Change of plans

Flew down to Savannah on Saturday for a week of much-needed R&R on the family farm.

Hey! Oops, I meant hay. Bales in front of my mom's house.

However once my flight landed, I learned my aunt had been admitted to the hospital at Emory. So on Sunday I drove 300 miles to Atlanta and have been here all week. This is the most driving I've done since college.

Atlanta traffic: it's whack.

Cuatro de Mayo

Ab's visiting NYC for a couple of days, so Rick threw a pre-Cinco de Mayo party yesterday, which featured potent margaritas & righteous nachos. The afternoon was sunny & 70s, so we were also able to hang out on the roof of his apartment building.

Fresh watermelon!


Pitcher of pineapple margaritas with strawberries.


Rooftop view at sunset.

Change is good

For a variety of reasons, I moved into a different apartment last Tuesday. Apartment hunting in NYC is stressful, so hopefully I'll be able to stay put for a few years. The new apartment is in the same neighborhood as my previous place, only 3 blocks south.

While moving is very disruptive, it does force you to purge unneeded belongings. (I hired 800-GOT-JUNK to take away 11 boxes of stuff, my TV/VCR and some furniture before I moved). I also threw out multiple trash bags full of paper and miscellaneous items.

The apartment is being painted next week. Will try to post pics soon. For now, here are some snaps from my new environment:

Beautiful weeping willow tree in my backyard.


Tattoo shop downstairs. Edgy.

Jesus saves, but not necessarily when it comes to rent.

Tribeca Fim Festival

The Tribeca Fim Festival just ended. Joseph and I went to the opening night of the festival to attend the world premiere of Faubourg Tremé, a documentary about the New Orleans neighborhood of the same name. This area is predominantly African-American, and its residents have a rich history of literary and musical accomplishment, as well as activism, dating back to before the Civil War. The film is positioned as "the untold story of Black New Orleans," and it lives up to this billing as I think everyone in the audience left the theatre having learned something new about this neighborhood.

Apparently the filmmakers had finished shooting the film and were editing it when Katrina hit. They returned to New Orleans to continue filming and wound up cutting the final film differently as a result of the storm and its aftermath.

My favorite "character" in the film was Irving Trevigne, a contractor in his 70s who was renovating the director’s house in Tremé. His grandfather edited the 1st black-owned newspaper in the South back in the 1860s. I enjoyed watching this man and hearing him speak, but he also provided the most upsetting moment of the film when we see him returning to his home weeks after Katrina and unsuccessfully trying to find valuables amidst the mold and debris.

The directors actually sat right behind me. After the screening, they did a panel with the line producer and one of the historians who appears in the film. Wynton Marsalis was one of the executive producers, and he was in attendance as well.