The big-city experience can sometimes be extraordinary
Minerva torpedoes merger with Johnsburg; Capital Lights proposed for Lake George
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More than once during late-night chats with my son growing up, I lamented never having lived and worked in a big city.
My career was forged in community journalism at small outposts like Oneonta, Plattsburgh and eventually this wonderful paradise in Glens Falls, so I wasn't complaining, just wondering if I might have missed something along the way.
My son's recent stops in San Antonio and now New Orleans have given me the opportunity to taste big-city life in small doses, both the good and bad.
New Orleans is especially fascinating.
Our planned Friday night dinner last week turned out to be something much more.
What you have to realize about New Orleans is that dining is more than just sustenance, it is an experience of the soul as much as the tastebuds.
Ask anyone for a dining recommendation and you get a top 10 list.
One of my son's first co-workers was a young woman whose family was in the restaurant business. Her step-father was a chef of some renown in the New Orleans culinary community, which in New Orleans is saying something, and Friday night was an opening-night reboot of their restaurant Saint John.
That's like a world premiere in NOLA.
The dining room was filled to capacity and there was my son's friend, Liz, greeting us at the door and ushering us to her favorite corner table, but only after introducing us to the owner/chef, Eric Cook, who had just published his first cooking book a few weeks earlier, Modern Creole.
My son has talked a lot about Cook and his restaurant over the past two years. He has gotten a first-hand look at the passion and lust for success in one of the most competitive culinary markets in the world where celebrity chefs are more prominent than celebrity athletes.
Cook is easily recognizable this night with his wild shock of unkempt blond hair as he lords over the counter facing the kitchen before giving final approval to each dish.
Cook is a native of New Orleans who spent six years in the Marine Corps in special ops right out of high school and saw combat in the Gulf War. Over the years, he has worked at prestigious New Orleans eateries such as Brennan's and Commander' Palace. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay even wrote the foreword to his book.
But when my son told me that Jeremy Allen White of "The Bear" fame hung out with Cook for three days while researching his role as an elite chef in the award-winning TV show, it got my attention.
"Yes chef," was the answer that gave Cook's civilian life structure after serving in combat in the Marines.
He opened his first restaurant, Gris Gris, in the Lower Garden District in 2018, then his first version of Saint John in 2021 right after Hurricane Ida. It has been a tough go in a competitive market.
Liz repeatedly returned to our table and asked about the food, the drinks and the atmosphere.
In New Orleans, the ideal experience is providing an unparalleled experience.
"It's kind of a shock to your taste buds," I said to Liz while trying to explain what it means to be eating out in New Orleans. "We have excellent restaurants in New York, but there is a sameness about them. When you eat out here, your taste buds are like, "Whoaaaa, what the heck is that."
There was no shortage of that Friday night.
The drinks were unique and spectacular.
The appetizers outstanding.
And the service impeccable.
New Orleans is a place that challenges the way you think about life. It is a gritty city with many problems, and where my son lives in the warehouse district is mostly ugly, but there is a giving friendliness from the people like I haven't seen in many other places.
As we walked off our dinner to my son's new place on a perfect summer evening - yeah, it's still summer in New Orleans - he must have said at least three times, "Man, I love this city."
They are heartening words for any parent hoping their children are happy.
"New Orleans is a city of hidden beauty," Cook writes in the introduction of his book. "Our streets are lined with architecture from a storied and lively past of the many cultures that have at one time, called this place home. The sounds of music from brass instruments can be heard echoing throughout the streets of New Orleans, and the aromas of a cuisine like no other can take you to a place of red-light districts and speakeasies that once were tucked and hidden from sight."
The guy can write a little bit, too.
As I think about my stay in New Orleans, I remember how the dinner table was the cornerstone of our family life when Joseph was growing up.
Cook emphasizes it was the same in his house.
"...no matter what we are doing or where we were in our busy day-to-day lives, we always came together at the dinner table as a family, every night," Cook wrote in the introduction. "That was our time to stop and catch up with each other."
So maybe that is what draws my son to New Orleans as he experiences a totally unique culture and environment than the one in which he was raised.
Maybe that is what it makes it so special.
But I wonder if it is the sense of family and warm embrace of the people he has met.
You can never get enough of that.
And the meal, well, it may have been the best I've ever had.
Minerva merger
It's no secret that school enrollment in the North Country continues to drop, cutting into resources for students and raising taxes for residents.
But that hasn't made school mergers any easier.
The proposed school merger between Johnsburg and Minerva seemed on the right track when the Johnsburg school board voted 4-3 to approve the merger, only to see Minerva vote 5-0 against it.
Johnsburg has 300 students while Minerva has 120.
If they had merged, the new district could have received up to $15 million in state reorganization aid.
Wine and cheese event
Make sure to mark your calendar for the popular wine and chocolate event at the Queensbury Hotel.
This Chapman Museum fundraiser will be held Friday, Nov. 8 from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tickets go on sale Oct. 1 for $60 per person. Early bird sales, before Oct. 15, cost $55 per person.
Order tickets at www.chapmanMuseum.org or call 518 793-2826.
Nurse story
One of the interesting things about spending some time in a big city like New Orleans is running into people you normally would not meet.
Standing by the elevator in my son's building, there was a woman in scrubs also waiting. I asked if she worked at a local hospital.
She did.
I asked her what she did and she told me that she had a fellowship in vascular medicine.
"Wow," I said, "That is impressive."
Getting on the elevator in the lobby Saturday morning, I ran into my vascular medicine fellow again, although this time a little bit disheveled.
"You haven't been working all this time, have you?" I asked.
"Yes, I have," she said.
"How long a shift was that," I asked.
"Thirty-three hours," she said.
"Thirty-three hours," I repeated. "How is that even safe?"
"It's not," she said.
I then told her how when my wife was a nurse she used to work 12-hour shifts at Albany Medical Center with a one-hour commute on each end.
I didn't think that was safe either.
HCR quote
I always learn something new when reading Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters From an American" column.
While writing about North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson and his recent scandal, Richardson mentioned an even worse example.
She wrote:
But the extremism doesn’t stop with Mr. Robinson. Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee for state public schools superintendent, has called for executing Barack Obama and President Biden and said the + in “L.G.B.T.Q.+” includes pedophilia, which is false as well as hateful. Though she is running for a job that would supervise public schools in the state, her platform promotes her experience home-schooling her children.
Now, that is extreme.
Capital Lights
Warren County supervisors discussed bringing another Christmas lights show to the Charles Wood Park in Lake George this year.
The Capital Lights show previously was in Albany. It would include a Christmas market, food and beverages and a skating rink to be funded by occupancy tax.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
It has become so "normal" in this country for extremists to call for expelling or murdering innocent, unknown people that they fear and abhor, (and sometimes acting on their beliefs) that the absurdity of being angry and afraid of these "others", just becomes more appalling. It is the same transference that their convicted leader displays every second he opens his mouth.
As for the special holiday light display, (and no, I'm not a Scrooge type person), wouldn't it be more productive to invest deeply in WIFI for the entire county? Just wishing.
NOLA sounds like NYC on steroids. I lived in NYC for 65 years, and yes, it is as awesome as it is stressful, but it also offers a bursting cornucopia of ethnic foods that are rarely found upstate. I'm glad you had the opportunity to feel that explosion of flavor that stays in your memory forever.
It is telling that the medical profession is so stressed, that unsafe working conditions strain and may discourage hopeful candidates who are so desperately needed.
My son lived in New Orleans for 6 years. We used every opportunity to visit, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, spring, summer, fall and winter. It's a city like no other in the US.