Well, we are all pumped up! Back from New Orleans with especially glowing memories. We rode Amtrak fourteen hours there and back. When we got on last Tuesday morning at 2:00 A.M., our Roomettes had the beds made for us. MJ slept in the top bunk. It is a different feeling to lie in a bed that is going down the tracks. A bit surreal. The lights of the towns and hamlets of Southern Illinois soon changed to the lights of the little towns of Kentucky. Then breakfast in the dining car. Hot and tasty. The Train rocked more than a cruise liner.

New Orleans was our cup of tea. Its artistic mindset and wonderful jazz music were a balm for our souls. The rhythm of life is unique to the Big Easy and the French Quarter. A different drummer was setting the beat. The Doorman at the Hotel Monteleone greeted us warmly and announced ‘I will be your Doorman.’ It is the first Hotel that I have experienced a doorman, and I thought of the Doorman on Seinfeld. Our Doorman was of great assistance in opening the doors to our Uber cars and helping us unload and load our luggage. As we were leaving, our Doorman asked us how cold it gets in winter where we live, and when we told him teens and twenties, he shivered and replied that New Orleanians are cold when the temperature reaches 60. He wore a neck scarf, a woolen hat, and gloves when he assisted us, and the temperature was in the 60s.

The spiritual light in the eyes of those we met in the French Quarter was inspiring. The lady owner of the Brass Monkey treated us like family and gave Jonathon a 20% discount on some wonderful Limoge keepsakes. The music transported me. I believe that in the French Quarter, two realities collide in happy unison.

Parades, when the stoic among us might ask what are we celebrating? I discerned the French Quarter residents were celebrating the union of Heaven and Earth, the unbroken connection between life and death. The hope of Heaven was walking with the Earth Angels.

Blithe Spirit at Le Petite Theatre brought cool water of laughter to a thirsty worried audience. Authoritarianism brings sadness and suffering. Art brings joy and hope for the future. Theatre speaks truth to power.

Being human is a unique dynamic in the universe. We are made in God’s image, the Bible tells us. Politics has nothing to do with our creation. We seek to soar on the wings of the angels. We want to understand the unknowable. We want to see the face of God. We wait for Godot, and at times he appears in New Orleans.