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This weekend, New Orleans hosted the Tennessee Williams Festival and several of my friends were panelist and moderators, and a fellow blogger was covering the festival, which is now in its 28th year. In the past, I’ve always gotten my festival pass as soon as they were available but this year, sign of the times, I was cherry picking which panels to attend. I went to a panel moderated by a friend on memoir writing as one of my books in gestation includes a memoir. It was interesting to see four white women on the panel and hear the subject of race featured so prominently. Turns out one of the women’s father is African American and the other woman of color is Argentinian and grew up in a small town in Alabama during the Civil Rights era. The true memoir was Blake Bailey’s The Splendid Things We Planned, which is a harrowing account of his very disturbed brother’s collision with his family. A friend is lending me the book all the while telling me it is very disturbing. Oh, I can’t wait to read it.

The other panel I attended featured another friend – a woman I had hired as a reporter at OTR Global when the bottom was dropping (read: one of the many times a change in direction, reorg, panic, and mayhem had ensued). She wrote a book about the Times Picayune, Hell or High Water, that is a must read for anyone interested in the newspaper industry and also the overarching theme of how corporations grow so out of touch with the people who work there that they implode [sound familiar?].

She invited me to join her at a cocktail party, where I sashayed into the courtyard of the New Orleans Historic Collection and an attractive woman said to me, “I like your look” – this woman turned out to be Naomi Wolf, here with her son on her first visit to New Orleans.

I had seen Naomi speak when The Beauty Myth came out, in the early 90s and here she was, not looking worse for wear, telling me she liked my look. Banner day, I thought. Naomi was visiting New Orleans for the first time, which I thought odd, how could someone who had gone abroad for school never traveled to New Orleans – one of the most interesting cities in the United States?

Naomi followed us down to Le Petit Theater’s newly remodeled playhouse to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and I thought, well, maybe Naomi’s never been here because here – in New Orleans – celebrating the playwrite, Tennessee Williams’ life, at an eponymous festival – here we sit in our sad little excuse for a theater after one of New Orleans preeminent restauranteur families, the Brennan’s gutted the larger theater to put in a restaurant – making the case to the city and planning department that they were the ones with the white hats – saving the theater from itself – turning the smaller theater in back into the real Le Petit Theater. Sad, is all I have to say, very sad.

Since Naomi lives in New York – why would she come to New Orleans? Is there any reason to leave a place where theaters overflow?

I was late to the festival panels on Saturday because of Stella who chose to get up at an ungodly hour – we continue to be in puppy triage around here – and afterwards, Saturday evening, I went out dancing to celebrate a friend’s 40th birthday party. We started at Delachaise for cosmos, Sex in the City style, then headed to dance with DJ Soul Sister at the HiHo – much later, we wound up on Frenchman Street where everyone and their mother was visiting – tourists – it’s a hate and love thing with these out of towners – everywhere I looked were tourists – Frenchman has become Bourbon Street for real.

Que lastima!

The weekend ended with my spirit group meeting at my house again – our question this month was What is God? – weighty subject but it’s a question everyone should be able to answer.

In the afternoon, I walked down the bayou to a fantastic party at a friend’s. They had catered both low country and southwestern cuisine in honor of where their children’s new spouses hail from – and it was a lovely day all the way around – so much so that I missed the Stella and Stanley calling contest in Jackson Square which ends the festival. I sat on my friend’s veranda enjoying the beautiful weather and thinking about how it is 40 degrees in New York, and no one there lives in houses that have French doors opening out to a garden which is nearly in full bloom in March – so that is a reason to come visit New Orleans, that is what seduced Tennessee Williams here, into the romantic and intoxicating ether of New Orleans – and that is why I am here.

We live our narratives down South as Eudora Welty was want to say.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 23rd, 2014 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.