The things you learn through the Tweeter Tube...

I have to wonder if the rappers who sampled the Miami Boys Choir have any understanding of the particular music they're rhyming over...

Eshet Chayil - A Woman of Valor

An accomplished woman, who can find? Her value is far beyond pearls.
Her husband's heart relies on her and he shall lack no fortune.
She does him good and not evil, all the days of her life.
She seeks wool and flax, and works with her hands willingly.
She is like the merchant ships, she brings her bread from afar.
She arises while it is still night, and gives food to her household and a portion to her maidservants.
She plans for a field, and buys it. With the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.
She girds her loins in strength, and makes her arms strong.
She knows that her merchandise is good. Her candle does not go out at night.
She sets her hands to the distaff, and holds the spindle in her hands.
She extends her hands to the poor, and reaches out her hand to the needy.
She fears not for her household because of snow, because her whole household is warmly dressed.
She makes covers for herself, her clothing is fine linen and purple.
Her husband is known at the gates, when he sits among the elders of the land.
She makes a cloak and sells it, and she delivers aprons to the merchant.
Strength and honor are her clothing, she smiles at the future.
She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the lesson of kindness is on her tongue.
She watches over the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children rise and praise her, her husband lauds her.
Many women have done worthily, but you surpass them all.
Charm is deceptive and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears God shall be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.

I kinda doubt they know, but it's still nice to have stumbled across this.

Update, 3:53 PM: According to a commenter here, the sample is actually from this album. Ah, 1976 - old school Jewish kiddie soul.

So nice that Joseph Cao voted for "life" and against his party lines.

Even more lovely is the list of 65 Democrats who decided to add the amendment Cao supported with that yea vote...and they have all redrawn the lines of health care reform over women's reproductive rights:

The Stupak Amendment goes far beyond the abusive Hyde Amendment, which has denied federal funding of abortion since 1976. The Stupak Amendment, if incorporated into the final version of health insurance reform legislation, will:

• Prevent women receiving tax subsidies from using their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;
• Prevent women participating in the public health insurance exchange, administered by private insurance companies, from using 100 percent of their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;
• Prevent low-income women from accessing abortion entirely, in many cases.

Let's hear it for - after all these years and bogus "year of the Woman" declarations - a still male-dominated Congress willing to kick potentially over half the national population to the curb. Cao doesn't deserve to be flamed by members of his own party like he has been for not toeing the GOP line, but he and the Democrats who voted for "life" - like Louisiana's own Charlie Melancon, who, after voting yea on Stupak, voted nay on HCR altogether - are symptomatic of a couple of things: women still have to carefully watch the decisions that are being made inside the Beltway, and party designations don't necessarily mean what they used to mean anymore...so keep following the money. Insurance companies and the right-wing are still behind the wheel on all of this.

Yes, reform needed to happen, and it isn't perfect, but damn.

Update, 12:43 PM: Coozan Pat asks in the comments:

Am I missing something on the Stupak amendment? Is there a whole lot of Federal medical subsidy money currently available to women of any socio-economic bracket to use in cases of elective pregnancy termination?

Because if there is, and the Stupak amendment represents any type of change from the current status quo, that would be news to me.

To clarify, from me:

Yeah, you're right. Traditionally, it HAS been a case of "Oh, you have the RIGHT to an abortion, but only if YOU are the one paying for it."

(note: according to this link, "Private insurers will have to drop abortion coverage from plans that have it (which is most of them) in order to participate in the exchanges. The Public Option will not provide abortion coverage. People will get access to affordable health care, but they'll have to pay out of pocket for an abortion. If people want to move to a plan on the exchange, they'll lose the coverage that they currently have.")

I just get miffed at this kind of thing happening over and over again just to get Congressional reps and senators off the fences on these issues: the stimulus package's scales were tipped to get more liberals voting for it when mental health parity was added, and now these further limits on abortion funding are added to get folks of a conservative bent to help kick HCR into gear.

And, historically speaking, the response of the women's organizations to Roe vs Wade is looking more like a resting on one little scrap of lucid judgment concerning women's rights rather than taking advantage of a spark for real change and running with it. We're going on near 40 years of this crap and I'm getting tired of it, is all.

Anudder update, 6:33 PM: Dangerblond says: Patrick, read this....and you should, too.

1. It effectively bans coverage for most abortions from all public and private health plans in the Exchange: In addition to prohibiting direct government funding for abortion, it also prohibits public money from being spent on any plan that covers abortion even if paid for entirely with private premiums. Therefore, no plan that covers abortion services can operate in the Exchange unless its subscribers can afford to pay 100% of their premiums with no assistance from government "affordability credits." As the vast majority of Americans in the Exchange will need to use some of these credits, it is highly unlikely any plan will want to offer abortion coverage (unless they decide to use it as a convenient proxy to discriminate against low- and moderate-income Americans who tend to have more health care needs and incur higher costs).

2. It includes only extremely narrow exceptions: Plans in the Exchange can only cover abortions in the case of rape or incest or "where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death." Given insurance companies’ dexterity in denying claims, we can predict what they’ll do with that language. Cases that are excluded: where the health but not the life of the woman is threatened by the pregnancy, severe fetal abnormalities, mental illness or anguish that will lead to suicide or self-harm, and the numerous other reasons women need to have an abortion.

3. It allows for a useless abortion "rider": Stupak and his allies claim his Amendment doesn’t ban abortion from the Exchange because it allows plans to offer and women to purchase extra, stand-alone insurance known as a rider to cover abortion services. Hopefully the irony of this is immediately apparent: Stupak wants women to plan for a completely unexpected event.

4. It allows for discrimination against abortion providers: Previously, the health care bill included an evenhanded provision that prohibited discrimination against any health care provider or facility "because of its willingness or unwillingness to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions." Now, it only protects those who are unwilling to provide such services.

Women are simply vessels for babies when it comes to their health care is all this amounts to.

I wouldn't be surprised at this point if the reintroduction of mandatory drafting into the armed forces came up as bills in Congress. Take our children, while you're at it, representatives and senators. You might as well.

One mo' time, 11-10: Coozan has more. And, once again, he is right.

Oh, somebody STOP me, 11-12: Found through the Tweeter Tube, Digby's response to Stupak:

I have a moral objection to paying for any kind of erectile dysfunction medicine in the new health reform bill and I think men who want to use it should just pay for it out of pocket. After all, I won't ever need such a pill. And anyway, it's no biggie. Just because most of them can get it under their insurance today doesn't mean they shouldn't have it stripped from their coverage in the future because of my moral objections. (I don't think there's even been a Supreme Court ruling making wood a constitutional right. I might be wrong about that.)

Many of the men who are prescribed this medication are on Medicare, so I think it should be stripped out of that coverage as well. And unlike the payments for abortion, which actually lower overall medical costs (pregnancy obviously costs much, much more) banning tax dollars from covering any kind of Viagra would result in a substantial savings...

...I realize that many people disagree with my moral objections to men getting erections which God clearly doesn't want them to get, but my principles on this are more important to me than theirs are to them. So too bad. If you want a boner, pay for it yourself.

Incidentally, one of my favorite prescription conflicts ever was one described to me by my husband. He told me of an elderly friend of his, now deceased, who had a prescription for Viagra, but who couldn't actually ever ingest it because it would mess with the effects of another medication he was taking. Nice. Very nice.

FINALLY, the comic that ought to make the term "Fujita-style" commonplace is online here. Just in time for the Saints to create the world's most incredibly pleasantly surprised emoticon.

I got a call at Edie's, where we now go to watch most of the games, and it was promptly dropped in the cellular black hole that takes the form of Edie's kitchen. Seeing it was my parents that called, I moved out of the kitchen and in sight of the TV and called back.

"Hey, there's that hurricane out there..."
"Yeah, Ida, Mom."
"What's the word where you are?"
"Well, it's a category 2, we're on the edge of the cone...andOH IS HE IN? HEEEY THEY MADE IT! WE'RE GONNA BE TIED, BABYoh, sorry Mom, we're at Edie's watching the game."
"Uh-huh, I see."
"The most they've forecast is some winds and rain for us, but it's not gonna comeHEY THERE'S THE EXTRA POINT HERE THEY COMEover here."
Mom sighing a little "You know you can come over here if you need to evacuate."
"Oh, I know, Mom. But boy, I'll tell you, the Superdome is packed full of people watching this game. It's not coming here, and we'll just batten down whatever hatches may need it."
"Okay, then, we'll let you get back to your game."
"Talk with you later, Mom. Love you, buh-bye."

Really, I know I should be more concerned, as they just called in my son's school closing tomorrow in anticipation of some stormy weather...but hey, 8-0!!!!

I saw this in a snazzy display in the local bookstore and couldn't resist venting to the bookstore employees over the sad irony of the sticker on the front proclaiming a free Gourmet subscription offer to the purchaser of the cookbook...especially after I'd seen the aftermath of Conde Nast's decision. Run and get that copy of Gourmet Today before they go into a second printing that will, no doubt, contain a new forward by Ruth Reichl complete with an atmosphere of sackcloth and ashes....but boy, those chocolate hazelnut cookies you bake will be divine, I'm sure.

Been reading about Dubai. It's fascinating, but I don't want to drive there. Really, I'd rather be dodging traffic on Manhattan's Central Park West.

Please give G some love. Send some good vibes out to all those who just applied to get their kids into what are still the better public schools here as well. It's all still one giant clusterfook 'round here. I wish I could give parents and teachers more hope in this area, I do.

Dan turned 38 today. He's planning a trip this summer for the family to head to Bialystok to check out some ancestral roots. Granted, when I think of Bialystok and Poland, I think of at least four things:

• What great and terrible things happened to my people there.
• Bialys. Good, tasty hot bialys.
• Bialystock and Bloom.
• The song that closed Poland.

Happy birthday to my travelin' man.

______________________

What I have had on the brain for most of this week, however, are musings on the power of words.

One man used his words to try to cover his lack of deeds, and, though there was some food for thought in his criticisms of New Orleans, his actions spoke much louder. Don't go calling the former Setback Czar a carpetbagger, though, as, once one looks back on the true meaning of the term, the nature of it opens the critic himself to criticism as well as a big picture of how the meanings of words can get bent, twisted, and obscured over time to the point where one is left thinking My God, I never knew that, but you know, I was educated that it meant this.

That thought really doesn't mean too much in the scheme of things. My father had to confront an educated woman and fellow scientist when he gave a scientific seminar in Europe a few years back on her still-held erroneous belief that Jewish people used the blood of Christian children in baking Passover matzah - because her father taught her. About the craziest thing I've ever heard of involving the actions of Jewish people was when Shabbetai Zvi, the self-proclaimed seventeenth-century messiah, married himself to a Torah scroll...but we don't do blood libel. Hell, I can't stand the sight of my own blood being taken, or of anyone else's being taken, thanks. But I digress.

Words. Obscuring, illuminating, insane words, perfect for criticism in all directions and for excuses...like the ones Greg Meffert did his best to throw in the direction of our local daily purveyor of words to try to mask his actions. Thankfully, the feds aren't buying it - they are throwing a bookcase or two of indictments at Meffert, his wife, and Mark St. Pierre, for bilking us all out of money meant to serve the city's technological needs in order to line their pockets and enjoy perks such as trips abroad or trips to local adult entertainment clubs. Cue my favorite look of shock here. No amount of pretty words can save the man now...they can, at the most, get him a reduced sentence.

Sentence - ha! Could be a group of words structured to form meaning, or a grouping of years spent in jail. The tangled webs we weave with these letters of the alphabet we have at our disposal.

Finally, I just finished reading Dave Cullen's amazing work Columbine, which showed me how absolutely wrong I was - and how wrong we all were - about the whys of the massacre there. Cullen doesn't mince words over what we ought to be doing regarding the latest shooting at Fort Hood: reserve judgment until more of the facts are known, something that, in this age of multiple news outlets rolling out pundits for every miniscule aspect of our lives, we could all use more of:

If we have learned anything from these tragedies, is that we won't get a firm handle on why for weeks, months, or even years. At this distance from Oklahoma City, we were convinced it was the work of Arabs or Muslims, and what was the difference between those two anyway? The Columbine killers' journals---far and away the most revealing evidence---were released in 2006, more than seven years after the murders....

...If we guess now, the myths will be with us forever. Ten years after Columbine, most of the public still believes it was about jocks, Goths, and the Trench Coat Mafia. No, no, and no. It wasn't even intended primarily as a school shooting: the failed bombs were supposed to be the main event. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not loners, outcasts, or misfits, nor were most of the school shooters. Most shooters do not fit the profile we have come to accept, because no accurate profile exists.

The whole thing is here. And that rush to judge "why" Cullen cautions against would have been quite useful when the events of 8-29-05 came 'round here.

It makes one wonder at times if words mean a damn thing. Are they contributing to the apathy and numbness of some about the news? Perhaps the right words might be better, if we could only find them. The search can seem akin to ferreting out needles in haystacks. Why even bother? All that anguish could well breed only more anguish and misunderstanding, or outright contempt and hate.

Well, sometimes a little inspiration comes down the pike when you least expect it.

I was in Amsterdam and I just stumbled into the Jewish museum. (Charlotte)Salomon's work - the paintings and the text that make up this book - was on display there. There was something about the line of suicides in her family - her grandmother, aunt and mother all took their own lives - and the idea of inescapable fate that drew me in. Since I've become a father I've become very aware of the things that are handed down on purpose and by accident. And I'm interested in what can be resisted. I have a bad habit, for example, of being anti-confrontational. I know why I have it - we can usually trace these things to historical and familial trauma. Part of being a parent is the opportunity to correct these things. I admire Salomon for resisting her fate so forcefully through her art. Sorrowfully, the Nazis captured her not long after she made these paintings and she was killed at Auschwitz. The conflict is: How can art redeem or correct? Sometimes it can't. And yet we keep doing it.

Tim says it best.

Get your adventuresome self over to the Bridge Lounge anyway, even if you haven't preregistered...because it is a FREE event, at the very least.

Jon Gruden, when he's not being a schmo on ESPN, was actually a mouthpiece for these mouthpieces during the Saints-Falcons game Monday:

The company, Makkar Advantage, is keeping details somewhat secretive, but we do know the the inventor of the PPM's, Dr. Anil Makkar, has been in New Orleans this weekend and has been in contact with Dr. Moreau regarding the details of our work with the Saints. Dr. Makkar was also meeting with Monday Night Football Analyst John Gruden to fit him for a PPM....

The mouthguards can be easily ID'd by the distinctive oval shaped "PPM" logo on the front of them. Most are either black or gold, a few are clear (usually for the lower teeth), and one notable exception was the crimson colored one I suggested for my fellow Alabama alum, Roman Harper.

What's the big whoop about these mouthpieces?

Through the science of neuromuscular dentistry, we use precise technology to help the jaw relax and find the natural bite that is most comfortable and relaxed. When the jaw is in a happy place, this frees up the channels for full communication along the spinal cord and to the brain without the nagging interruptions and signals coming from those significant nerves and muscles around the lower part of the face and jaw. The brain is free to signal equally to heart, lungs, and other organs, and it brings proper alignment throughout the core, leading to greater strength, flexibility and balance.

This seems pretty simplistic, but has been proven to result in improved overall strength, conditioning and performance for athletes. The PPM orthotic mouthguard holds the wearer's bite in the position that has been scientifically determined to be the happiest place for their teeth and jaws to rest and relax. A simple pen test, when placed in the mouth to simulate a neuromuscular position, can instantly demonstrate to a person the kind of difference a PPM mouthguard can make.

Frankly, I'd be a bit suspicious of having one Dr. Moreau wiring me up with electrodes, but hey, I'm not the one who's got the 7-0 record on my shoulders - or in my jaw, for that matter.

Big thanks to brenyb for the dentistry links.

I'll reserve my Saints' socks post for a later date...

Maitri mused recently on the fundamental interconnectedness of all things relating to power, oppression, and prejudice after a trip to Dachau, and I left my rant at the feet of her post.

Of course, Lord David's most recent experiences in an ongoing battle of confronting the abuses of power occurring in his own neighborhood by those who are supposed to serve and protect could also have been included in that response. And he's not alone....any police department that allows its officers to pull their weapons on citizenry that don't deserve it at highly inappropriate times (and shame on those who term it a "prank" - cruel intimidation is what it is) is one that certainly needs a major attitude adjustment. I mean, yes, this kind of thing happens in many other places, too... but the reforms the NOPD has supposedly had in place since Richard Pennington was chief seem to be torn and frayed in this city of hurt. We need help from the police, not help from the police, if you know what I mean.

Speaking of interconnectedness, a group of folks who went on a tour of Israel a few months ago spoke of their travels at our synagogue last night, complete with a slide show afterwards. One fellow kvetched a little about the seeming rudeness of Israelis, which Dan (as a visitor of Israel himself who didn't agree with that assessment at all) immediately confronted him about afterwards and found it to be a part of a stereotype held by the man that included New Yorkers and Chicagoans as rude as well just because they didn't say hello to you on the street without any provocation. The same man also admitted his thought that the new wall that was being built on the Green Line surrounding the West Bank probably contributed a great deal to the tour group's feelings of security while they were in Israel...an admission that greatly saddened me, as that Wall is simply another terrible prop in an ongoing war of occupation and brutality on both sides that both Israelis and Palestinians are tiring of but cannot seem to stop.

One of the things I saw more than a few pictures of in the slide show, however, were the loads of feral cats that inhabit Jerusalem and many other places in Israel... (confession: I've had cats on the brain lately, as my oldest cat - my chubby, green-eyed, dark gray, black-striped tabby cat - has gone missing from our house in the past week. I've been trying to hunt her down and hunt down recent pictures of her to post to no avail. If anyone has seen her around the LGD, please bring her home, as she's not really an outdoor cat)...many of them starving and just barely getting by.

If one were to go by the interconnectedness of all things, I guess we'd take a good look at how societies treat their animals. Even though kindness to animals is a tenet of the Torah, it takes a gifted writer such as Haim Watzmann to examine one Jerusalem family's response to a mother of kittens and the comments of caring people to make the link between the treatment of animals and the treatment of people:

Eventually, I figured it out. The dysfunctional relationship of israelis with their cat (and to a lesser degree) dog population but one symptom of a population in moral decline. The image of the emaciated Hagar desperately trying to feed her brood at whatever temporary spot of warmth she finds – only to be banished because of, you know, the neighbours – is the picture of creeping decadence. The cats may be hungry as they are allowed to multuply without bound, and feed around garbage dumps, but it’s the people’s soul that’s decaying.

The picture Haim put up of Hagar’s pathetic face says all it needs to. I think he must know……

We all know.

But what we choose to acknowledge and act upon is key.

It is all intimately linked.

Oh, and speaking of kids...and "gimme my money back!" moments...

Soupy Sales passed away last week. He gained notoriety for his New Year's show, when, in a fit of pique at having to work on a holiday, he discovered the true power of television:



Shel Silverstein's Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book played around with that a few years earlier:

...but Soupy, in saying that on television, got considerably more mileage and money out of it, money he promptly donated to charity.

Hope you're enjoying "Puerto Rico", Soupy...or wherever you may have ended up.

Thank you, Disney, for making the ultimate admission that Baby Einstein videos are absolute crap by offering this refund for their return.

The better move for most parents would have been not to go near those products in the first place.

Granted, I'm not that immune to all the bells and whistles, myself. I did purchase two things labeled "Baby Einstein", one of them a board book and another a CD collection of classical music for the infant set that was on sale at BJ's Wholesale Club. The CD collection was boring as hell, to the point where the little guy was nearly begging me to put the James Brown back on. The board book got lost in a sea of other board books we owned that were better, and the Baby Einstein one could never surpass the board book version of Margaret Wise Brown's My World, which wasn't even her best, but held the little guy's attention enough for him to carry it everywhere and for us to have worn out three copies of it.

My aunt, after having babysat for him once shortly after I purchased My World, told me I needed to return My World right away to the bookstore, as it was badly written and didn't seem to be doing much for the kid. One memorable night at Lafitte's Landing with the little guy in his high chair and our friends all around a great big table, however, told me different: he turned to a page on which the bunny family was sharing a meal around a big table with their friends and kept looking up and back down to the book to compare what was around him with the picture.

My World helped him connect with what he saw every day. Baby Einstein products, not so much.

And really, it wasn't the idiotic videos that aggravated me so much. I just didn't buy them, just like we made the decision not to purchase $900 strollers or Dolce & Gabbana for infants, as we knew the little guy would grow out of 'em almost as soon as we passed our credit card over to the salesperson. What got me more than freaked was seeing the apartment of a mother of a year-old child that was full of electronic toys, all of them requiring batteries in order to function and nearly all of them being of the Baby Einstein brand.

It was consumerism run rampant. It was a brand name using its supposed research-tested clout to put something over on new parents who were so lacking in confidence of their own parenting skills, so frightened of what it was going to take for their youngsters to get by in a brave new post 9-11 world, so in need of keeping up with the Mommy and Daddy Joneses that they were going to blow some serious bucks on something that would make their kids the best of the best and allow the parents to do the housework and hold down a career in the bargain. God forbid you were not one of those families that wanted to give your kid the best. That would be tantamount to being in the same sad basket with at best, the people who shouldn't have had kids in the first place, and, at worst, in with some sort of 21st century child abuser.

I also made it a point, and still make it a point, not to associate with people who think that way...because the best isn't necessarily the stuff that costs beaucoup bucks.

Parenthood is a crazy time, especially when we all seem to have bought the whole idea of the nuclear family in which both parents work and juggle the child care (though that is still kind of uneven by gender - moms still do more than dads in the child care realm) and one's own parents and grandparents are no longer the ones we consult about what to do when a problem arises with one's own child - or, if we do consult them, their advice doesn't hold as much sway over the parenting decisions we make as it once might have. Still and all, I was wary of jumping on the Baby Einstein bandwagon because I knew, deep down, there were other ways of nurturing the little guy than plunking him in front of a screen full of hand puppets and transforming and pulsating shapes and colors. And we really had little use for toys that had us buying stock in Duracell, since most of those toys were little more than glorified noisemakers.

If the whole debacle over Baby Einstein ought to have taught parents anything, it's that of buyer beware, especially in an age where adding "baby" or "infant" to products from furniture to safety locks and outlet covers (oh, don't get me started on THAT) to sheets and toys is enough to make us parents hand over our wallets in good faith that what we purchase is always going to be good for our kids.

Gather up those videos and get your money back, parents. Then let your kids bang on the pots and pans while you cook, and, later on, read some good children's books to them that don't have a brand name anywhere near them. Dance a little to "I Feel Good" and have some fun with your young 'uns....because good, honest play will teach them more than some video ever will.

via this link on the Tweeter Tube.

I'd love to link to Greg Peters' latest Suspect Device comic in this week's Gambit, too, about "the boys in uniform", but it's not up yet.

Hell, neither is all of this week's Gambit. Ummm, hello over there...latest issue online, Gambit HQ? I'll just have to make obscure references to being married "Fujita style" all by my lonesome, I guess.

Update, 6:37 PM: Gambit's latest is now up, with one of the highlights in this week's issue being the interview with Angus Lind. Love to figure out the contents of that notorious column of Lind's that was referred to in the interview...

Someone please tell me why I now get so het up when these lists come out.

A while back, when I was starting out college and the cheapest - not to mention one of the longest - ways to travel home was by train, then an hour and a half drive to my parents in Middle-O'-The-State, PA, my mom lucked into a place on the outskirts of Harrisburg that had opened up in what had once been a Popeye's. She walked into the Smokey Pig and beheld a sight she hadn't seen in a couple of decades: a large spit over a fire behind the counter slowly cooking some of the best barbecue she'd tasted outside of Georgia. The smell of the sauces used won her over as well, and she was a woman on a mission from that point on.

Grabbing a pile of their menus, she made it her business to expand their business, even though she knew it was a bit much for most people who lived in MOTS to schlep all the way to some godforsaken industrial byway an hour and a half south of their town just for barbecue. Nobody thought that way in Pennsylvania, a state where most ingredients for pizza have died before they have even crossed the state line - and putting them together to make an edible pie is beyond anyone's ken. Haute cuisine? Didn't exist where my parents were.

I like to think our visits to the Smokey Pig every time my family came to get me from the train station helped sustain the place for just a little while, even though I know location doomed it from the start and our visits there to get our fill of Georgia pit 'cue and some quarts of their sauce were very infrequent. Mom was just so driven to make sure the place stayed alive, she sucked us all into her task. It was disappointing to hear that the place had shut its doors and doused its fires only a few short years after Mom discovered it.

I see lists of the happening places in New Orleans, however, intending to drive adventurous folks through those places' doors, and I cringe inwardly.

I know one reason for this is that, with some exceptions, it's a tad easier for good places to be found, to sustain a loyal clientele, and to even thrive here. We appreciate good food, good company, and are willing to support it in this town. It's gold, y'all, gold.

What also helps bring in the gold here, though, is the tourism. The economy hasn't diversified enough to where local crowds alone can keep things going, and, in the reality of the restaurant business, local crowds can't do it alone. Same goes for most bars. But there are some watering holes that are just special, that I have a soft spot for, that I like just the way they are without the turista infusion. There are some that will keep their character and resist the ways of the fern bar serving up the latest trendy mojitotiniac fizz no matter what, and I raise a glass or three to them, but there are some that are walking a fine line between the ferns and the funk. What will their tipping point be, and how many locals will be displaced as a result?

With restaurants and other eating places, this kind of thing can be sad, sure. My husband informed me of a double whammy in NYC when he went up there on business in the past week: our favorite Israeli grill in Queens and our divine bagel place in Brooklyn are no more. The former closed due to personnel problems, the latter due to lofty plans to convert the building The Bagel Guys and many other businesses were in to condos - plans that didn't pan out when the bottom fell out of the economy, but still left a vacant building in the wake of the recession. We shook our heads over those casualties and wondered what would be left to visit when we returned to say hi to friends we once lived closer to. We can still say hi to our friends, sure, but not over a great bagel or some kick-butt kibby. Sigh.

But the bars? What is it about publicizing the bars that gets me feeling uneasy?

On the one hand, bars can be sleazy dens of iniquity in which one's paycheck can succumb entirely to the impulse to drown one's sorrows and the pains of everyday life that are too tough to bear when one is fully sober. I'd have a soft spot for the bars where I blew a great deal of dough in my misspent youth if it weren't for the fact that I was simply marking time there by draining glasses of alcohol before I had to return to the glass studio to feed a hungry furnace its nightly diet of broken shards of cullet. I don't remember much about the places where I drank aside from some details revolving 'round playing bad pool, doing my best imitation of Lady Day when "T'ain't Nobody's Business If I Do" came up on the jukebox, and catching some occasional food specials with the drinks when I was ravenously hungry - all of which could have happened in ANY bar, not just the one I went to.

Then again, there are the places I went to to check out some great live music; the spot that served me up too many Long Island Iced Teas the night before I got married; the places where I got together with good friends over some good brew, got pleasantly buzzed, and even had some friendly banter going with the fellow behind the bar; the places that seemed to have friends I'd never met 'til that night they'd just emerged from the woodwork; the places where I wasn't going to be annoyed by loads of guys hitting on me, and, if there was the off chance that someone coming in was gonna try it anyway, that they'd be getting the message from the regulars soon enough - the list goes on and on. These moments can happen at any bar, to be sure, but with me, they have happened most frequently at the bars in this city I call home.

It's something that people don't understand until they come here and have been here for much longer than a weekend jaunt...and it is something that Julia Reed does touch on in her article accompanying the Conde Nast Traveler Bar Tour:

After over a decade in the far more intense urban confines of Washington and New York, I found these brief lunches (at Napoleon House) in the upper reaches of the French Quarter a joy, a perfect example of what Walker Percy identified as the city's "peculiar virtue... a talent for everyday life rather than the heroic deed." New Orleans, he wrote, "has nurtured a great many people who live tolerably, like to talk and eat, manage generally to be civil and at the same time mind their own business." He added that if a person were to fall ill on the streets of Manhattan, folks would grumble about the inconvenience of stepping around a body. In New Orleans, on the other hand, it is still likely that "somebody will drag you into the neighborhood bar and pay the innkeeper for a shot of Early Times." They will, in other words, take care of you in the same way as Girod had hoped to nurture the down-on-his-luck Napoleon, by giving him a safe haven and a restorative pick-me-up. (boldface mine)

Shortly after this terrible event occurred at Pal's, I told a visitor to this city about how much many of the local bars resemble localized community centers in these parts. What gets my goat is when the places that really are off the beaten path get messed with a little. The average bar 'round here isn't just a place to sit your butt down and drink - although, if that's all you wanna do, nobody's gonna stop you unless you cause a ruckus that disturbs everyone else in the place. You can get some good, restorative help for the soul from some of the best local pubs...and I tend to be a little suspect of someone using the CN Traveler as a high-class insider guide to soaking up an atmosphere from such places. In fact, I kind of hope such people do walk into places like the Dungeon or the Mayfair and are so overwhelmed by the atmosphere in those places that it kicks 'em right back out onto the street. Could well teach 'em a lesson.

In a nutshell (that everyone coulda just scrolled down to check out at the conclusion of this post, I guess), I get weary of these bar recommendations because bars in so, so many ways are like people - there are so many of them that aren't for everyone that walks through their doors....and, in truth, they shouldn't be trying so hard to be all things to all people. A bar is a bar is a bar in that each one is serving up a more or less similar menu of alcoholic beverages, but the tone of each bar is set by its owner(s), its tender(s), and its people, all of which make for a delicate balance of camaraderie with an edge.

Word of mouth amongst the barflies is a good thing, as it keeps things in that balance.

Words in a glossy magazine with slick pictures of hipsters ( or in an article online with a snazzy slideshow) - well, the jury's still out....and the bars will be on their own there.

Gotta love it. Ya just gotta.

More on this from Rob Walker at NO Notes, aka, the virtual St James Infirmary HQ.