Minor Wisdom

A little reggae for your S.E.B.

A tip of the hat to Peter Friedman for steering me to this one.

If you haven’t looked at the sky tonight, ...

... then go outside and look right now (7:37 CST). You’ll see a sliver of a crescent moon laying on its back, aligned with a planet (I’m guessing Mars; but it could be Venus). It’s in the western sky, so it won’t be there all night.

A song for Ash Wednesday

Here’s a song appropriate for Ash Wednesday: Gotta Serve Somebody, by Bob Dylan. No editorial videolizing—just a straight-ahead live performance.

200th Blawg Review

Congratulations are in order for the anonymous editor of Blawg Review, the weekly law-blog carnival, hosted here in January 2007. Today sees the 200th installment, appropriately hosted at Blawg Review’s home base. To keep any web project going for nearly four years is a notable accomplishment. To do so not by yourself, but by involving scores of law bloggers on (I think) three continents is stupendous. So Ed., congratulations and best wishes for 200 more.

Tipitina

This morning, my wife and I did our annual Carnival thing, catching the Thoth parade down on the corner. It was a cool, sunshiny day. My face is a bit sunburned, except for the white area protected by my sunglasses.

We’re home this evening, while about a mile away, Bacchus is rolling down Napoleon Avenue. The parade starts at Tipitina’s, on the corner of Napoleon and Tchoupitoulas. Which brings to mind the song the nightclub is named after. Here is a nice rendition. On piano, the world's funkiest white man. On guitar, the world’s whitest white man (tats aside).

Dr John & Johnny Winter - Tipitina
Uploaded by taduckly_

It’s Carnival Time

The best Carnival song of all time is Carnival Time by Al Johnson. Give it a listen, and read the lyrics.(Hat tip to Mardi Gras Digest, via NOLA-dishu.)

The Green room is smoking,
and the Plaza burning down
Throw my baby out the window,
let those joints burn down
All because it's Carnival Time,
oooooohhh, it's Carnival Time....!
Oh Well it's Carnival Time, and
everybody's having Fun!

Claiborne Street is rocking
from one side to the other
The joints are jamin, packing,
and I'm bout to smother
All because it's Carnival Time,
oooooohhh, it's Carnival Time....!
Oh Well it's Carnival Time and,
everybody's having Fun

Right Now, it's Carnival Time,
oooooohhh, Carnival Time....!
Oh Well it's Carnival Time and,
everybody's having Fun

Well if you put a nickel, well now,
I put a dime now
we can get together now and drink us some wine
All because it's Carnival Time,
oooooohhh, Carnival Time..!
Oh Well it's Carnival Time and,
everybody's drinking wine.

See also Luke 12:34.

The Henri Nouwen Society offers a free daily e-mail mediation from Nouwen’s Bread for the Journey. I find today’s installment especially relevant:

What is the basis of our security? When we start thinking about that question, we may give many answers: success, money, friends, property, popularity, family, connections, insurance, and so on. We may not always think that any of these forms the basis of our security, but our actions or feelings may tell us otherwise. When we start losing our money, our friends, or our popularity, our anxiety often reveals how deeply our sense of security is rooted in these things.

A spiritual life is a life in which our security is based not in any created things, good as they may be, but in God, who is everlasting love. We probably will never be completely free from our attachment to the temporal world, but if we want to live in that world in a truly free way, we'd better not belong to it. “You cannot be the slave both of God and of money” (Luke 16:13).

Another reason to hate this song

The Language Log asks whether this is the worst pun of all time. What say ye?

First Arrow

Roy Jacobsen was kind enough to tag my other blog, The (New) Legal Writer, with the Premio Dardo Award, recognizing “the effort of a particular blogger to transmit cultural, ethical, literary and personal values in his or her writing.” The rules require me, in accepting the award, to in turn bestow it on 15 other blogs who meet the criteria. I’m usually not one for chain blog posts, but I’m happy to do this one, because it gives me the opportunity to recognize some people who deserve recognition. I gave eight awards on The (New) Legal Writer, leaving seven to give here:

• Ernie the Attorney. Ernie hardly needs more recognition than he’s already gotten. Besides fitting the Premio Dardo criteria, he is the one who gave me the little push I needed to start blogging. He’s also a friend and a neighbor—his condo building is just across Audubon Park from my house.

• What About Clients? I’m grateful to Dan Hull for the recognition and encouragement he’s sent my way. Coming from a blogger of his high caliber, it’s quite humbling. Dan believes in practicing law with enthusiasm—if you can’t manage that, find yourself another line of work. He lives life the same way.

• Southern Appeal. SA’s principal instigator, Feddie, and I have a lot in common. We’re both Catholic; we’re both Southerners; we’re both appellate lawyers. Yet somehow I ended up as a bleeding-heart liberal, while he ended up an unapologetic arch-conservative. There’s also the matter of favorite booze: mine is Dewar’s; his is Blanton’s. What I like about him and his colleagues is their intelligence and genuineness. I read SA to challenge my own thinking.

• iPhone JD. My friend and colleague Jeff Richardson recently started this blog to share his knowledge of and enthusiasm with the iPhone. I don’t have an iPhone, but I enjoy reading Jeff’s blog because, despite its techno-niche theme, Jeff manages to put a lot of humanity into his writing.

• Clusterfuck Nation. I’ve never met Jim Kunstler, but I consider him a prophet—and an entertaining one at that. Like the prophets of old, he forecasts doom and gloom unless we repent of our idolatry, the idols being cars and suburban blight. He foresaw the subprime crisis and the current economic meltdown years before it made the news.

• Ask Sister Mary Martha. When Sister first started her blog, many people thought it was too witty and entertaining to be written by a real nun. My opinion is that Sister is a real nun; she knows too much Catholic catechism not to be. She has a wonderful tag line: “Life is tough. But Nuns are tougher. If you need helpful advice just Ask Sister Mary Martha. She'll help you. Just don't expect any sympathy.”

• Ashley Morris gets a posthumous Premio Dardo. He lived large and wrote with more passion than any other blogger I’ve known. (See, e.g., this.) His wife, Hana, is keeping the blog alive, and as Ashley would have wanted, she’s writing in her own voice.

Big Chief

Here in New Orleans, Carnival officially started on Twelfth Night, January 6. But this weekend, Carnival kicks into another gear. In the city and suburbs, we had parades last night, we have more parades today, and (weather permitting) we will have parades every day through Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday). To get everyone in the proper mood, here is Professor Longhair performing “Big Chief” at Montreux, 1973.

Professor Longhair "Big Chief"
Uploaded by Jaxx