Approaching July

While drafting my weekly email to cousin Bob I thought about expanding the audience, adding my communications to our blog - CAML's CASITA - travels & travails - rather than sending them only to Bob. 

With that in mind, here goes....

It has been a good week. First and foremost Melanie's remodeled eye got an A+ from her doc Friday afternoon and we now await her second cataract surgery on Bastille Day; two weeks after that we hope to be on the road to Nova Scotia. At least we'll head in that direction and wait to see how the politicians handle recommendations of their epidemiologists.

This week we became 'Friends' of the World War II Museum in New Orleans; now we can visit the museum on a daily basis but avoid the daily admission fees. We went to the Museum Thursday around noon, took the St Charles Avenue streetcar down to Lee Circle (you may recall Lee's statue was removed this past year) and walked two blocks to the Museum. It was a very warm muggy day and the streetcars were crowded. In recent years the MTA has changed their layout; there are fewer bench seats with backs that flip back and forth, depending on whether it's an uptown trolley or a downtown trolley. To replace the old seats devices for have been installed to assist in loading, and off loading, wheelchairs. There are benches along both sides of the center aisle but hanging straps on only one side and the overall seating capacity seems greatly reduced.

We spent two hours in the new museum wing, mostly devoted to the later part of the war in Europe and the Pacific. Then streetcarred home. It's nice to be able to go for an hour or two whenever we want, more than two or three hours at a time can be a bit overwhelming. Many of the displays in the new section of the museum are like stage sets: forests, mountains, deserts, with war materiel and descriptions, videoes, and documents throughout. We hope to spend a few mornings there getting deeper into the details. Melanie has a much better sense of the history than I, perhaps she can coach me.

I read back through this and noted something missing - descriptions. In the novels I read there are descriptions of environment, weather, moods, attire, people, etc..., all things I have never paid attention to in my emails and letters, i.e. writing. This blog will never be the great American novel but please forgive if I try to include some of that missing stuff in future posts .

Friday morning friends from Ann Arbor, former New Orleans residents, arrived. They'll stay with us until Monday, visiting folks they've not seen in some time. Lots of fun to catch up, share political, travel, and food stories, recipes, books, etc.... We walked to Palmer Park for the June Arts Fair which was much smaller than expected. We couldn't tell why, remnants of the Covid effect perhaps. On our wander along Carrollton Avenue and back to the house we stopped for lunch at a favourite Japanese restaurant, Hana. In the 20+ years we've been going there it hasn't changed - there's still the large Blue Marlin on the wall, they still make the excellent Hana Special Roll, the sushi chefs behind the counter, and their prices are still quite reasonable.

Weather has been warm, high 80's, with showers or thunderstorms daily. In the heavy rains, which can put down several inches in an hour, the gutters along the Avenue run like streams that in many places would be large enough to have names. Between the drops we walk - the miles today included a section along the river in the area known as The Fly which lies between the New Orleans Zoo and the river, the mighty Mississippi where we see tugs and barges, and freighters from around the world.

Taking care of business - we sold our mobile home in Royal Oaks. Since we  have no further need of a bank account in Dundee we closed that as well. We plan to continue to visit friends there to celebrate a few more Thanksgivings.

These days I find most of my reading is ebooks, I don't have to personally visit a library. In fact I can visit libraries in Nova Scotia, Florida, New Orleans, Texas and Arizona without leaving my chair.. So, I took the next step and bought a Kindle Oasis from Amazon during Prime Days.  I'm still getting used to it - currently reading The Paris Wife - learning how to change fonts, manage line spacing, paragraph widths, downloading library ebooks, etc. It has a wifi connection which is nice - don't know yet if I can use it for email if I get a new address.

We are now settled into life in Uptown New Orleans though it takes a few weeks. We're mostly by ourselves, hoping the US-Canadian border will open later this summer. I read the CBC news daily, frequently get updates from friends and relatives in the 'frozen north,' and read articles in the NY Times about 'the border.'

Early Saturday morning Melanie's nephew Ben, and family, pulled out with their truck and 27' trailer, headed toward Blacksburg, VA and points north; they plan to spend the summer in the Boston area before moving to Florida in the autumn. Last evening we texted them, they are overnighting at a truckstop along I-59 south of Chattanooga. They'd spent several days in between the rain drops moving household effects in to, and out of their rig while looking after Maisie, their precocious five year old. 'Rig' being RVese for trailer, motorhome, class C or fifth wheel, 

Cheers and let us know what's up with you and yours.  Charlie & Melanie