Well, we visited the World War II Museum in New Orleans in 2013 and again last week. What a moving, immersive experience. I felt as though I had traveled back in time to the days of World War II. MJ’s Dad, Berl, and her uncle, Merle, were soldiers in WWII. Brock and my father in the Pacific Theatre. When I was born, the War had been over for 12 years. In those halcyon days, everyone knew a World War II vet. They were the greatest generation. Dad brought back hand-carved wooden boxes from the islands. Neva J ruminated as to whether Dad had a Pacific Island girlfriend. They married soon after his return from the War.

Anne Frank captured my imagination. Her photos resemble Neva J when she was a girl. The WWII Museum caused me to feel I was there with the Frank family, of which only the father, Otto, survived. He published the Diary Of A Young Girl in 1947. Otto moved the family to his Amsterdam office, where he had a hidden annex behind a bookcase that the family hid from 1942 to 1944. Neva J spoke of Anne Fank often as I grew up. Her affinity for her was extraordinary.

New Orleans is a city of etheral presence. The presence of another unseen world is palpable. The residents of the French Quarter realize this fact and celebrate it. There is more that we do not see than what we see. New Orleanians would not live anywhere else. I video recorded a band at our hotel that moved me to tears. I wondered why I was so moved until I considered that my experience was special and singular in my life. Angels walk among us in human form. We feel it from time to time. We know it in our hearts. Something is happening that unites Heaven and Earth, and we are in the middle of the Union.

Anne Frank hoped for the opportunity to grow and live the joining of Heaven and Earth. She dreamed of life outside her family’s hideaway behind the bookshelf. She wrote in her diary of the more that awaited her in the coming years. As I stood in the Anne Frank presentation at the World War II Museum, I knew she was there watching and smiling.