Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans

Odd Words October 22, 2014

This week in literary New Orleans, sponsored by the Loyola Writing Institute at the Walker Percy Center for Writing and Publishing.

& Thursday at 6 pm check out the weekly Spoken Word event #WordConnections at the Juju Bag Cafe.

& Mary Monsted will sign her CD Miss Mary’s Musical Gumbo Chants, Stories, and Musical Movement Activities for Young Children at Maple Street Book Shop from 6-8 pm. Miss Mary brings children’s music to your ears with her album, Miss Mary’s Musical Gumbo. This CD provides a resource for Pre-School and Elementary teachers, carpool parents, children, and grandparents. Children are able to listen, play, sing, move, and pretend with the songs, chants, stories, and musical movement activities on the “Musical Gumbo” CD. Lyrics are included for 26 songs lasting 43 minutes. Subject matter contained on the CD covers a broad spectrum of ideas.

& Thursday at 6 pm Octavia Books hosts an evening with New Orleans writer James Nolan when he reads and signs his new interrelated collection of short stories, YOU DON’T KNOW ME. In this collection, James Nolan swings wide open the courtyard gates of a city fabled both for its good times and bad. With ten new stories plus ten from his acclaimed previous volume, Perpetual Care, he introduces us to a quirky village of universal characters at crisis moments. We meet fatherless boys, Creole spinsters, and lying hustlers, a pregnant teenager, a concert pianist searching for his roots, a crooked homicide detective, a Carnival-parade king hiding in a Dunkin’ Donuts, a pistol-packing babysitter, and a codger who plots to blow up an overpass. Bookended by two post-Katrina stories, this collection takes us from the secretive hive of the French Quarter to decaying cemeteries, from Gentilly to Uptown to family dramas in the suburbs. With mordant dark humor, James Nolan paints a wry, disturbing but affectionately human portrait of his hometown for those who think they already know New Orleans, and what it means. But until you turn the addictive pages of these stories, you don’t—not really.

& Thursday at 7 pm the bi-weekly meetings of the SciFi, Fantasy and Horror Writer’s Group meets at the East Jefferson Regional Library. James Butler, a writer of science fiction and fantasy (especially steampunk), leads a workshop to encourage the creation of these genres by local authors. Open to all levels. Free of charge and open to the public. No registration.

& Every Thursday evening the New Orleans Poetry Brothel hosts a Poetry Hotline. Call 504-264-1336) from 8-12 pm CST and we’ll to hear an original poem.

& Thursday Garden District Book Shop features Dylan Landis’s Rainey Royal. Greenwich Village, 1970s: Rainey Royal, fourteen years old, talented, and troubled, lives in a once-elegant, now decaying brownstone with her father, a jazz musician with a cultish personality. Her mother has abandoned the family, and Rainey fends off advances from her father’s best friend while trying desperately to nurture her own creative drives and build a substitute family. She’s a rebel, even a criminal, but she’s also deeply vulnerable, fighting to figure out how to put back in place the boundaries her life has knocked down, and more than that, struggling to learn how to be an artist and a person in a broken world. Rainey Royal is told in 14 narratives of scarred and aching beauty that build into a fiercely powerful novel: the harrowing and ultimately affirming story of a young artist.

& At 7 pm Thursday NEW ORLEANS LITERARY & PERFORMANCE SERIES presents Spoken word artist & singer GAYNIELLE NEVILLE w/ Eric B on percussions and Keenan Shaw on bass at the Goldmine, followed by an open mic. NEVILLE is a longtime singer / songwriter partner of her husband Cyril Neville, Gaynielle Neville’s solo album WOMAN POWER debuted in 2014. As a spoken word aritist, Gaynielle’s powerful voice has served as a central force in the New Orleans community for more than three decades.

& Friday from 5-6 pm wear your Halloween pajamas or a costume and join Octavia Books for its first ever Good Night, Sleep Tight Story Hour. Dr. Jeffrey Sigler, regular winner of the Edgar Allen Poe Reading Contest during his time at UVA, will be our special guest reader. He’ll recite “The Raven,” read from I AM a WITCH’S CAT by Harriet Muncaster, LITTLE BOO by Stephen Wunderli, and EDGAR GETS READY FOR BED by Jennifer Adams.

& Friday at 6 pm Garden District Book Shop hosts Marcus Samuelsson and his book Marcus Off Duty: The Recipes I Cook at Home @ The New SoFAB Museum. In a full-color cookbook with 150 photos, a five-time James Beard Award winner and best-selling author shows how he cooks at home for family and friends via an array of more than 120 recipes, which incorporate flavors from Ethiopian, Swedish, Mexican, Caribbean, Italian and Southern soulfood cuisines. His eclectic, casual food includes dill-spiced salmon; coconut-lime curried chicken; mac, cheese, and greens; chocolate pie spiced with Indian garam masala; and for kids, peanut noodles with slaw. This is an inside glimpse into how one of the world’s top chefs cooks in his home kitchen for those nearest and dearest to him. As the Southern Food and Beverage Museum settles into the new location, we are re-acknowledging the great Mrs. Leah Chase for her contributions to the culinary landscape of New Orleans. Join SoFAB, Dillard University Ray Charles Program, and Garden District Book Shop as we re-dedicate the Leah Chase Louisiana Gallery to honor a New Orleans culinary legend. As part of the ceremony Marcus Samuelsson, renowned chef and author, will speak to the importance of food in his life. Marcus Samuelsson signs his book, Marcus Off Duty: The Recipes I Cook at Home at the NEW Southern Food and Beverage Museum (SoFAB), 1504 Oretha C. Haley Boulevard.

& Every Friday The Rhyme Syndicate presents a spoken word open mic at Dish on Haynes Boulevard hosted by Hollywood. Doors at 8. Admission $7, $5 will college ID. Music by DJ XXL.he

& Saturdays at 11:30 am its Story Time with Miss Maureen at Maple Street Book Shop.

& Saturday Garden District Book Shop features Bonnie Warren and Cheryl Gerber discuss and sign their book, New Orleans Homes at Christmas from 1-.From reveillon dinners to purple, green, and gold ornaments, the holidays in New Orleans are a savory dish of diverse traditions and local spice that’s all its own. Look inside and enjoy what’s behind the doors of the homes of Archbishop Gregory Aymond, Tom and Gayle Benson, and others. Tour the residences of noted interior designers, including the renowned home of Sue Ellen and Joseph Canizaro. Historic traditions and modern memories live side by side in these lovingly dressed homes. Depicted in these elegant pages are private and public historic dwellings, overflowing with stunning decorations and personal touches. From English Turn to the Garden District, friends and family joyfully gather in homes embellished with garlands and family mementos. In this intimate exploration, hosts discuss their decorative styles, and professional interior designers show off their own personal masterpieces. Historic sites such as the Hermann-Grima House feature the Christmases of yesteryear. Along with beautiful photography, this work presents locals’ favorite holiday recipes and internationally lauded restaurants’ sumptuous offerings, which serve up a taste of a truly New Orleans Christmas.

& Saturday at 2 pm the Louisiana Music Factory, 421 Frenchman Street, hosts Thomas W. Jacobsen book signing:The New Orleans Jazz Scene 1970-2000. In 1966, journalist Charles Suhor wrote that New Orleans jazz was “ready for its new Golden Age.” Thomas W. Jacobsen’s The New Orleans Jazz Scene, 1970–2000 chronicles the resurgence of jazz music in the Crescent City in the years following Suhor’s prophetic claim. Jacobsen, a New Orleans resident and longtime jazz aficionado, offers a wide-ranging history of the New Orleans jazz renaissance in the last three decades of the twentieth century, weaving local musical developments into the larger context of the national jazz scene, Jacobsen vividly evokes the changing face of the New Orleans jazz world at the close of the twentieth century. Drawing from an array of personal experiences and his own exhaustive research, he discusses leading musicians and bands, both traditionalists and modernists, as well as major performance venues and festivals. The city’s musical infrastructure does not go overlooked, as Jacobsen delves into New Orleans’s music business, its jazz media, and the evolution of jazz edu-cation at public schools and universities. With a trove of more than seventy photographs of key players and performances, The New Orleans Jazz Scene, 1970–2000 offers a vibrant and fascinating portrait of the musical genre that defines New Orleans.

& Sunday from 1-3 pm Garden District Book Shop features Sidney Pulitzer’s Repair Washington: Practical Legislation for a Constitutional Convention. Recent polls prove that most Americans are frustrated with our Federal Government. Professional Career Politicians are in gridlock except for spending us into ever deeper debt. Higher taxes, complex regulation, and ever larger government have slowed national growth, and young people cannot find jobs. Constructive change is urgently needed. This book offers perfectly legal legislation consistent with Article V of our Constitution to call of a Constitutional Convention. When 34 states pass the law, the convention will offer amendments to improve how our government functions. Examples are two-term limits, shorter elections, control on political donations, ethics for public servants, budget discipline, tort reform, a press responsible for truth and respect for privacy, tougher law and order, greater freedom of religion, and more. Amendments cannot be ratified unless 38 states, three-quarters of the states, ratify each amendment. Unsound amendments will never be ratified. These changes will return citizen patriots to service in government and restore our freedoms. We will keep a balance between government and free enterprise, and preserve our freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

& Sunday brings In Search of the Living Dream: A Symposium on Harnessing Our Dreams for Healing, Creativity, and Community, from 2-7 pm at The Old Fire House, 720 Mandeville Street. In Search of the Living Dream is an all-day dream symposium focusing on how to harness our dreams to cultivate healing, creativity, and community. The low-cost community focused event will provide direct, practical information and tools on how to use your dreams to heal yourself as well as your relationships. Later in the afternoon, the talented and dynamic writers Rodger Kamenetz and Moira Crone will lead participants in writing workshops aimed at digging into deep wells of creativity housed in dreams. We’ll end the evening with a dream poetry throwdown featuring New Orleans poets Bill Lavender Laura Mullen, The Poetry Brothel, and more.

Join a dynamic group of dreamwork practitioners working with over 100 dreamers from around North America in a unique method of
Archetypal Dreamwork pioneered in Vermont over the last decade. Rodger Kamenetz, Sue Scavo, Bill St. Cyr, and Kezia Kamenetz have traveled and taught about dreams around the country and the world — to places like Johannesburg, South Africa, Esalen, Kripalu, and Sivananda Yoga Retreat in the Bahamas. This dynamic event will bring you dream teachings in unique and participatory ways. Participants can register for the individual workshops for $10/ea below or pay one price for the entire day. There is an early bird price of $20 all-day if you register below before October 15th, after the 15th and at door, $25. To register go to http://www.dreamitout.com/events-workshops.

& This Sunday at 3 p.m. The Maple Leaf Reading Series features an open mic. The Maple Leaf is the oldest continuous reading series in the south, founded by Everette Maddox. Poet Dennis Formento reads from and signs his new book, Cineplex. Poet Lola Haskins reads from her work (lolahaskins.com).

& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest. Watch Odd Words on Facebook and Google+ on Tuesdays for a complete list of her guests and features.

& Tuesday at 6 pm Octavia Books hosts two authors: Anny Bloch-Raymond, author of FROM THE BANKS OF THE RHINE TO THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI: The History of Jewish Immigrants and Their Individual Stories, and Carol Mills-Nichol, author of LOUISIANA’S JEWISH IMMIGRANTS FROM THE BAS-RHIN, ALSACE, FRANCE.

• With the large-scale immigration of Jews from diaspora communities, the Jewish population of the United States is the second largest in the world. You’ve most definitely heard about the Jewish communities in and near major cities such as New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. But did you know that one-fifth of the Jews who reached the US shores in the 19th and early 20th centuries settled in Louisiana? From France and Germany, they crossed the Atlantic Ocean to become peddlers, small shop-owners or sugar and tobacco traders in small towns along the Mississippi River. Jews they were, but Jews who invented a new and liberal Judaism that interacted with the Christian world which dominates the South. Whites they were, but Whites who had to fight for their civil rights (and their new country) and did not abide by segregation laws. Migrants they were, but migrants who let the good time roll and invented an authentic Creole kosher cuisine.Their history is written all over the South, here on street corners and on gravestones, there on synagogues and museums. But their legacy lives on: Anny Bloch-Raymond explored countless archival boxes and talked to dozens of families before beginning to write FROM THE BANKS OF THE RHINE TO THE BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI — a story and a history of Jewish life in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

In this her latest book, Carol Mills-Nichol has written about the French Jewish immigrants from the Bas-Rhin who settled in forty-nine of the sixty-four Louisiana parishes over the course of the last two centuries. She begins by explaining the special pitfalls of Jewish genealogical research, then goes on to show how to use both French and English on-line records in order to unlock the secrets of long-departed ancestors. Mills-Nichol includes four case studies as examples of how to tackle certain genealogical brick walls. While the novice researcher can expect to unlock many secrets from the past, there will also be many frustrations in store for him, many unanswered questions, and some details which may take years to uncover. Patience is the watchword for the competent genealogist. The remainder of the book is devoted to the study of over six hundred Jewish immigrants who left from places in the Bas-Rhin, Alsace, such as Strasbourg, Haguenau, Hoenheim, Harskirchen, Rothbach, Ingwiller, Schirrhoffen, Schliethal, and Oberlauterbach, to name just a few. Some unlucky souls never even completed the journey. They may have died of disease in European ports while awaiting passage, or perished at sea during the arduous voyage. Those lucky enough to arrive did not always settle in New Orleans. Many journeyed still farther inland to big towns such as Shreveport, Baton Rouge, Alexandria, Opelousas, Donaldsonville or smaller villages like Chackbay, Waterloo, Livonia, Mansura, Hohen Solms, Bunkie, Berwick, Big Cane, Bayou Goula, or Pointe-à-la-Hâche. Still others were employed as store keepers on plantations such as Azima, Belmont, Cinclare, Cora, Cote Blanche, Cypress Hall, Live Oak, and Tezcuco. While many of them prospered in Louisiana, others suffered unspeakable tragedies in their adopted homeland. Some were murdered. Others ended their own lives. A frightening number of them succumbed to cholera, typhoid, or yellow fever, many within a few years of their arrival. Whatever their story, the reader cannot help but be caught up in the drama of the existence of these immigrants who risked everything to start anew in Louisiana.

& Tuesday at 6 pm Garden District Book Shops hosts Kevin Fortuna and The Dunning Man: Stories. The six stories in The Dunning Man feature anti-heroes who reject society’s rules. Characters from all walks of life—a rogue hip-hop star, a blackjack dealing mom, a middle-aged drunk plowing through his inheritance, and an empty-nester housewife trying to make peace with the past. They each exist in the here and now, living for what’s possible and what’s left—not what they’ve left behind. Redemption awaits all, but only along the rutted, gut-churning path of honest self-examination. Set in Atlantic City, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., the Hudson Valley and Manhattan, Fortuna’s stories depict the violent clash between society’s expectations and the chaotic arc of individual destiny. These are powerful tales of truth seekers imbued with larger-than-life personalities and the all-consuming need to find something worth seeking.

& Tuesday at 7 pm a Children’s Author Panel – Ryan, Downing and Dartez will be featured at the East Jefferson Regional Library. Three children’s authors with new books will discuss and sign them. The authors are Ryan Adam, New Orleans Mother Goose; Johnette Downing, Macarooned on a Dessert Island; and Cecilia Casrill Dartez, L Is for Louisiana.

& Every Tuesday night get on the list to spit at the longest running spoken word venue in New Orleans at Sweet Lorraine’s Jazz Club hosted by African-American Shakespear. Doors open at 7pm and the Mic pops at 8pm. It is $5 to get in.

& Wednesday at the Latter Memorial Library A Book Club Named Desire meets. Adults meet to discuss a local classic every fourth Wednesday of the month at 6 pm. For more information, contact Toni at tlmccourt@hotmail.com.

& Wednesday at 6 pm Garden District Book Shop features Anne Byrn’s Saves the Day! Cookbook. A problem-solver extraordinaire, Anne Byrn knows what every too-busy cook knows. There are a gazillion recipes in the world, but the right recipe, the recipe that always works, the lifesaving recipe for when times are crazy—that’s priceless. Saves the Day! Cookbook presents 125 of these guaranteed tried-and-true recipes for every occasion. Whether they are Anne Byrn’s own family favorites or collected from her network of fans across the country, these go-to recipes include easy appetizers for a party or potluck—Bacon and Cheddar Torte, Stuffed Jalapen~o Peppers Witowski; mains to feed a family or a crowd, from fast-to-fix Shrimp and Cheese Grits to do-ahead, no-fuss Ina’s Sweet- and-Sour Brisket; salads perfect for entertaining the book club, including Grilled Tuna Salade Nicoise and Libby’s Avocado and Pink Grapefruit Salad; sides that please everyone; and desserts that don’t take a week to assemble, like Veronica’s Mocha Cake, Lemon Snow Pudding, Ella’s Easy Peach Pie.

& Room 220 presents Eli Horowitz Wednesday at 7 pm at the Press St. HQ (3718 St. Claude Ave.). He’ll be reading from his latest work, The Silent History. Maple Street Book Shop will be on-site to sell books. It begins as a statistical oddity: a spike in children born with acute speech delays. Physically normal in every way, these children never speak and do not respond to speech; they don’t learn to read, don’t learn to write. As the number of cases grows to an epidemic level, theories spread. Maybe it’s related to a popular antidepressant; maybe it’s environmental. Or maybe these children have special skills all their own. The Silent History unfolds in a series of brief testimonials from parents, teachers, friends, doctors, cult leaders, profiteers, and impostors (everyone except, of course, the children themselves), documenting the growth of the so-called silent community into an elusive, enigmatic force in itself—alluring to some, threatening to others. Both a bold storytelling experiment and a propulsive reading experience, Eli Horowitz, Matthew Derby, and Kevin Moffett’s The Silent History is at once thrilling, timely, and timeless. Eli Horowitz was the managing editor and then publisher of McSweeney’s. He is the co-author of The Clock Without a Face, a treasure-hunt mystery; Everything You Know Is Pong, an illustrated cultural history of Ping-Pong; and The New World, a collaboration with Chris Adrian, forthcoming from FSG.

& At 8 pm Wednesday it is Poetry & Music at BJs’ Blood Jet Series at BJ’s at 8 pm. This Wednesday features for our biggest night of poetry this season. Four visiting poets will take the stage to stir up the haunts: Frank Sherlock, Paige Taggart, Tracey McTague & Dara Wier.

• Tracey McTague lives up on Battle Hill in Brooklyn, down the street from where she was born and across the room from where her daughter was born. She is the ornithologist consigliere for Lungfull! Magazine by day. By night, she is a root doctor, alchemist and hunter-gatherer.
• Frank Sherlock is an American poet, and poet laureate of Philadelphia. He was a 2013 Pew Fellow in the Arts. He is the author of OVER HERE (Factory School) and a collaboration with CA Conrad entitled The City Real & Imagined (Factory School). His New Orleans collaboration with Brett Evans is entitled Ready-to-Eat Individual (Lavender Ink). He is a co-founder of PACE (Poet Activist Community Extension and a native Philadelphian.
• Paige Taggart is a Northern Californian and currently resides in Brooklyn. Want For Lion is her first full-length collection. Her second book Or Replica will be published by Brooklyn Arts Press. She is the author of 5 chapbooks: Last Difficult Gardens (Horse Less Press), DIGITAL MACRAMÉ (Poor Claudia) Polaroid Parade (Greying Ghost) and The Ice Poems (DoubleCross Press), and forthcoming I am Writing To You From Another Country; Translations of Henri Michaux (Greying Ghost Press). She earned her MFA from the New School and was a 2009 NYFA fellow. She works as a full-time jewelry production manager & additionally makes her own jewelry.
• Dara Wier is the author of nine collections of poetry. She teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The Harvard Review describes Wier’s poems this way, “many of Weir’s.stanzas draw a reader away from a recognizable world into one in which women waltz with bears, houseflies chat with colonels, and the absence of sound makes a material presence.” Her most recent book is Reverse Rapture (2005), published by Verse Press.

& Every Wednesday at 8 pm at the Neutral Ground Coffeehouse there is an hour-long open mic poetry night (or fiction night; whatever you want to read really!).