What I principally remember from my trip to New Orleans for the ISGB's annual conference was the loneliness, and a deep sense of isolation, though I didn't mention it in the letter about the trip on which these posts are based: it had been several years since I'd attended one, and the relationships I'd developed when I attended more regularly had frayed over time without their annual renewal.

The hotel staff was very kind to me, which I appreciated deeply. I made a lot of beads for them;)

The recipient of that letter had given me not one, but two Cafe du Monde mugs over the years, as souvenirs, but I kept breaking them. This was very disappointing, because I liked the retro style 1950s logo; it kind of reminded me of the traditional dish towel I purchased at a Lowell Mill, also a field trip made during an earlier Gathering—supposedly made on the thunderously loud looms, a few of which the US National Park service manages to keep going for demonstrations. There were no OSHA rules to prevent hearing loss back then.

So I started the letter about a visit to one her favourite spots, Cafe du Monde, famous for its sugar dusted square donuts, called beignets, which of course I had to see in order to get a new mug.

Well Cafe Du Monde was literally across the street from the museum where our FQ [French Quarter] tour ended, so I had beignets as a sort of early dinner. The mug didn't even make it back to the hotel before I chipped it on one of the many metal posts cluttering the sidewalk of the area.^[1] —Since it was surface printed/sintered rather than a stain under the glaze (as it would've originally been printed years ago) I wasn't too heartbroken—just concluded, with 3 of these things broken, the last of which didn't even make it back to the hotel, let alone home, it's just not fated to be.

(At the time, I tried to be philosophical about this—that's one thing age gives you, I guess; but the event foreshadowed, in some sense, my experiences.)

Cindi B, Annie S, her mom, and I went out to a restaurant near the hotel that was part of the original one that developed bananas foster, which we 4 split as a dessert—also, Annie was able to beg soft-shell crabs, which weren't actually on the menu that night, but evidently the season is very short and she really wanted some. They were tasty, crab-flavoured deep-fried crunchies, kind of like beer battered french fries. We also had vinegared heirloom tomato salad and rack of lamb—v. nice. Cindi B didn't care for the tartness, so I got a whole serving of that.

The high point of the walking tours was getting to see the textile collections & old glass beads from mardi gras—they switched to plastic, I guess, some time in the 60s. Evidently as a more ‘green’ effort, glass bead necklaces, rather than tons of plastic to be thrown away, are coming back, at least for some krewes/parades.

Unfortunately I have no images from the museum, probably because they prohibited photography; perhaps that's why I have such vivid memories, because I was trying to fix what I saw in my memory so desperately, but even so, those memories—of several strands of glass beads stretched out, a patch of beaded embroidery—are still only flashes, glimpses barely in focus at center, like one of pictures from my lensbaby.

Though people do save Mardi Gras necklaces, as in the picture, and some recycle them, and some no doubt even upcycle them (not that I would know anything about that) the vast majority, literally tons’^[3] worth of trash, ends up in landfills. The city is accustomed to cleaning its streets, but the beads are so ubiquitous they clog the sewers—which in a low lying city like NOLA, are critical.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.

Sylvus Tarn