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If I could I would sing and possibly, even though I always wanted to sing like Jessye Norman, I might want to sing a song like Li Saumet from Bomba Estereo because Fuego has that right sort of beat, impatience, and youthful energy that lordy I wish I still had. But last night we went to see a different sort of music and that is instrumental and honestly, I have to sing the praises of Astral Project just one more time – the way Steve Masakowski plays the guitar, it sounds like some other instrument – it’s really incredible. We’ve heard parents all around the globe send their children to study guitar with him. Johnny V on drums and OMG, you cannot take your eyes off of James Singleton as he moves up and down and all around that bass (someone asked me at Jazz Fest why his bass was so dark and turns out it is a fluke). World class is all I can say – that we can claim them as our own, makes New Orleans an epicenter, that I can claim him as a neighbor, lucky me.

Yesterday was my 51st revolution around the sun and I pinned a dollar bill on my chest as is the custom here. I only received one more dollar unlike last year when, chi ching, I racked up (so to speak). But this year, the money was actually pinned on the ErgoBaby, on a flap so no one would poke Tin, and everybody (from out of town of course) kept stopping to tell me my money was falling out of my pouch.

But money is a form of currency that means something to other people, yesterday before the Fest, a few neighbors and friends stopped by to raise a glass of champagne with me and have an ice cream sandwich and carrot cake from Sucre and who could put a price on being surrounded by people you love singing you happy birthday?

For everything else there is Mastercard.

We closed out Jazz Fest in the Blues Tent listening to B.B. King. Need I say more? Well, okay I will. When Jazz Fest starts, the police pull up a mobile unit on the bayou at the foot of Grand Route St. John, and for some reason that symbolizes the beginning of Jazz Fest. This year, I took Tin every day and it certainly changed the way I experience the Fest but all in all I have to say we passed us a good time.

B.B. King is 84 years old. Is that possible? I mean the guy is a legend in his own time. We parked ourselves in the Blues Tent because we knew that if we didn’t, we’d never see him. That meant that we sat next to mostly the same people all the way through Luther Kent – who I thought was great too – as Tin slept and we both sweated it out – to B.B. King. The asshole sitting next to me who started out as Mr. Personable ended up drinking too much, hitting on me the whole time obnoxiously and almost making me miss seeing the legend. But I digress – one asshole in a group of 100K does not a bad experience make.

Imagine that there were close to 100K people at Jazz Fest just on Sunday – I really don’t know the final count – actually it was probably closer to that on Saturday when the weather was nicer and in the misty rain of Sunday, a much easier crowd to handle. But isn’t it a testament to good food and good music that that many people can be jammed together in one place and hardly any skirmishes ensue?

But now that it is over, I got the blues, not as good as B.B. King sings them, but the thrill is definitely gone and it is a whole other year till the next Jazz Fest. No more dancing gypsy girl, no more fly swatter dancing guy, no more Quint riding around on a cart, no more crawfish bread, gospel tent, crafts galore, Indian drummers and fry bread, jama jama and plantains, rosemint tea, wearing my fest hat, wearing my muddy sandals, walking and walking and walking, interviews with legends on the Allison Miner stage, checking the JF schedule nine million times, smiling nonstop, grooving to music that is as eclectic as a Martinique band in the middle of an antique carousel to Jose Feliciano on the Gentilly stage.

Goodbye Jazz Fest – till next year.

There is a myth here in New Orleans that adoption is taboo. I hear the African American community disdains the notion of adoption because it signifies a breakdown in the safety net. Generally, someone in the family will care for the child is the thinking and if not, then what does that say about your family. Try to shove that into the country’s notion of the African American family unit.

Recall the woman sitting with me at Jazz Fest who told me to just say I had Tin rather than say he was adopted. The stigma.

What is the stigma of adoption, isn’t every birth fraught with its own nagging questions of why am I here? To which I say, you are exactly where you are supposed to be, no matter how things may seem to appear.

I stood in line at the carousel for a second time and a mother and daughter approached me with the young girl oohing and aahing over Tin. She said to me, “I always wanted an African American child.” She was hardly 10 years old and I looked at her mother and her mother shook her head as if to say, “Go figure, but it’s true.” The little girl said, “I just love their hair.” And I said because it is curly? And she said, “No because it is like this,” as she pointed to Tin’s nappy curly hair. She said, “You are so lucky to have him,” and I laughed and said yeah, I know. One day you will have your own, I’m sure. Ha.

Then sitting outside the gospel tent listening to Aaron Neville sing Down by the Riverside, I was letting Tin run around and a young girl came up and said to me, “Is he adopted?” And I said yes. And she asked, “From Haiti?” And I said no, Gary, Indiana. And she said, “I want to tell you that I think adoption is a great thing.” She was no more than 8, and her skin was darker than Tin’s. And I said, “Thank you honey, I think it is great too.”

Then when I was walking into Jazz Fest and thinking about all the people we would see there, I wondered about the first birth mother we entered an agreement with and her daughter who we were going to name Elle. We spent months together, going to the doctor every few weeks, getting ultra sounds together. I remember those moments, as we both watched the little girl on the monitor and me hoping she was mine, but wondering what the mother was feeling, and just feeling a sense of awe and unease tangled up in my gut.

A month before the little girl was due, the birth mother changed her mind. Or maybe it had happened earlier and I was listening to the woman when she said she was still pro adoption, but wasn’t listening to the other cues, that she and her children had named the little girl, or that she was taking grief from everyone in her life about what she was fixing to do. When she told me she couldn’t take being the asshole anymore, all I heard was a door closing, slamming – I felt physically ill and had to hang up the phone.

But I thought about her now and her daughter as I was carrying Tin strapped to my chest into the Fairgrounds – it’s glaringly obvious from a big picture perspective why that adoption failed (read: waiting for Tin); but also I thought to myself that honestly I think adoption is very complex and I think we as people have created the stigma because of our own mythology. I think this birth mother was not ready to start all over again having been a teenage mother, I think her pregnancy was unexpected, I think she really did want to have her child adopted by parents who would love and care for her, and I think that she was chastised by her clan, including her children, for making that choice and at the end of the day she chose to keep her baby. It was hard to be that close to a birth mother, who started out as a stranger, and to go through a pregnancy from two months to almost eight months with her and not be raw and aware of everything that she was experiencing, and I was experiencing, while holding out hope that she would let us adopt her child. Very complicated indeed.

Walking to Jazz Fest yesterday, T said guess who text me? The mother had text her, out of the blue, and wanted to know if we had adopted a baby and that she was hoping we were doing okay. Her baby is cutting her front teeth. Tin has four teeth coming in at the same time. We’re going to meet soon and introduce our children.

What I hope is that when Tin moves towards his own self-actualization he will understand all the complexities of his narrative and will have the courage to make his own world as an adult.

Facebook has been very annoying to me for a long time because people I never hear from always want to Facebook me, but never call or just simply email. So I have to log onto Facebook to respond. Plus I keep a blog, so I don’t want to update Facebook with anything of import because I spend my free time keeping my blog updated with stuff of import.

A friend told me that her identity was hijacked by a hacker on Facebook and it made me think I wanted to just get off of it. So today when a message to someone was inadvertently picked up by someone else, I decided to deactivate my Facebook account. Yee ha! Free at last.

Good riddance Facebook.

Some colleagues were telling me that they are watching Treme and although they had maybe some of the same, albeit for them minor criticisms thus far, they had both been devotees of the Wire and were going to stick with it because the Wire had taken a while to come together. However, one of them said New Orleans is perhaps the most unique city in the world. And on that there is no doubt.

We spent the entire day at Jazz Fest and let me speak highly here of the Ergobaby – with its head flap, Tin was able to take two long naps as the flap provides a magic blanket environment and takes the stimuli away. We saw Kent Jordan in the Jazz Tent, then Big Al Carson in the Blues Tent, then we went to hear Astral Project and although I was prepared to sit for the entire show, Tin was restless and wanting to run. The guy who sat next to me was a doll and said that he owned a liquor store in Colorado and when Tin grows up, he can come run it for him. Ha!

Then we happened upon the Fleur de Ladies Brass Band and that was a sight to behold – the one and only ladies brass band to play at Jazz Fest. They were lots of fun and closed with of all things – Valerie, which they dubbed Ba aa by.

Then we caught the subdudes as we found a spot in back of Gentilly on the grass where we sat down and Tin took a nap and then I too took a nap as Jose Feliciano took the stage and did a cover of Purple Haze.

Then we headed back for our Martinique fix to the Chouval Bwa of Martinique – the Creole Carousel. Made of wood, operated manually, and accompanied by a live orchestra. I got a guy to take a movie of Tin and I riding it, and you can see his girlfriend who is riding waving in the beginning. It is foot powered and once the guy gets going the carousel and the music really pick up speed!

In a bathroom interlude we caught Kristin Diable at the Lagniappe and two songs of Elvis Perkins in Dearland – both worth a stop. We headed back to Gentilly to hear Gypsy Kings but then I realized I had left my backpack at the carousel, so we just heard one song and had to leave. Aretha Frankin cancelled because of the oil spill, citing that the potential chemicals in the air might affect her voice, and so Earth Wind and Fire were kind enough to take her place – if you have been following my blog or were at Jazz Fest last year, you know they were terrific. So we ended up stopping to dance one song with them.

In the end, a fabulous day – the sky was overcast and so it was good weather and Tin ate crawfish bisque from Dizzy’s, and crawfish bread from Panorama. Can’t beat it with a stick.

The Gulf was what made New Orleans important to the people of the United States who didn’t think New Orleans matters – forget culture, music, food, lifestyle – having a port the size of New Orleans kept it spinning. And yet, hurricanes, oil spills, and eroding wetlands are also our lot.

Here is an article in ProPublica stating BP should have known better. In the NYT this morning it was that the federal government should have acted faster. Yesterday, heading into Jazz Fest a petitioner wanted us to sign a petition against Shell Oil Company for the oil spill. Well, while everyone sits around and tries to find out who is to blame for this – Louisiana’s natural habitats are in peril – our birds, our fish, our waters, our plants, our people. At this point does it matter who is to blame? It matters more that they do something about it, fast.