It's the off-week for the Saints summer training camp, and instead of the usual diversions coaches dream up to help the team cohere and stay together while not actually practicing (like team bowling, for example), Coach Peyton and team owners the Benson Family have come up with something quite different.
For the past few days, the Saints have gotten onto buses (one hopes air-conditioned!) and driven hours to the end of Plaquemines Parish and, the next day, down to Grand Isle, to meet with the folks most closely affected by the Gulf Oil Spill. They gather in a local community center with fishermen, oystermen, shrimpers, and oil workers and their families, and other folks like shop owners and catering workers and restaurant owners and their families, and listen to their stories. They shake hands with hundreds of people with work-hardened hands, get countless hugs from maw-maws, and ruffle the haircuts of hundreds of kids. It's like being politicians, only they're not running for anything.
And for good measure, they carry in the sacred Lombardi Trophy and everyone there gets a chance to touch it, to lay hands on it. (I picture Sean Peyton polishing the smudgy hand prints off the thing with a chamois on the bus on the way back home.) And everyone takes advantage of this, pressing forward with their hands out-stretched like supplicants to a shrine, like the Lombardi has a magic power to heal and restore.
All of this would have been enough and I would bless them for it and be grateful they're the kind of team they are, but they didn't stop there. The Saints are offering for raffle one of the "extra" Superbowl rings they will receive as 2009 Superbowl Champs (apparently, each winning team gets a few extra, to gift any way they want -- who knew??), with ALL proceeds going to Gulf Relief. The lucky fan who wins will get his or her ring at the season-opener game against Minnesota in September. The minimum order is 5 tickets for $10, but the more tickets you buy, the more they are discounted (like, 100 tickets are $75).
Of course, Big Man and I bought tickets right away, as did I'm sure, nearly every member of Who Dat Nation who could possibly squeeze together $10 or more. When I went online last night to check on it, I Googled "Saints Superbowl ring raffle" and discovered that there were close to 650,000 Google pages devoted to this topic. The Saints announced that they were hoping to raise $1 million from the raffle -- but I'll be sure surprised if they don't get more than that.
Once again, the Saints under Sean Peyton are showing that they are more than just a professional football team and that they "get it" about their role in the city's and area's recovery. All I can say is, Bless you, Boys, bless you.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
The Kind of People We Are
Months and months ago, possibly even last year, someone came up with the great idea to hold the first-ever New Orleans Oyster Festival on the first weekend of June, this year June 5-6, next to the House of Blues on the edge of the French Quarter. Of course, back then, no one could have dreamed that we would be facing the loss of America's best oyster beds, which have been giving folks the best-tasting oysters in this country since like the 1870s.
Perhaps in some more logical or sensible place, the Oyster Festival would have been canceled. But not here. The show must go on, and if we are to lose our precious and delicious oysters, then at least we'll go out swinging, with a big bang of a celebration. So the festival went on as scheduled. That's the kind of people we are. Hit us with a hurricane and a federal levee failure, and we will still hold our Mardi Gras and the critics be damned. Pour poison into our Gulf and threaten our oysterbeds for the next generation, we will throw an Oyster Festival to end all oyster festivals. Depressed and low down as I have been over this thing, I knew we had to go.
The ways to cook and eat oysters were uncountable, but I will list a few of the highlights that appealed to Big Man and me: oyster and shrimp (also endangered by the spill) eggrolls, oysters en brochette, oyster and spinach salad, oyster and eggplant casserole, fried oyster po boys, raw oysters (of course!), chargrilled oysters, buffalo oysters with bleu cheese sauce, oyster dressing (just like yo' Mama used to make), oysters with pepper jelly sauce, oyster gumbo, oyster soup, oyster sauce over crawfish cakes -- you get the picture, I'm sure. And I have to give a shout-out to the incredible Red Velvet Torte for dessert -- a large square of red velvet cake completely dipped in hard dark chocolate and then topped with fresh whipped cream. OMG f'sure.
There was a contest for the fastest oyster shucker, and another contest for the person who could eat the most raw oysters in the shortest period of time. (I've been known to eat *quite a lot* of raw oysters at one, er, standing, but I would hate to shovel them down fast. I like to savor my oysters, and enjoy a little sauce with 'em. I believe the winner vacuumed up something like 8 dozen in 5 minutes or some other ridiculous figure. Better him than me.
There were bands playing, of course -- what's a New Orleans festival of anything without music?? And the heat was mitigated by drizzles and gentle rains, hardly needing an umbrella to fend off, but really making it pleasant on that blacktop. (The festival ground was a parking lot so it could have been brutal.)
There was an Oyster Heritage Tent set up, where local craftsmen were making lovely artistic oyster knives, in case you shuck at home, and showed beautiful variations of ceramic oyster plates. Save the Gulf had a display, as did several other organizations, and there was a scroll to sign and send greetings to Louisiana's oystermen and their families. P & J, in business since 1875, had a display as well. Big Man and I signed the scroll ("We love y'all and would do anything we can to help.")
There were also posters of the event (what's a New Orleans festival without an artist-designed limited edition poster?), which had a large fleur de lis (of course) fashioned out of raw oysters (naturally) labeled hopefully as The First Annual New Orleans Oyster Festival. May that be so, may that truly be so!
Perhaps in some more logical or sensible place, the Oyster Festival would have been canceled. But not here. The show must go on, and if we are to lose our precious and delicious oysters, then at least we'll go out swinging, with a big bang of a celebration. So the festival went on as scheduled. That's the kind of people we are. Hit us with a hurricane and a federal levee failure, and we will still hold our Mardi Gras and the critics be damned. Pour poison into our Gulf and threaten our oysterbeds for the next generation, we will throw an Oyster Festival to end all oyster festivals. Depressed and low down as I have been over this thing, I knew we had to go.
The ways to cook and eat oysters were uncountable, but I will list a few of the highlights that appealed to Big Man and me: oyster and shrimp (also endangered by the spill) eggrolls, oysters en brochette, oyster and spinach salad, oyster and eggplant casserole, fried oyster po boys, raw oysters (of course!), chargrilled oysters, buffalo oysters with bleu cheese sauce, oyster dressing (just like yo' Mama used to make), oysters with pepper jelly sauce, oyster gumbo, oyster soup, oyster sauce over crawfish cakes -- you get the picture, I'm sure. And I have to give a shout-out to the incredible Red Velvet Torte for dessert -- a large square of red velvet cake completely dipped in hard dark chocolate and then topped with fresh whipped cream. OMG f'sure.
There was a contest for the fastest oyster shucker, and another contest for the person who could eat the most raw oysters in the shortest period of time. (I've been known to eat *quite a lot* of raw oysters at one, er, standing, but I would hate to shovel them down fast. I like to savor my oysters, and enjoy a little sauce with 'em. I believe the winner vacuumed up something like 8 dozen in 5 minutes or some other ridiculous figure. Better him than me.
There were bands playing, of course -- what's a New Orleans festival of anything without music?? And the heat was mitigated by drizzles and gentle rains, hardly needing an umbrella to fend off, but really making it pleasant on that blacktop. (The festival ground was a parking lot so it could have been brutal.)
There was an Oyster Heritage Tent set up, where local craftsmen were making lovely artistic oyster knives, in case you shuck at home, and showed beautiful variations of ceramic oyster plates. Save the Gulf had a display, as did several other organizations, and there was a scroll to sign and send greetings to Louisiana's oystermen and their families. P & J, in business since 1875, had a display as well. Big Man and I signed the scroll ("We love y'all and would do anything we can to help.")
There were also posters of the event (what's a New Orleans festival without an artist-designed limited edition poster?), which had a large fleur de lis (of course) fashioned out of raw oysters (naturally) labeled hopefully as The First Annual New Orleans Oyster Festival. May that be so, may that truly be so!
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Memorial Day on Grand Isle
To regular readers of this blog, wherever you are --
I apologize for not posting lately. I have felt overwhelmed by all the emotions associated with the oil spill, and how many times can you write that you are sad, mad, scared, and helpless? And I have thought that posting about anything fun, like concerts or festivals, would seem like I was trivializing -- or, worse, forgetting about it. Believe me, whatever we are doing, however much fun we are having, the oil spill is never far from our thoughts and pervades our sleep.
But what can you do? After you get your hair salon and pet place to donate their cuttings to Matter of Trust, after you call/write your elected officials, there's really very little you can do. You can volunteer to help with clean up, but if you're not trained in animal/wild life rescue, they politely tell you you're not needed. And if you just want to do unskilled tar ball pick up or other such grunt work, you have to be very careful that you're not stealing what would have been paid day-labor for all the folks thrown out of work by the spill. So what's left?
Well, protest, for one thing. The first public Oil Spill Protest (the first of likely many to come, unless some unforeseen success takes place) was held in the pouring rain on Sunday, May 30, at 1 pm. (At least it wasn't hot.) There were lots and lots of signs, not all of them obscene (but some sure were!), with various ways of parsing the BP acronym (like "Bad People" and "Big Polluters" and even "Bitch Please!").
There were also lots of speakers, representatives of local organizations like Levees.org and Save the Wetlands and many others, and professors at Tulane and UNO and LSU, and leaders of the shrimpers and oystermen organizations -- when these latter speakers said their piece and mourned what was being lost, and how unlikely it was now that they'd be able to pass along their way of life to their children and grandchildren, they cried and so did much of the crowd. Even Dr. John, who's been a member of the Voices of the Wetlands group, spoke, in his inimitable style, angry, as he said, "That the criminals have been put in chawge of the crime scene!" He decried the blowout preventer (which term he couldn't recall and he said in frustration "that damn thing that shoulda stopped it but didn't "woik"), and demanded to know why there hadn't been a back-up plan.
It being New Orleans, the protest had a small pick-up brass band that punctuated what speakers said, played between speakers, and blatted out raspberries whenever BP's name was mentioned.
After all that, there didn't seem to be much else to do, but Big Man and I decided to spend Memorial Day driving to Grand Isle, where we could see first-hand what was happening, and where we could spend a few bucks eating lunch.
We felt so bad for them -- Memorial Day Weekend was supposed to be the big Grand Isle Speckled Trout Rodeo, and now no one was allowed to fish for speck off the island. Most people who had bought tickets in advance did not ask for a refund, and since the band had already been booked and paid, the party, such as it was, went on Saturday night.
The drive took us 2 1/2 hours, through Cajun Country that Big Man had never seen before and where I had not been in many years. Everywhere was evidence of the spill's widening ripples of influence -- boats docked that should have been out in the Gulf; protest signs in yards ("Mr. Obama, where are you?" said one); signs advertising "Disaster Work Catering Services" (at least somebody will be making money); closed roadside seafood markets, their signs listing everything they would have been carrying draped with sheets or tablecloths to cover them.
One unhapppy marshland resident went even further, and posed a mannequin dressed in a hazmat suit holding an oil-smeared plastic fish in an outstretched hand near the side of historic Louisiana Highway 1. Next to the adult mannequin was a small child mannequin in a small matching hazmat outfit, cupping its head in its two hands, as if sobbing. The figures had a big sign, "God Help Us." It was heart breaking.
There were media truck aplenty parked at the Grand Isle Marina, just as you cross over the bridge to the island, and we saw a lot of Army and Coast Guard vehicles as well. As we watched, two schoolbusses pulled up into the public beach area parking lot and unloaded scores of workers dressed in Tyvek suits. As we crossed over the dune to view the beach, we saw that a giant fat orange double-boom lay the length of the beach, and was backed-up by a small sand berm on the seaward side. (The bay side of the island is protected by booms marked "US Navy" floating in the water a few yards offshore.) Supervised by Coast Guard personnel, day laborers were scooping up tar balls on the beach and stuffing them into plastic sacks, and we could see workers on the Grand Isle Gulf beach as far as we could see in either direction.
We drove to one recommended Grand Isle restaurant, but it was closed -- although I had phoned there on Friday and been told it would be open. We ended up eating at the Starfish Restaurant, on the main road, and we asked to be served on the outside picnic table. There we enjoyed seafood gumbo, mini crabcakes, and platters of fried shrimp and oysters with onion rings (me) and a seafood platter with shrimp, oysters, catfish, and stuff crab with French fries (Big Man). (If you are gonna help an area by eating in one of their restaurants, then don't go there on a diet, for pete's sake, eat hearty!) The food was very good, and the servers thanked us for coming.
As we sat under the overhang and enjoyed both the food and the Gulf breeze, we watched as an enormous number of waste disposal trucks and military vehicles went by on the main road. Some young men in Army uniforms drove up in a military-camo jeep, and we were able to thank them in general for their service and in particular for being on Grand Isle right now helping with the spill.
Despite the pounding heat (it had rained earlier but the sun came out with a vengeance afterwards), we spent some time on the Grand Isle beach and we noted that the sand, while not sparkling white as in Alabama and Florida, was perfectly clean, and the beach was wide and empty. (The beach is closed to swimming -- obviously -- but the beach is OPEN for sun bathing and picnicking and whatever.) And there was no smell whatsoever of tar or gas or petroleum. None.
Driving off the island to go home, we noticed dozens and dozens of "for rent" signs on the raised beach cottages. I'm sure you could get quite a bargain renting a room or a cabin or a house for some time this summer on Grand Isle, and you would be doing the people of that beleagured island a big favor.
I apologize for not posting lately. I have felt overwhelmed by all the emotions associated with the oil spill, and how many times can you write that you are sad, mad, scared, and helpless? And I have thought that posting about anything fun, like concerts or festivals, would seem like I was trivializing -- or, worse, forgetting about it. Believe me, whatever we are doing, however much fun we are having, the oil spill is never far from our thoughts and pervades our sleep.
But what can you do? After you get your hair salon and pet place to donate their cuttings to Matter of Trust, after you call/write your elected officials, there's really very little you can do. You can volunteer to help with clean up, but if you're not trained in animal/wild life rescue, they politely tell you you're not needed. And if you just want to do unskilled tar ball pick up or other such grunt work, you have to be very careful that you're not stealing what would have been paid day-labor for all the folks thrown out of work by the spill. So what's left?
Well, protest, for one thing. The first public Oil Spill Protest (the first of likely many to come, unless some unforeseen success takes place) was held in the pouring rain on Sunday, May 30, at 1 pm. (At least it wasn't hot.) There were lots and lots of signs, not all of them obscene (but some sure were!), with various ways of parsing the BP acronym (like "Bad People" and "Big Polluters" and even "Bitch Please!").
There were also lots of speakers, representatives of local organizations like Levees.org and Save the Wetlands and many others, and professors at Tulane and UNO and LSU, and leaders of the shrimpers and oystermen organizations -- when these latter speakers said their piece and mourned what was being lost, and how unlikely it was now that they'd be able to pass along their way of life to their children and grandchildren, they cried and so did much of the crowd. Even Dr. John, who's been a member of the Voices of the Wetlands group, spoke, in his inimitable style, angry, as he said, "That the criminals have been put in chawge of the crime scene!" He decried the blowout preventer (which term he couldn't recall and he said in frustration "that damn thing that shoulda stopped it but didn't "woik"), and demanded to know why there hadn't been a back-up plan.
It being New Orleans, the protest had a small pick-up brass band that punctuated what speakers said, played between speakers, and blatted out raspberries whenever BP's name was mentioned.
After all that, there didn't seem to be much else to do, but Big Man and I decided to spend Memorial Day driving to Grand Isle, where we could see first-hand what was happening, and where we could spend a few bucks eating lunch.
We felt so bad for them -- Memorial Day Weekend was supposed to be the big Grand Isle Speckled Trout Rodeo, and now no one was allowed to fish for speck off the island. Most people who had bought tickets in advance did not ask for a refund, and since the band had already been booked and paid, the party, such as it was, went on Saturday night.
The drive took us 2 1/2 hours, through Cajun Country that Big Man had never seen before and where I had not been in many years. Everywhere was evidence of the spill's widening ripples of influence -- boats docked that should have been out in the Gulf; protest signs in yards ("Mr. Obama, where are you?" said one); signs advertising "Disaster Work Catering Services" (at least somebody will be making money); closed roadside seafood markets, their signs listing everything they would have been carrying draped with sheets or tablecloths to cover them.
One unhapppy marshland resident went even further, and posed a mannequin dressed in a hazmat suit holding an oil-smeared plastic fish in an outstretched hand near the side of historic Louisiana Highway 1. Next to the adult mannequin was a small child mannequin in a small matching hazmat outfit, cupping its head in its two hands, as if sobbing. The figures had a big sign, "God Help Us." It was heart breaking.
There were media truck aplenty parked at the Grand Isle Marina, just as you cross over the bridge to the island, and we saw a lot of Army and Coast Guard vehicles as well. As we watched, two schoolbusses pulled up into the public beach area parking lot and unloaded scores of workers dressed in Tyvek suits. As we crossed over the dune to view the beach, we saw that a giant fat orange double-boom lay the length of the beach, and was backed-up by a small sand berm on the seaward side. (The bay side of the island is protected by booms marked "US Navy" floating in the water a few yards offshore.) Supervised by Coast Guard personnel, day laborers were scooping up tar balls on the beach and stuffing them into plastic sacks, and we could see workers on the Grand Isle Gulf beach as far as we could see in either direction.
We drove to one recommended Grand Isle restaurant, but it was closed -- although I had phoned there on Friday and been told it would be open. We ended up eating at the Starfish Restaurant, on the main road, and we asked to be served on the outside picnic table. There we enjoyed seafood gumbo, mini crabcakes, and platters of fried shrimp and oysters with onion rings (me) and a seafood platter with shrimp, oysters, catfish, and stuff crab with French fries (Big Man). (If you are gonna help an area by eating in one of their restaurants, then don't go there on a diet, for pete's sake, eat hearty!) The food was very good, and the servers thanked us for coming.
As we sat under the overhang and enjoyed both the food and the Gulf breeze, we watched as an enormous number of waste disposal trucks and military vehicles went by on the main road. Some young men in Army uniforms drove up in a military-camo jeep, and we were able to thank them in general for their service and in particular for being on Grand Isle right now helping with the spill.
Despite the pounding heat (it had rained earlier but the sun came out with a vengeance afterwards), we spent some time on the Grand Isle beach and we noted that the sand, while not sparkling white as in Alabama and Florida, was perfectly clean, and the beach was wide and empty. (The beach is closed to swimming -- obviously -- but the beach is OPEN for sun bathing and picnicking and whatever.) And there was no smell whatsoever of tar or gas or petroleum. None.
Driving off the island to go home, we noticed dozens and dozens of "for rent" signs on the raised beach cottages. I'm sure you could get quite a bargain renting a room or a cabin or a house for some time this summer on Grand Isle, and you would be doing the people of that beleagured island a big favor.
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