The Goddess of Gumbo

There was so much action in the gar­den in the month of May–action that, between finals, grad­u­a­tion, and every­thing else that was going in my life, just did not get doc­u­mented in this space. And now that I’m writ­ing again, am I writ­ing about gar­den­ing? Heck, no. You see, yes­ter­day I watched a movie, a …

Walk­ing amid bougainvil­laea and banana trees, trav­el­ing by trol­ley through half-empty streets in the Gar­den Dis­trict, heart shad­owed by the wrecked but not quite ruined beauty of New Orleans, I met one day a few years ago a newly minted assis­tant pro­fes­sor: cul­tured, ele­gant, del­i­cately beau­ti­ful. We talked of many things: books we loved, our …