Tennessee Pastoral

After a hiatus of a few years (since the dot-Com bomb), The Golden Gryphon is once again a going concern – or, at least, has a license to consult and do software design and development for various and sundry members of the general public. I had to assure the licensing folks that no heavy equipment would be in use, and the neighbors were unlikely to be disturbed by the din of business being conducted on the premises, but it is now a done deal, and we have a business account associated with the enterprise.

Judy had to go down to New Orleans for a conference, and I decided to go along, as the Hotel, like most of them in this day and age, promised broadband access. We flew in a day early (my first trip on SouthWest airlines), grabbed a cab to the Hotel (the , which may rate an entry of its very own), and spent the afternoon re-acquainting ourselves with the French Quarter, starting with stuffed crepes at the Palace cafe. We then found a new-for-us used book store to spend a rainy afternoon at, discovering old favorites and the kind of obscure, old, out of print books that you can never find at amazon, and which can only be seen at the olde booke shoppes around the world.

To me, New Orleans is about food. Come to think of it, lots of fun things in life are anchored around food . And this time around in the big easy, we got to sample a new restaurant – , where the chef (Kevin) leads a class of cooking the meal that you are about to eat, all the while regaling the crowd with quips, history, cooking tips, and local color. It was a great performance, both of culinary skill and a stand up routine, drawing the audience in while preparing a stupendous meal – and I have learned how to make Bananas Foster and Pecan pralines.

While Judy was busy at the conference, I worked through the morning, then went walking, soaking in the soul of the big easy, visiting old friends like Jackson Square, the Bakery down exchange alley, the Ursuline convent. On Sunday, Judy and I continued revisiting old acquaintances – Beignets for breakfast on Royale – and making new ones, discovering another used bookstore, going up and down the river in a paddle boat to the .