“I’d had very little experience with New Orleans before Katrina; I didn’t really start getting to know it until it was full of water. But even without much in the way of the cuisine and entertainment that makes it famous, New Orleans had me intoxicated. Its people were responding to the disaster with such candor and wit that the city seemed the national repository of that snoot-cocking Huck Finn spirit we Americans claim to cherish, and if it disappeared, a piece of the American soul would go with it.” — Dan Baum (of tweet and New Yorker fame), The Way of the Bayou - Happy Days Blog - NYTimes.com

During my year outside the South, I’ve been thinking a lot about Southern identity and what the South means to me.  I think I probably sound like a broken record with friends at this point, trying to define “my South” with all its strangeness and complexity.  Baum gets at it in this article — a sense of humor, resiliency, porch-loitering DIY values.  He makes me miss New Orleans and the Jazz Vipers (who play at the Spotted Cat every Monday and Friday — it’s my favorite dive, don’t miss it!).

I’ve said repeatedly over dinner and while meeting friends, recently, that when I get back I feel like whatever’s brewing about the South will mean a lot of hard work.  I don’t know how it will manifest itself (photography?), or if now is the time to create it, but it feels Big.

So.  Who’s going to New Orleans with me this fall?  I am ready for some street swing, beignets, and curb-side foot tappin’.

More of my own Spotted Cat photos here, and some of NOLA here.