N'Orleans!

Here are some pictures to get a feel for the flavor of New Orleans.  Karen is eating alligator soup, at a restaurant recommended by Andrew Decker.  (Thanks, Andrew) and I am smiling about the beignets (if you don't know what that is, read:  French zeppole) at Cafe Du Monde.  

There are also some pictures of the French Quarter as the night got kicked up as infamous Louisianan, Emeril Lagasse, would say.  Also, you will see a horse and his cop entering a bar through a window to get a glass of water.  It was sort of a spectacle, I'd say.

Snapshots of Austin

So here are a few pictures of me and Marianne doing some Austin-y things like:  try on cowboy boots. listen to live fiddle music, eat cupcakes from the cupcake trailer and just sort of soak in the local flavor.  

N.B.  The picture of the giant Texas flag was snapped en route to Austin, actually outside City Limits.  

O. Henry's House

Hey guys!  

So the rest of these entries will be written retrospectively since I am now home safe in New York.  My last entry was written in the research library at UT Austin while I was waiting for the Steinbeck letters to be culled for my perusal.  They were sooo cool to actually hold and look at.  They were written on all kinds of paper, but mostly on yellow legal sheets.  He wrote a lot about his daily routines, the purchase of his new home and the progress he was making on his books.  He seemed particularly concerned with how things were going on The Pearl.  Very interesting.  The letters were written to his publisher over a course of many years.  There were hundreds of letters and, since the library was closing, I couldn't possibly read all of them.   In any event, it was probably one of the coolest stops on the trip.  The resources at this library were very impressive, though not all of them were accessible to the general public without good reason.  I should try to access more of these research centers near home, etc. 

So the following day I visited O. Henry's home in Austin.  He lived there from approximately the age of 24 - 38.  His time in Texas, however, was sort of colored by all kinds of hard times.  His wife died in 1897 and soon after that he was found guilty of embezzlement charges and was sent off to jail...in Columbus, Ohio, one of the first stops on my literary tour (though I didn't visit the prison). After his time in jail he never returned to Texas, but made it out to the east coast, Philadelphia and New York.  In New York you can have a beer in the booth where he penned "The Gift of the Magi" if you hit up Pete's Tavern on Irving Place, just a short walk from Union Square.  At the O. Henry house I purchased a comic book that graphically depicts many of O. Henry's stories.  I'm excited to use this in my class this year because hopefully it will break down the material for the students and also inspire them to produce their own graphic versions of literature. 

Another thing that I learned at the O. Henry house were all the different theories as to how O. Henry (whose real name is William Sydney Porter) got his pen name.  One idea is that he basically just made it up while looking through the newspaper and trying to create a name for himself under which to write.  It has also been said that the name comes from the title "OHio pENitentaRY."  I'm not exactly sure but either way it sounds like he basically picked something he liked without much rhyme or reason.  

UT Austin

Right now I am in the Ransom Center of the UT Austin library, trying to look at some manuscripts of Bernard Malamud and letters from John Steinbeck. It's really quite a serious operation. I had to lock my bag up and watch a video on how to care for the materials. I learned what a book snake is, and that's always exciting.

I requested (out of the boxes and boxes of materials available) the letters that Steinbeck wrote every day to his publisher while he wrote East of Eden, you know, the ones he put in that big wooden box that I want to have recreated. I thought that would be cool since I already thought that was pretty interesting at the Steinbeck Center. For Malamud I asked for drafts of his short story "The Apprentice." There's so much more to see but I only have a short amount of time. You have to fill out a pretty detailed calling card and then they have to retrieve the stuff for you. I'm not allowed to have a purse, camera, phone, etc.

Downstairs is the Gutenberg Bible and also the first photograph ever taken. There are millions of books and manuscripts kept here, including the original copy of James Joyce's Ulysses. I asked for that but they said it's restricted. I think that's false advertising, you know? I guess I can't complain too much.

Tomorrow I'm going to visit O. Henry's house (it's closed today) and see what's going on there. Today we met Joel Johnson for lunch! Awesome! We went to The Shady Grove and Joel gave us the low down on Austin. Hopefully we're going to see some bats fly from under the Congress bridge and then listen to some live music. I just found out that Marianne should be driving down from Waco tomorrow and that's really really exciting. I like Austin a lot, except for the fact that you kind of need a car to get around. I'll fill you in on more after I get to see the letters and essays and when I've seen more of this city "where cowboy meets hippie."

Phoenix, New Mexico, El Paso

Today we drive from Phoenix, AZ, completely whizzed through New Mexico and finally ended at a La Quinta in El Paso, Texas.  As many of you have probably heard, the heat in Arizona is ridiculously unbearable and unlivable.  Even though I knew it would be that way, it was still shocking and unpleasant.  However, we had a great stay with Mark's aunt, who cooked us dinner and made us banana/strawberry smoothies.  

We also stopped at the Chiricahua National Park, which is home to these amazing rock structures.  The Indian name for them simply means "standing up rock," which they are.  It's like someone took big boulders and just stacked them one after another into a column and then topped it off with a flat stone cap.  They were different than anything else I'd ever seen and Paul said the same.  However, we couldn't get any awesome pictures because the sun had already set and there wasn't any serious light.  The visit to the park was cool though because absolutely no one else was there.  (I started imagining crazy serial killers hiding in the rocky valleys but I didn't share my crazy ideas out loud).  Also, a lightning storm started and it was so beautiful.  Every so often a big dash of lightning would crack across the sky and light up the red sandy dirt of the park.  It was awesome.  We decided that anyone could come through and see this place during the day, but we had a special experience because of the night lightning circumstances, free from crowds. 

The lightning really didn't stop the entire night but it was gorgeous.  I haven't seen anything like that before so even though I was slightly concerned for our safety (Paul told me later that you don't have to worry about lightning if you're in a car) I enjoyed the stormy drive.  

Another highlight of the day was when we spotted stray calves in the middle of the road and stopped so we could see them up close.  In the background was a rainbow and it really was out of control pretty and sort of unreal.  You can see how cute the calf is and sort of get a feel for the rainbow too in the pictures.  

Now we are in El Paso, Texas for the night!  It's insane how close to Mexico we are, though we will not be going in.  This is the setting of Cormac McCarthy's wide open Texas novels like The Road and No Country for Old Men.  Hopefully I can get some good shots tomorrow while we're driving approximately ten hours to Austin, Texas!  I'll let you know.  

San Diego

It was wonderful spending time in lovely and temperate San Diego.  We were lucky to stay with our friend, Mitch, who is living on Coronado, a beautiful beach town across the bay from downtown San Diego.  Mitch is in the Navy and doing his residency at the Naval hospital, hence the picture of him in uniform.  

Coronado is really beautiful and was made famous with the Hotel del Coronado, which has housed such famous guests as Charlie Chaplin and Thomas Edison.  L. Frank Baum also penned most of The Wizard of Oz here. It is also rumored that he based his vision of the Emerald City on the image of the Hotel del Coronado.  The hotel also appeared in many films, such as Some Like it Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe.

In addition to hanging out with Mitch and Yan, two fellow Sweeneyites, I also went to the San Diego Zoo, traversed Balboa Park and relaxed on the Coronado Beach. The wart hogs and Galapagos tortoises were probably my favorite animals at the zoo.

The weekend also ended with brunch at the Hash House, a restaurant that builds a theme around the state of Indiana.  Additionally, their gimmick is super giant impossible to finish portions that are really sort of insane.  Paul's pancake looked like a flying saucer and the plates were like boat size.  Each dish came with a sprig of rosemary and also a slice of yellow watermelon, which I had never seen before.  This should explain what we're eating in the pictures.

P.S.  I'm not sure why the beginning text is underlined.  If you click on it, however, a giant picture of my favorite Galapagos tortoise will appear.  I didn't plan this.  

Elephant Seals!

Okay, so by far one of the coolest curiosities that we discovered on this trip (in my opinion) was on the California coast in between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I'm going to admit, at first, I was way too freezing and tired to even want to get out of the car. Mark insisted and after I borrowed his sweatshirt, took a deep breath and prepared myself for the biting winds (it's really cold in Northern California and in my consistent denial of this, I was wearing shorts and a tank top), I got out of the car and ran onto the beach. Well, I'm really happy that I ddi because there I saw one of the most amazing things ever...it was a whole cluster of elephant seals sleeping on top of each other like a bunch of chubby sardines. They have these ridiculous looking faces and actually make GROWLING noises. I took a video and hopefully you can see it. Though it looks boring in the beginning, the end is soo cute, so you have to watch the whole thing. {ALERT: I cannot upload the video. I don't know WHY right now but sorry you can't see the elephant seal magic yet}. I loved the elephant seals and I'll probably never get to see them again close up like that in their natural environment. SO worth it.