I'd like to go back to Big Easy & have some oysters, right now. Jimmy Behrle, I'd like you to come along. I'll show you how to crochet & recite Longfellow's "Evangeline" at the same time.

I can't get over the fact that Longfellow's daughter "laughing Allegra" stayed at my g'parents' house in Minneapolis for a week in the 1920s. & that his great-grand-daughter was my mother's best friend. & that my Mom had her first drink (sherry) when she was 13, in the Longfellow house in Portland, Maine. this is all news to me.

I'm going to go read "Evangeline" now, by the shores of Gitchee Gumee.