Quarantine: Week Two (Monday, March 23 – Sunday, March 29)

Monday, March 23 I wrote my first ‘quarantune’ (“It’s the End of Days [and I Feel Like Drinkin’]”) and made a lovely caprese with the purple basil I’d planted in my garden.

Tuesday, March 24 I made a sunset time lapse from another isolated outpost on Lake Pontchartrain and started watching Tiger King.

quarantine week 2 - 4 lake pontchartrain sunset

Wednesday, March 25 The Louisiana death toll surpassed 50, jumping to 65 from the reported 49 the day before.

Thursday, March 26 Criminal court justices ordered the release of some lower-level offenders and pre-trial detainees from local prisons, partially due to courageous and relentless action on the part of Orleans Public Defenders (one of whom is a former neighbor whose work I respect and admire endlessly!).

Friday, March 27 The dog walk took me again through the Quarter, and I spent part of it on the phone with my 84-year-old grandmother isolating in Minnesota (she’s doing well despite being ‘grounded’). Got some pics on Canal and on the way back home through the Quarter. Of particular note is the enormous Jazz & Heritage Fest sign still plastered on the front of the Sheraton, ironically proclaiming: “Right Place. Right Time.” Dr. John’s original lyrics are perhaps more suitable; one might even go a step further and say it’s both the wrong place and the wrong time. At the start of my walk I overheard a man in my neighborhood say to a woman, “Man, these kids be cuttin’ up! I ain’t goin’ NOWHERE right now. Could be a second line right now; I wouldn’t go.” I joked to my neighbors that that’s how you know Tremé residents are serious about a lockdown: they’re willing to forgo their second lines. That day, the Louisiana death toll surpassed 100, jumping to 119 from the reported 83 the day before.

quarantine week 2 - 7 jazz fest billboard

quarantine week 2 - 8 menas restaurant iberville chartres

quarantine week 2 - 9 gallery for fine photography

quarantine week 2 - 10 digo siempre adios y me quedo detail

quarantine week 2 - 11 st louis and chartres

quarantine week 2 - 15 naghi's french quarter

quarantine week 2 - 16 naghi's we will be back sign

quarantine week 2 - 17 kindness sidewalk chalk

quarantine week 2 - 18 clover grill closed door

Saturday, March 28 was scheduled to have been my orchestra’s concert night; my second-violin crew cheers’ed each other from afar. Finished Tiger King.

Saturday, March 29 A warrant was issued for the arrest of a man who organized a second line that drew over 100 people. My seedlings graduated to the real garden and on my walk through the Tremé I found a painting of a sad guitarist next to a dumpster that, naturally, I wiped down with hand sanitizer.