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9:43 p.m. - 2003-05-12
What I did on my summer vacation.
I just finally got back from driving around and around South Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Florida. Ya'll think I'm kidding right? I'm not kidding. I think we covered about 1800 miles in two days.

And surprisingly, I have nothing fun or witty to say about it. It was the weirdest trip, because it was supposed to be fun, (even though it was technically business for Bruce) but it turned out to be one of those intensely soul searching times when a lot of "Personal Growth" happens. Which is great for the soul, but makes for incredibly boring reading.

So let me bore you! Sure! You know you want to be bored!

Basically, I spent the whole time wondering how I came to be so lucky, and whether I really deserve all the things I have. Am I a good person? Am I helping the world?

It started because when we got to Dauphin Island I realised that I am starting to recognise the stray cats. This is a good sign, because it means the population is stable (I haven't been there since December) and they aren't looking any skinnier, and people are obviously feeding them. But it still depressed me. I felt like there are just so many stray animals (and heck, stray people, too) and there seems like only so much I can do. And suddenly all the animal rescues I've done didn't even seem to amount to a drop in the ocean.

It really bothered me. I felt like I should sell everything I own and donate it all to charities and turn our house into an animal shelter like my mom basically did with our house when I was young. I really felt like a useless, selfish, human being.

Are you bored yet? You know you are!!

Bruce had his meeting on Friday morning, and Friday afternoon we went to Biloxi to the George E. Ohr museum. You don't know who George E. Ohr is? Oh, you must do a search on Google!! He was the Mad Potter of Biloxi! And I have loved him for years and years! So I was anxious to see this little museum dedicated to his work.

And it was very lovely, with staff who are so enthusiastic about George Ohr. They talk about him as though he were a wonderful and eccentric friend, even though he has been dead for years. And when I bought a few things at the gift shop the man who checked me out gave me a keychain as a "lagniappe" (a New Orleans expression: something added on as a gift) because I was such a George Ohr lover.

It was so very sweet. And once again it caught me wondering if I deserved this sweet gesture. The museum doesn't have a lot of money, and I felt so ambivalent about taking even a free keychain. Yet the man was so excited to give it to me, how could I ever say no?

It's a fabulous keychain. It's in the shape of a mustache (George Ohr had an insanely long mustache) and says "The Mad Potter of Biloxi" on it.

The next day Bruce did some fish identification work and then on the spur of the moment we decided to go to New Orleans. It's my favorite city in the world, and I haven't been there for ages.

It was a mistake to go. It really depressed me. And once again I was left with this feeling that I have soooooo much and I hardly deserve it.

New Orleans is so haunting. And it's full of incredibly fascinating old decrepit architecture and ghosts and hoodoo and banana trees and the riotous chaos of the French Market and the mystic Mississippi winding through. It has the most alluring charm.

It also has the starkest poverty I have ever seen. And everytime I go I'm shaken by this. There are people so poor that even if you gave them a million dollars they would still be poor, because it's in their very souls to be poor. I think they were born and bred to be poor.

And they are living in these falling down drop dead gorgeous buildings. At one time, when they were young, both the buildings and the people must have been beautiful. But now they are all wasting away...

Sigh. Enough florid prose. We stayed just long enough to buy a dress in the French Market, have a pastry at La Madeleine, light a candle in the Cathedral (and why have they no kneelers, I must ask?) and go pay a visit tto St. Louis Cemetary #1 to thank Marie Laveau for granting me the favor I asked last time I was there.

Yeah, I said the Cemetary. Marie is dead. It's a long story.


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