I’ve followed horse racing since doing some work for a breeding consultant when I lived in New Mexico and have always wanted to be able to say that I saw a horse win the Triple Crown. Every year since then I’ve watched the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont and seen a number of horses come close to horse racings banner achievement. While I was alive the last time a horse won the Triple Crown, I was only two years old, so today’s opportunity to watch Big Brown, the most dominating thoroughbred race horse I’ve ever seen run, take his shot is an exciting one. I’m even missing the first few innings of LSU’s super regional game against UC-Irvine to see if Big Brown can repeat horse racing history. (more…)
Only a few days after the publication of the article that I linked to in my last post and Baton Rouge is facing a pretty big community art crisis. It’s a rather lengthy play-by-play, so I’ll just link to The Advocate’s article on the matter. Wgo had told me about the school board meeting and I had planned to attend but just ended up watching the meeting on public access. I turned off the proceedings before the vote on the matter, thinking that there was no way that anyone could argue with the substitute motion that was filed. Alas, it only garnered a 5-5 vote, and so the Baton Rouge school board has cleared the way for the demolition for a student-built sculpture that is listed on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s inventory of American sculptures. Culture Candy sent out a call to action, where Wgo summarized the issue as such:
Culture emerges from community; and the various artworks and attitudes that comprise culture sustain and inform the very context in which they arise. Authentic art arises from authentic community, and this art in turn models authenticity to the community. Education is one of the more conspicuous of the means by which culture is communicated and sustained; it is certainly the most conspicuous guardian of a community’s intellectual health, and in a healthy community, this intellectual well-being includes the arts and humanities.
And this is why citizens who recognize the central role of culture in a healthy community must take notice when its school board votes to destroy a public sculpture on the Smithsonian list of monuments, a sculpture built by its young people through the process of education, an artwork that has authentically arisen in the community through the very process of acculturate that community. This is more than deeply troubling. The system by which the Baton Rouge community is educated has chosen to authorize the destruction of one of the few public displays of arts in education in this town. This is pathological; this is an animal eating its own heart in an attempt at sustenance.
I’m not sure what can be done or who is going to do it, but take a look at the full Culture Candy email for their immediate suggestions (I’ve reposted it here it because their site is down right now). If education, art and community are something you value in Baton Rouge, be on the lookout for ways to help out with this. I’ll post more as I know it.
Many congratulations to BobbyP and MsXTC on the arrival of their first born! Joseph Walker (who at only 4 hours old has no online pseudo-name yet) arrived at 12:17 pm at 7lbs 3oz and 21 inches long at Women’s Hospital here in Baton Rouge. BobbyP reports that both mother and child are doing well and JW (I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to call him this until he’s old enough to tell me to stop) arrived with 10 fingers, 10 toes, and all other requisite male-oriented appendages.
Free time for A&W posting has been hard to come by recently, with a lot of time devoted to the doing of things and not enough time for reflecting upon them or even really catching my breath between them. In the last few weeks there have been trips to NO for both Wilco and St. Patrick’s Day, each excellent adventures, plus the first meeting of the Historically Curious Flavors & Pastimes Investigatory Committee (more on this to come as a regular A&W feature). Just this last weekend Maddie Potter and I had BobbyP, MsXTC, Wrestlerette and Wgo over for the first cookout since time changed. Over vegetable kabobs, hot sausage po-boys, galvanized buckets of ice cold beer and a fire on the deck we celebrated BobbyP’s birthday, he and MsXTC’s last weekend of living child-free and the arrival of the Vernal Equinox and Easter, all rolled into one. Through all that I’ve somehow knocked out over 20 hours of overtime (any web application in developers in the Red Stick area looking for work?). So yeah, things are jumping.
In that ever futile yet always waged battle against lost youth, I begin my 36 hours of Spring Break. As with last year’s mini-Spring Break to see Yo La Tengo at Tipitina’s, this year finds me on a trip to NOLA back to Tips, this time to see Wilco on the second night of their two night stand there. Maddie Potter and I are going to get down there early enough to wander up and down Magazine Street for a bit and hopefully the weather will be warm enough to enjoy a few pints on the balcony of The Balcony, just as I did the evening of the Wilco show at the State Palace Theater back in 2005 (that was the last live show I saw in NOLA before Katrina). After a night’s stay at the Prytania Park Hotel we’re hoping for a lazy lunch and meander up River Road back to Baton Rouge. SPRING BREAK!!!
The show is being streamed live from the Wilco website if you want to give a listen.
Along with most of the football following world I’d like to give a public thanks to quarterback Brett Favre, who announced his retirement from professional football today. I consider it one of my distinct pleasures as a football fan to have been around to watch him play the game and as a fellow Mississippian, it was a point of pride to share my home state with one of the greatest players in football. While the Saints are my first love in the NFL, the Packers have always been my second favorite with Favre at their helm. I even had a Packers Party during this year’s NFC Championship between the Packers and Giants, replete with brats and cheap Wisconsin beer, which turned out to be #4′s farewell game. Wright Thompson’s article on ESPN.com says a number of things that I can’t say any better about Brett, Mississippi, and the hole he’s left in many a football fan’s heart. It’s a good read. So thanks again, Brett, for all the memories. I wish you’d played one more year so I could have seen you play in the Dome this season, but the fun’s got to end sometime, I guess.
For someone who regularly grumbles at sunny weekdays observed through the prison bars of my office window that then give way to rainy weekends, I have to give ups to the Universe for dealing Baton Rouge two stellar weekends, weather-wise, in a row. Even two lines of storms passing through saw fit to do their dirty work late at night or in the wee hours of the morning on both Saturday and Sunday this last weekend, leaving dawn clear and cool and the days sunny and warm. (more…)
There’s little of import to report over here in Camp Ashes. A real, for true, honest-to-god, wet, grey winter has descended on the Red Stick, which has left me with the desire to do little more than make stews (an excellent turkey/potato affair was conjured over the weekend), drink dark beers (mad props to this death-defying wonder) and/or whiskey*, watch movies and read.
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