N.O. Restaurants

Just came across this:

Goop: Gwyneth Paltrow's site's newsletter has New Orleans restaurant reviews from R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe. When I was there in 1979 all I recall is the dobro po' boy singing and buck-dancing and seeing Al Hirt through side door as the hurricane approached. Window shopping for pralines below the Old Man River is odd when they're closed. Looked in the window of the Voodoo Museum. Ever see that? A little white house I recall. My friend, Lucy from Buffalo now works for the CDC in Atlanta, GA,  flew out to Merida, Yucatan in Mexico anyway, early August storm fizzled and left "only" over four inches of rain. Then wettest summer in recorded history. We stayed in the LaSalle apparently cheap and a favorite with travelers on a budget.

Back across Lake "Pon-chart-rain" in my old '65 VW, the lighting falling on the coast I passed an armadillo on the way back to Columbus, Mississippi to finish work on the Waverly Plantation Ferry Access, as the Tennessee-Tombigbee Barge Canal was being constructed and further work in Tishomingo, MS staying in Belmont, MS up near the Tennessee border. Mary FitzHerbert and I had an interesting time exploring the area too. She bought a dulcimer from a “mountain banjo” instrument maker in Golden, MS. They sell them up in North Carolina at the fiddlers convention.  She left for a bit in the middle as her son got married in the Philippines, works for Dole, had an all bamboo pipe organ play at his wedding. She was from Uruguay, but a Welsh native and though graduated BA Anthropology with me, left after her student experience back for Penalt, near Monmouth near the River Wye to look after her elderly mother on the Hillside Farm, on the Birches Road. Penalt is where Wikipedia has Robert Plant as once living and maybe found solace after losing his son to a liver disease there.

Columbus, Mississippi, was once home to Tennessee Williams, is near the Waverly Mansion in West Point, MS. I recall reading in the newspaper that the Queen of England was the largest single owner of property in that state, something like 14,000 acres? That was in 1979 so don't quote me but it was around there. At the time Congress chose it over an "energy island" for New York City. That would have created a power generating platform offshore, facilitating easier electrical power generation and cleaner air, cables into the city rather than the various small power plants in it.

http://www.goop.com/newsletter/96/en/ (Gwyneth Paltrow’s  father and brother attended Tulane University. I have a niece Brooke who did)