FQF

Uncle Jack is pleased to report that he and Mrs. U.J. have survived another French Quarter Festival and are safely back in Charm City.  He uses the term "survived" advisedly because each year, as this magnificent free extravaganza of music and food grows larger (and they grow older) it has become a little more taxing and a little less enjoyable.  As usual they heard a lot of  music, much of it sublime and entirely too much of it wretched.  And they feasted on a number of culinary delicacies that simply do not exist outside of  New Orleans---mufulettas from the Central Grocery on Decatur Street, oyster po'boys from the Acme Oyster Bar, garlic soup and sweetbreads at Bayona, crayfish crepes from Muriel's on Jackson Square and pralines from Loretta in the French Market, all enhanced by that golden elixir known as Abita Amber beer.  There was much to enjoy----vastly more than they could manage in the heat and crowds.

    French Quarter Festival is one of America's greatest parties along with Jazz Fest and Mardi Gras, the major economic engines of the Big Easy.  It is much more family oriented than the others and probably the only time of the year when baby strollers outnumber Harley Davidsons in the narrow streets of the Vieux Carre. An estimated half-million people attended this year's expanded four-day celebration and it seemed like twice that many to Uncle Jack.  The weather man had predicted four straight days of uninterrupted heat and humidity with no hope of rain and that seemed to swell the crowd to unprecedented size.  Getting from Point A to Point B became such a struggle at times that Point B completely lost its allure.

    With all that they had a wonderful time and they are happy they went but whether they can save up the wherewithal, physical and fiscal, to do it again next year remains to be seen.  They have already made their hotel reservations just in case.

    A festively dressed couple enters Jackson Square, focal point of the FQF.  Those parasols are de rigeur when the sky is cloudless and the temperature reaches 90.  Parasol, after all, means "against the sun". Did you know that?

Part of the crowd listening to the New Orleans All-Stars and Pete Fountain give out with some rousing dixieland on the main stage in Jackson Square.  Pete is 80 this year and has suffered several strokes in addition to losing everything to Hurricane Katrina but he can still play and obviously loves FQF.

A portable police observation tower looms over the crowd in front of St. Louis Cathedral.  It wasn't needed for the very orderly FQF crowd.

One of the not-so-good bands that play on streetcorners all over the Quarter hoping for tips.

As usual the balconies along the Rue Chartres were bedecked with plants and flowers.  They have to be watered several times a day which makes for hazardous walking below.

The mighty Mississippi was nearly at flood stage trying to accommodate all the snow melt from regions as far afield as Montana and North Dakota.  The breeze off the river was almost like air conditioning for overheated festival-goers who flocked to the "Moonwalk", the promenade along the river named for mayor "Moon" Landrieu, father of the present mayor Mitch Landrieu and his sister, senator Mary Landrieu.  Politics seems to run in the family.

 One of the many art works that brighten the old French Market in the Quarter which has undergone major rejuvenation in recent years.

This lovely bas-relief celebrates the Old Market when it was a major source of fresh fruits and vegetables, fish and oysters.  Today it more resembles a bazaar in the Middle East with table after table of imported schlock.  

This young woman danced frenetically in the blazing sun in front of the Southern Syncopaters jazz band for nearly two hours.  The Department of Energy should be investigating her as a possible alternative energy source.  Uncle Jack would love to know what was in that gallon jug she sipped from between every number.

Meanwhile, back at the Johns Hopkings library building site, the work goes on.  At this point it is beginning to resemble a modern-day Stonehenge.

     

When will it end?

     Mother Nature threw Baltimore another curve this morning.  Yesterday (Monday) was a flawless summery day---perfect for the Oriole's home opener which drew 45,000 deliriously happy fans to Camden Yards to watch their new heroes stomp Detroit 5-1 for their fourth consecutive win. Sometime in the middle of the night a storm swept through Charm City with winds that shook Uncle Jack's 15-story condo building and driving rain that splattered the windows and woke him out of a sound sleep.  By dawn the temperature was back down in the low 40's, the wind continued unabated and a fine drizzle continued to fall until late in the afternoon.  Uncle Jack found little consolation in the fact that something very similar happened on the Outer Banks yesterday.  Enough already.
     Other than taking the Mini in for an oil change there were no cultural activities on his calendar for today so he had time to root around in the archives for a while and find an ancient column somewhat appropriate for the season, to wit:



                                                                March Madness


     Uncle Jack will bet that he is not the only person on the
Outer Banks who is glad that March---the longest March in the
history of weather---is finally over. Coming on the heels of
what had to be one of the worst Februarys ever, this March
was nasty enough to make even Canadians grumble.        
       As usual there was something bad about March besides the
weather, to wit: the NCAA basketball tournament which never
fails to turn Uncle Jack into a quivering pudding of guilt as
he wastes hour after hour watching sweaty young men in short
pants engage in ferocious dunk-to-dunk combat in an effort to
establish the supremacy of their respective "institutions of
higher learning" as colleges and universities are still
laughingly referred to in some circles.  
     Each year the spectacle gets a little harder for Uncle
Jack to enjoy even though he knows he is watching some of the
finest amateur athletes that money can buy---many of whom will
soon be earning more money in one week than he has amassed in
his virtuous lifetime of incessant toil. (If they are not already
getting it under the table, stuffed into their capacious Nikes
by greedy agents and overzealous alumni).
     If Uncle Jack sounds jealous it is for good reason because
he knows full well that had he been born 40 years later he,
too, might have a shoe contract to fall back on in his old age.
It is an incontrovertible fact (anybody who might have
controverted it is already dead) that at one time Uncle Jack
owned the deadliest two-hand setshot ever seen in northern
Wisconsin. He stood at the threshhold of fame and fortune but
only briefly because unbeknownst to him in a gym in faraway
Indiana Oscar Robertson had invented the one-hand jumper and
rendered Uncle Jack obsolete overnight.
     But that was long ago and Uncle Jack has long since
adjusted to the fact that he will never amount to anything.
His problem with the NCAA tournament, that which causes him
to writhe in his Barcalounger, his hair shirt soaked with
the sweat of guilt, is his knowledge that the whole thing
has become such an embarrassing travesty in the name of
higher education.
    Colleges and universities, many of them actually worthy
of the name, have been sucked into the sordid business of
recruiting and maintaining semi-professional teams of so-called
"student athletes", most of whom never see a diploma much less
earn one. (A few probably couldn't read it if they did get one).
  The reason for all this chicanery, of course, is money--vast
amounts of money derived primarily from lucrative TV contracts.
College basketball sells products---with a vengeance as any
frazzled survivor of "March Madness" can tell you.
    For this reason even prestigious universities like Duke
and Stanford are willing to prostitute themselves to hucksters
and world-class windbags like Dick Vitale, who has single-
mouthedly done more to turn off intelligent basketball fans
than anyone he can think of.                                    
    Uncle Jack is not kidding when he says that if anything
ever goes wrong with his "mute" switch he will never watch
another basketball game on ESPN.                          

     Anyway March and the NCAA tournament are over and now
Uncle Jack can look forward to doing his taxes. This is something
that always makes him angry but at least he won't feel guilty
and he doesn't have to listen to Dick Vitale while he does it.

Coming soon to a beach near you?  The Nags Head Town Council is threatening to start beach renourishment by mid-June and continue through the summer.  They say it's the only way to save our beautiful beaches.  If this reminds you of the reasoning behind the My Lai massacre you could be right. 
                                                         








   

Culture redux

   Uncle Jack and Mrs. U. J. returned to Charm City from a respite in Nags Head ten days ago and  immediately resumed their spring round of cultural activities.  (The calendar says it's spring but apparently nobody has told Mother Nature who continues to torture Baltimoreans with freezing temperatures and the occasional snow flurry even after the forsythias and dogwoods have bloomed).
    The first of two Baltimore Symphony concerts they attended last week featured a 29 year old pianist named Orion Weiss who was unknown to Uncle Jack but not to regular BSO patrons who were present twelve years ago when Weiss, who was then a 17-year-old high school student in Cleveland, was called in on 24 hours notice to substitute for the world-renowned pianist Andre Watts who cancelled out of a performance of Shostakovitch's second piano concerto.  Orion aced it and the event gave his career a huge boost and since his graduation from Juilliard  four years later he has been in great demand as a soloist with orchestras all over the world.
    The second BSO concert last Thursday evening was even more heartwarming.  It featured several dozen Baltimore public school kids who participate in the BSO's "OrchKids" program.  They joined the orchestra on stage for a performance of a specially commissioned composition based on the Pied Piper story.  They did a wonderful job and it must have been the thrill of their young lifetimes for these budding musicians.  No doubt the BSO management hopes they will all grow up to be season ticket holders.
    Sandwiched between the two BSO concerts they enjoyed a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony by a local group called the Concert Artists of Baltimore.  Somebody once made a list  of ten things every person should be lucky enough to do before dying and one of them is to hear Beethoven's Ninth performed by first-rate musicians and now Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. have had that inspiring pleasure.  (He is not ready to die yet, though----not until he has achieved his lifetime goal of making 50 free throws in a row).
     They almost missed a third concert on Friday when the Vinca Quartet got caught in a horrendous traffic jam while driving down I-95 from New York City.  They arrived a few minutes late and breathless but they regained their composure and played quartets by Bartok and Beethoven beautifully.  Three of the four members of the group are young ladies of such surpassing beauty that one wonders how they ever found time to practice back in their high school and college days.
    Two not-very-good plays rounded out their cultural activities for the week unless one is broadminded enough to include watching the Orioles play baseball as a form of high culture.  Uncle Jack is happy to report that the Birds are off to a splendid start under their new manager, Buck Showalter, winning their first three games against the Tampa Bay Lizards in convincing fashion.  Reality will probably set in soon enough. The home opener is tomorrow against the Detroit Tigers.

    They are counting the days until their departure for New Orleans to attend the French Quarter Festival for the umpteenth time next Thursday.  Uncle Jack is going to enjoy this one like it could be his last because when you get to his age it might very well be.  That folding chair he hauls all over the Quarter for three days gets heavier every year.

We took a stroll through the neighborhood this afternoon and found this tree abloom in the park across the street. Soon there will be hundreds more.

These are a few of the 80,000 tulips that have been planted in nearby Sherwood Gardens, waiting to burst into bloom sometime toward the end of the month.  Google Sherwood Gardens for the full story on this incredible free park maintained by residents who live in the Guilford neighborhood of Baltimore.

                          This forsythia decided not to wait for the tulips before showing off.

Tremendous progress has been made on the Johns Hopkins library addition since ground was broken back in September of last year.  We think this latest batch of columns may support the roof but that remains to be seen.

    The facade at this level will be all glass. Installing it should be an interesting process to watch.

Kelly's Parade

Uncle Jack can't remember the last time he was in town for Kelly's St. Patrick's Day parade but it must have been at least 20 years ago which would have made it  the first or second one.  He never would have guessed then that it would grow from such humble beginnings (two or three fire trucks and Kelly riding in a green convertible) into the extravaganza he watched in awe as it rumbled down the beach road yesterday afternoon. As promised he took some pictures but the Sony's battery went dead very early on so he missed some great photo ops later on.  The Outer Banks Voice's crack photographer was better prepared as you can see by going to http://outerbanksvoice.com/2011/03/20/photos-st-patricks-parade-is-a-grand-celebration/#more-29311  The whole thing was a hoot and he thanks Mike Kelly for making it all possible.

South Nags Head on Dwellable

Part of the Town of Duck's bloodhound investigative unit.  Why does the Town of Duck have a bloodhound investigative unit?  Presumably because they have more money than they know what to do with, sort of like Dare County.

Uncle Jack believes this may have been part of the crack South Nags Head White Trash Drill Team but he's not sure.

Here they are from the front.  A very impressive organization, ready to defend South Nags Head from all intruders with the possible exception of Mother Nature.

A harbinger of a big bash to come this summer;  Nags Head's 50th Birthday Party. Stay tuned.

Sunrise in Sonag

    It's been a long time since Uncle Jack last took a picture of the sunrise from the beach in South Nags Head but here is proof that he did it this morning.  It was already sixty degrees F at 7 a.m. and that helped.  Looks like good weather for Kelly's annual St. Patrick's Day parade tomorrow so he will try to get out there and capture some of the excitement with his little Sony Cybershot.  Stay tuned.

                                                                             7 a.m.

                                                                   7:10. Right on schedule.

Mrs. U.J.'s azalea bush is in bloom with dozens of buds waiting for the next warm day to pop out. It was 70 F in Nags Head on Friday.

Jennette's pier house is an imposing structure which looks to Uncle Jack like it is daring Mother Nature to take her best shot.

                        The windmills were spinning like crazy in a light breeze on Friday.

                                                                         Ciao.

Such a week!

    How much culture can one old retired person absorb in a single week?  Uncle Jack was put to the test this past week and he seems to have survived unscathed in mind and body.  It started on Monday with a tour of several historical parts of the Johns Hopkins Medical Center, one of the world's greatest centers of medical research and treatment for over a century.  Some of the original 1889 buildings are still in use, perfectly preserved in their original state, and provide a link to the pioneering efforts of the founding doctors (see picture below). The highlight of the visit for Uncle Jack was meeting Dr. Patrick C. Walsh, retired director of the James Buchanan Brady (aka "Diamond Jim") Urological Institute who literally "wrote the book" on prostate cancer. Lucky for Uncle Jack he read "the book" ten years ago when he was diagnosed with stage one cancer of the prostate and had to decide what to do about it.  Thanks to Dr. Walsh's advice he decided to do nothing other than start a strategy of "watchful waiting", thus avoiding potentially harmful surgery that might have made the last ten years of his life a lot less enjoyable than they have been.  It was a thrill to have a chance to thank him in person.  (Dr. Walsh explained that the Brady Institute was named for the flamboyant "Diamond Jim" after he made a huge monetary contribution to the hospital following his successful treatment for prostate cancer back in the 1920's. Contrast that with Al Capone's gift of three dogwood trees to Union Memorial Hospital after they treated him for syphilis.)
     On Wednesday night Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. attended a fascinating two-hour lecture on the architecture of Baltimore by a young Johns Hopkins professor whose name he forgets. (He forgets almost everything these days)They have been doing a lot of exploring around the city on their own over the past couple of years and it was interesting to learn about how some of the extraordinary buildings they have visited fit into the history of the city.
       Thursday's free noontime concert at the Peabody Conservatory was exceptionally enjoyable because it featured "ancient" music of the 17th and early 18th centuries played on period instruments by some very talented student musicians. (When was the last time you ever heard somebody play a theorbo?)
      Friday night's Baltimore Symphony concert featured music of Ireland replete with step dancers and Irish tenors singing "Danny Boy" and whatnot.  Uncle Jack stayed home, drank a Guinness and watched basketball on his 52 inch you-know-what and Mrs. U.J. said he missed a great concert.  (And she missed a great basketball game in which the Miami Heat cooked the L.A. Lakers).
      Saturday afternoon's concert at Evergreen Museum unexpectedly turned out to be the highlight of the week.  It featured a young Colombian harpist named Edmar Castaneda whom Uncle Jack had never heard of but who has now entered his personal pantheon of great musicians---not just great jazz musicians but musicians, period.  Rarely has he heard such an electrifying performance on any instrument let alone the Colombian harp. If you ever get a chance to hear him play don't miss it.  Here's a small sample from Google that really doesn't do him justice.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGhgdynmtZo
     Yesterday afternoon's concert by the excellent Peabody Symphony was not too shabby either.  Any program that includes both Beethoven's Emperor piano concerto and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, both extremely well played, is not to be missed.  At $8 a ticket for seniors this is another excellent reason  for music lovers to live in Baltimore.
      Uncle Jack somehow found time to watch some college hoops over the weekend, as much as he abhors the rotten business it has become.  He suffered a bit from ambivalence as he watched Duke carve up Maryland but he hasn't lived here long enough to get very upset about it.  More important, he returned to the hardwood himself last week after finally getting his pass to JHU's magnificent O'Connor Recreation Center across the street from his condo.  He was a bit rusty at first and could hardly lift his arms the day after his first outing but this morning he was back in the groove and popping three-pointers with gay abandon.  Mrs. U.J. went swimming in one of the two gorgeous pools which she pretty much had to herself for half an hour.  Too bad the students are too busy studying to use these opulent facilities.

      Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. are off to Nags Head again on Wednesday 3/16 for a week of sun and fun.  He promises pictures.

The "Big Four" of Johns Hopkins medicine:  William Welch, William Halsted, William Osler and Howard Kelly, portrayed by John Singer Sargent in London in 1905.  For more information about these incredible men go to http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/about/history/history5.html   Find out which one was a drug addict.

The Johns Hopkins library addition grew to eye level this week in spite of some inclement weather that shut everything down for a day.

The mammoth construction crane has now been incorporated into the structure.  One of these days it will have to go or this is going to be a very funny looking building.
    
 

Cold comfort

     Uncle Jack came down with one of the worst colds of  his entire life earlier this week and he is still trying to shake it off.  He is gradually learning that the older a person gets the longer it takes to recover from whatever ails him, and he also learned that it is not a good idea to babysit with a two-year-old who is spraying toxic germs and viruses in all directions no matter how cute and lovable he is.
      He did take some comfort from the fact that his cold kept him inside and gave him even more time than usual to sit in his barcalounger and read which is one of his favorite pastimes.  He needed some extra time because one of the latest books he acquired is a huge collection of  letters written by H. L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore, who is one of his favorite defunct writers. He found this book in the sale bin at the Dare County library in Manteo a couple of weeks ago along with another Mencken book that had apparently belonged to the late Huntington Cairns of Southern Shores who was a friend of Mencken's.  In fact, several of the letters in the collection were from Mencken to Cairns back in the 1920's when they were friends.
     After the death of Mr. Cairns, who was a distinguished art historian and director of the National Gallery in Washington for many years,  his personal effects were sold at auction from his beachfront home in Southern Shores and the two Mencken books somehow found their way to the shelves of the county library back in 1990 where they remained, uncirculated, until Uncle Jack bought them.
     If anyone in Dare county had actually read them they might have been removed from circulation a long time ago because one of Mencken's favorite punching bags was Christianity, and for that matter all organized religions and their preposterous belief systems.  He would have had a field day with a controversy now raging among evangelical Christians over the writings of a pastor named Rob Bell who
turned up in the New York Times yesterday, to wit:

In a book to be published this month, the pastor, Rob Bell, known for his provocative views and appeal among the young, describes as “misguided and toxic” the dogma that “a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better.”


        This was one of the biblical tenets that Uncle Jack had a hard time with back when he was studying Christianity under the tutelage of the Reverend John A. Houkom at Nidaros Lutheran Church in Ashland, Wisconsin so many years ago so he can readily understand why Pastor Bell might be having trouble getting his head around it.  It is probably comforting to his critics to believe that he will surely burn in hell for his heresy.
        Anyway this whole episode reminded Uncle Jack of a piece he wrote many years ago for the Outer Banks Current which he has dredged up from the archives, to wit:



                                                      The Lord Moveth in Mysterious Ways


This week started out like it was going to be Uncle Jack's lucky week. On Monday he got this very nice letter from the Reverend Ewing who is the minister of the Church by Mail in Atlanta, Georgia. 
His letter was mixed in with a lot of catalogs from people who want Uncle Jack to buy truffles and smoked almonds and yachts and stuff like that but it really stood out and caught his eye because right on the front of the envelope it said "Dear Jesus, I pray that you will bless this home, Spiritually, Physically and Financially" and on the back it said "Bless the hands that open this sacred faith letter that can change their lives and give them the Desires of their Hearts," and all of this was underlined with a yellow magic marker so you could hardly miss it.
Uncle Jack could hardly get the Reverend Ewing's letter open because his hands were shaking so hard, just like they were when he got the letter from the Readers Digest last year that said he might already be a millionaire. He did finally get it open and the letter turned out to be more exciting  than the envelope.
In the letter the Reverend Ewing said he felt the Holy Spirit leading him to pray for somebody at Uncle Jack's address and he said "Do you need help???? Do you need a continuous flow of money blessings?" and then he said he would send Uncle Jack a very nice Prosperity Cross that he could wear around his neck or put in his tackle box or whatever he wanted to do with it ABSOLUTELY FREE!!
Uncle Jack thought this was pretty amazing because he could not figure out how the Reverend Ewing, who lives way down in Atlanta, Georgia, could have found out that Uncle Jack is going to need a continuous flow of money blessings for the next 36 months which is how long it is going to take him to make the payments on the new secondhand Jeep he just bought.
Uncle Jack is pretty sure it was not just a coincidence that the Reverend Ewing's letter and the payment book from the bank came in the very same mail so you can bet he did not waste any time sending off for his free Prosperity Cross which he hopes will get here pretty quick because his first payment is due in about two weeks and also his Jeep could use a new stereo tape deck if you want to know the truth.
The only thing that worries Uncle Jack a tiny bit is that the Reverend Ewing's letter was addressed to "Boxholder, Rural Route 2, Nags Head, N.C." and Uncle Jack actually lives on Route l so he is wondering if maybe somebody else was supposed to get the Prosperity Cross.
If Uncle Jack did get somebody else's letter by mistake he will be glad to split the money  blessings with them when they come but in the meantime he is just going to take for granted that the Lord really does move in mysterious ways just like the Reverend Hokum always said he did.

Uncle Jack only got over to the construction site once this week because of his cold and he can hardly wait to see what has happened in the days since these pictures were taken.  All this black plywood is very mysterious.

Who knows what all this scaffolding is for. He can only hope that somebody knows.