Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you have on
Could it be a faded rose from days gone by
And did I hear you say he was a-meeting you here today
To take you to his mansion in the sky

I do not wake up easily in the morning. I have a pained ritual which includes trying to figure out where the newspaper delivery guy threw the newspaper, and looking at my watch to see if it is late enough to have missed the much diminished crowd that walks to school each day from down the street. I always hope I have missed them so they don’t suffer the trauma of watching the barefoot half dressed lady searching for her paper.

Then I career down the hall to the kitchen and make my coffee which is another needlessly complex ritual of grinds and steam and frothing. Then I read the paper..it ain’t pretty but it works for me.

Today I knew I had to get out of here by 7 to watch the Delta come down. Driving up onto the Interstate in what amounts to a New Orleans rush hour and finally bumping down Florida Avenue I kept asking myself what the hell I was doing. It was early, it was raining and I didn’t know much about the Delta.

Some people fall in love with grand buildings and some fall in love with history. Sometimes something just grabs you and won’t let you go. On my ride up to the Delta I thought about how much I don’t know about history, and then I thought I don’t know much about my liver and I depend on that every day. So maybe you don’t have to know much about history to feel it programmed in your body like some “somatic”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_nervous_system impulse. At any rate if you follow my line of reasoning going to see the Delta torn down was like a salmon swimming upstream I was pleased to find out at least “2 other people”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/skeletonkrewe/sets/72157606319794870/. felt compelled enough to get up and go watch the Delta come down at dawn.

When I first fell in love with it it was because of the soaring sign, and the wonderful paintings of “Lester Carey”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/skeletonkrewe/2349643899/ at first I didn’t realize that it was on the same block as Club Desire.
Club Desire has recently been nominated by Francine Stock to the “Cornerstones Project”:http://www.regional-modernism.com/2008/10/club-desire-threatened.html

Between the Club Desire and The Delta there isn’t much. And what there is will be coming down soon perhaps O’Lee’s is next

Then where do we get our boneless liquor?

So another chapter closes, the music at Club Desire has long been silenced and the only music left, this painting of Louis by Lester is now long gone.

There is a group trying to save “Club Desire”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5QXhTWHZ78 and I wish them luck.

Halfway gone.