An Afternoon in NOLA City Park

Sometimes in the winter and often in the spring, I LOVE to take some time out and go to City Park (New Orleans) to chill amongst the beauty! 

I semi-regularly go to the walking track near the NOLA Museum of Art and actually exercise, but avoid it like the plague in summertime because it's approximately one billion degrees and a million percent humidity here. If that sounds like it's an exaggeration, it's not.....it's completely true.

                               

Anyway, before I moved to NOLA, apparently most of City Park was comprised of golf courses and while there has only been one in the almost ten years I've lived here, post-Katrina, they are now being re-developed. So, a giant swath of the park will no longer be the lovely, natural, and free area I've known it to be. 

                        

It always makes me so happy to drive through the Harrison Avenue cut-through and see people out playing with their dogs or kids. On some Tuesdays after my St. Paul's staff mtg and in my way to UNO, I stop and sit for a little while with my morning coffee. I haven't been able to in a while since I have lessons now on Tuesdays, but I do still steal some Friday afternoon time or weekend time to go and read in some of my favorite spots! 

                          

I've been soooooooooo happy over the years to see the lovely Spanish moss returning to the trees! Though I was a new resident after hurricane Katrina, I noticed its absence and it struck me as rather odd for this Savannah / sub-tropical climate area. 

City Park helps me relax. It gives me (and countless others) a place to be out "in the wild" without driving outside city limits and while being relatively (and arguably) safe because roads are nearby, it's reasonably populated, and one still probably has cell phone service. 

                       

I love the place. While it's exciting (and brings the city tons of revenue and glitz, I'm sad to have seen the start of rebuilding the golf courses. I have no idea how many of them they're planning to rebuild, but I surely hope there will be some of my favorite places left when it's all said and done!

PS. Two weeks ago, a whole field was covered in giant, beautiful thistle! 

                         

i thank You God for most this amazing

                                   I THANK YOU GOD FOR MOST THIS AMAZING

City Park, NOLA in March 2015

                                        i thank You God for most this amazing

                                        day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

                                        and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

                                        which is natural which is infinite which is yes

                                        (i who have died am alive again today,

                                        and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth

                                        day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

                                        great happening illimitably earth)

                                        how should tasting touching hearing seeing

                                        breathing any–lifted from the no

                                        of all nothing–human merely being

                                        doubt unimaginable You?

                                        (now the ears of my ears awake and

                                        now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

                                                                   -- e.e. cummings (1894-1962)
                                        #poetry #gratitude #thanks #Nature #nola #Episcopal

Poem found at: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2013/10/26 
And here is a GORGEOUS choral composition written by Eric Whitacre (b. 1970) sung by The Stanford Chamber Chorale and the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, under the direction of Stephen Layton. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMbSY7b0fuM

butterfly I saw at UNO on a pretty purple flowering bush

Thistle at NOLA City Park, March 2015

You Are the Peace

You are the peace of all things calm

You are the place to hide from harm

You are the light that shines in dark

You are the heart's eternal spark

You are the door that's open wide

You are the guest who waits inside

You are the stranger at the door

You are the calling of the poor

You are my Lord and with me still

You are my love, keep me from ill

You are the light, the truth, the way

You are my Saviour this very day.

Memorial Day Thoughts 2013

Every Memorial Day, I always think a lot about my Dad, Ashmead Courtenay Carson, who was a Bomber pilot in WWII, a fantastic artist, and a smart, kind, & gentle man who loved choral music. I also think about the day in context of humanity and those from all ages and across the planet who have given and are giving their time & lives for the pursuit of peace. This picture collage is made from my Innsbruck trip in 2010 when I visited the Italian Tyrol town of Rovereto. The Campana della pace is made from the cannons of WWI, WWII, and other wars. There are flags from EVERY country in the world and a continuing flame burning in remembrance to the fallen. It took me many hours to hike there: up two peaks and through a dense forest (without signage except that first sign), but it was one of the most "worth it" experiences of my whole trip.

Memorial Day Thoughts 2012

Christopher Columbus, after "Discovering America"

 "They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane..."

What have we done? To ourselves? To each other? To our planet?

I'm actually leaving out the rest of that quote. It is:

"They would make fine servants... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

This is an example of what civilizations have done worldwide since before the time of Ur, Uruk, and the Sumerians of Southern Mesopotamia. Take one look at these origins of what is now Iraq and you will see a peaceful marsh-dwelling people, full of respect for nature, dominated repeatedly by surrounding nomadic peoples for their prime fertile landscape. This 53 minute video link is a cool (though old) English documentary about the origins of this "cradle of civilization". There are several more in the series and they review other global cradles such as India, China, Egypt, and the Mayan civilization. I'm not sure how I feel about how it holds "The West" responsible for the total victory of liberal democracy or the end of civilization, but it's worth watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXohegE-lBY

Civilization meant a process of forming organized groups of people and living in these societies, working together. Theoretically, somewhere along the way, our success at having a stick turned into envy for a bigger, better, cooler-looking stick. This caused all sorts of problems. Later, we came to rank civilizations according to writing, progress in agriculture, transportation, trade, culture, knowledge, legal systems, metallurgy, astronomy, and more. How about peace?

The amazing choral piece below is called Raua Needmine (Curse Upon Iron) by the Estonian composer Veljo Tormis (one of the greatest Estonian composers). It takes text about the mythological birth of iron from the great Finnish epic, the Kalevala, and combines it with modern text. The Kalevipoeg is similar and considered to be the great Estonian epic. I first learned of this piece as a member of the University of South Carolina's Concert Choir, under the direction of Dr. Larry Wyatt. My experience with this piece is actually one of the reasons why I am in choral music today, though it's not one of my favorite pieces. As it happened, we were singing it and thought the text was in Finnish. We didn't have the translation yet so I went to the professor on campus who taught Finnish and asked him about it. I learned it was not Finnish, but Estonian and contained text from the great Finn and Estonian epics. My eyes widened. I looked up the Kalevala and with it and the professor, found the text from which this piece came. Casually, I mentioned this later when discussing choir and ended up proudly speaking about the text and the piece at the concert. As an undergraduate, having your professor say wonderful things about your initiative and sing your praises was awesome, plus......I learned a few things and felt smart! :-)

Anyway, back to the piece itself. It's rather scary......lots of curses and shouts and a single pounding drum that is ever-present. I believe that all of humanity's barbarian actions resulting in war since the beginning of civilization on our planet are fearful. Why curse iron? Did they curse rocks before that? How did tools and knowledge end up as weapons? The writer of the Kalevala text from so long ago was 'spot on' when he recognized that there should be an incantation to preserve the good nature of the creation of iron......although....if it weren't iron, it would be something else. Is the constancy of the drum's return a warning that we, as humanity, cannot escape our need to own, to defeat, to act and even create in aggression?

Without regarding religious texts, who was the first aggressor? Nature or nurture? There is argument on either side of that coin.

Are we surviving our own technological age?  

I have no answer, but this Memorial Day, I encourage myself to examine this, to remember the fallen in mankind's past from time immemorial, and to bear in mind those who have yet to lose their lives....and certainly will, while striving for the principles they and their countries hold true. I will think not just of individuals, but of societies in whole, who lost not only lives, but their very innocent existence under assimilation or eradication as a by-product of progress....

Raua Needmine  by Veljo Tormis, arranged by Tauno Aints, published by FennicaGerman
From new CD "From the Baltic Coast", State Choir of Latvija, conductor Māris Sirmais

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huQ_OcKwGwASee More

Ohoy, villain! Wretched iron!
Wretched iron! Cursed bog ore!
... You flesh-eater, Gnaver of bones!
You spiller of innocent blood!

Wicked, how did you get power?
Tell how you become so naughty!
Damn you, bastard! Wretched iron!
I know your birth, you purblind fool,
I know well your source, you evil!

Once there walked three nature spirits,
three fiery daughters of the sky.
They milked their swelling breasts to earth,
They squeezed their milk into the fens.

From the first maid spurted black milk,
this turned into soft wrought iron.
White milk squirted the second maid,
this was the source of tempered steel.
The third maid spouted blood-red milk,
This gave birth to bog iron ore.

I know your birth, you purblind fool,
I know well your source, you evil!
Then you were not high and mighty,
not yet mighty, not yet haughty,
when you moaned in the white-hot furnace,
Whined under baeting hammers.

Saliva was brought from a viper,
venom from a black snake!
For iron wouldn’t harbor evil
Without saliva from snakes.

Shelter us, supreme Creator!
Keep us safe, God Almighty!
So the mankind would not perish,
mother’s child vanish without trace.

This link has another textual version and more of the story of iron and other metals.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/kveng/kvrune09.htm

and here is the entire epic, translated by John Martin Crawford, 1888
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/kveng/