I was walking my well trodden paths of Southern Illinois University this week and enjoying two specific unusual occurrences for SIU and this time of the year.  The first being the news that the freshman class is larger than it has been in a number of years, sixteen percent I am told, and the second that the temperatures are very cool or fall like.  The natural beauty of my University has always captivated me.  SIU is located in the most scenic geographical location of Illinois. During the Ice Age the glaciers halted in our area as evidenced by the beauty of the Shawnee National Forest.  Also, there has been a tremendous amount of landscaping work done on Campus.  This along with the addition of numerous flower and plant planters,  new classic lighting, and marble seats and pillars indicating a second primary entrance to a majestic campus.  The result is inviting physical beauty that is unparalleled in our state.

If you will allow me a bit of a digression let me say that I spent over thirty-two years employed at SIU.  During those fruitful years I received many promotions and almost completed a bachelor’s degree.  I became involved, sometimes at high levels, with the incredibly complex machinations  of Campus politics.  I have for many years been fascinated by the story of and subsequent success of former University President Delyte Morris.  Dr. Morris came to the University in the 1940’s when SIU was called Normal or a Teacher’s College.  He with extraordinary ability and capability transformed a small Teacher’s College to the internationally respected Southern Illinois University that we have today.  He did this by basically having a charisma that convinced everyone from the Governor and legislatures of the state to the student and janitor of SIU into believing that they were on his team and that he was doing something special that had not been done before!  Dr. Morris truly built Southern Illinois University from a locale that was populated by coal miners,  factory workers, and farmers and attracted national and international talent such as R. Buckminster Fuller purely by the mystery of what he was doing in Little Egypt.

However for the last twenty or more years my University became more concerned with personalities than progress.  The revolving door of Campus leaders or Chancellors, including two who were very successful, along with the recent Board of Trustee childish bickering has been a series of blows that I agonized at times as to whether or not we can recover from.  We must focus as closely on the success of our students or the inner beauty of our Campus as we have of late on its’ outer beauty or physical appearance!  SIU was founded on the unique proposition that a first class university education was the right of all those who were willing to work to attain it.  Not just for the elite or the Ivy league but also for the coal miner, the factory worker, and the farmers’ child.

Last month the Brooks family took a step on the wild side.  We visited New Orleans.  Mary Jane and I had talked about this visit for roughly twenty-five years.  We often do not get in a hurry.  Upon our arrival at the Maison Perrier Bed and Breakfast we were greeted with a welcome drink.  At this point I thought that perhaps the drive was worth it.  Tom, the host at the Inn along with his wife Patricia, were so welcoming and full of information it seemed that it would be impossible to do and see all there was to partake of.

Magazine street was just a few blocks from our new home.  We toured the antique shops and found that they housed very rare and upscale items that were for the discerning collector.  At Patricia’s suggestion we ate at the World Famous New A’wlins Jazz Cafe and Oyster Bar.  The cuisine was to die for and the atmosphere was special!  A three-piece combo and singer treated us to as fine Jazz music as it has been my privilege to hear.  The owner came to our table to thank us profusely for coming in both english and french and to admonish us to look at the television in the corner where he and his restaurant had just come on the Food channel.  He was extremely proud of this rare treat!

Our tours of two historic cemeteries was enjoyable.  St. Louis 1 and Lafayette 1 are like no burial grounds I have seen in that they are not only very old but also totally above ground mausoleums.  Some of the individual sarcophagus are so deteriorated that little more than a pile of bricks remain.  It was extremely hot while we were there and I overheard tour guides likening the crypts to ovens and what happens to items in them.

I think Jackson Square was my favorite area of the French Quarter.  Full of unique shops as well as sidewalk artists and the display of their crafts it was an area that reminded me of our visit to Nice, France, a couple of years past, with our good friend Margo Lestz.  An artist had made tin figures from roofs of homes in the ninth ward that had been devastated by hurricane Katrina in 2005.  The images were of skeletons and other macabre icons that both seemed so appropriate and chilling.  He wondered if anyone had ever told me that I resembled the famous Doctor Oliver Sacks?  I told him that he was the first.

We took two bites of the apple when it came to the well-known restaurant Pat O’Brien’s.  The first was at the bar where we enjoyed the classic Hurricane which is a drink with four shots of rum mixed with punch.  You have heard of rum punch I presume?  It was quite delicious and left us with a feeling of well-being and a slight euphoria.  On another day we sojourned into the other side of the establishment which is a dueling piano bar.  This being my first experience and being placed right next to one of the dueling pianos with a table of frat boys almost setting with us…I was somewhat uncomfortable until I had another Hurricane.  Whereupon the dancing frat boys became interesting and somewhat humorous.

Coops, was my favorite restaurant experience in the French Quarter.  It was the end of a long hot day where we had been somewhat underwhelmed by Frenchmen’s street and subsequently decided to return to the New A’wlins Cafe on Magazine rather than continue to search for what was supposed to be the highlights of the Quarter.  As we were walking back to the street car, which is a rarefied experience in our modern life,  we happened upon Coops.  We waked in and were immediately waked out very nicely as we found out that due to fire codes the waiting line formed outside the door.  Soon the waitress came to get us as we told her that we were more than willing to set at the bar.  After all we had already been to Pat O’Brien’s.  The very fast and business like bar tender asked me if I would like something to drink.  When I asked if he made a good Dirty Martini he responded that he made a very bad Dirty Martini.  I had two.  From the Alligator bites to the Red fish and Sausage it was an outstanding meal!

After our search for Nirvana in the French Quarter we came upon two native New Orleanians.  One of them admonished us that the best way to enjoy the riches of the city was to find our own special place and that place would become our New Orleans.  Truer words have not been spoken!

The soon to be decided presidential contest in the United States has recently revealed the contrast between the politics of “party first” as opposed to working across party lines to assist people in an emergency.  Although the devastation of Hurricane Sandy is unprecedented along our east coast it was refreshing to see President Obama a democrat and New Jersey Governor Christie a republican lay aside party dogma for just a little while to mutually focus on helping people.  Both were not only complimentary of each others efforts but also seemingly stunned by the suffering left in the wake of the monster storm.

I often wonder if our elected leaders have a clue how disenchanted the people who elected them are with the constant mud-slinging and name calling each side focuses at the other?  Our political system was constructed by our wise founding fathers to be a system of compromise.  It does not function if compromise does not occur.  When one group or the other decides that the best way to have political success is to simply stonewall and shut out the other party we have abysmal failure on a catastrophic scale.

With the decision as to who will be our President for the next four years to be decided in less than a week perhaps our leaders will at long last work together to solve the storm of the Republic’s history and actually discover they are heroes to us all.

Last month our family was privileged to tour London with our friends of over forty years Jeff and Margo.  We enjoyed many of the usual attractions such as Parliament and Buckingham Palace.  However one of the most enjoyable experiences was lunch and shopping at Covent Garden.

The first impression I had was the exuberance of the lunch partakers.  People were walking up and down steep steps eating an exotic dish that was bursting at its’ seams.  I thought this must be what we had come for but Margo led us to a wonderful Pie Shop and we subsequently indulged in delicious meat pies.  What made the truly magnificent pies even better was the pervasive air of theatre and art not as a diversion to be enjoyed sparingly but as an avocation and a reason for living.

We saw a silver statue that moved.  Now this may be primarily for the young but I am young at heart.  The joy by which the old man manifested his skill was something I could have watched all day.  Two men on unicycles juggled and rode in place and neither lost their pins or fell.

Our first night in London we saw a performance of Billy Elliot at the Victoria Palace. What a great experience! The palpable joy the troupe put into their work was electrifying.  I have attended many plays including some on Broadway but I have never been a member of a more lively engaged audience.

Europe can and will get in your blood.  There is such an abundance of history and divergence of culture it presents a compelling novel that you can not wait to turn the next page.

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