Our month started off with a crawfish boil at our son John's house in Baton Rouge. We took year-old Kyle with us to a restaurant for breakfast and returned to crawfish boiling outside in a large pot.
Our month also started with Del's mom Doris requiring 24-hour care as she recuperated from the repair of her L3 vertebrae, and she was unable to get out of bed or a chair unassisted because of intense pain. For several months, our few trips away from home have been short day trips like the B.R. one because Del has been her mom's day-time caregiver. At the beginning of May Del was still working with the physicians to find some relief for her mom and the prognosis didn't look good. In mid-May Doris received an epidural and that brought her the first relief from the cycle-of-pain that she's been in since the operation. The self-splinting action of the muscles which had been severed during the operation abated and she has been progressively able to do two important things: reduce the pain medication and receive physical therapy. The first stage of physical therapy has been electro-stimulation "Matrix" therapy. The next stage will involve hydrotherapy and will begin as soon as she is physically able to enter the pool. All of your prayers for Doris's recovery are most appreciated. By the end of the month we are encouraged that she will slowly regain her strength and become independent of full-time care in the near future. We are happy to report that she was able to come to dinner at Timberlane for Mother's Day, her first trip out of her house except for doctor's visits for several months.
May was a forgettable month for local sports. Hornets eliminated from playoffs. Fired coach, hired new coach. LSU lost first two games in SEC Baseball Tournament, but finished the season as No. 5 in the Nation and is likely going to make a hit and run for the National Championship in Omaha in June. Then there's the Voodoo. Who Doo? That's the New Orleans Arena football team which, in its first year, is making a run for the title by achieving home court advantage for the playoffs.
May was also a forgettable month for the weather. The first two weeks pounded us with rain nearly every day, and one day a routine drive back from Metairie turned into an adventure as every street I tried ended up blocked by deep water. I finally doubled back to where I started and sat out the storm at my daughter's house before heading for home. The last two weeks have been balmy and dry --- a boon that we are most thankful for. Our St. Augustine grass is a healthy green, our garden is blooming all over, and all the plants are sending down strong roots to the water stored up in the ground by the heavy rains. For the next three months, our daily weather forecast will be "Clear to partly cloudy with widely scattered afternoon thunderstorms." It's summertime in New Orleans.
In mid-May I decided to take my trip to Austin that I had postponed since January when Del's dad died. The weather was still dicey and unsettled in New Orleans and flooding had occured along the route I was taking. I stayed on I-10 which was high and dry, but in some places it was like a ribbon of concrete rising out of a lake of water on both sides. Even approaching Austin, I saw the side culverts of the roads filled with rushing water. I stopped in Beaumont to visit my daughter Carla and her two kids, Molly and Garret. Then in Houston to spend the night with my daugther Yvette and her two kids, Evelyn and Aidan. Only heavy rain I encountered was entering Houston where I picked up Aidan at the Nature Center in the middle of a shower. Yvette and her husband Greg fixed a fine supper for us and we played Matherne Rules Scrabble after the kids were put to bed.
First stop after Houston was in Pflugerville to visit Roméo and Vickie. Dr. Roméo DiBenedetto had interviewed me about doyletics on TV for the El Paso Community College a few years ago, and has since moved to the Austin area. We had a great lunch together and then I drove to meet Bradford Riley who lives a few miles away in North Austin. We had dinner together at his favorite restaurant, the Saltgrass Steakhouse. The next day I drove to Hilmar and Lesley's and visited with them. That night I went to the Austin Waldorf School whose 12th Graders were performing "The Tempest". Bradford was the Speech Coach and I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation. I stayed over to help strike the set and had dinner with Bradford and one of his fellow directors at the Magnolia Cafe. When the Cafe went to 24/7 operation, they modified their sign to say “SORRY, WE’RE OPEN.” When I returned to the Moore residence, Hilmar was still up watching the Spurs-Lakers NBA playoff. Like the New Orleans team earlier, the San Antoinio team ended their season. 
Sunday with the Moores was marvelous. Breakfast tamales and tomatillo salsa on the patio and long conversations that lived on into the late afternoon. They gave me a guided tour of the neighborhood, and we ended up down at the Magnolia Cafe for supper. The next morning I left for home and decided to drive straight home with a stopover at Carla's along the way. Carla and the kids had been strawberry picking in the morning and we gnoshed on strawberries and dipped them in chocolate. I made the 600 miles from Austin to New Orleans in twelve hours including the hour or so stopover. On the way home, I treated myself to the most delicious delicacy -- I stopped in Lake Charles for Steamboat Bill's crawfish étouffé stuffed pistolettes. I found out why they are so good on the trip to Austin – I stopped at 10 AM and they hadn’t started "frying the bread" yet, I was told. Apparently they deep fry the palm-sized football-shaped bread loaves called "pistolettes" and stuff them with freshly made crawfish étouffé. Two of them will amply satisfy even a hungry Cajun. With care, it's possible to eat them while driving as I did.
When I got home Del said, "We have three movies, but two of them don't look good." Those two were "Emporer's Club" and "Rare Birds" and they were excellent. The third one, "True Romance", was interesting, but definitely not the chick flick that Del thought it was.
Had an amazing thing occur this month. A GoogleAlert informed me that doyletics was mentioned in an article in the New Zealand Herald on-line. I went to the article and found an article about my 21st Century Marriage contract. I wrote a letter to the editor, saying, among other things,"I enjoyed Juliet Rowan's piece on '21st century marriage' and am glad that she found my 21st Century Marriage Contract on line. I am happy to report that after 26 years of marriage my wife and I are still happy not being required to disobey or obey the other, or I might not be writing this letter to you. People usually take vows when they get married --- they in effect climb into a semantic box and soon wonder why they feel trapped. The 21st Century Marriage Contract is my way of helping folks stay out of the box, and thus increase their chances that their good friendship might ride out the sea change that marriage brings to all." The amazing part is that I read this article on May 19, 2004. The dateline of the article was May 20, 2004! An article about my work appeared in a newspaper on the other side of the globe and I heard about it and was able to read it the "day before" it was published!
With our eight children and seventeen grandchildren, every month brings at least one birthday. May and June brings at least seven that I can think of:
Yvette, Evelyn, Jennifer, Thomas, Emerson, Garrett, and Walden. It requires careful scheduling to get presents wrapped and mailed in time for each one, and Granma Del's birthday-present acquisition- and wrapping-machine was busy this month getting all those gifts ready for the mail. See photos.
Del needed new hoses for her mom's garden and replacement backs for her diamond studs, so we scheduled a double massage with Charlotte and Laura in Metairie with side-trips to 'Designs in Jewelry' and 'Harbor Freight'. Barry Pizzalotta fixed up Del's earrings, Harbor Freight provided the garden stuff, and we floated from our massages over to Houston's Metairie for a great lunch. Lump crabmeat over a grilled redfish, mmm, mmm, talk about good!
A few days later I took Del with me to the Thursdays at Twilight concert in City Park in the Botanical Garden Reception room. Sid Norris played the Pathetique Sonata in C Minor, Opus 13, by Beethoven from the “Sturm und Drang” period of music, followed by “cute” village dance music by Francis Poulenc, then 12 preludes by Chopin, followed by his Baccarole -- a Venice Gondolier’s song with its darker moments. After the concert we walked across the street to view the new Sculpture Garden which is fortuitously open late on Thursday nights. Amazing sculptures in a beautiful setting of ponds and trees. The Magritte bronze was planted into the ground and resembled a chopped off tree stump.
Two days later we went downtown to remove Del's equipment from the office she is vacating. She is working mostly out of the house for the time being. Then we drove over to City Park and got on the new City Park/Canal Streetcar and rode it all the way to the top of the French Quarter at Esplanade Avenue. We got out and walked through the Farmer's Market, listened to the live music along the way. This was Streetcar Return day: free rides to celebrate the return of the Canal Streetcar line after forty years absence. With one fare, tourists and locals can now ride from the Museum in City Park to the St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square in the French Quarter.
The next day we had to go to the cathedral for confirmation of our two granddaughters, Tiffany and Jennifer (See Photos below), and then to a reception a couple of blocks off the City Park end of the streetcar line. We parked near the house for the reception, walked to the streetcar and walked through Jackson Square to the confirmation, and afterward rode to the reception with our daughter, Maureen and her friend Katie.
Such a busy month, I barely had time to squeeze in my work on this Digest, but, here it is --- another case of publishing triage delivered to your desktop with brand-new pixels in pixelated delight. Till next month . . .
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Keep those cards and letters coming. Each month I have to remove about 7 names from the Digest list because folks have changed email addresses. To receive just one note of thanks while I go through the sad task of saying goodbye to those long-time readers makes it all worthwhile.
If you have been enjoying the photos in this Digest, but have wondered who or what you were looking at, simply let your cursor fall stationary over the photo and the photo's identification will appear.
2. Heartburn Story 
Buddy Hackett told a story about his growing up and going into the U.S. Army. As a child he grew up eating very hot, spicy foods, and had a perpetual heartburn. When he joined the Army, he was served bland meat and potatoes fare and soon his heartburn ceased. Worried, he went to the Boot Camp Army doctor and said, "Doctor. I got a problem — my fire went out!" When Buddy Hackett died last year, a lovely fire of love and humor went out in our world. Let us remember Buddy in our prayers. . . .
3. Texas, Coffee, and Less
When driving East of my home into Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, we often stop at the Visitor Centers at the borders and are greeted by super clean restrooms, smiling faces behind the counters, and a choice of a cold coke or hot coffee gratis. When returning home we get a similar reception at the Bienvenue en Louisiane Welcome Center. After I drove across the border into Texas during a recent trip to Austin, I stopped at the Texas Visitor’s Center which added a new meaning to the word "cross". I wanted a new road map. My current map still had Governor George Bush’s photo on it. I looked around for the coffee and the guy behind the counter asked what I was looking for. “Coffee” I replied. 
“We just had the coffee machine serviced. It’s outside in the vending area.” Outside at a visitor’s center means armor-plated when it comes to vending machines. Some cog-loose users after hours mistake the soda and coffee machines for slot machines and there’s no Tilt button to discourage them. So they bolt them to wall and cover the front with heavy wire mesh that’s nearly impossible to read through. That handicap was bad enough, but there were selections that varied from A01 through A37 for type of coffee, cappuccino, tea, decaf, hot chocolate, and fifteen varieties of sweeteners. I decided that lacking a comfortable chair to sit in to read the blocked display through a magnifying glass, I left in a cross mood determined that I would drive to somewhere I could say "Coffee" and it would appear in front of my eyes. That ain't no way to treat visitors to yah home state, Pard'nah.
4. Taint Necessarily So
As we drove out of the garage this morning I noticed our gas gauge was on FULL and I asked Del if she had bought any Shell gasoline. She said no, as I expected because we had been avoiding Shell gasoline for many years. During this past month, 
Shell stations locally had to stop selling gasoline because of high sulfur content. Sulfur is the substance in the air which tarnishes silver, I told Del, and that's how the 3M Silver Strips work to keep our silverware and bowls from tarnishing. The strips, placed in an enclosed drawer or bag, remove the sulfur from the air and the silver will not tarnish, no matter how long they are kept in the container.
Sulfur in the gasoline causes silver in contact with the gasoline to tarnish and the gas gauges use silver contacts which are in contact with the gas. A tarnished silver contact will become a very high resistance and the gas gauge will remain stuck indefinitely at FULL until the gauge is fixed at a cost of about $500. Repair shops in the local area are up to their ears in gas tanks being pulled from cars for repair due to the tarnished contacts tainted by the Shell gasoline.
Royal Dutch Shell is the parent company of Shell Oil and its reputation has been tainted by an overstatement of its oil reserves. It's exactly like the entire Shell company has had its gasoline tank gauge with tainted contacts so that its reserves read FULL when in fact they were only partially full.
Here is an example of "As Above, So Below" — at the highest level of Royal Dutch Shell, with the gauge of its oil reserves reading more oil than is actually present, and, at the lowest level of the Shell production and retail chain, the gasoline customer's gas tanks are reading more gasoline than is actually present.
The best source at the best price is to order your copies on-line is from the publisher Random House/Xlibris's website above.
“Troy” (2004) — what woman wouldn’t run away with Orlando Bloom (Paris)? Helen of Sparta certainly did, then became Helen of Troy, and launched a thousand ships from Sparta to overcome Troy and return her. Thus began the ten year siege of Troy and its environs, which culminated with Hector killing Patroclus, Achilles killing Hector, and Paris killing Achilles in a bloodbath worthy of Homer’s epic verse. Great movie, well worth the cost of the big screen admission. Brad Pitt is the epitome of the golden warrior Achilles, son of Thetis the sea nymph played by Julie Christie. (Always thought she was a bit of a nymph.) Why bother to read the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid when you can get the gist of all three in a short three hour span? If you listen carefully, you can hear the name Aeneas being called as Hector’s wife and others leave the sacked city of Troy at the end of the movie.
“Rare Birds” (2002) — Ah! There are rare avis at every level in this exquisitely funny Canadian movie. Perched upon a Newfoundland promontory is William Hurt’s languishing restaurant, the Auk, looking like the solitary northern seabird of its namesake. His only customer many days is Phonz, a Zero-Mostel-esque neighbor who is building an RSV, has inherited cold light technology from an inventor partner, and has recovered a ten-kilo package of cocaine from a wreck on the coast. He suspects that some bad guys from Winnebago are spying on him to steal his idea and plans for his Recreational Submarine Vehicle. He loves the haute cuisine that Hurt creates in his moribund restaurant and comes up with a marketing plan: attract birders to the end of the world by announcing the sighting of a rare duck. That’s the setup — the movie unreels in a rollicking fashion that will have you reeling in laughter. A Canadian version of Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” with Hurt holding down the Gene Wilder straight-man part. 
“Roughing It” with James Garner as a very convincing Samuel Clemens giving a commencement speech for his daughter’s graduation class. She has a $20 gold piece riding on whether her dad will be other than a doddering old fool. If he is actually entertaining, her classmate has to pay up. Sam tells the story of how he got started when he wasn’t much older than the graduates and he has them enthralled as vignette after vignette of his frontier experiences out West unfold in front of our eyes. “Mr. Slade”, the guy who has a party for his wife’s return on a certain Saturday every year, and the shovel foreman at the silver mine are two memorable ones. His brother, Orion, gets sick just in time to keep Sam from striking it rich and becoming one of the idle rich traveling all over Europe. By the time the graduation ceremony’s audience comes out of the exquisite trance Mark Twain had put them into, his daughter’s friend had slipped the $20 gold piece to her. This story is the best model for how to do a graduation speech — full of true stories about how Sam became a writer — he certainly didn’t start out as one. 
“Urban Cowboy” — amazing how young John Travolta, Debra Winger, and Scott Glenn have become since we first watched this 1980 film about a chemical plant worker in the outskirts of Houston. This movie is full of great music — we got up and danced a few times during the movie. Travolta and Winger were “looking for love in the all the wrong places” in this “boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-goes-home-to-wife” movie. If you haven’t seen it, you’re in for a treat.
face down mud duty for Hoffman. Maybe it was more funny the second time watching it because we knew all the passengers were going to get out safely (there – now you know), but Del and I roared at Dustin’s exquisite performance. Heck, we got belly laughs from the DVD menu screen which showed John Bubba (Andy Garcia) and TV reporter Gail (Gena Davis) in aligned profiles staring off idealistically into space and Laplante turning to the audience giving us his usual morose “get outa my face” stare. Great film.
“Madame Curie” (1944) with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon as Marie and Pierre as two scientists processing pitchblende ore. The pitchblende ore contains thorium and uranium and give off “rays”, but after separating those two elements, the radiation emitted by them only accounted for half of the original radiation. Puzzling over this discrepancy, Marie postulated a previously unknown element must be in the “Unidentified Material which represented .001%”, so she measured that material and located the missing radiation — then gave the name “radium” to the unknown radiating material. They set up shop for mass separation of pitchblende and spent four years of processing tons of ore, she and Pierre. When the material was placed in the final evaporator dish all that was left was a scum — all the material had gone! They were crushed and went home to bed. In the middle of the night she sat up thinking, “That scum must be the radium!” They rushed to the lab and saw the radiating light glowing from the scum in the bottom of the dish. For many years they had struggled in the dark to bring the new element of radium into the light, and there it was in the dish emitting its own light! 
“Serving Sara” (2002) with Matthew Perry and Elizabeth Hurley in a cockeyed story of process servers run amok — dueling servers — Joe Dirt and Wopalong Tony. Will J.R. the philandering cattle baron get a hubby-friendly divorce from Sara in Texas or a split-up-the-ranch divorce in New York? With Tony chasing wild geese from Miami to Bangor, Joe is up to his armpits in hot chick and bull. Well, like the sleazy motel clerk said, “You have to see it to believe it.” Just a channel surf click above TV sitcoms where Perry learned to play to the cheap seats. 
He committed suicide
Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner were contemporaries who lived for many years within an hour's train ride of each other and yet never met. Neither had much respect for the other 
