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Baton Rouge: Sense of Place (part 1)

Baton Rouge is a small town that hardly seems to have the urban energy expected for a state capital. A number of concerned planners, civic organizations, corporate sponsors, and urbanist oriented citizens have a vision though. And I’m appreciating their efforts. Firstly, there are obvious attempts to raise awareness of the distinctive urban character of […]

Checkout to nowhere

Yesterday morning, I finally received the call that my background check came through. Just in time, I thought, since my one week reservation at Motel 6 was coming to an end. So in a reprise of my recent nomadic exertions in DC, late last evening I repacked my belongings into my rental car, and in […]

Motel 6

Fifty years ago Airline Highway was likely a very pleasant country road. No longer. I don’t have any pictures of it for you (maybe in an upcoming post) but I’m sure you’ve seen it before. It’s a sprawling commercial strip like any other. Every few years they expand the intersections to add another few feet […]

Jews in the Bayou

Fruity Jews in the Woods, or just plains Jews in the Woods, is the name of a community which is getting larger, that meets and organizes collectively over the internet via a listserve and wiki, and gathers together once or twice a year for Shabbat at a rural retreat of some sort. The values of […]

Baton Rouge

After a three hour flight from DC, I’m in Baton Rouge. Allan drove me to the airport, once again helping me to appreciate what a wonderful and reliable friend he is. I spent the morning trying to tease out my anxieties from my past memories and to focus on the good I can do, but […]

Last night with friends

There is a peace here in Paul’s hamishe home on Harvard (just a few doors up the street from where I used to live). I’m sharing the couch with Emma, a small black and white chihuahua-like dog with big eyes and big ears, and incontinence. She managed to nest in my pillow before I had […]

On Swedenborgianism in Bond Hill

One of the more interesting hypotheses in my book I felt was that Bond Hill’s first church was trans-denominational, or perhaps even Swedenborgian, reflecting the progressive spiritual framework of Henry Watkin’s family. The degree to which Watkin was a Swedenborgian hasn’t been fully established. We know that Watkin’s father-in-law Henry Fry was a committed Swedenborgian […]

A few updates…

The new edition of Bond Hill: Origin and Transformation… contains a few new findings. Robert Wimberg corrected an error of mine, where I had confused the Old Mens and Womens Home (aka the Old Folks Home) with the Altenheim (aka the German Old Mens Home). I really appreciate it when readers take the time to […]

Latest edition featuring new findings

By the end of the summer my interest in publishing with Arcadia slacked. The editors were great to work with but Arcadia was very interested in publishing the book with original scans of images of old Bond Hill photographs. Unfortunately those photographs may no longer exist. The images of buildings and streetscapes in Bond Hill: […]

Arcadia Publishing to pick up Bond Hill

Self-Publishing Bond Hill with on-demand printer lulu.com has been great but I haven’t been as inclined or motivated to self-promotion as I might have been only a few years ago. So the idea of finding a publisher to pick up my book to promote and distribute seemed like a great idea. Good thing for local […]