NOLA BIBLE
My wife and I live in Baltimore and have been coming to Jazz Fest since ’93. Absolutely love it and we make it most years. Fell in love with NOLA music and food as a result but we limited ourselves to our once-a-year trip.
Well, in November, 2007 a NOLA friend gave me an OffBeat subscription for my birthday. I devoured that first issue and the second issue and reading OffBeat intensified my jonesing for NOLA. I made an incremental trip to NOLA in January, 2008 to visit OffBeat-providing friend.
I made two trips in 2008.
I will be making my third NOLA trip in 2009 for my 50th birthday and we’re bringing 20 out-of-towners with us. Some have been to NOLA before, but they only know the tourist NOLA. We plan on showing them the real deal—Vaughan’s on Thursday night, Joey K’s, Le Bon Temps, a Frenchmen Street crawl, Jacques-Imo’s, Maple Leaf, Rock ’n’ Bowl, Buffa’s, Sunday jazz brunch, etc.
We have asked our friends to refrain from buying birthday gifts and instead if they feel they have to give something, to make a charitable donation (as we will) to one of two NOLA charities—the New Orleans Musicians Clinic, which I learned about from one of your recent columns, or Threadhead Records, which I learned about from the Jazz Fest message boards, which I have been lurking on for years.
I know you know you have impacted NOLA in many great ways and you should be very proud.
Keep up the good work, Geaux Saints and heartfelt thanks for publishing the NOLA bible that increased my love of your city.
—Alan Reisberg, Rockville MD
ONE CENT TAX
I’ve been reading your Weekly Beat and it makes me sad that New Orleans is still having a hard time getting back on its feet, taking care of its musicians, etc. I recently returned from Europe where
many people still think the town is more or less destroyed, and I received the Tab Benoit issue on the Wetlands, another sad topic. Maybe the City should lobby for a one-cent gas tax nationwide, which would go into rebuilding the levee system and surrounding wetlands. It seems only natural, since it’s the oil and gas companies who are making a living off of the area while destroying it at the same time.
People are still afraid to go to New Orleans; it seems to me, especially with all the crime reports. I made a point to make my first family trip to French Quarter Fest in 2008, with a 6-month old, and it was my first time since Katrina. I was blown away at the spirit of the people there, passing the baby around and telling their Katrina stories.
—Eddie Tadross, New York, NY
WETLANDS
I am a lifetime subscriber of OffBeat magazine in Tokyo. Your magazine provides indispensable information that a Louisiana music lover like me is always seeking to have, that is so hard to get in this foreign land. I read the article “Voices in the Wilderness” by John Swenson about Tab Benoit’s ongoing efforts to save the wetlands, and I have seen Tab and VOW All-Stars perform before. I have personally interviewed Cyril Neville once and he told me a lot about the crisis at the wetlands, but still, this article contained a lot of information that I never knew about, and it was shocking to say the least.
The hard fact is that there is so little information in Japanese language on regional stuff like what’s happening in Louisiana that people are totally unaware and indifferent to such an issue. Sadly, even Hurricane Katrina seems to be a thing of the distant past for many of us.
So with this in mind, I would like to translate Mr. Swenson’s article into Japanese and place it onto my Web site, “Blues Ginza.” I would like more people to read your article, and I figured a Japanese translation on the Internet should be the most effective way to go.
—Masahiro Sumori, Tokyo, Japan
