LEJ's Blog

: Name: LEJ's Louisiana; 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.

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Sunday, January 16, 2022

✍The Bishop Turned / February 2022

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February 2022

The Bishop Turned

~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher!
by Leonard Earl Johnson

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

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LEJ's Louisiana

Mardi Gras Glossary and History

linked at the end of this month's column

www.LEJ.world

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

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The Bishop does not seem old in an age when Joe Biden, President of the United States is 79; and his nemesis, Donald J. Trump is 75.

Still, retirement is required of Catholic Bishops at 75.

L. A. Norma added, "Cardinals are disallowed their vote for a new Pope after reaching 80," as she pushed her wine glass toward the approaching server. The Rectory's formal dinning hall is aglitter with The Bishop's birthday
dinner, and "retirement" is a word spoken by many lips this night. It is The Bishop's 74th birthday.

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The Rector,

host for the feast, took the podium, "In our day of seas rising and sky-fallings..." His words were not much heard by The Bishop, nor any of the gathered Diocesan Cloth and guests.

Then he presented The Bishop's gift for all to see. A small porcelain rocking chair inscribed JFK, in gold leaf. All looked.

Everyone knew the story of The Bishop's boyhood presence in Dealey Plaza that November day ~ "Just before Thanksgiving" ~ when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And everyone knew of The Bishop's collection of JFK memorabilia.

Everyone also understood a new Bishop would be announced within the year.

All wanted to be in the number behind the curtain making the selection.

None wanted the title, but one.

"Thus leads the path to power in any organization on Earth," Sylvia remarked to Baltazar. Adding wistfully, "Perhaps beyond."

They were dressed in what might be called 'casual formal.' Sylvia wore a red sequined evening gown that glittered back at the candles on their table. Baltazar wore a black suit, with vest, but no tie, and of course white fisherman boots adorned with colored jewels.

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Outgoing bishops, neighboring bishops, the apostolic nuncio, various members of the Roman Curia, and The Pope (Bishop of Rome) all have a role in the selection of new bishops.

One of the concurring bishops must be an archbishop,

sort of chairman of the selection committee.

In this case The Archbishop of New Orleans will fill the bill poetically. On the marble plaques of New Orleans Saint Louis Cathedral is inscribed a long list of past rectors of this French Quarter icon (and oldest Cathedral in America). One of whom was 'Maurice du Quesnay,' a rector and antecedent to Maurice W. du Quesnay, a bicycle ridding Associate Professor of English, and longest serving faculty member at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, U La La.

Maurice W. du Quesnay is no longer Catholic, but he would like to be bishop nonetheless. He was born Catholic and attended Jesuit, Catholic Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Later in life, while pursuing Old Testament

♗The Man who would be Bishop♗

tracts in original Hebrew, he came to follow the ideas of pre-Jesus Judaism, even becoming a crest on the wave reestablishing Temple Shalom, on rue Lee, in downtown Lafayette. "Rabbi" du Quesnay, as he has come to be known, elevated to Catholic Bishop du Quesnay!? An idea on its surface ludicrous.

But not to Maurice W. du Quesnay, who points to today's ecumenical movement, his own Catholic lineage, and: "No requirement of church membership existed for any of the founders of The Faith, including Jesus, Himself."

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Dillard, a new Cathedral Ladies Sodality Service member, and a volunteer for tonight's birthday dinner, approached du Quesnay's table and sat a slice of chocolate cake before him. Alongside she laid a sticker reading: "Turn Back Voter Turnout," and her phone number.

~ www.LEJ.world

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Your comments and corrections

are welcome

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Lagniappe

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LEJ's

Mardi Gras History and Guide

Photo credit Hanson Trahan

The greatest free show on earth!

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© Leonard Earl Johnson

Go here for
T-Shirts, Koozies, LEJ.world icebox magnets and such falderal ...

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Your comments and corrections
are welcome

If you wish to read any month's column go to www.LEJ.world anytime.

They are posted on the first of each month and polished for the next few years.

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LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp

is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.world,

Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER,
and historically at

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans

publication of the

Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association

It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

www.LEJ.world

Saturday, January 01, 2022

⚓The Visitation / January 2022

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January 2022

The Visitation

~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher!
by Leonard Earl Johnson

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

www.LEJ.world ✍

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

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Hildegard Bottlebrush welcomed the visitors and led them upstairs to the Rectory study. They each took the Priest's hand and reminded him of where they had met.

Baltazar said it was in Grand Coteau, at a Sacred Heart Academy reading where the Rector and the Bishop each bought $5 reprints of his chat book, "The Boy Behind the Altar / Big Mamou to the East Village." He spoke the title beaming at the Priest, though he assumed few of the cloth ever read any of his 'Fisher of Men' poems.

Hildegard silently slipped away and returned with a tray filled with coffee pots, China cups, cream pitcher, sugar bowl, warm pecan cookies, polished silver spoons and white linen napkins. She poured and passed the offerings.

"We have taken rooms next door to the little blue and white Mission House of Mother Teresa," Dillard, the taller of the two Red Women, told the smiling Rector.

"We plan on joining the Cathedral congregation," her friend Sylvia added, while rummaging in her red KRVS-NPR tot bag.

This news caused The Rector's smile to fade and his silver spoon to slip from his fingers and bounce once on the hand knotted burgundy rug.

Dillard and Sylvia are the kind of parishioners who cause young priests to dream of wine. The rug ~ from Bukhara ~ had traveled the Silk Road from Uzbekistan to France before any one in the Rector's study this day were more than dreams in their molecular ether. Centuries later it sailed to Louisiana aboard a ship made of wood and propelled by wind. Now it softens the footsteps of these interestingly holy, revolutionary, mercenary, bewildering, and beguiling folks. Hildegard gave the Rector a fresh spoon.

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Sylvia removed the little package Baltazar had given her for safe keeping and handed it to him. Baltazar opened the tissue paper, folded back the bubble wrap and placed the little JFK forget-me-not rocker on the coffee table.

Hildegard removed the cups of coffee.

"I am asking five-hundred American," Baltazar said. The Rector's eyes widened as he read the gilded monogram, JFK. He looked up and said, "I am offering you three."

JFK Memento
Dallas, November 22, 1963
In that little space of time the deal was struck. Three crisp one-hundred dollar banknotes left the Rector's alligator wallet for the fisherman poet's bejeweled left white boot. One yellow jewel was slightly larger than the others and covered a secret compartment revealing ~ when unlocked with a tiny gold key ~ nine mildly psychogenic emerald gummy bears. Next to the bears he placed the three perfectly folded and creased greenbacks.

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Hildegard had attended Sacred Heart herself, but chose not to speak of it.

"Catholic hierarchy runs Gott-to-Cloth with only passing nods towards housekeepers." She once told this to the now Canonized Mother Teresa. They had met during the future Saint's 1985 visit to Louisiana. She had come to bolster the faithful in the wake of Jason Barry's exposé in the National Catholic Reporter, and his subsequent books and movie about clergy sexual-abuse. Her visit had led to the establishment of the Mission House across from Dillard and Sylvia's new quarters.

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Hildegard's name, before being assimilated from its original German to American-English had been Hildegard Flaschenbürste.

Her family had immigrated to the 'German Coast' of Louisiana in 1721, from German/French disputed Alsace Lorraine. They had come as members of John Law's Indies Company, and the region where they settled in Louisiana took the French name, Bayou des Allemands, meaning 'Bayou of Germans'.

Bayou Des Allemands

A scenic spot on the Amtrak line thirty-five miles west of New Orleans. It is unincorporated, but still known and posted as Des Allemands (Of Germans).

A famed motor boat chase in the 1973 James Bond film, Live and Let Die was filmed on Bayou Des Allemands.

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Addendum Adieu

Anne Rice

1941 - 2021

Word arrived on the Saturday morning train from New Orleans that vampire epic author Anne Rice died in Southern California where she had decamped shortly before New Orleans was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, in 2005 ~ after the death in New Orleans of her Husband, the poet and painter, Stan Rice ~ to be near their Son,

writer, Christopher Rice, aka, C. Travis Rice.

She posted on her Facebook page on July 28, 2010

"Today I quit being a Christian. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being 'Christian' or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else. My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become."

🎵𝆕𝅘𝅥𝅯𝅘𝅥𝅰𝇥

Storms Never Last

Jessi Colter and Waylon Jennings

The Waymore Blues Band,

Official Music Video

You Tube

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Late news

Joan Didion

1934 ~ 2021