Crawfish and BIRNout Boil

Jazz Fest started last week which means lots of things including packed hotels, music everywhere nearly all night and day and plenty of crawfish boils. Sunday was my annual family reunion crawfish boil and Monday was the 2nd annual BIRNout Boil at the Sandpiper Lounge hosted by Billy Iuso and the Restless Natives (BIRN).

Only in Nola is it perfectly normal to expect people to show up at 3pm on a Monday for a concert and boil and only in Nola would we all do it less than an hour after tornadoes and a mini-hurricane blew through. The storm was so strong, thousands are still without power and perhaps you saw the footage of winds so forceful they blew a long train off a bridge.

Family Reunion

My parents met as students at LSU before my father’s job took them to Maryland. My mother returned later in life but my father continued to build his life in the D.C. area. Last year, he and my brother and I attended a family reunion in Baton Rouge and I got to meet many members of my family for the first time. This year, my dad and brother returned for the 25th annual crawfish boil reunion, this time accompanied by my stepmother who’d never seen New Orleans.