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Location: New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

Leonard Earl Johnson (photo credit Frank Parsley) covered Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (2005), and the 2010 British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for ConsumerAffairs.com. He is a contributor to Gambit Weekly, New Orleans Magazine, SCAT, Baton Rouge Advocate, Advocate Magazine, The Times-Picayune, Country Roads Magazine, Palm Springs Newswire and the anthologies: FRENCH QUARTER FICTION (Light of New Orleans Publishing), LOUISIANA IN WORDS (Pelican Publishing), LIFE IN THE WAKE (NOLAfuges.com), and more. Johnson is a former Merchant Seaman, and columnist at Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans; and African-American Village. Attended Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and Harry Lundeberg School of Seamanship at Piney Point, Maryland. Winner of the Press Club of New Orleans Award for Excellence, 1991, and given the Key to The City and a Certificate of Appreciation from the New Orleans City Council for a Gambit Weekly story on murder in the French Quarter.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Nagin sighted in The Land of Boudin


Yours Truly in a Swamp
by
Leonard Earl Johnson

Reprinted from

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans











Greetings from The Land of Boudin,

My Birthday is August 22, 1943. This year's celebration -- not quite over -- has been a hoot.

Yesterday, in celebration, a friend and I went out to see an old Cajun cottage being moved to a site of loving restoration by another friend. On the way home, we lunched on boudin from Janice's Supermarket, in Sunset.

Best damn boudin this side of the Mississippi, cher! exclaimed a heavyset man next to me.

We went to the Catholic Academy of the Sacred Heart grounds, in nearby Grand Coteau, to find shade for our lunch, then returned to Janice's for more boudin to take home.

In line, buying a cooler full of boudin, was none other than New Orlean's long suffering Mayor Ray Nagin, whipping boy to the displaced, and the fearfully at home.

(Perhaps you know, The City is murder capital, not only of The Swamps, but all the lands plundered by Goofus W. and the Bush Crime Family. Not to mention, it is not rebuilt after two years of largely empty Federal words, and our levees are now built higher on one bank than the other.)

I told him he did not deserve all the criticism he was getting. Nagin's smile was as tender as smiles can be. His Wife nodded. His body guard looked around. I flashed my gold tooth.

Maybe, "On our way home from Alexandria," Nagin was buying so much boudin to share with
Barack Obama. "We always stop here for boudin," he said. There were no license plates on his very dark-windowed Ford muscle van, by le way.

Which reminds me, do you recall him saying Goofus W.'s Airforce One was the ultimate pimpmobil? The spirited tongue of Long and Edwards lives!

Hope you be well, un-murdered and full of good boudin.


La vie de bohème, L. E. J., du marais de Lafayette et de Nouvelle-Orléans.


* * *


The New York Times slide show of the new New Orleans.


You may want to fix yourself a stiff drink first.


(Slides 1 & 4 were blank when I posted this.


Yankees can not count right, I guess.)


* * *

And lastly,
Der Will Always Be Dat New Orleans:




Le Donner l' assaut à du jour