New Orleans – Page 2 – Anne McClane

The Fourth Age

I had some time to reflect this past weekend, and a phrase occurred to me: the fourth age. I applied it in very personal terms, which I’ll get to in a bit. But first, the references.

The first thing that came to my mind was Tolkien. Though I’ve read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (many years ago); and I’ve seen the LOTR movies more times than I can count, I couldn’t tell you exactly what transpired in Tolkien’s “Fourth Age.” I just knew the term sounded very LOTR-ish.

The Internet tells me “the fourth age began when Sauron was vanquished and the One Ring destroyed.” Meaning the events depicted in the books (and movies) happened at the end of the third age.

But the Internet also revealed some meanings I was not aware of. There’s a book by Byron Reese that came out last year, titled The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity. It appears to be about the times in human history when technology has reshaped our world. Sounds interesting enough, but it’s not what I’m getting at.

There was also a search result that stated the fourth age is “an era for the final dependence, decrepitude, and death.” Yikes. Still not what I’m aiming for, but perhaps a little closer.

No, it occurred to me that I am entering my own, personal, Fourth Age. As I look back, I can identify two, roughly three-year periods, that encapsulated major personal transformation. The first, when I was 16 to 19-years-old, the time when I left home and headed west. The next, the years from 32 to 35, when I returned home for good. If that pivot to home was the start of my Third Age, I sense I am at the end of it.

So if I am smack-dab in the middle of my shift to the Fourth Age, what do I expect it will bring? I don’t anticipate a physical move, the return to New Orleans was always intended to be permanent. But I do hope it will contain as much reading as my first 1.5 “Ages” did. I also hope it will contain more of the special type of magic I always sensed around me, as a child growing up in this magical place. I still sense it, but the obligations of adulting (sorry to use that word) can deaden that faculty.

But most of all, I intend for my Fourth Age to contain more writing than any age that preceded it. I can think of no better way to tap into that magic and share its wonder with a weary world.

October 30, 2019 by Anne McClane

Summer 2019 Wrap-up

Okay, so, I’m still working on the re-writes for my third novel, The Conclusion on the Causeway. Editing is taking longer than I’d like. Procrastination shares a good bit of the blame for that.

My current diversion? Writing this post. Now that it’s autumn, a new season, I thought I’d go through my pictures from this past summer, and share some photos that never made the leap from my phone to the social-media-sphere. Which, in my case, exclusively means Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and this blog.

The following photos are from the morning hours, my favorite time of day to get outside. Truthfully, during a New Orleans summer, I find it’s the only time of day when the temperature’s tolerable. All the pictures, save the last one, were taken in New Orleans City Park.

June 28, 6:02 a.m. Close to the earliest sunrise I’d see this summer.

July 3, 6:07 a.m. This summer not only marked my 50th birthday, but also the Apollo 11 mission’s. Folks practicing yoga at the Peristyle, beneath a banner which reads “The Eagle has Landed. City Park salutes the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.”

July 11, 6:10 a.m. Most mornings, I’d find this congregation just past the Peristyle. I dubbed them “The Duck Council.”

July 16, 5:55 a.m. Bayou St. John (right across the street from City Park). This spot became one of my favorites for sunrise viewings.

July 20, 8:26 am. On the anniversary of the moon landing, I happened across an event for STEM students getting set up in City Park’s Scout Island.

August 3, 7:18 a.m. Taken during the second workout I logged using the “Map My Run” app. I went exactly 4.56 miles.

August 31, 6:49 a.m. Lake Pontchartrain.

September 25, 2019 by Anne McClane

Marconi in New Orleans

Marconi Drive New Orleans

Marconi Drive is a street in New Orleans that figures into my fiction with some frequency. (It’s early, and my alliterative bent is apparently in absolute overdrive.) It’s also a street I travel pretty often — write what you know, right?

Returning home from breakfast Sunday morning, Husband Tim asked if the street was named after the Marconi who invented the radio. Without hesitating, I answered, “yes.” But then I struggled to remember the circumstance that led to one of our streets being named after Guglielmo Marconi. I wanted to believe the Marconi Company had a radio relay station somewhere around these parts, because that’s just the type of stuff that gets my imagination going.

Alas, a ruined early-twentieth-century radio tower lives only in my imagination. Here’s what I discovered: Guglielmo Marconi visited New Orleans in 1917, six years after he won the Nobel Prize for physics, and was welcomed by big, adoring, crowds. Roughly twenty years later, part of Orleans Avenue was renamed in his honor. This information comes from Hope and New Orleans: A History of Crescent City Street Names, by the talented Sally Asher. (Thanks, Sally!)

Marconi died in 1937, and it seems he was pretty well thought-of. In 1938, the same year the City of New Orleans dubbed a thoroughfare after him, Franklin Roosevelt approved a memorial to Marconi in Washington, D.C. Even though Marconi had been aligned with Mussolini’s fascists since the 1920s. (This information courtesy of Mental Floss and Wikipedia.)

Pre-WWII America must have been a different place. Because my imagination kicks into overdrive again when I think of the inevitable backlash Marconi would have faced if he’d lived and invented and been a political animal in our current century.

Maybe the negative attention would have caused him to withdraw from society, and live a recluse life. In an abandoned radio tower somewhere in the vicinity of Marconi Drive in New Orleans. 🙂

August 28, 2019 by Anne McClane

Silver, Blue and Gold

New Orleans morning — The color of the sky, I’m told

“Silver, Blue and Gold” is the sixth track from Bad Company’s 1976 album, Run with the Pack. Writing credit goes to Bad Company front man Paul Rodgers, whose distinctive vocals can be heard covering the lyrics.

It’s also a song that gets called up in my internal playlist under certain conditions. (If at all curious about my internal playlist, see also: While You See a Chance, or Pink Floyd.) Conditions this past Saturday were primed for a “Silver, Blue and Gold” appearance.

I headed out a little after 6am for some exercise. The sky ahead of me was clear, but a quick look over my shoulder revealed a threatening, dark grey, cloud. It looked ready to share, and it was moving in my same direction. Not one to be put off by a bit of rain — it’s usually welcome during a summer run in New Orleans, as long as there’s no lightning — I sallied forth.

Because the sky was uneven: gloomy in parts, dazzling in others, I was on the lookout for rainbows. Thus, the lyric popped into my head:

Give me silver, blue and gold,
The colour of the sky I’m told,
My ray-ay-ain-bow is overdue.

(Lyrics copied directly from Google, which had the British spelling of color. Also, that phoneticized version of rainbow. Which is exactly how Rodgers sings it: ray-ay-ain-bow.)

That last line, “my rainbow is overdue,” always gets me. I feel like it can apply to multiple situations. Any situation that feels like a constant struggle, with no easy button, and very faint signs of light at the end of the tunnel. Oh, say like, writing a novel, anyone?

So the rain did catch me, right at the mid-point of the run. It was fairly light, and for the heavier bits, I was under a forest canopy, anyway. All in all, not too bad. I’ve definitely been caught in worse. And there was a rainbow waiting for me at the end. It’s pictured at the top of this post, a little faint, it’s the best I could do with my iPhone.

It wasn’t even overdue; I’d say it was right on time. I’ll take that as a good omen.

July 31, 2019 by Anne McClane

The Creepiness of Summer

I’ll state it from the outset — summer is my favorite season, hands-down. Even despite the oppressive heat we experience in south Louisiana, there’s something about the freedom and abundance of the season that makes it number one in my book. Lush greenery, late sunsets, blooming crape myrtles, warm breezes off the beach; these are all things I look forward to, year after year. And there’s nothing inherently creepy about any of it.

So perhaps it’s because I’m watching season three of Stranger Things, which is set around the 4th of July, 1985, that I’m thinking about the flip-side of summer. Or the “Upside Down” of summer, if you prefer. Some creepy things about summer that have occurred to me:

Heat stroke seems much more gruesome that hypothermia. Thinking about my internal organs cooking inside of me just sounds excruciating.
Necrotizing fasciitis. Caused by flesh-eating bacteria. These bacteria apparently love warm water.
Flying, giant, cockroaches.
Sad clown balloons behind chain-link fences. (In all fairness, this particular piece of graffiti in New Orleans City Park has probably been there for a few seasons. But I noticed it for the first time as I was mulling over this “creepy summer” idea, and it felt like a perfect visual).
Grasshoppers contemplating abandoned cigarettes. (See note above. Except that I don’t think the cigarettes or the insect will be there very long).

Maybe this stuff feels extra creepy to me because of the contrast to all the things that I love. But I certainly appreciate the duality of it all. Bottom line: I don’t resent the creepiness; in a way, it makes me embrace summer even more.

July 10, 2019 by Anne McClane

Behind the Photo: Garden District

This may (or may not) be the start of a new blog feature: “behind the photo.” My thought is to give some context to the impulse that compelled me to snap a photo.

Truthfully, I do this very thing in this space all the time. Look for any of my “City Park” posts. So I guess the only thing that’s new is that I’m attempting to brand the effort. The marketer in me dies hard.

A quick Google search tells me that both National Geographic and Time use the phrase “behind the photo” for sections of their publications. But I don’t think anyone who stumbles across this post will confuse it for either one of those esteemed periodicals.

Anyway, on Saturday, I paid a quick visit to the Garden District of New Orleans, to run into the Garden District Book Shop. (If you’re curious to read more about this great independent bookstore, click here.) What captured my attention at this corner was not so much the sign, but the wall in the background, and in particular, the people there.

That wall encloses Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, one of New Orleans’s oldest cemeteries. As I drove past the entrance, I saw a large group of folks milling about. My guess was that they were sightseers, either about to embark on or just finishing up a tour.

My first thought: Only in New Orleans, do you see large crowds gathered around a graveyard.

But then I remembered a time in Paris, just two years ago now, where I wandered about with friends around Père Lachaise Cemetery.

My second thought: Maybe it’s a French thing.

One final observation to finish this up. Both the name of the cemetery, and the reference on the sign to the “City of Lafayette,” can be a bit confounding to the modern-day Southern-Louisiana dweller. To me, Lafayette is the city about 140 miles west of New Orleans, that one can reach via I-10. The Internet says it’s the 4th largest city in Louisiana, which sounds about right to me.

But apparently, a different city with the name Lafayette was once also a suburb of New Orleans. Back in those days, I think the name was pretty popular, given that the Marquis de Lafayette, or General Lafayette here, was “USA all the way” during the American Revolutionary War. By a very quick and non-official count, it looks like 15 of our 50 states have towns named Lafayette, or some close variation.

Back when Lafayette became part of New Orleans, what I know as Lafayette today was called Vermilionville. It didn’t get the name “Lafayette” until 1884.

So there’s your “behind the photo” scoop, and, bonus, a random Louisiana fact.

April 10, 2019 by Anne McClane

Laborde Mountain

On a quick jaunt into New Orleans City Park’s Couturie Forest, I thought of a term I remember hearing in my youth: riprap. Riprap is “loose stone used to form a foundation for a breakwater or other structure.” That’s what my dad called the broken concrete that lines the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. The levee that rings the south shore of this brackish lake was just a two-block walk from the house where I grew up, so I spent much of my childhood around riprap.

I think the word is still in use, I just don’t hear it much anymore. Perhaps because my day-to-day life does not involve constructing shoreline structures. (More’s the pity.) And the purpose of this post is not to share any deep observation about figurative, or metaphoric, riprap. I’m coming up empty, there. So instead, I thought I might share a few details about Laborde Mountain.

Laborde Mountain sits within City Park’s Couturie Forest, and the Internet tells me it was made from riprap derived from the construction of nearby Interstate 610. (Which, coincidentally, is the Interstate that is overpassing in the title of my novel, The Incident Under the Overpass.) The peak of Laborde Mountain is 43 feet above sea level, and is the highest point in the city of New Orleans.

Here are some pictures, where you can see the interesting composition of riprap around here. That’s it for today!

February 6, 2019 by Anne McClane

Lucky 13

Portentous. That’s the word that comes to mind when thinking of this past Sunday, January 20. The Saints played the NFC Championship game in the Superdome, there was a lunar eclipse, or “blood moon,” later that evening, AND Husband Tim and I celebrated our thirteenth wedding anniversary.

First thing that comes to mind, honestly, is that I can’t believe I’ve been blogging for more than three years. I wrote about our tenth anniversary in this post: Notching a Decade. And, the second thing, is that thirteen has never been a big deal to me. Not to make light of it — I get that triskaidekaphobia is a very real thing. Every time I get on an airplane with no row 13, or in an elevator in a building with no apparent 13th floor, I understand that the number inspires a real enough fear in enough people that such decisions get made.

It’s just never been a big deal to me. My feelings are akin to Jim Lovell’s, in one of my favorite movies, Apollo 13. His wife, Marilyn, expresses concern over the number of his mission: “Naturally, it’s 13. Why 13?” she asks. Jim Lovell’s reply: “It comes after 12, hon.”

The same thing goes for eclipses. I’m fascinated by the synchronized timing and alignment of these giant celestial bodies, and the tricks they play on us earth dwellers (click here for my observations of fireflies during a solar eclipse). But I don’t think they herald any particular play of luck: good, bad, or otherwise.

So, I did not feel any particular foreboding ahead of that NFC Championship game. Tim and I were there together, as part of our anniversary celebration. Our spirits, and optimism, were high. Yet, the Saints lost, in a particularly painful fashion. (A missed call by game officials in the last minutes of regulation play turned the tide against us.) For those not in New Orleans, let’s just say, to qualify the loss as heartbreaking is a grand understatement.

In retrospect, do I think the number of years we’ve been married, or the red moon, had any impact on the unfortunate turn of events for the Saints? No. I didn’t pre-game, and I still don’t. But as a fiction writer, these are the types of noteworthy details that add compelling dimension to any conflict.

And for the record, if I was writing this story, the Saints would have won. 😦

January 23, 2019 by Anne McClane

The Epiphany

Sunrise on January 6, 2019. Three kings in the foreground?

This past Sunday was the Epiphany, or King Cake Day as it’s known to some around these parts. January 6 marks the date the three wise kings visited the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. In New Orleans, it marks the start of the Mardi Gras season, and also the date when king cakes become available.

If you’re not familiar with king cakes, I wrote about them a few years back, in a post titled, appropriately enough, King Cakes. For the next two months, these sweet treats will be purveyed at bakeries all around town.

There were also parades and parties on Sunday, of which I did not partake (I’ve been fighting a cold for the past week and a half). The weather was perfect, however, so I did get out for a nice long walk right after sunrise. A good opportunity to clear the lungs and nasal passages, (not a pretty picture) and, more suitable for this blog, capture a few photos (hopefully prettier pictures).

It’s a long Carnival season this year — Fat Tuesday isn’t until March 5 — so I’m confident I’ll have ample time to join in the festivities. In the meantime, here’s my own, simple, gentle epiphany: I’m happy to be part of a place that elevates food, music and frivolity to royal levels, but still allows me to escape into its sylvan expanses when needed.

January 9, 2019 by Anne McClane

Before the Solstice

Sunrise in the Couturie Forest, November 18, 2018

So, winter officially begins this Friday at 4:23 pm local NOLA time. According to an article I found on mentalfloss.com, this specific time corresponds to the moment the North Pole is pointed furthest away from the sun. It’s also the specific moment when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn.

I’m not a huge fan of winter. I’ve probably stated that here before. It doesn’t get super-cold in New Orleans, and we rarely have to deal with the problematic logistics of trying to get to places dealing with snow and ice, so I understand that there are worse places to winter. But it does get cold here. . .a windy and damp cold. And it still gets dark early.

But that leads me to the thing I love to celebrate about the solstice—it’s the turning point. After Friday at 4:34 pm, the nights will start getting shorter. Ever so gradually, until we all find ourselves at 10:54 am on Friday, June 21, 2019. (That’s the next summer solstice, when we’ll have the longest day and the shortest night).

The impending change of season has me reflecting on the one just past. Speaking for myself, the Fall of 2018 was a good one! I was blessed with the opportunity to reconnect with distant, long-time friends (Tamara, Stacey, Carol, and Christine); I traveled to Houston and Amsterdam; the Saints are having a phenomenal football season. And, oh yeah, MY SECOND NOVEL RELEASED.

Again, personally speaking, getting #2 out into the world was a huge boost to my confidence as a writer. Now, I’m sure I will still get in my own way, writing-wise, on a daily basis. But I also know what I can do—and continue to do— if I simply persevere.

Those feel like nice words to conclude my 2018 posts. . .I’m taking a break next week for the holiday, and will resume in the New Year. Happy Holidays, everyone, and thanks for reading!

In this post, I’ve shared some pictures from Fall 2018, that never made it to any social media outlet. . .

Black and Gold carpet in the Couturie Forest, December 1

December 19, 2018 by Anne McClane