DRAFT: Houmas House / April 2015

Houmas House

DRAFT

Yours Truly in a
 Swamp
a monthly e-column

Houmas House masters, Keven Kelly, Mother Kelly and Sugar Baby 
at Media Party, Saint Patrick's Day 2015.

* * *
April 2015
Free subscription @ Subscribe@LEJ.org

by

Leonard Earl Johnson

Houmas House
on Saint Patrick's Day

by Leonard Earl Johnson

www.LEJ.org 

Riverboat, Mississippi River
Houmas House, Louisiana

Cold Man Winter loosened its chilly grip on the bayous, rivers and swamps of Louisiana. 

"Finally!" Promptly L. A. Norma and I headed out for the parties, parades, and music festivals umpity thump-thumpin' from Laughingyette bayous to Big Swamp City bar rooms! 

[Music-fest list at the end with links.]

* * *

All over la Grande Mère Marais (the Great Mother Swamp) azaleas bloom and trees bud in promising greens and reds. spring is chucking hope under Louisiana's chins, from DC-dreaming Governor Bobby Jindal down to wee the people. Jindal is America's first Indian-American governor in history and he wants to take the brand national.  

"Jindal preens for his out-of-state handlers, a lapdog to the Koch Brothers," Norma snorts, blowing smoke out the driver's side window of her little red rental.

We Crossed The River at Baton Rouge singing Al Capps' ode to bad leadership from the 1959 film,  

Li'l Abner: Jubilation T. Cornpone

 music by Gene De Paul and lyrics by Johnny Mercer

When we fought the Yankees and were faced with utter defeat

Who was it who burned the crops and left us nothing to eat?

Why it was Jubilation T. Cornpone ... Ole toot your own horn Pone ... 

University presidents and state administrators wring their hands on television over Governor Jindal's years of foolish Potemkin budgets designed to showcase how he could run a government without taxes and services. He could not. 

Jindal may or may not flee his ruins for Washington, DC, but his replacement -- widely expected to be fellow Republican U. S. Senator David Vitter -- will inherit his stunning mess, and a hard political task announcing school and bridge closings. 

"Already, entire departments at the University of New Orleans have closed," Norma says, "and drawbridges tremble in fear for their maintenance." 

Governor-expect David Vitter is said to care little for the "Magic Maharaja," Norma tells us. "Would you, in Vitter's shoes?" She crushed her cigarette into a little tin box she carries for the purpose.

* * * 

Giant Sea birds overhead search for their family rookery, and we tell each other stories of Br'er Rabbit. Our little red car crunches chalky white shells in the parking lot of Laura Plantation -- from where the East African Uncle Remus tales first took translation into Louisiana French Creole. Tulane University scholars later translated the French version to English for the amazement of English speaking folks from Senegal to Cincinnati.  

We drove along the West Bank, then crossed over the Sunshine Bridge, named in honor of another colorful Louisiana governor, Jimmy Davis, who was also a movie star and a saloon singer who wrote, "You are my sunshine / My only sunshine..." 

It is sometimes said by detractors that Louisiana is built along the Mississippi and organized around Mardi Gras. "O. K. by me," Norma says, "you'd prefer Senegal or Cincinnati?"

On to Houmas House, the grandest sugar plantation on The River.  It is on the East Bank, near Burnside, above New Orleans an hour and fifteen minutes by hard road (by River more).

 

Lord of the manor is Kevin Kelly, a baronial Irishman (with dogs!) who also  

Kevin Kelly with beard, Kyle Edmiston, Doug Bourgeois and
Nippon News delegation

owns a mansion on Saint Charles Avenue, in New Orleans, that is site of his invitation prized five-day Mardi Gras party -- with balconies on the parade route. Oh, my! 

Jim Blanchard and Bonnie Warren

Kelly attended his NOLa Mardi Gras party this year, costumed as the man who carried word to D. C. that the British had been turned back at New Orleans. The man lived at Houmas Plantation. 

"Damn those wet blankets who claim the War of 1812 was already over!" Norma snorts. It was by a few months.

"As owner of Houmas Plantation, Burnside knew: Had the Brits got  to the steps of Gallier Hall we might still  be flying the British Jack!

"The Yanks did, and we're still flying  theirs."

* * *

Lorinzo Bergen, New Orleans artist
 and Leonard Earl Johnson, an elderly scribe

Proper early fenced garden, Houmas House

Properly unfenced radio / tv stars: Bob and Jan Carr, WDSU - NOLa

Garden leprechauns

Garden with small fountain

 The Gardener:
Craig Black Artist at Houmas House Plantation and Gardens

The Menu

The Chef, Jeremy Langlois

The things you gave up for Lent.

The diners

The Master's table on Saint Patrick's Day!
Paul Arrigo and Kevin Kelly

The Dessert



All Photocredits thanks to Margarita Bergen,   Janis Turk,   Houmas House

French Quarter Fest 2015

Festival International de Louisiane, Lafayette

NOLa Jazz Fest

Ann Murry's:  YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE

Copyright, 2015, Leonard Earl Johnson

For more L. E. J.'s Yours Truly in a Swamp go to 
w w w . L E J . o r g

Go here For T-Shirts, Koozies, LEJ.org icebox magnets
and such falderal ...

FYI: 

Your monthly e-mail notice may not come. New Yahoo's mail system is too cumbersome to continue using. Our mailings can not be done one-at-a-time. We have many thousands of e-readers. Too many, it seems, to keep getting free-mail from Yahoo, and we are not able to pay for the pay-mail system.  So there. 

You may not receive a monthly notice for YOURS TRULY IN A SWAMP, 

until / unless I figure out how to set up a new freemail system. 

(Don't hold your breath.  I am a storyteller, not a computer-pinball gamer). Contact me if you want on the list - that may get e-mailed.

If  you wish to read each month's story please go any time to www.LEJ.org 

(They are posted newly on the first of each month and polished for the next few weeks.) 

Hope you do, I love talking with you,

Leonard Earl Johnson,

Columnist to the elderly and early weary. 

© 2015, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved.

Comments are welcome, post them in the Blog Comments.

* * *

From Lent to Easter / March 2015

L. E. J. as Ernie K-Doe

Yours Truly in a Swamp,

a monthly e-column

by

Leonard Earl Johnson

A similar version of this article appeared in Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans, April 2010

Free e-mail subscription at Subscribe@LEJ.org 

You may have to copy-and-paste this address

* * *

"Ain't nothing in the world time and money won't cure."

 ~ Ernie K-Doe, 1936 - 2001

New Orleans Musician and Self-Proclaimed Emperor of The World 

From Lent to Easter

by Leonard Earl Johnson

www.LEJ.org 

On Ash Wednesday all over Louisiana, Carnival lifted its joyous mantle leaving Lent's ashen smudge in its place. 

In cathedrals and parish churches, mission altars and heathen households, the Sacrament of Death was being celebrated.

 At New Orleans Saint Louis Cathedral, business suits stood cheek-by-jowl with crimson capes and smeared-lipstick ladies awaiting priests dressed in the Vestments of Sorrow, applying smears of The Cross to their foreheads.  With thumbs dipped in the ashes of last year's Palm Sunday palms. Outside, rain washed The City. I have many doubts about theological things, but none whatsoever about this ceremony. To ashes we shall return.

 We attended six a.m. mass at the
 Cathedral to welcome Lent, and then caught the nine a.m. Amtrak train called the Sunset Limited, out of Town. 

 Could ashen Lent have more fitting a morning's metaphor than that? 

Lent is the longest holiday in all the Christian calendar. Should you need reason to be suspicious of religion's political powers, consider that.  Carnival's pleasurable length shortens by measure of the ill-conceived Gregorian Calender.  But Church law prevents this happening to Lent's suffering by measure of Canon law hocus pocus. 

Like traveling Governor Bobbie Jindal's
many Potemkin budgets, L. A. Norma tells some altar boys discussing the weight of this year's Mardi Gras garbage. 

Louisiana State House

Governor's private lift

* * *

Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is the last day

of Carnival's ever-changing length.

Next day is Ash Wednesday, the 

first day of Lent's forty never-changing days of suffering.

The Catholic Calendar, by which we measure all this, is not accurate, what with the date of Easter changing with the moon! A matter, you may recall, Galileo later tried, without success, to clarify for his Pope, successor to Peter's Throne. And keeper of Heavens's Keys and the temporal clock.

* * *

Easter, the end of Lent, is also a ceremony about Spring. Borrowed from religions that came before Christianity. It maybe the oldest human celebration and it is calculated (or miscalculated) by Canon law, with instruments created with faith in suffering and suspicion of pleasure.

Suffering is not to be monkeyed with by theological calculations. Carnival's pleasures, however, are reducible by God (or His agents with their inaccurate stopwatches).

Lenten fasting repairs Winter's damage and Carnival's excess, and prepares us for Spring's rebirth. Like the jazz man says,

"Blow the roof off the sucker ..."

Awaiting Easter
It has been a long cold Lent, but with sunny mornings and a warm place in the kitchen to read Internet Newspapers and sip coffee. Spring is here this morning, and the live oaks outside our dormer windows are budding into a soft young green. 
Live oaks are ever green. They don't dump their old leaves till Spring's new buds arrive (as followers of JFK conspiracies know). Then they change from old dark green to young soft green almost overnight. Today soft-green rules the Great Mother Swamp, and old alligators lie on the banks in whatever sun we can find dreaming of Easter baskets, Spring and ashes.

(A version of this story first appeared in 2004)
-----------
Copyright, 2015, Leonard Earl Johnson

For more L. E. J.'s Yours Truly in a Swamp go to 
w w w . L E J . o r g

Go here For T-Shirts, Koozies, LEJ.org icebox magnets
and such falderal ...

FYI: 

Your monthly e-mail notice may not come. New Yahoo's mail system is too cumbersome to continue using. Our mailings can not be done one-at-a-time. We have many thousands of e-readers. Too many, it seems, to keep getting free-mail from Yahoo, and we are not able to pay for the pay-mail system.  So there. 

You may not receive a monthly notice for YOURS TRULY IN A SWAMP, 

until / unless I figure out how to set up a new freemail system. 

(Don't hold your breath.  I am a storyteller, not a computer-pinball gamer). Contact me if you want on the list - that may get e-mailed.

If  you wish to read each month's story please go any time to www.LEJ.org 

(They are posted newly on the first of each month and polished for the next few weeks.) 

Hope you do, I love talking with you,

Leonard Earl Johnson,

Columnist to the elderly and early weary. 

* * *

© 2015, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved.

Comments are welcome, post them in the Blog Comments.

* * *