Dear George,
We are just back from an 11-day vacation which combined our son J’s art shows with sunning on the beach. It’s hard to imagine a better mix. On our first day we went to the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in downtown New Orleans. The Ogden is holding its annual “Louisiana Contemporary” show, featuring 25 Louisiana artists who represent “the vibrant visual arts culture of Louisiana”. Two of J’s duct tape works were selected for the exhibition. The two works (shown below) are “Bienville’s Deception” and “Higgins Boat at Normandy”. The Higgins Boat piece was used to promote the exhibition on New Orleans streetcars.
These two works are part of a mammoth duct tape project J has undertaken over the last year or so in conjunction with New Orleans’ Tricentennial. In his words, “My plan was to start with the Native Americans living and trading on what is today’s Bayou St. John and then go on to portray the arrival of Bienville, the European colonization of New Orleans, the Americanization of the city after the Louisiana Purchase, the Civil War, the subsequent Reconstruction era, the age of Storyville and Jazz, and finally the modern era.” There are sixty-five pieces in the whole collection, about fifty of which are currently being shown at the Isidore Newman School’s Reynolds-Ryan Gallery at 5333 Danneel St. in NOLA. One can see the whole collection at nola300caughtontape.com.
We celebrated the Newman opening with a family brunch at Commander’s Palace, one of NOLA’s great historic restaurants. Our grandchildren, L and V, turn ten next month and have become perfectly at home at fancy dining outings. We all had a joyous time.
We left New Orleans last Sunday morning for Destin, FL, about 270 miles away. We stayed at a Marriott hotel across Highway 98 from Henderson State Beach Park with its glorious white sand beaches. I spent a lot of time in the ocean while Katja was content to read Homer’s Odyssey on the beach. We celebrated our 58th anniversary at Emeril Lagasse’s new Sandestin restaurant, Emeril’s Coastal Italian.
This was an ideal way to wind up the summer. Soon we begin OLLI classes, with Katja studying British detective mysteries and me writing some mysterious poems.
Love,
Dave 
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