What is it about ghost stories that so fascinate the young and the old, the skeptics and the paranormal researchers?  Carl Sagan had responded once to the question of whether or not he believed in other life forms in the planet, that as of yet he had no scientific proof, but that he sure hoped so.  This is how many people respond when asked about ghosts or spirits.  Well, that is provided that the ghosts are friendly.  There are many stories about ghosts haunting the streets and the buildings of New York City.

Some people actually look for allegedly haunted hotels when booking accommodations, however when I traveled to the city recently I was more interested in the non-haunted rooms.  Seeking luxury home I booked my stay using this page.  My trip to the city was a story collecting trip.  I wanted to know if most people who claim to have seen the ghosts, where seeing random ghosts or ghosts from history.  Not big history either, just the history of a location and a person.  Such as in the case on the train tracks in San Antonio, a site that is said to be haunted by the victims of an actual collision.

I found that some of the stories revolved around previous patrons who simply spent quite a bit of time in a particular location, such as the claims that the members of the Vicious Circle (Dorothy Parker, Harpo Marx, Edna Ferber etc…) still hang around the restaurant at the Algonquin Hotel, in spirit of course.  Other stories people tell, are of actual events, and the actual victims or inhabitants of a location, who still refuse to completely leave this earth.

This is the case at the Belasco Theatre. This is one of the oldest theatres in the city, and many have claimed over the years to see the previous owner, David Belasco, wandering around back stage shaking the hands of the actors and riding the elevators.  Either way, be it the West Village bar Chumley’s, or in the famous Dakota Building on the upper east side.  Either way, be they random ghosts, or the spirits of real people, the city is full of their stories, but then the city of New York is filled with wonderful stories in general.

It was an extremely busy first day in San Francisco. After checking out what might be a good restaurant in San Francisco, we headed down Powell Street and caught the cable car to Fisherman’s Wharf; this place was absolutely cool! We hung out for as long as we could. Fisherman’s Wharf is very, very touristy and once we got there, we had to purchase jumpers, because it was too cold for us and the wind blew right through what we were wearing. We found San Francisco to be just like it is in all the movies, hilly, very hilly and it is cold even in the summer time. The average temperature here ranges around 20 to 21 degrees. 
 
The Wharf is 3 miles long and goes all the way to the Ferry Building. We had to squeeze our way through the throngs of people here and dodge some whizzing bike riders. We could see Alcatraz Island from the Wharf and count out all the piers, 40. We booked a boat tour to take us around the Bay, and while we were waiting to go on the tour, someone fell into the water! Two firetrucks came and one fire brigade boat and a police boat. They pulled the poor freezing person from the water, and the show was over. The tour around the bay is fantastic, but we were still to cold. Once we got off the tour boat, we went to the ‘Fisherman’s Wharf Taqueira restaurant, it’s the one we read about on the website listed above, man was the food there terrific! We really over ordered, but we couldn’t decide what to eat.
 
After that hefty meal, we decided to Filbert Steps, and up to Colt tower. The walk there was harsh, some parts were steep, very steep. Just what we needed after a huge meal. We then made it to the Ferry Building, and we were tired. We were lucky to catch a cable car going back to our hotel. Man were we beat, cold and happy.

There was a time when things mattered so much more.  I could convince myself that living in coffee shops and pubs was the most important part of my work, because it was there that I could have the most essential conversations.  These would be the kinds of talks that fueled my energy to get back into the cave I lived in and work until all hours of the morning.  It was a hard and furious work, because I thought I was supposed to be hard and furious.  I had all sorts of philosophical questions that were always running at full speed from the back to the front of my mind, all day and all night, and I perceived myself like the Hermit card in the tarot deck, always looking for answers in a very lonely search.

It’s hard to trace back to those days, when I’m finding myself spending more time at the best restaurants in Manhattan, enjoying a moment that passes, and not feeling like it’s up to me to chase it.  I don’t have to capture the conversation in any kinds of permanent mental pictures that will help me get the moment back later, when I’m creating.  The words still come, of course, and inspirations still flow through me like I’m always just waking up from a dream that I can still remember.

I met the most curious person in my life at the time when things were at their peak for me.  I thought it was a peak, because everything I made came to some kind of light, on paper or in another conversation.  He looked like a mad poet, and he spoke like an angel, but he surprised me when I discovered he truly had no plans.  Or at least, no master plan.  He could perform tricks with napkins and cards, and all the women were enchanted, and all the men were jealous.  But he had another card, a secret card, that was an invitation to a Magic Theatre that I’d never seen.  But once I walked through that door, nothing would ever be the same.

Each year in Lafayette, Louisiana, the city becomes the place to be for music, food, and entertainment, during the Festival Internationale de Louisiane.  Begun in 1987, this annual event has become a popular celebration of music, craftsmen and artistry.  Now in its 24th year, the 2010 event will occur from April 21st to the 25th, and may well draw together three hundred thousand people. 
 
In the past, there’s a whole host of great performers and entertainers from around the world.  Here’s a list of just a few of them: from Brazil, Cyro Baptista; from Cuba, Yerba Buena; from Belgium, Mousta Largo; from Mali, Tinariwen; from the United States, Steve Riley and the mamou Playboys; from Sweden, Vasen; from France, Le Trou Normand and Les Yeux Noirs, and from South Africa, Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
 
This year’s performers include Steel Pulse, Seira Leone’s Refugee All Stars, Lunasa, Sonny Landreth, Keith Frank & the Soileau Zydeco Band, Mucca Pazza, Taj Weekes & Adowa, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, Donna the Buffalo, Henry Gray and the Cats, Irish Stories & Songs with Celjun and Lunasa, as well as many others.  The festivities will have several presentations from Louisiana Folk Roots, including the International Fiddle Summit, Michael Yuan Nunez & Mark Meaux and the Quebec/Louisiane workshop.  In addition, you’ll find Melissa Stevenson & the Dill Pickles, as well as the Progressive Baptist Church Choir.  It’s quite an eclectic list of performers. 
 
If you plan on attending, you’ll want to find a hotel well in advance, and then, not only should you attend the festival, but take part in other attractions Lafayette offers, such as a visit to the Children’s Museum of Acadiana or a trip to nearby Avery Island, where you can see how Tabasco is made, plus see the famous Jungle Gardens and Bird City.

New York has always been the place where I go to get away from my dreams.  Like a character in an Ishiguro novel, I come in to the city, I have a job to do.  I do the job, and I get the job done.  It’s my favorite place to go, because I don’t have to remember anything, except for my name, and my hotel room number.  Even those things can be left behind, because I have the number on the passkey, and I have the name in my wallet.  There are sometimes other important details that come in and take over the busy part of my mind.  These details are what can help me to get exactly where I need to be.  

I like to stay in New York, because the business hotels are always willing to offer me the chance to become anonymous.  This suits me, because I was born rather anonymously, and most of my best works have been done without anyone knowing my name.  Most people have heard of me, and know my work very well, but they never connect the two.  It’s been difficult at times to keep them separate, since they are both famous for different reasons.  And extremely different reasons, at that.  But then again, you never know where you might end up, and where your work might end up, and we should not be surprised when they turn out to be different things entirely.  

The New York that takes my dreams away is the one I first found when I was learning my art.  This is the time that I first knew what I would be doing for the rest of my life.  I tried working in Los Angeles for a time, but found that the cameras everywhere made everyone want to be seen.  In New York, there are cameras, but they are like old friends that you don’t want to meet again, and they sometimes have a difficult time catching you, if you are careful about it.  I am not afraid of not dreaming when I work, and when I am dreaming, I find myself unconsolable.

Mallory was just beginning her first semester at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and didn’t know anyone on campus when she first arrived there. It was a beautiful campus and she loved the self-contained aspect of it as well as all of the lakes. It was definitely her favorite of those that she toured before making her final decision. She had applied to three different schools and was accepted by all three of them, which at first seemed to be exciting but then Mallory quickly realized that problem that it actually presented. She felt like her work was over simply by narrowing her options to three schools. However, when she received her acceptance letters she realized it had only just begun.

Finally, her decision came down to a gut instinct to go to Charlotte. Her parents were happy with her choice though she never confessed how she arrived there. They had been with her on her original visit and they all stayed in one of the Charlotte luxury hotels. Both of her parents were impressed with the campus and the school and her mother loved the university neighborhood in which it was located. At the time Mallory fantasized about which apartment she would live in and all the friends she would meet while at school.

The actuality of the demands of college and realities of being on her own had fully settled in as Mallory made her way to her early Monday morning algebra class. The highlight of that class, well aside from the fact that she actually liked algebra, was the fact that an incredibly good looking guy sat right across from her every day. She sat at her desk and looked forward to seeing him when someone tapped on her shoulder. She looked up and it was Matt, that good lucking guy! He asked her if she was doing okay with their current section and she said she was, which she immediately regretted thinking he was going to offer to help her. Instead, Matt looked relieved and asked if she would be willing to meet him in the library later that afternoon to help him. Mallory agreed she would and suddenly, and for the first time, realized she loved college life.

It was a tough game for the Philadelphia Eagles today. They were even through the first quarter as neither they or the Dallas Cowboys scored. Then in the second quarter after the Cowboys gained their first touchdown the Eagles immediately returned it. An eye for an eye it seemed. And right after that it seemed the Eagles caught an interception very near the Cowboy’s goal line and for that instant things looked good for Philadelphia. Troy had to continue the details of this game as he reported back to his brother and cousin who had been out on a secluded fishing trip and missed a whole day of football.

Troy was a huge Eagle’s fan and though he lived in a small town upstate of Philadelphia, he frequently makes the trip to attend a game at the Lincoln Financial Field, though he continues to refer to it as Veteran’s Stadium as that was the name of the field when his grandfather took him to his first game there in 1979. It remained Veteran’s Stadium until 2003 and though it wasn’t the original stadium name, it was what it was called for almost all of Troy’s life. And even some of the staff at the hotel Philadelphia where he would stay called it the Stadium.

Fortunately his cousin and brother had already heard that the Eagles did not win the playoff game before they encountered Troy so he didn’t have to deliver the whole blow. And that refers to Troy’s passion for the team and the difficulty he would have had proclaiming the loss, not the reaction felt by his audience who were oddly indifferent to the game’s outcome. They were interested in the details of how the score became so lopsided and Troy had to continue on with the devastating second quarter, during which the Cowboys scored a total of 27 points. The second half of the game was not as gruesome as the first and neither team scored much. Ultimately, the final score was Dallas 34 and the Eagles 14. It wasn’t a shut out, or as bad as last week, but it was still bad. Troy’s cousin and his brother decided they needed to take him out that night. It was good for Troy, but didn’t help his precious Eagles much.

New York City gave me a cure for insomnia, but perhaps only because it also made me an insomniac.  The first months that I lived here, I did not sleep.  I had just moved from a small town in Montana, and I was ready for anything.  The rugged life I knew was sufficient preparation for what was ahead, this I felt in my gut.  To be honest, it was excellent preparation for many of the mean surprises the city has in store, but in no way could have prepared me for the war with my own head.  Not a war in a dramatic sense, because no hard reason could have helped me come to terms with the fact that deep down, I am totally neurotic.  This means, of course, that I belong here, much as this may hurt my credibility in the cowboy poetry circuit.

I had not slept in two months.  Aside from occasional moments of dropping off for a few minutes in the subway, or waiting for a friend in a park, or sometimes while I was giving readings.  It helps to be someone who lives at variance, because you can get away with peculiar behaviors.  The only time I did sleep through a night was when I was visiting an out of town friend at a Manhattan business hotel, where the sounds of the city were far away, and I dreamed of crickets.  And I smelled sage and mesquite.  I had a friend who also worked the poetry circuit, and she had a side business in homeopathy, and she would prescribe my placing small white beads under the tongue.  She also recommended hot baths where I could be away from it all.

The one time I decided to try taking her advice, I found myself lying in a bathtub at 11pm, my head half-submerged so my ears were under water.  I tried to think of an open field, but instead came to realize that I was in a very crowded city, in a very crowded neighborhood, in a very small apartment, in a small room in a small apartment, and at that point I lost my last thread of sanity.  It was at that moment that I realized that homeopathic cures wouldn’t help my condition, because I had just become a New Yorker, and I didn’t want a cure for that.

When we stepped outside of one of the nicest Virginia luxury hotels, frost crunched underneath our boots. It was a very crisp November morning, and the sky was clear, which promised that we would have a great day at the Urbanna Oyster Festival. The festival was originally called the Urbanna Days to help promote the local economy, but it became so successful and changed each year that they finally had to rename it. This years Urbanna Oyster Festival estimates about 80 thousand people to show over the two days of the event.

We arrived about 9am on the second day of the Festival; the first day started on a Friday. The festival is a ‘pay-as-you-go’ event, meaning that there’s no entry fee. There were about 200 vendor stalls selling everything from local crafts, food, books, clothing, art, and even boats and RV’s! During the festival, the entire town of Urbanna is closed off to vehicle traffic, so that all the vendors can set up their stalls all along the streets. In between sets of stalls are stages with with either bands play or dance performances unfold. Many of the festival goers arrive by boat, since Urbanna is bordered by both sides by rivers.

The highlight of the festival is the oyster shucking contest. The winner of the professional division gets to participate in the World Oyster Championship in Galway, Ireland. But, we found the amateur division to be the funniest to watch. Of course, we had to try every way the food vendors prepared the oysters, from raw, fried, roasted, to stewed and steamed. I believe we were actually sloshing our way around after our 11th sample of oysters. So, we had to fill that sloshing with crab cakes and seafood fritters.

Unfortunately, all this eating made us over-stuffed. We ended up walking back to our car and driving back to our hotel, burping all the way. But, it was so worth it, even though we didn’t leave a good impression with all the people we came in contact with.