in which I had little say in my life.

I can’t imagine going back to a time where as a woman, my freedoms, my choices, my autonomy would be challenged by the courts. So yes. I’m emotional. I”m angry AND I’m focused. And perhaps, that’s a female thing. Perhaps it’s a “woke” thing. Perhaps it’s a “liberal” thing. (I wear all those titles proudly.) But as I’m always looking for purpose…I’ll have to thank my country and the GOP. I am fired up and that’s not always pretty. But it is purposeful.

PS New Orleans photos tomorrow?

First, this post is not going to be for everyone. AND I’m asking you to come along with me, for the ride. It may be way too close to man-splaining – AND I WILL TAKE THAT RISK.

AND Second, JDT will see the title of this post and it may trigger her. Hah, it will trigger her. We stated very early in our posts we are learning to be Joyce-Glen again, or perhaps for the first time. A lot of good news, we are fighting or bickering or just being a pain in the ass to each other much less. AND when it does happen (as did briefly this AM) it is much more vitriolic. I sense this to be normal?

AND Third, why am I doing this? No, it is not to change your mind. There is way too much of this in our culture. I want to share my perspective, AND GAIN YOURS. PLEASE! You know I grew up in a high octane family where emotion in argument became PUNISHED. This has helped me (no not in the way you imagine) and it causes me issues in my communications with those I love. I think they see me as without emotion. A REALLY HORRIBLE THING. I was watching the TNT on NBA the other night. Chuck said something I will now use. He attributed it to Nick Saban. Mind you, Chuck is Auburn, Nick is Mama. So, no built in love. He said, and I will paraphrase his paraphrase – You must play with emotion, not emotional. Stupid football, how could sports teach me another lesson? DAMN!!

Shortly (60ish days or so) after I wrapped up treatment for my cancer, I was struggling with getting “better” and it was a dark, very dark period for me emotionally. I rationally knew (Dr. Yom told me) I would get worse for maybe 30ish days as the accumulation of chemo and radiation did its work (remember, the point of them is to kill the cancer, yet leave the surrounding tissue (me) alive). Then I would begin to get better. AND it was at this darkest time for me, during the nights while I tried to sleep, that I had thoughts. Initially I thought about death. Then I began to think about causing my death. I played out how I would tell Joyce and Niels and Blair. I thought about the “best ways”. Then I finally fantasized about carrying out my suicide. Let’s just say it was a really hard time for me. AND I CAN ONLY IMAGINE HOW HARD IT WAS FOR JOYCE AND NIELS AND BLAIR. Finally, after one mostly sleepless night, I opened up to Joyce. And, as always, Joyce was incredibly thoughtful, held me close and we called Katherine Czezack together. Dr. Czezack had been my therapist, yes psychiatrist, when I needed guidance dealing with anger. She is wonderful. AND she was again. She gave me ways, specific body and mind techniques, to embrace, accept, re-shape and yes, even LOVE the emotions. Embrace the emotions, don’t live emotionally. I have made progress with this, and with all things, it is a PROCESS.

Joyce was just about to take Dug for a walk this morning. AND she looked at her phone and made a brief agonizing quip. Seems something came over her phone about the current SHIT with Roe V. Wade. Nothing in her life triggers her emotional state like this. I’ve come to realize this is her version of our society committing suicide. Not a single person, little me, but our whole society. SO MUCH BIGGER. And I am the pedestrian to Joyce’s traveler. As always, I brought my play with emotion, not emotional self. Satisfying, even hopeful for me, yet complete BULLSHIT for Joyce.

Joyce, I am sorry. I AM WORKING AT BEING BETTER.

Ya’all know that we went to the NOLA Jazz & Heritage Festival this past Friday through Sunday. So many emotions washed over me during that three day experience. I certainly haven’t taken it all in yet, AND I hope I’ll continue to let it settle.

Like much of the South, it is all about pace. In order to be in harmony here, I believe one needs to learn to slow down and take it as it comes. Many people, me likeliest to be included, struggle and perceive this as less. I’m now learning it isn’t less. AND it isn’t more. It is just different. No JUDGEMENT.

We wrapped up our three days early Sunday evening. After two days of experimenting, taking it in and learning what we could, we created a plan for day three – Sunday. In talking with fellow festivalers, we learned that Jazz Fest builds and peaks. WOW, that was the case Sunday evening. AGAIN, the pace thing. Friday was really mellow! And try as CeeLo Green and Lionel Richie might, there just wasn’t any of my past experiences with THE festival like experiences. In the 70s and 80s I attended soooo many Days on the Green at the Oakland Coliseum. Each of those (Led Zeppelin, Eagles, The Clash, The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tower of Power, and yes even Peter Frampton, to name but a few) brought their own unique “energy”. Even into Saturday, with disparate acts like The Soul Rebels and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. Side note, try as I might, I just don’t get the Country thing. It rained (a real gully washer) Sunday morning – a good sign. Our plan, leave our place at 12:30 and arrive just before the 2:00 show at Festival Stage. Well, this is a terrific time to travel and enter Jazz Fest. Accordingly we got there right at 1:15, which was just before halfway through Cowboy Mouth – a very high energy, wonderful NOLA based live act. AND the feeling was just different. I was beginning to get excited. A short intermission later led to Anders Osborne – another NOLA based, terrific musician. While not the same showman as Fred Leblanc – Cowboy Mouth, the music was hard driving and soulful. Another intermission (these are things you learn to enjoy) and on came Dumpstaphunk. I have such joy associated with the Neville Brothers in the early 80s. So soulful and THE real NOLA sound. Well, the lead man of Dumpstaphunk is Ivan Neville – son of Aaron Neville. Go ahead Wikipedia him. You’ll see his image and say, “Oh yeah, I know him.” At least you will if you listened to any of this genre in the late 70s and 80s. He’s a founding member and “voice” of the Neville Brothers – so soulful. DUMPSTAPHUNK WAS AMAZING. To me it is the best of the NOLA sound, at least of the 1990s and 2000s. Incredible musicians. Incredible funk! AND they were the “warm up” (and my how they warmed up the crowd) for Red Hot Chili Peppers. I was really curious how this would go over. Yes, at their best they are a funk band. I fell in love with them through Blood Sugar Sex Magic. Yet, they are not a NOLA band. They are quintessential LA. No, not Louisiana, Los Angeles. Not to worry.

My approach (a bit less Joyce’s) was to sit in the bougie Big Chief seats. First, they were seats. Second, they were in a covered area up a bit that exposed us to the most glorious cooling breeze. My days in the 70s and 80s of moshing it up in front of the stage are well behind me. It is unfortunate, true, sad and frankly the way I as a recently 64 year-old man am not able behave any longer. However, half way into intermission I asked Joyce if it was OK if I went exploring. She gave me a bit of a sideways glance and said sure. So, I spent the next ten minutes traversing about 100 to 150 feet and realized, at about 200 feet from the stage I was going to struggle to get much closer. Sooo, I turned around and went back to the safety of my bougie seat. Me and about 1,000 of my closest friends. I told myself to imagine being in Cabo’s (a really small 200 seat wonderful music venue in late 70s Chico) 25 feet from Tower of Power. AND, it mostly worked.

RHCP’s opening song was quite appropriate – Can’t Stop. It speaks to transformation. Like many artists of the 80s, Anthony is a recovering heroin addict. Blood Sugar Sex Magic was created as he was coming out of a relationship he destroyed with his drug use and his “final stages” of his long struggle with rehab. AND Anthony, Flea and Chad are just turning 60. That in itself is a huge transformation. They and Ivan Neville and me and Joyce are all about the same age. It is impossible not to see and thoroughly appreciate the incredible energy they bring to RHCP shows.

Part, I believe at least 50%, of a great show is the audience. RHCP had that audience in the palm of their hands. I’ve seen it maybe a half dozen times, but not since the 80s. Those shows (The Clash, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, etc.) left something with me that wasn’t experienced again until this show. Thank you RHCP!

RHCP closed the show with Give It Away – again an appropriate theme for the festival. A huge part of Jazz Fest was the environment of gratitude AND giving. Each and every performer spoke to the moment. Their approaches were individual and unique, AND each spoke to how great it was to be back after two years of cancellations due to COVID-19. Anders Osborne said “I have been invited for 32 straight years.” Amen!

AND . . . the encore was Under The Bridge. I believe it to be the best song ever about LA. Its’ “anthem”. It purportedly is Antony’s love song to los Angeles. Remember, love is complicated. (RHCP also wrote and perform Californication.) I have my own complicated relationship with the Southern California basin. I got married there and it birthed my wife. I spent 5 years living there and learning to “hate it”. My son was born there. Just complicated! So, while I was incredibly inspired by Flea (as he came out for the encore he did a handstand, “walked” across the stage and held it for a good 30 seconds.), Ivan and Anthony, I was also moved by Jazz Fest in that life is precious and to be grateful for all of our blessings.

And, to Give it Away (NOW!)