Fleur-de-Lee

"Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?" In a very New Orleans state of mind today, for a variety of reasons.

Read a terrific article by Chris Rose in the Times-Picayune HERE which discusses the meaning of the fleur-de-lis and has some great quotes including:

it was 1879 when the newspaper columnist Lafcadio Hearn took note of New Orleans' chronic states of decay, insolvency, lawlessness and prurience, yet still proclaimed: "It is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio."

and a reader posted a comment quoting The Master:

"In America, there is New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland."

- Mark Twain

Also, coincidentally, received a mass email about a music event that ended with this quote:

[from an] editorial from the July 20, 1918 New Orleans Times-Picayune:

"Why is jass music, and therefore, the jass band? As well ask why is the dime novel or the grease-dripping doughnut. All are manifestations of a low streak in man's tastes that has not yet come out in civilization's wash. Indeed, one might go further, and say that jass music is the indecent story syncopated and counter-pointed... On certain natures, sound loud and meaningless has an exciting, almost an intoxicating effect, like crude colors and strong perfumes, the sight of flesh or the sadistic pleasure in blood. To such as these the jass music is a delight, and a dance to the unstable bray of the sackbut gives a sensual delight more intense and quite different from the langour of a Viennese waltz or the refined sentiment and respectful emotion of an eighteenth-century minuet... Its musical value is nil, and its possibilities of harm are great."

Hallelujah!