Paleography

Even though my skills at interpreting the handwriting of 18th century scribes is improving, this morning I met my match in one critical document. It was written in 1700 and defines the financial and labor obligations of young Cristobál Dávalos. He was apprenticed, at 13 years of age, to Tomás de Torres, a locksmith and blacksmith. It would seem like a promising career opportunity. I have yet to find another 18th century locksmith and very few ironsmiths. Of course, I am working with legal documents and it is very possible that the others had no occasion to visit an official scribe or their documents have been lost.

I am reading apprenticeship contracts and they seem to vary little over the 18th century. Guardians are sometimes responsible for clothing but virtually all expenses from room and board to healthcare and even burial expenses are incurred by the master craftsmen. In one instance, in case the master watchmaker should die before the completion of the contract, the apprentice was to inherit the master´s tools. None of the documents mention anything related to the eventual acceptance of the apprentice into the respective guilds (gremios) but in one instance, the master guarantees the "graduate" apprentice´s work for five years.

Back to paleography. I'm hoping that a haircut and lunch will give me the patience, concentration and imagination to tackle the rest of the document. Paleography reminds me of the Sunday Times double crostic. Fragments of words, marks on paper which could go one way or another are juxtaposed against my Spanish vocabulary (which, I am happy to report, is pretty good) trying to build the most plausible narrative. It is slow going but reveals so much detail. My initial database, developed from the index summaries of the collection of 18th Century Escrituras Publicas enabled me to identify the documents that called for closer inspection. And that will be my work for the next month.

An Outing with Architecture Students

Five years ago, during my last Tulane sabbatical, I taught in the Architecture School at the Universidad Mayor, Real y Pontificia de San Francisco Xavier de Churquisaca (South America´s second oldest university founded in 1624.) My friendships with both facuty and students have made this time in Sucre most enjoyable. This year, I was named Docente Honorario (Honorary Professor) and, on occassion I have been invited to participate in design reviews and other classes. The school is planning a new building and on Tuesday afternoon, I will join in on discussions of proposed alternatives. The following photographs were taken during a field trip with Arq. Guillermo Layme and his students to a site for a class project, one of the few times I have been able to enjoy the countryside.

It seems that all of the photos in this blog from Sucre seem to be taken on sunny, cloudless days. Indeed, cloudy days are rare. So, here are a group of photos taken in softer light conditions. San Lázaro was Sucre´s first cathedral. It was built on a terrace which served as an outdoor atrium, a space for the conversion of the indigenous population. Santo Domingo was the center of the Dominican Order and the Inquisition.

Santo Domingo



San Lázaro

Calle Oruro - once a street of craftsmen.

Gran Fiesta presented by the School of Finance and Business Administration of the UFXC. Note the menu - stuffed potatoes, piquante noodles, basically spicy meat sauce, and (mmmmmmmm) spicy tiny flavorful potatoes (papa lisa.) All of this plus music and dance for 5bs or 75 cents.

A day in the Life

The House on Abaroa Street

Santa Mónica

Spring, in all its glory, has arrived in Sucre. This morning, rather than going directly to the Archivo Nacionál, I decided to take care of a few errands. But first, I wanted to take advantage of the early sun angle to photograph the facade of a colonial courtyard house on Calle Abaroa that I have been looking at for years. The elaborate portal was decorated in a style which relates to the clearly mestizo facade of Santa Mónica. Half of the palacio has been demolished allowing a revealing sectional view of the typical adobe construction.

While I was clicking away, a charming young woman approached and as she unlocked the carved wooden door, she asked me where I was from. I was able to get myself invited into the remarkable patio and took the photos included in this post. As you can see, it contains a truly remarkable and completely unexpected staircase. The austerity of the patio itself and the baroque exuberance of the stairs suggest that they were a later addition. But they also point out the love of contrast found in most colonial buildings here – direct basic bearing wall construction largely of unadorned walls with a few simple openings combined with rare but with richly sculpted entrance portals.

On my way to the Brazilian Consulate (to enquire about visa requirements – I will be returning via Rio), I joined the Dino gym (Sucre is noted for its dinosaur tracks recently discovered at the outskirts of the city.) It is on the top floor of the MultiCentro Céspedes on the Plaza. The penthouse gym has a terrace with a panoramic view. Unfortunately, their aerobic equipment is meager and in bad repair but it appears to be the best-equipped gym in the city. I should have joined a month ago but, now that my research path is clear and I have completed a body of work, its time to work on my own body.

Fortunately, he Brazilian consul was not in. I will have to return this afternoon. There I was, only a few blocks from the Colonial neighborhood, Los Tres Molles. (A molle is a native tree with clusters of small red berries.) It occurred to me to photograph the remaining examples of colonial architecture in the area. I had just read a document from 1740 certifying the purchase of a lot and house by Nicolás de Herrera, a silversmith (platero) I have been studying. It occurred to me to see if the name “Tres Molles” meant anything to current inhabitants. A shoemaker directed me to a corner store and its elderly (can I use this term) owner. He was quite familiar with the term and described the neighborhoods boundaries. When I told him about Nicolás de Herrera, he said that Calle Destacamento 111 was once known as Calle Herrera. Also, a Doctor Herrera had offices near the corner on property possibly part of the original purchase. I will be speaking with him this afternoon.

Aha!!! I now have a whole new avenue of historic research and a brilliant excuse to change focus and escape from the Library from time to time.

Barrio de los Tres Molles

The Prado Today

It´s an unexpectedly chilly morning in Cochabamba. I´m sitting in Dumbo´s, a clean and pleasant gringofied restaurant on the Prado, not far from the spot, now long gone, where David Erbe and I took pension in the ´60s as Peace Corps volunteers.

In those days, the Prado and Sundays were synonymous. Bolivians would sit at tables along the sidewalk eating salteñas (spicy meat pies), drinking the local beer (Taquiña) from liter bottles and playing “Generala” (poker dice) for beers. All this, while admiring Cochabamba´s golden youth as they promenaded (chaperoned by their parents) up and down the park-like neutral ground (New Orleans for median strip.)

The promenaders would disappear into the church in the Plaza Colón for Mass before repeating the ritual afterward. Meanwhile, the observers made plans for afternoon excursions – bike rides into the countryside or poolside relaxation at the Cortijo, a country-club like spa, now a luxurious private residence.

It could be the weather, more likely cultural changes, but the Sunday morning promenade is a thing of the past. Many of the Prado´s small apartment buildings and fancy houses have been replaced by high-rise hotels and office towers. Ground level restaurants have moved indoors and the Prado has become something else entirely.

In the ‘60’s, Cochabamba was a rather slow-moving city of 100,000 with very few private automobiles. We, along with our students and many Cochabambinos, traveled by bicycle. Today, the same streets are choked with traffic and the metropolitan area has upwards of 800,000. Sucre has its own problems of rapid urbanization but its scale and temperament remind me more of my Cochabamba.

La Ciudad Blanca

I first came to Sucre in 1965, when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer. The city had a population of some 40,000 and barely extended beyond its colonial core. The perspectives framed by one and two story colonial and republican buildings terminated with green hills planted with corn and other crops with blue mountains beyond. Today, the hills closest to Sucre are covered with red brick houses waiting to be stuccoed when more prosperous times arrive.

Five years ago, when I was teaching at the university, I lived near the architecture school, in the first ring of expansion. My private Quechua lessons were on the other side of the Mercado Campesino, part of the next ring of growth toward the north. Sucre expanded in all directions, accommodating both rural-urban migration and the shift in population since the closing of the tin mines, in the 1980s. Streets no longer follow the original grid of the colonial settlement. Houses no longer provide a continuous wall defining the public space of the street from the private domain yet the tendency to assert ownership and control is expressed by high gated walls.

Despite the expansion of urban terrain and population, Sucre remains tightly organized around the same plaza that was laid out during the ceremonial foundation of the city in 1538. Politicians and petitioners congregate in front of the Alcaldia (City Hall) and Prefectura (Departmental Government.) In the mornings, senior citizens - perhaps former government officials sit on sunny benches reading the daily papers. Meanwhile, small armies of school children in uniform troop across the square on their way to colegios. Most of the private and religious schools are scattered around the Plaza in buildings that were once monasteries and convents or large private homes. Their large central patios work well for their new activities.

After school, teenagers congregate on one side of the Plaza flirting just like they did when I was growing up in Forest Hills and the way suburban kids do in malls all across the States. I was talking to the parents of a friend of mine from Sucre, now living in California. In their day, they were only allowed to meet for an hour on Wednesday evenings and again on Sunday. When I visited Sucre in the mid-sixties, colonial courtship traditions were still operative. From the more liberal perspective of Cochabamba's youth, the Sucre's Sunday promenade (young women strolling around the Plaza in a clockwise direction - or was it counterclockwise - and young men in the opposite direction, gradually pairing up under protective and watchful parental gaze in the same kind of flirtatious behavior) seemed ridiculously out-moded.

During the noon-hour, the Plaza often provides the setting for blood drives and public heath exhibits, national unity pagents, and mobile phone promotions. It is the terminus of protest marches, accompained by firecrackers, with dramatic public oratory (further fireworks) directed from the bandstand. Religious processions like last week´s Entrada de la Virgen de Guadalupe also enter and circle the Plaza ending with prayer at the Cathedral's entrance. In the evening, clowns and magicians, along with salesmen of miracle cures, take over, using the monument to Mariscal Sucre as a backdrop. I haven´t been in the Plaza late in the evening but I am told that university students, as they did in Cochabamba so many years ago, pace back and forth under the lamp-posts studying for exams.

In addition to being the first day of spring, the 21st of September is also El Dia del Estudiante. Since Friday, there have been parties in the various Facultades of the University. On Friday, I spent some time in the Museo Colonial and the excited shouts of elementary school children from the adjoining escuela primaria and the decorated hats of schoolchildren crossing the Plaza at lunch were indications of the extent of these celebrations. Sucre is enlivened, as it has been since colonial times, by its role as an educational center. The University, the second oldest in South America, brought together students from beyond the Audiencia de Charcas (Sucre was the major political and religious center in the Southern Andes.) It is still a major center of higher education and students come from all over Bolivia to study at the Universidad Mayor y Pontificia de San Francisco Xavier de Chuquisaca and several private universities.

I am interested in the schematic nature of the colonial city, the way a conceptual framework gets populated by particular human beings and evolves through time. In Sucre, the urban plan called for by the Consejo de Indias, the branch of the Spanish Government that administered the colonies, was laid out on gently undulating topography suggesting, as you move away from the Plaza (which itself slopes), patterns of drainage and possible neighborhood divisions. Sucre, like Rome is surrounded by seven hills, several of these were associated with neighborhoods during the colonial period and may have accommodated different social groups, including artists and artisans. One of my research interests is the geographical distribution of classes and disciplines. My examination of the notarial archives has given me some very preliminary suggestions of this neighborhood structure.

Today, most of the buildings in the colonial core have been rebuilt or substantially renovated. Perhaps some of the original adobe walls are still present under subsequent decorative applications. The original settlers were given large lots, sometimes an entire block, and over many generations, large houses were divided among multiple heirs and had portions sold off during times of economic hardship. It is difficult to reconstruct these larger properties today. My friend Bill Loftstrom and a Bolivian architect are trying to locate and mentally reconstruct the Palacio de la Audiencia from the remaining fragments. At the fringes of the colonial core, a number of one and two story houses, built of adobe, with infrequent and unadorned openings and tiled roofs, strongly suggest the character of early colonial construction. These undecorated adobe bearing walls, wooden lintels and sloping tile roofs, are common throughout Bolivia and much of Latin America. These simple constructions were in their own way, just as abstract and schematic as the gridded colonial city. In Sucre´s colonial core, with very few exceptions, buildings are regularly whitewashed, enhancing this abstract, almost dream-like quality, especially when seen against an intensely blue cloudless sky.

Sucre Beginnings

My first 10 days in Sucre have been very productive on a number of fronts. After a week in the lively Hostal Cruz de Popayán, with its world travelers living out of impressive backpacks, I moved into an upscale version – small, with few guests and no backpackers. My companions, so far, consist of three French-Canadian volunteers (causing me complicated linguistic problems) and a Taiwanese acupuncturist (we had our first conversation this morning and he doesn’t necessarily use needles – more on this theme later.)

My Bolivian friends have been most attentive. I’ve been to a birthday party, had family lunches and have gone out in the evenings with former students. One of my friends from Peace Corps days, Bill Loftstrom, is a noted Latin American historian and has retired to Sucre with his Bolivian wife. Last Friday, he presented a paper before the local historical and geographical society on a group of paintings popular in the 19th century that abound here. I paid a visit to the Architecture School, where I taught 5 years ago and where I have many friends – outings to the Uyuni salt flats and to the tropical reserve at Torotoro are in the works.

Meanwhile, this is the week building up to Sucre’s most important annual festival, La Fiesta de la Virgen de Guadelupe. In recent years, indeed since my Peace Corps days over 40 years ago, these festivals had been considerably scaled down since the colonial period. Indeed, the Carnaval de Oruru was just about it, insofar as spectacular costumes seen by troups of regional dancers was concerned. In the intervening years, every major Bolivian city has revived these elaborate celebrations and Sucre is no exception. So, Sunday evening there was a relatively small entrada (the term for these processions of dancing troops.) My friend Darío dances with a group of Morenadas and was part of the program. Next weekend, the groups will where there most elaborate

outfits. For Sunday, however, costumes were vastly symplefied. Indeed, the male Morenos (ranging in age from 5 years old and up) wore some combination of business suits with ponchos or scarves. Different components of the larger group dressed identically – even the marching band. Surprisingly, my digital camera was able to capture some of the spirit in stills and video clips.

I have begun my works in the Archivo Nacionál de Bolivia. It’s only 3 downhill blocks from my digs. I have started reviewing a detailed index of every notarial document in the collection from the 18th Century, identifying every artist and artisan who was involved in any legal procedure. I have been developing a database of these individuals and their associates. I will identify the most interesting of these documents and the most cited individuals and look at the documents themselves. I have my reservations of this approach and, while I am moving forward, I am looking into complementary investigations. Sitting at a desk in the archives, for hours at a time, is really tough on my back and my eyes. Today, I went to a physical therapist, recommended by Bill, and was manipulated – giving me some relief. He checked my blood pressure and took the ph-factor of my saliva. Apparently, my diet is way off. He recommended the Green Tea from the Chapare region (where the coca comes from) and wants me to drink it several times a day to reduce oxidants and help purge me. OK. I’ll give it a try. I have another session early Monday morning. So, bottoms up!!!

Considering that the kind of historic research I am doing requires a long stretch of time sitting and reading, I am really fortunate to have such a well organized archive with very supportive personnel. Furthermore, that I arrived in Sucre with an already established and quite varied network of friends makes an extended stay here really quite comfortable. (Indeed, I sort of worked backwards and developed my dissertation topic to enable me to work here.) And then there’s Skype and the Internet - I am hardly disconnected from my base of operations in New Orleans and at Tulane. So, please let this be the end of the hurricane season – too much anxiety. We all have better things to be concerned about.

Desde Sucre, La Capital Constitucionál de Bolivia.

Black Arts Festival - 2008


I live directly across the street from the Saint Joan of Arc School. Every spring they stage the Black Arts Festival as a fund-raiser. There are always great musical acts and plenty of delicious New Orleans treats. This year, two Mardi Gras Indians paid a visit and I couldn't resist hauling out my fancy digital camera and snapping away.

Of course there was much else going on at the fair: gospel, blues and rock & roll. Nevertheless, an Indian siting is a rare and special thing, especially on my block so, I'm afraid, I had eyes for little else.


There were only two Indians in the pack, this time. However, they were accompanied by a retinue of rhythm-makers and second-liners.




The bead-work is exquisite. It is said that costumes are worn for only one year. The dancers construct their own. I'll have to find out if the feathers and beads are recycled from one year to the next.

The Return of the Mourning Doves

The Mourning Doves have returned to Freret Street. Rocco growls when he sees them in the rafters of my porch. Gris-Gris has learned to growl from his maestro but has a much smaller voice - disproportionately small.

At this point the doves are deciding if they want to nest here again this year. I hope they do. There is the pleasure of renewal in watching their industry and the emergence of the next generation. I will have to investigate but I do think these are the same parents who have come back year after year. I hope their kids have fond memories, as well, of the protective eaves of my roof.

Spring is returning to New Orleans. The leaves are beginning to emerge on my big American Elm. It seems that they fell only a few weeks ago and, indeed, this particular winter hardly seemed to get its feet on the ground. I was planning to visit a yarn store and get wool and a crochet needle to repair several of my old Bolivian alpaca sweaters’ unraveled bits but it may almost be time to roll them up in the mothballs for yet another season.

This afternoon, I will take a bike ride to Audubon Park. There is a small island in the lagoon where migrating birds nest on their way north. It may be early, but the activity of the mob of white herons and their friends is our own version of those National Geographic Channel documentaries. Meanwhile, I will get myself ready for early morning mournful (I couldn’t resist) coos from my straw-gathering friends.

Thanksgiving photos

Thanksgiving Video

It's actually pretty dramatic. Will Zach remove letters faster than they're put up? Will the notice board spell anything intelligible? Will Melissa and Robin give up?

Tune in and find out.

In praise of Gris-Gris

While we might have observed Gris-Gris’ birthday a month ago with all appropriate fanfare and enthusiasm, the second anniversary of Katrina is also the second anniversary of Gris-Gris’ membership in our family and is cause for celebration and reflection. These have been two years of change and adventure and the youngster has participated as a trouper through displacement and recovery.

Gris-Gris’ first days with us were spent in a cat-carrier. Originally, when I brought him back from the LA/SPCA Shelter, I wanted to introduce him into our household slowly. Since my house is one continuous space, there wasn’t a separate room I could keep him in and, anyhow, I wanted the older boys, Felix and Rocco, to become familiar with his sweet scent. And then Gris-Gris and I evacuated leaving his newly adopted brothers to manage for what we thought would be three days. It was only after our three months exile in Austin (reunited with the older cats) that the youngster had the run of my house in New Orleans. Did I say run? Well, Gris-Gris, at 4-months was an agile leaper and discovered nooks, perches and crannies that larger and less agile Rocco and Felix could never consider.

Fully grown Gris-Gris is considerably smaller than his brothers. They weigh approximately 17 pounds whereas Gris-Gris seems relatively small at only 12 pounds. My house is on three levels and there are many parapets (best translated as “for pets”) throughout. As I move through the house, Gris-Gris hops onto these low walls and meets me at the head of stairs poised for a petting.

Apparently, all of my cats are quite unusual in that they love to meet and greet any visitor. Growing up in our Forest Hills apartment, we never had any pets other than Gary’s tropical fish. My first cat, Black Tom, came about as a consequence of discovering a mouse in my apartment when I first came to New Orleans leading to a bad experience with a successful mouse-trap. I have had cats now for some 36 years. I have become more and more appreciative of each cat's unique personality.

Rocco lavishes affection and demands the same. Felix loves the attention of being fed by hand, comes when he’s called and loves an occasional snuggle. Gris-Gris is a gentleman, very courtly and with dignified. His solid warm-grey coat makes him virtually invisible at night but, in the day, emphasizes his sculptural form – very much the Egyptian. His long ears, pointed chin and luminous light brown eyes suggest that he is from another branch of the cat family than the chunkier two-toned Felix and Rocco. When you pass your hand in the vicinity of his head, he stretches up to be petted. Gris-Gris, you are an essential part of this family and we, the older members, hold you in highest esteem.

Katrina – Two years later

This morning, I went down to the Orleans Parrish Criminal District Court to see one of my friends, a law school student, perform as an assistant DA. On the way down, I drove under the magnificent live oaks of Carrollton Avenue, at my end an area unaffected by post-Katrina floods. I turned onto Fontainebleau Drive, the first 10 blocks or so fully recovered from serious flood damage. Healthy trees, mown lawns and summer flowers suggested that the struggle to recover was, at least physically, over. Further down Fontainebleau, closer to where I used to live, restoration projects were still underway and Katrina’s damage had not yet been erased.

The trial I was hoping to attend was postponed. One of the police officers was engaged to escort President and Mrs. Bush as they toured New Orleans, two years after. I returned to my cozy house in my cozy neighborhood and prepared to begin the new semester at Tulane. While the University’s recovery was costly in faculty departures and building repairs, a casual tour of the campus suggests that Katrina’s floods had never occurred. (Please notice my emphasis on the flooding which was the principle cause of damage to New Orleans.)

On Sunday, I had dinner with my friend Janie. We reminisced about our experience as Katrina evacuees. We left New Orleans early Sunday morning, a day ahead of Katrina’s landfall. We drove west on the I-10, taking the usual outbound lanes. The inbound lanes were directed toward Baton Rouge whereas we headed north on I-50 intending to eventually head west ourselves but further from the coast. Happily, there was not too much traffic and as we approached the Mississippi border we were able to move at a fast clip (this seemed very important at the time.)

Just outside of Vicksburg, I got a call from my dear brother Gary and a half-hour later, he had made arrangements for us to stay at the Gold Strike Hotel in Tunica, Mississippi. (Did I mention that we were traveling in Janie’s Mazda with her dog Dolomite and cats Ishi and Muffaleta? I had left behind my big cats Felix and Rocco and was traveling with 4-week-old Gris-Gris who I had adopted the Friday before our evacuation.) All of us, and I mean every evacuee, was only expecting to be away from home for a few days and I felt confident that my big boys could take care of themselves. It’s interesting that those hours and days are so vividly engraved in our minds.

On Monday morning, images on the two large-screen hotel televisions showed the immediate damage to New Orleans caused by rain and wind – nothing that the city had not experienced many times before and not particularly serious. There were images of thousands of New Orleanians who had not been able to evacuate huddled in a Superdome who’s roof had two major holes. And then we learned that levees had been and breached and that water from Lake Ponchartrain was filling low-lying areas – indeed, most of the city. We stayed at the Casino for almost a week (along with many other evacuees.) We then moved to a motel in a nearby town. Janie and I were talking about how kind people were – organizations offering meals, Internet access, etc. We were able to see aerial images of the city and check the extent of the flooding. We ourselves were reassured but many of our fellow hotel guests were not at all so fortunate.

Gradually, we started to think of what we would do next. How could we get back to New Orleans, rescue our cats (poor Janie had been cat-sitting for friends prior to Katrina) and see to our properties. We contacted pet rescue services. I don’t know how I heard, but I received a message from Eliot Barron, the son of a Tulane colleague and my house sitter from earlier that summer. My cats were fine but the back door lock had been bashed open. He left the cats ample food and water and they greeted me when I got back into the city a week later.

Meanwhile, we were attempting to get closer to home – there were no vacancies at closer motels (we were 200 miles away.) We were attempting to rent an apartment or house in Baton Rouge. Eventually, Janie’s friends, Jerrye and Tommy Martin invited us to stay in their home in La Place – just 26 miles from home, . They had not lost power or sanitary services. We were able to sneak into New Orleans, retrieve animals (oh what joy!!!), scrub down our refrigerators and freezers (what a mess!!!) and remove clothes, papers and other essentials. By then, it was apparent that we would be gone for some time. I recovered my car and Janie and I went our separate ways: Janie to Albuquerque and me to Austin where I was able to take classes at the UT. (There were many other gracious invitations.)

Unlike so very many others, our properties and live were more or less unaffected by the storm. Without family or employment, my situation was so much simpler. Indeed, my time in Austin was filled with intellectual and physical challenges (the consequence of a ruptured Achilles Tendon and surgery.)

But more than anything, the pleasure of new friendships (especialmente Pepe Pierce – a kind and brilliant fellow grad student) and the renewal of others (the extraordinarily generous Clint Bledsoe and his charming family) and my gracious former student Gary Greenblum made my time in Austin so enjoyable, almost obscuring an uncertain future in New Orleans. So, this time around, the world of Stephen Paul Jacobs avoided a major setback while others continue to struggle and suffer. But the melodrama is not over.

Rocco's Refined Tastes

As I rounded the corner from the kitchen bringing my salad, I was astonished to spot Rocco on the dining table tasting my gazpacho. Rocco has never been know as a gastronome. Indeed, he always seemed to prefer quantity to quality. Felix, on the other hand, has a distinct preference for smoked meat and is very fussy about the cat treats I proffer.

By the way, the Guadalajara Gazpacho from the uptown Whole Foods is really wonderful with its floating bits of avocado and corn niblets - perfectly spiced. This summer, I have become devoted to Whole Foods soups - the tomato basil bisque especially. Maybe it comes from my 7 weeks in Bolivia where wonderful soups are so much a part of every main meal.

These last weeks in New Orleans have been particularly hot. Until the end of July it would rain every afternoon, lowering the temperature and encouraging the lushness of our tropical vegetation. Lately, the sky's a pale blue and the sun is unrelenting. Walking out of the house even after dark is entering a continuous steam bath. I try to run my errands in the morning and even then the heat is oppressive. When I used to do darkroom work, it was necessary to correct for water temperature, so I know that cold tap water, this time of year, is in the 80s.

I had a long chat with my neighbor Donald, who was walking his poodle Tiger. He was concerned about the storms in the Gulf and the Atlantic. We agreed that if another hurricane comes this way, its all over for the city. That's an exaggeration but after all the effort that has gone into the recovery, and great progress is being made, a major storm would be devastating. The levee system has not been fully reinforced and any breach would be a repetition of the Katrina flood.

Steve visits the Simpsons