I LOVE OCTOBER!

Yes, I am THAT person. That person who LOVES OCTOBER...(and that person who has a personal blog...and uses it for all manner of things silly, academic, travel, and to tout the marvels of OCTOBER.) It has to be my favorite month and for a number of reasons. I love when Autumn actually arrives and sets in and while it doesn't come until late October or even November in my home of New Orleans, here atop the beautiful "holy mountain" in Sewanee - it sure is stunning! The smell of leaves, obvious big drops in temperature, and
crisp and fresh air all mark a solid Fall. Sewanee fog is also beautiful...like living in a cloud. New Orleans fog is pretty too. Here are two of my favorite New Orleans October fog photos from the park across from where I used to live on Frenchmen Street. 
(Believe it or not, these are iPhone photos.)

I also love October because of Halloween and I love wearing my silly socks. I've got this Edgar Allen Poe lunchbox that I bought ten years ago in NOLA and it's hilarious so I use it during October and OF COURSE I wear it with my "Poe family" t-shirt :-) I have several Halloween shirts with bats or cats. I am the person that buys the chocolate eyeballs to give to everyone! If you know me and are nearby, you will likely hear just about every Halloween pun that exists :-)

I love pumpkin spice and though it's available in September nowadays, I get it more in October. I also love sugar free instant apple cider, sitting on the porch enjoying cool weather, walks or hikes in the woods, colorful leaves, and college football - 
GO USC GAMECOCKS! 

Sometimes, I get somewhere where there's a nice bonfire or smell wood smoke as I'm walking. The days are getting shorter more rapidly and it always reminds me of the good parts of my childhood when it was exciting to have shorter/darker days, walking to school, Halloween costumes, fall festivals, the SC State Fair (one of my favorite memories), apples, popcorn, and toasted pumpkin seeds. It IS always crunch time academically and a super busy month, but it feels great! 

For me, October always brings to the forefront a juxtaposition of an acute sense of the brevity of life (paralleling seasonal cycles) and the happy urgency of scurrying to finish tasks or the celebratory defiance of evening activities outside under brilliant lights before the coming seasonal cold and slumbersome stillness.

Transcendence on a Misty Evening

As soon as I walked out of the hospital, I could feel it and so I chose to walk slowly, savoring every moment. My whole 0.7 mile walk to the subway station this evening was a mystical and transcendent thin place. It's chilly, misting droplets filling the air, and the twilight fading into the night. The softness of the air. The hum of a streetlight. The hint of the idea of an Autumn out of place. The sounds of children playing. The smells of dinners. The oddity of civic fireflies that flickered over green garbage cans and brownstones. A multitude of languages, cars whooshing by, bells on shop doors dinging the way in or the way out, music of all sorts coming from a distance down every street, the smell of fresh laundry, and an occasional breeze in the trees. I'm so grateful to have moments like this! Moments of satisfying joy, a twinge of sadness, a breath of excitement - Moments that fill me with inexplicable longing, yet fill me with this transitory life itself. I walked from the past, through the present, and touched the future tonight. Thanks be to God.

(Photo via google, but it grasps the feelings I had).

How is it MARCH 2017 already?!

OF COURSE all my blogging plans went out the window during exam week and then again during the rest of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany! Here I go again, starting up after the hiatus. :-)

Photo by Caroline Carson, November, 2016

Exams - difficult, but we made it through and my first semester of seminary is in the books!
Advent & Christmas in NOLA - FANTASTIC! I conducted a NOLA Civic Symphony concert, saw tons of friends, sang at St. Paul's, Christ Church Cathedral, and Immaculate Conception Jesuit Church. 
Travel - Choral performance tour with Larry Wyatt & COLA VOCE to Israel. From there, I used airline miles and hotel points to explore Egypt.
Spring semester - It's started well and while only one paper has been turned in, it's about to get CRAZY with something big due each week from now til the end of the spring. 
OTHER - It's Lent so I'll be writing about my personal disciplines in the next few days.

To Nap or Not to Nap... (After 16 days at Seminary)

View of storm from the Cumberland Plateau

Today's one of those Saturdays where I would have loved to sleep in. In fact, I truly need to catch up on sleep because now that seminary orientation, Quiet Day, Matriculation, and the first week of classes have all come and gone, I am a bit sleep-deprived. Last night featured lots of fun and new friends together for a fun community cookout and big birthday party too!

All Saints Chapel in Sewanee

Nevertheless, it was not to be. My new neighbor's music was loud and constant from 6 AM onward. So, by 8 AM, I had decided to leave and drive to Manchester, TN to explore a bit and pick up a few more necessary items at the Walmart there. 

                               

I found a couple of farmer's markets while there and bought a few things: muscadines from a nice man playing the autoharp, honey & lip balm from a local beekeeper, and lemon bread & a peach fritter from a nice grandmother .

St. Bede's Episcopal Church in Manchester, TN

I found the local Episcopal church, St. Bede's, and decided that I'll attend there tomorrow morning! After exploring the town and finishing errands, I cam on back and straightened up the apartment, fixed my sink drain, sprayed some more for bugs and spiders (I have a feeling this is going to be VERY regular up here!) and dozed a bit after starting the crock pot on a delicious roast for later. 

I'm loving being here! Everyone is so nice and our 2019 class is full of super smart folks. The choir has begun and the director, Kenneth Miller, is outstanding, both as organist and rehearsal technician. It's going to be great to sing for him. I'm really very happy about that as I was worried that I'd be picking apart every choral thing and feeling like I'd want to jump up and fix things. Those feelings will surely arise every now and then, but I'm happy that Professor Miller is excellent :-)

I also love all my other professors. EVERYONE is BRILLIANT. Wow. It is truly and deeply humbling. I'm a bit worried about getting behind already because the vocabulary and amount of assumed knowledge and reading history is MUCH higher than I expected. I bought a book on an "Introduction to Theology" and will be buying a dictionary so I can try to catch up behind the scenes on some of the basics which every one else seems to have already. There are more than a few students in my class who majored in Philosophy or Classics and they all are very well-read. Even though I have a D.M.A. degree, the learning curve is STEEP right now.

Chapel of the Apostles, Sewanee School of Theology

Chapel services are plentiful and well-arranged. Sermons have been terrific and thought-provoking. I've gotten to read and be a chalice bearer once in a noonday Eucharist and that was both exciting and a little scary since the community is new to me and everyone is both listening and watching intently!

Fontastic....

I have two work study positions and they are:
1- sing in the choir! (YAY!)
2- social media and photography! (YAY!)
Here are some albums I've taken already:
1- Seminary's Quiet Day and Matriculation 2016 (none from during the service from me)
2- Jonathan Myrick Daniels Pilgrimage 2016

Last night, a fellow student's suggestion (Garrett Boyte) of raising funds for Episcopal Relief and Development to be given for Louisiana flooding was realized in the weekly community cookout. My rector in NOLA at St. Paul's Episcopal asked his friend Jude Tauzin from Tony Chachere's if they could donate anything and they sent a GIANT box of spices, jambalaya mix, and koozy's. 

                                       

Garrett made a ton of delicious jambalaya, another student in my class, Forbes Mann, made tasty boudin balls, and I made chocolate walnut pralines! Over $1500 was raised because lots of folks came out, the seminary's St. Luke's Mission committee agreed to match raised funds up to $500, and the Dean got us to the level we needed to have them match! It was a great success!

It HAS been busy indeed. It's hard for me to fathom that I've only been here since the evening of August 11th! Only 16 days and SO MUCH HAS BEEN GOING ON!
Please keep me, my fellow classmates, and our tremendous faculty and staff in your prayers! 

A beautiful misty Sewanee morning

5 1/2 Reasons Why I've Lived on "The Border of the Quarter"

Tons of people ask me about my apartment. Mostly, they want to know why I live in (almost) the French Quarter and why I put up with no parking and no washer/dryer and the lack of w/d connections. So, I've been thinking about that lately as I prepare to move to Tennessee and attend the Sewanee School of Theology for my MDiv (as a postulant for priesthood in the Episcopal Church!!!!!) When I moved from Milledgeville, GA to take the position of Director of Choral Activities at The University of New Orleans, I was looking for an apartment during the immediate recovery from the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. 

At least 80% of the housing in the whole area had been destroyed completely or enough to where it was not fit to live in. I remember it took me three different trips down here to explore housing options and check out apartment possibilities. On the third trek, my friend Kate came with me and we both called every number we saw outside of houses offering space and investigated every ad in the paper and online. It was extremely DIFFICULT to find something (AND that accepted pets). The apartment I finally took was in Metairie, tiny, and VERY expensive ($750 per month - compared to what I was paying in Georgia). My job was a one-year visiting position so I figured that after a fun year of FINALLY finishing my doctorate, I'd probably be leaving for another job somewhere. As it turned out, I "woke up" in the spring, a freshly-minted doctorate holder, and realized "Whoa, I live in New Orleans!!!". By then, the university offered me another year and so I found myself wanting to really live in New Orleans proper. I found a terrific apartment on Esplanade Avenue, the border of the Quarter, technically The Marigny neighborhood, and lived there for five years. Then, I moved again, but stayed in the same basic neighborhood. 
There are tons of reasons why I love living in this area, but here are the five that stick out the most to me!

1. Close, but not too close...

Photo by Caroline Carson. 

According to the Myers-Briggs, I'm a borderline introvert/extrovert and as many times as I've taken it, that's been the case. I love to be on my terms when it comes to entering the action or not. I'm there, but I'm not there (just like the woman above, she is outside the scene behind her, yet she IS part of the scene.) I like hearing the nightly brass bands down the street. I live on Frenchmen Street so that's just about every night. Drum circles at 3:00 AM, I don't love that so much. Hearing parades begin to pass by....well, I can choose whether or not to run outside and watch it on our front porch or to simply know it's happening and continue reading my book. Usually, I choose to run out and wave and watch until everything passes by! People, I love them, but it's nice to be able to choose how much of your dosage of tourists to administer :-)  If I feel like walking to where the action is, it's super easy. New Orleans makes it easy and the French Quarter especially. One block can be crazy active and loud while the next block can be quiet and serene.

2. The Art

Photo by Caroline Carson

I love art and have always been surrounded by it. My walls in home and offices are covered with artwork. My father was an excellent painter and a graphic artist as well as a superb photographer. My brother is a fantastic artist as well and I have some of both their pieces on my walls! I LOVE photography and even though I don't know very much about it, I know I have a decent eye. I feel closer to my father when traveling and taking pictures. On the scale of fantasticness, the palette that the French Quarter provides is beyond description. Everywhere you go, you see visual art and artists: performance art, the architecture, sketches, painters, crafts, scuptures, etc. 

3. The Music

iPhone photo by Caroline Carson

I'm a musician so this one for me is obvious. I don't go out to jazz clubs often, but I truly appreciate living here when I want to do that - or to take visiting friends out. I've been known to show up at Irvin Mayfield's Jazz Playhouse, Snug Harbor, or The Spotted Cat. 
St. Louis Cathedral also hosts plenty of classical concerts as do some of the smaller churches every now and then. Festivals are all over my area all the time. I like hearing live music wherever I am in the Quarter. Being on the edge of the Quarter, one can also hear all sorts of morning birds. I get to hear the steam calliope on the Steamboat Natchez play when the wind is just right, church bells from several places on Sunday mornings, and fog horns from large ships in the middle of a Fall night. I do enjoy a good thunderstorm too - and all areas of New Orleans are great for that. ALL of it is the music of life.

4. The Crazy

Photo by Caroline Carson

Hmmm....this sort of goes without explanation, but where else can you ride home and see a skeleton on a bike with a cat and a boombox in its basket? Perhaps a mime and a statue man having tea on a streetcorner? What about dogs dressed up in costumes for the Mystic Krewe of Barkus parade? People with amazing and in-your-face personality who could care less what you think of it! Folks of similar reputation as Ruthie the Duck Lady. Almost daily on my street, I see a man dressed in tux and tails with top hat and glasses with 3-d crazy eyes. He doesn't ever speak, but he'll nod sometimes. In April I saw a man wearing a bumblebee outfit riding a bike and singing at the top of his lungs. I would have taken a photo, but I was driving and he vanished around the corner. It didn't really faze me. I just assumed it for was for some New Orleans Allergy Festival. Hey, that COULD ACTUALLY BE A THING HERE! Just think of the Benadryl-flavored snoballs, the pollen-fried chicken... I digress.
Bumblebee Man was completely and happily in his own world.
Every. day.
Really though, the people that live here are just people. Also, they'll speak to you. Just about everyone says hello, smiles, or nods in greeting. They also dance....a lot. :-)

5. Feels sort of like Europe and reminds me of my beloved Charleston 

So, this one is a big one. The French Quarter is not the pure essence of New Orleans, but in my opinion, it sure does capture a huge percentage of that.
Cobbled or old brick walkways, small and colorful cottages, the market, the history, the restaurants, the pedestrian nature of the whole area - these things not only remind me of my beloved Charleston, SC., but they remind me of walking in Europe. I am mostly pedestrian when I visit other places and especially when I travel overseas. There is a very European feel to the French Quarter, and not just French and Spanish quality. One can hear any number of languages walking into the Quarter, tourists are everywhere, music is calling you from a seemingly infinite number of places, as are the street performers. There's always food or art being sold all around the area and there's a general air of excited energy. 
I love, love, LOVE the riverfront and watching boats and ships pass along. Sometimes, I've gone to pick up some cafe & beignets on a weekend morning or a daquiri on a weekday evening and just sat on a bench at the river. In addition to my little picnic days or walks in City Park (which I ADORE!), I will also occasionally sit in Woldenburg Park and eat a half sandwich and read a bit.

5 1/2. THE FOG

Photo by Caroline Carson. Christmas morning fog on Esplanade Avenue, 2007.

HA! I'm halfway kidding.....the fog is everywhere in the city, but I have enjoyed photographing it in my neighborhood.

Fog in Washington Square Park. Photo by Caroline Carson

Frenchmen Street Fog at Washington Square Park. Photo by Caroline Carson

So, I'll miss my border-of-the-Quarter residence when I'm gone, but I hope to return many times and maybe even live nearby again!

NOLA Fog, February 1, 2016

Some lovely fog this morning on Frenchmen Street. 
I tried to catch some, but I MIST....
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
#OldestJokeEver #StillHilarious  :-)
I walked across the street to Washington Square and snapped a few photos. Then, on my drive to UNO, I decided to go a few more blocks up to Lake Pontchartrain and back through the main entrance of campus. They're just iPhone photos (and copied from my own FB post so LOW quality), but enjoy!