People. The only one I'll name is Jake, Helen's brother.
Jake was the Grand Marshall
Jake was the Grand Marshall
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Helen Hill Second Line Pics: Part 2
Cupcakes!!!!!!
People made tons of cupcakes for Helen and decorated bunches of boxes to transport them at the Second Line. We all ran around giving them away along the route....
Billy passed out the posters
I made a stuffed chicken with an orange "duck"
tape beak that everyone liked to squeeze...
Noy! (Noi? never had to write her name)
Miranda and Kittee
Mo(e? All these only-spoken-names!)
My cupcakes! Miranda and I decorated them!
We made teapots, piggies, chickens and Helens.
I carried a stuffed pig cupcake box I made at Kittees
We all stood in line, ready to proceed while the band, Panorama
played super-sad melodies
Then the music became happier and we took off.
I tried to take an action photo while holding
cupcakes and while including myself. That didn't work out so well...
Miranda gives away cupcakes
I don't know these lady, but she did very well!
We all swarmed cars stuck at intersections to give them cupcakes
It was so fun!
People made tons of cupcakes for Helen and decorated bunches of boxes to transport them at the Second Line. We all ran around giving them away along the route....
Billy passed out the postersHelen loved Piggies and Chickens (and tea parties) so many boxes were decorated with them:
I made a stuffed chicken with an orange "duck"tape beak that everyone liked to squeeze...
Noy! (Noi? never had to write her name)
Miranda and Kittee
Mo(e? All these only-spoken-names!)
My cupcakes! Miranda and I decorated them!We made teapots, piggies, chickens and Helens.
I carried a stuffed pig cupcake box I made at Kittees
We all stood in line, ready to proceed while the band, Panoramaplayed super-sad melodies
Then the music became happier and we took off.I tried to take an action photo while holding
cupcakes and while including myself. That didn't work out so well...
Miranda gives away cupcakes
I don't know these lady, but she did very well!
We all swarmed cars stuck at intersections to give them cupcakesIt was so fun!
Helen Hill Second Line Pics: Part 1
The House
The second line for Helen was wonderful. Tons of people came to march and there was so much to see and feel on the walk from Clark Street to The Mother-In-Law.
First off, there is the house. When we arrived, it had been covered by messages and decorations by friends. Here are some photos:
Inside, someone sprayed Helen's name on the Nola mural
Outside, many people decorated and wrote goodbyes
when people really started to show up
People plucked these hearts from the fence to carry in the procession
The second line for Helen was wonderful. Tons of people came to march and there was so much to see and feel on the walk from Clark Street to The Mother-In-Law.
First off, there is the house. When we arrived, it had been covered by messages and decorations by friends. Here are some photos:
Inside, someone sprayed Helen's name on the Nola mural
Outside, many people decorated and wrote goodbyes
when people really started to show up
People plucked these hearts from the fence to carry in the procession
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Helen Hill Second Line!!!
OOOOOOOOOooooooo.
Please come!
Where: Cleveland and Clark
When 12:30 Saturday, February 24, 2007
Bring cupcakes, cupcake carriers and piggies, chickens and teapots....and yer dancin' shoes!
Please come!
Where: Cleveland and Clark
When 12:30 Saturday, February 24, 2007
Bring cupcakes, cupcake carriers and piggies, chickens and teapots....and yer dancin' shoes!
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Mardi Gras 2007
We have had a very, very busy Mardi Gras season. Many pictures to come.
We went down the street from our house to "under the overpass", where the bands sound best and ALWAYS stop to whoop it up, and caught Zulu and as much of Rex as we could take.
Good people watching:
Love the outfit:
We went down the street from our house to "under the overpass", where the bands sound best and ALWAYS stop to whoop it up, and caught Zulu and as much of Rex as we could take.
Good people watching:
Love the outfit:
Monday, February 19, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
On Leaves for Helen Hill Memorial Tree
Please excuse the brevity of the following message, but it's Mardi Gras!Please excuse the brevity of the following message, but it's Mardi Gras!
All leaves for the tree should be be around four inches long and more that three inches or so wide. Each should be weather-proof and have either a hook built-in or a hole in order to render the leaf "hangable".
All leaves for the tree should be be around four inches long and more that three inches or so wide. Each should be weather-proof and have either a hook built-in or a hole in order to render the leaf "hangable".
Monday, February 12, 2007
Ruthie Monday XXXV (Finally)
Please find below pictures of Ruth-Anne and Olive, the Dappled Dachshund who inspired me to go run and get me one. Photos by Miranda Lake.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
High Lonesome Memorial for Neal Walker
Below is the poster that Billy and I made for Neal's memorial. Below the poster are the words that Billy Sothern said for Neal at the service.
The High Lonesome Blues of Neal Walker
Billy Sothern
When I got the call telling me that Neal Walker, my friend, colleague, boss, and role model, had died, I went into the next room over to look at a photograph on the wall of my wife and I dancing while Neal loomed slightly out of focus in the background, tall and gray, with his hands to his mouth playing the harmonica. And staring at the picture, with the sound of his music in my mind, I thought to myself about how Neal had helped turn me into lawyer, with advise on matters big – like how to construct an argument concerning the right to self representation or how to make your clients life jump out from the page – to small – like exactly how he expected an ellipses to appear or that there must be two spaces after a period.
And that was Neal, an amazing human being who could with equal dexterity argue with great precision before the United States Supreme Court, convince a deep south jury that his client was real person and should get a life sentence, and play a blues harmonica solo with some of the best bands in New Orleans.
Last week, many of Neal’s friends met at his house on Royal Street just to be among each other and around Neal. Until I reached his house, I had been sort of numb to his death. But as I poked around his things, the small box of old 78’s on the floor, the German poster of concrete architectural gems, the books – Graham Greene, Thomas Pynchon, James Lee Burke, Peter Mattheison, arranged in neat order on the bookcases, the small stack of Bob Dylan cd’s, I began to a sense of the enormity of what we had lost because I started to hear Neal’s voice in my head spinning a yarn about the old days when he and his friends used to argue the finer points of Mao vs. Trotsky. How he was a friend of an earlier pioneer of poured concrete architecture, an old Maoist, or perhaps Trotskyite character. How Bob Dylan was a good songwriter but a lousy harmonica player. A million stories, each of which could have gone for ever, all well told. All gone, except in our memories.
For me, part of being around all of Neal’s things made me appreciate how much I admired him. I met him for the first time as an intern at the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center when I was twenty two years old and he was cranky, distant, intensely intelligent, and I thought, incredibly cool. Since then, I learned from Neal – sure many things about the law – but importantly about life and art and music. Without Neal, how many fewer people in the world would love Alan Lomax’s field recordings of prison music from Parchman farm. How many fewer would have heard the street music of Kinsasha, amplified with transistors and other things they had found in the junk, Neal told me with excitement, or the James Brown-esque R and B of Ethiopia. This is all to say, how much narrower and smaller would our lives have been without his influence. How much different would my life be if I hadn’t learned to affect certain Neal-isms. Haven’t we all tried to be just a little bit more like him. He was just so cool.
At Neal’s home that night, I put some old music from Neal’s vast collection of vinyl, organized alphabetically and by genre, and then a threw on a Bob Dylan album that Neal had introduced me to a few years earlier called Good as I Been to You. A few minutes later, Froggy Went A Courtin’, a classic song, several centuries old, that found its way to this country through Scotch Irish folks who came to towns in Kentucky near where Neal grew up. The song is about Froggy, who falls in love with Ms. Mousey, and asks her Uncle Rat permission for her hand after being told, “"Without my uncle Rat's consent. I wouldn't marry the president, Uh-huh.” Froggy and Ms. Mousey had an amazing wedding. The flying moth came, the june bug came, the big snake ate the wedding cake. It was a party Neal would have like. It was the kind of party he was planning to have with his fiancé Anna in the coming months.
Neal was part of the American musical and storytelling tradition that this song came from, a tradition called “high lonesome” by the folk musician John Cohen when he went down and recorded Roscoe Holcomb in Daisy, Kentucky in 1961, when Neal was eight. As I understand it, and I am sure that Neal could do a better job explaining, high lonesome is a blues that’s battered and sad but still innocent, like that of a hurt child. But the high lonesome singer or story teller, in fact, is wise on the blues and unsurprised at the pain of the world. He knows and possesses these blues. They don’t possess him.
In some ways, I think that this high lonesome tradition brings the different parts of Neal, the musician, the amazing lawyer together. Neal was a storyteller wherever he was, the Supreme Court, Winn Parish Courthouse, on stage with his harmonica. He used these skills to fight two of the darkest black eyes of American democracy, the death penalty and the woeful treatment of human being following Hurricane Katrina, and he used these skills to play songs and tell stories that made our lives richer.
Like many of the songs that Neal like, Little Froggy didn’t end happily, because as Neal knew, life is sweet, though hard.
Mr. Frog went a-hoppin' up over the brook, Uh-huh,
Mr. Frog went a-hoppin' up over the brook.
A lily-white duck come and swallowed him up, Uh-huh.
A little piece of cornbread layin' on a shelf, Uh-huh,
A little piece of cornbread layin' on a shelf.
If you want anymore, you can sing it yourself, Uh-huh.
The High Lonesome Blues of Neal Walker
Billy Sothern
When I got the call telling me that Neal Walker, my friend, colleague, boss, and role model, had died, I went into the next room over to look at a photograph on the wall of my wife and I dancing while Neal loomed slightly out of focus in the background, tall and gray, with his hands to his mouth playing the harmonica. And staring at the picture, with the sound of his music in my mind, I thought to myself about how Neal had helped turn me into lawyer, with advise on matters big – like how to construct an argument concerning the right to self representation or how to make your clients life jump out from the page – to small – like exactly how he expected an ellipses to appear or that there must be two spaces after a period.
And that was Neal, an amazing human being who could with equal dexterity argue with great precision before the United States Supreme Court, convince a deep south jury that his client was real person and should get a life sentence, and play a blues harmonica solo with some of the best bands in New Orleans.
Last week, many of Neal’s friends met at his house on Royal Street just to be among each other and around Neal. Until I reached his house, I had been sort of numb to his death. But as I poked around his things, the small box of old 78’s on the floor, the German poster of concrete architectural gems, the books – Graham Greene, Thomas Pynchon, James Lee Burke, Peter Mattheison, arranged in neat order on the bookcases, the small stack of Bob Dylan cd’s, I began to a sense of the enormity of what we had lost because I started to hear Neal’s voice in my head spinning a yarn about the old days when he and his friends used to argue the finer points of Mao vs. Trotsky. How he was a friend of an earlier pioneer of poured concrete architecture, an old Maoist, or perhaps Trotskyite character. How Bob Dylan was a good songwriter but a lousy harmonica player. A million stories, each of which could have gone for ever, all well told. All gone, except in our memories.
For me, part of being around all of Neal’s things made me appreciate how much I admired him. I met him for the first time as an intern at the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center when I was twenty two years old and he was cranky, distant, intensely intelligent, and I thought, incredibly cool. Since then, I learned from Neal – sure many things about the law – but importantly about life and art and music. Without Neal, how many fewer people in the world would love Alan Lomax’s field recordings of prison music from Parchman farm. How many fewer would have heard the street music of Kinsasha, amplified with transistors and other things they had found in the junk, Neal told me with excitement, or the James Brown-esque R and B of Ethiopia. This is all to say, how much narrower and smaller would our lives have been without his influence. How much different would my life be if I hadn’t learned to affect certain Neal-isms. Haven’t we all tried to be just a little bit more like him. He was just so cool.
At Neal’s home that night, I put some old music from Neal’s vast collection of vinyl, organized alphabetically and by genre, and then a threw on a Bob Dylan album that Neal had introduced me to a few years earlier called Good as I Been to You. A few minutes later, Froggy Went A Courtin’, a classic song, several centuries old, that found its way to this country through Scotch Irish folks who came to towns in Kentucky near where Neal grew up. The song is about Froggy, who falls in love with Ms. Mousey, and asks her Uncle Rat permission for her hand after being told, “"Without my uncle Rat's consent. I wouldn't marry the president, Uh-huh.” Froggy and Ms. Mousey had an amazing wedding. The flying moth came, the june bug came, the big snake ate the wedding cake. It was a party Neal would have like. It was the kind of party he was planning to have with his fiancé Anna in the coming months.
Neal was part of the American musical and storytelling tradition that this song came from, a tradition called “high lonesome” by the folk musician John Cohen when he went down and recorded Roscoe Holcomb in Daisy, Kentucky in 1961, when Neal was eight. As I understand it, and I am sure that Neal could do a better job explaining, high lonesome is a blues that’s battered and sad but still innocent, like that of a hurt child. But the high lonesome singer or story teller, in fact, is wise on the blues and unsurprised at the pain of the world. He knows and possesses these blues. They don’t possess him.
In some ways, I think that this high lonesome tradition brings the different parts of Neal, the musician, the amazing lawyer together. Neal was a storyteller wherever he was, the Supreme Court, Winn Parish Courthouse, on stage with his harmonica. He used these skills to fight two of the darkest black eyes of American democracy, the death penalty and the woeful treatment of human being following Hurricane Katrina, and he used these skills to play songs and tell stories that made our lives richer.
Like many of the songs that Neal like, Little Froggy didn’t end happily, because as Neal knew, life is sweet, though hard.
Mr. Frog went a-hoppin' up over the brook, Uh-huh,
Mr. Frog went a-hoppin' up over the brook.
A lily-white duck come and swallowed him up, Uh-huh.
A little piece of cornbread layin' on a shelf, Uh-huh,
A little piece of cornbread layin' on a shelf.
If you want anymore, you can sing it yourself, Uh-huh.
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