Not Quite Good Friday

• Courting Disaster
• Food Card Being Processed
• Sue Administering Silent Treatment
• Single Note For Single Note Harp Playing

Serve, Desert

None other than Howard from New Orleans
reading and reading and...

I am considering asking for community service on the ticket that I got during Mardi Gras. I would have to plead guilty, of course, and my criminal record would become that much longer, but, the 30 or 60 hours of community service could be theoretically knocked out within a week, whereafter, I would be free to come back to New Orleans without the risk of being incarcerated over an unpaid fine, or a missed court date. I will serve the community before I desert it.
One always wants to keep that option open, especially with the Superbowl coming in merely a matter of 10 months.
Food Card Office
I stopped in to the food stamp office and voiced my concern that, because I applied online without giving a phone number, my "processing" could be delayed.
I talked to a nice man with an authentic New Orleans accent ("I get Brooklyn all the time..") who told me that the computer was indicating that everything is proceeding as normal and within 4 or 5 days there should arrive at the Rebuild Center a plastic card with 200 bucks worth of food on it.
I paid a lot of taxes when I was younger and worked in Massachusetts, I'm just getting some back, is what I tell myself.
I also tell myself that the money is going nowhere else but back into the economy, creating jobs for food handlers everywhere.
That's how I think about the food card in a way that doesn't conflict with my upbringing by salt of the earth folks who would never, ever, ask for "charity."
I also add that the world is different now and so is society and that we live in desperate times; but then I remember that my grandparents did go through the Great Depression and WWII and never got food stamps...
Sue Silent

Sue, the Colombian lady, in better days

Sue stood by the Walgreens and looked at me but didn't say a word, even though I spoke to her, Friday morning.
"...You Might As Well (busk)..."
I might have thought that Howard was trying to get rid of me, the way he asked me "Are you going out to play?" last (Friday) night, and then appended "You might as well, huh?" after it.
I did go out.
I stopped at the Unique Boutique where bums were like fleas in a shag carpet; parasites that had waited two weeks for the family and their pet to return from vacation.
If my Mardi Gras money lasts me a couple weeks, then that will be a couple weeks longer than lasted that of most of those losers.
There were few people out.
I got to my Decatur Street spot, and was able to make a few bucks off of people who walked past me, hearing Chinacat Sunflower, by the Grateful Dead or a blues jam in D mixolodian mode.
A couple of guys approached and one told me he had twenty bucks, if I could play a couple of obscure Neil Young songs. One of which was entitled something to do with Hank Williams, ("From Hank, to Hank Jr.," or something like that).
He was feighning to walk off without leaving the twenty, and I knew that my best chance of changing his mind was to continue to play. I searched my internal database for songs that a guy who likes "From Hank to Hank," might also enjoy.
I started picking something which seemed to remind him of yet another Neil Young song, "Sugar Mountain," for as I played, he said "How about Sugar Mountain, you must know that one!"
He was right, I must know that one because it's a "must-know" song if you have a harmonica around your neck; but; I didn't...not really.
I had heard it before and I like it, but had never sounded it out until then. I struggled to find the key and started singing it and winging the chords.

He approached and said "You're struggling, huh?"
I took this to mean struggling "in general," and that maybe I wouldn't be if I knew more Neil Young songs about Hank Williams.
He still dropped the twenty in my case, to go along with about 8 other dollars.
I then left to enjoy one, just one, excellent Sierra Nevada "Torpedo" IPA from Stanley's and stopped by to see a certain rasta farian, who was at his usual spot, in the process.
Returning to my spot, I got there just in time to see the guy who sits on a stool and plays an obnoxiously distorted electric guitar, carrying his stool and amp and guitar and approaching "my" spot. He sped his pace and put his stuff down on the spot, to mark it as his.
I hung around and talked to him, kind of happy that circumstance was to force me onto Bourbon Street earlier than I usually go there.
I asked him if he wanted to jam on one song before I left, but couldn't wait for the full half hour it took him to tune his strings, which he had just put on. There were a couple people standing around, waiting for us to start, but he kept tuning and tuning.
I went to the Bourbon Street spot to find another couple of blokes sitting not far from where I play, close enough so that I wound up going further down and making another 6 bucks or so.
34 bucks on a Friday night after the big festival had ended and people had left in droves, not bad, unless you remove the guy who threw the twenty from the equation.
I have been focusing upon single note playing on the harp, which to me sounds more precise and less like you're just putting your mouth anywhere, huffing and puffing and honking on the thing at random.


Blues Travelor "Just jump right in, Daniel!"

 That approach does get you somewhere in the keys where you really can't hit a bad note, but it is probably the thing that once made me decide that I didn't like the sound of the harmonica, back when I was a teenager and listened to Bob Dylan on the John Wesley Harding album. I remember thinking that he sounded like us kids with our five dollar Marine Band harps, which we basically just honked on indiscriminately approximating the sound of a really bad accordianist, before quickly becoming bored with the instrument.
Equally discouraging at a later age was hearing the Blues Traveller guy and thinking that it would take 20 years to attain his level of virtuosity. I have been discovering some of his "tricks" (like glisando and rapid fire adjacent notes which are each drawn or each blown; you can rip off some fast notes that way).
The Cake Of Life
So, it is now Saturday evening.
I will go out with very low expectations, like assuming the attitude that I am grateful to be alive and anything in the tip jar will be icing on the cake of life.