Still missing New Orleans a lot, especially all of my friends and the whole Krewe du Vieux gang. Since we had the fire at the den this summer (and with a new mayor coming up AND the possibility of a great Saints season AND a theme unrelated to Katrina & The Flood), the KduV 2010 theme is All Fired Up with Dr. John as King and Mother Miriam Chamani of the Voodoo Spiritual Temple as Queen.
Although now an Austrian city, Salzburg was a part of Germany during Mozart’s lifetime (1756-91). Technicality, you say. Yet, one of the best pieces of advice I received in Germany was “Never remind an Austrian that Mozart was from Germany and Hitler was from Austria.”
b) The St. James Infirmary cartoon/video is out! It is animated in that cool old Fleischer Studios’ Talkartoons style and features Clint Maedgen, The Turk, & Ronnie Numbers of The New Orleans Bingo! Show. I love, love, love it. Clint’s done Cab Calloway proud.
c) DR. JOHN may just be king of the 2010 Krewe du Vieux parade.
It’s been four years since Katrina and The Flood. Yet, when you meet another New Orleanian, the triumvirate of questions pops up within minutes. Were you flooded? How much water did you get? Did you make out ok?
World War II ended four plus sixty years ago. Still the collective memory of bombings, European cities reduced to rubble, mutual shame, and disgust. That any of it had to happen. Such hurt can’t help but linger.
The Goldene Krone is the only establishment in Darmstadt that escaped Allied bombs. The locals like to let visitors know such things. With a horse’s head sticking out of a third floor window (small Godfather moment on seeing that), the Krone is a fabled jazz club now. Live jam sessions and foosball almost every evening. There were four of us – three Americans and a German – and a whole lot of Gemütlichkeit (that’s German for craic and not a drink, although there was that as well).
The kicker, of course, is that American jazz and blues musicians are now more popular in European cities that you’ve never heard of than in their own country. Germans know well the difference between their Boldens and Mortons, Bechets and Brubecks, Hopkinses and Whites, Soul Rebels, and Hot 8s. Was I ever surprised when the pretzel boy of Frankfurt recited to me the history of the accents of New Orleans’s Irish Channel, and he’s never even been there. He wasn’t so taken aback on discovering I once lived in the very neighborhood of which he spoke so fondly.
"This textbook is intended to introduce engineering graduate students to the essentials of
modern Continuum Mechanics. This understanding should include an appreciation for the status of the classical theories as special cases of general nonlinear continuum models. The relationship of the classical theories to nonlinear models is essential in light of the increasing reliance, by engineering designers and researchers, on prepackaged computer codes. These codes are based upon models which have a specific and limited range of validity. Given the danger associated with the use of these computer codes in circumstances where the model is not valid, engineers have a need for an in depth understanding of continuum mechanics and the continuum models which can be formulated by use of continuum mechanics techniques."
