Living Around the Bayou
Down the street, rather along Highway 165, I turned off at Cross Keys Bank to open an account and deposit a check from West End Press in payment for my trip to the Albuquerque Cultural Conference. (Maybe my life is changing.) Cross Keys is a local community bank with origins in St. Joseph, Louisiana and […]
Welcome to the Sterlington, Louisiana Dirt Track Races
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I’d be living in the rural south. When I say never, I really mean never. I’m a city girl whose horizon has always been shaped by buildings, never trees; secondly, I’m a Jewish girl, which means that large urban centers are the places where the majority […]
M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I
I found the Sterlington, Louisiana Library, a new building only five years old, located a hop, skip and a jump away from where I now live. A big rig got impatient with me looking for the right turn and blew his fog-horn honk up my jeans, gave me the startlement treatment, while I thought, what […]
Standing at the Pizza Altar
Walmart in Monroe, where I walked through what seemed like a hundred brands of everything and anything before I found, in between the frozen chicken and packages of lasagna, the frozen pizza aisle. Full disclosure here. I’ve never shopped for food at Walmart, maybe in search of a light bulb or toilet paper, but not […]
Plane Time
I dreamed a silicon chip looked like an Aztec mask, a great yawning blackness where a mouth should be. A dying vampire awoke in a pool of perspiring blood cared for by a young woman with a baby. A Dallas waveform appeared. A shine on Bachman Lake, sun sparks on oil floating? The flight is […]
Biking Around the Upper Ouachita
I took a bike ride this morning around Bayou Bartholomew, which is not quite as Lance Armstrong as it sounds, a five-mile pedal around a stretch of houses that hug the bayou. Bayous conjure up memories of Roy Orbison crooning about his bleu bayou. It turns out that technically a bayou is a sluggish body […]
A Jew in Monroe, Lousiana
This is my first season in Louisiana. I came here in triple digit heat, sweat beading off my arms by just standing outside, an occupant of cold suburban caves and icy cars who was admonished not to roll down windows, driving back and forth along highway 165 transporting a young friend to and from the […]
Moving from California to Louisiana
The deed is done. The movers drove up yesterday in an 80 foot truck, the kind you see in your rear view mirror barreling down the freeway and decide to merge into the right hand lane quick. Warren and Richard stormed through my boxes, wrapped furniture in pads, placed inventory stickers on everything and drove […]
Temple Run
The deed is done. The movers drove up yesterday in an 80 foot truck, the kind you see in your rear view mirror barreling down the freeway and decide to merge into the right hand lane quick. Warren and Richard stormed through my boxes, wrapped furniture in pads, placed inventory stickers on everything and drove […]
Beauty and the Bugs
When I first moved to Monroe, Louisiana from Oakland, California, I was cautioned about becoming a bug activist. Instead I was advised to think about mosquito repellent, ant poisons, moth balls strategically laid out in garden beds to discourage the appearance of moccasin snakes, and cans of hornet zappers placed on patio tables. Speaking of […]