Where's Pa?

We're docked about 10 miles below New Orleans on the Mississippi River at the "sweet" town of Violet, LA.  Not much of a town, but the only restaurant in town boasts winning the Gumbo cook-off crown.  I've been there a couple of times, and the last time I had Wild Boar Gumbo which was sooooo good it gave my Puritan soul pause during this penitential season.  A lot of buildings on the walk there have spray-painted signs of either "bulldoze" or "no bulldoze." After all this time a reminder of Katrina.  I lived in this town (New Orleans, that is) many years ago and thought: "what better place to live than America's only real "Catholic City."  Well.... victim psychology gets you only so far.  Biloxi and the rest of the Gulf Coast has re-built.  But not the Big Easy.  However, I digress.  This is the land of Walker Percy, and to my poor tobacco stunted nose, it smells like a place any sane man could call home.  It was from here that I migrated to DC and met the redhead -- a worthy trade.  But then we ended up in Somers, CT :(  back in the liberal bastion I so loath.  To get a better understanding of this you could visit a new web site called "The Front Porch Republic" which extolls the value of localness and friends and tradition.  Somewhere in my mind this is why I intend to battle bravely to keep the homestead going until they carry me out feet-first (the best of all possible ways to "leave home.")  I think the financial "crisis" is God's way of telling us to get back to basics.  Anyway, the above are some pictures from my front porch.

And the redhead?  God bless her, she's sending plenty of crock-pot recipes. (I have a Yemenese sailor on board and yesterday he couldn't eat my pork dish, and today I couldn't eat his Yemenese beef dish.  But we understand each other).