Unfortunately we were stuck in New Orleans for several days

This is Christopher Staudinger hanging up river flags at his folks' house.

 He's a river friend of Ping's, a poet, and an excellent all-around dude. We met up with Chris in New Orleans with the original plan to pick him up and then zip off to Venice at the end of the Mississippi to meet up with river friend and shrimper Mike Waddle to hang flags and catch some shrimp together. Well we checked the weather forecast, and judging from the high winds, heavy rain, and 15-20 degree temperatures we figured that shrimping was unlikely to happen that night, so Ping reluctantly made the call to spend the night in the drab town of New Orleans, where there really isn't that much to do at all.

I, of course, was devastated, as it happened that I was to be turning 25 at midnight, and what's more, my friend and fellow LIU writing student Jack Carr was incidentally stuck in New Orleans that night as well, and the last thing I wanted to do was turn 25 under such circumstances. Unfortunately such things were entirely unavoidable, and after an excellent dinner of shrimp pasta made by Chris's awesome family, we made the decision to venture out into the cold to see Walter "Wolfman" Washington.

Here's the shrimp pasta recipe!

Well, to make matters worse, once we arrived at the Maple Leaf Bar, we discovered that in addition to an excellent musical ensemble, Sunday night also featured a crawfish boil, which entailed buckets of crawfish, shrimp, clams, crab legs, sausage, boudin, pork chops, and corn on the cob dumped out onto long tables for everyone to eat as much as they could. Needless to say we were sorely disappointed by these circumstances and made even more uncomfortable by the large quantity of crawfish boil we had consumed pretty soon after that fantastic shrimp pasta. The music was also incredible.

Earlier in the evening, we had consumed a King Cake. Everyone's always eating King Cakes in New Orleans during carnival. Baked somewhere in the King Cake is a plastic baby Jesus. If you get the plastic baby Jesus, you get...

...to buy the next King Cake! It's not really much of a prize. Anyway, guess who got the plastic baby Jesus? 

...Blogger Extraordinaire right here. Well, as luck would have it, someone at the bar gave me one of them king cakes. The knife we used to cut it hit the baby, so we all dodged a bullet there, and nobody owed anybody else a king cake.

We hung the flags up at Chris's house, where his parents put us up. I just have to say it one more time, thank you so much Mary and Ed for your awesome hospitality, your excellent food, everything!

This was pretty cool.

Most people make river flags about rivers. This artist decided instead to make a flag about Dennis Wilson of the beach boys complete with instructions on how to download his album Pacific Ocean Blue on the internet!

Wizards of ladder safety

 This is one of my new favorite poems:

The river is awesome
The water is cool
When its hot
It feels like a pool
I really like rivers
like my school

The next day, since it was still too cold and windy to venture out to Venice to do any shrimping, we drove back out to the Achafalaya Swamp to meet up with Roy and Annie Blanchard. Roy is a 74 year old cajun fisherman. He built his house all buy himself (well, Annie said she busted her fingers hammering nails with Roy too,) with sinker cypress timber he had found in the basin. There's no cypress logging any more, because all of the good trees were felled, like I mentioned in the last post. Well, there's still some logs in the basin that had too much sap in them to float and sank to the bottom. Over time, the sinker logs lighten up and start to float, and Roy collected these whenever he found them in the swamp, and used them to build his house. He said the only thing he had to buy was nails! (And flooring, roofing, wiring, stuff that's not made out of wood, etc.)

Here they are signing books in their lovely living room. You can see up above Roy's head, there's what looks like a big old deer trophy. It sticks out a good three feet into the room. Roy killed it himself! He does just as much hunting and fishing at age 74 as he did when he was my age, only I never had to build any houses from timber I found in the swamp.

Roy took us out in his boat. It was a nice big aluminum boat, very sturdy. Did Roy make that? Nope, but his son did!

Here's the front of the boat!

What were we going out in the boat to check out? More cypress trees of course!

It was the coldest day of the year in the Achafalaya swamp. Here's Chris, Roy and Ping tryna stay warm in the cypress trees

This one got hit by lightning

Look at all that Spanish moss!

Takin photos, and shooting video for the Kinship of Rivers video installation!

We wanted to go get some shots of the sunset, but some clouds came in at the last minute. I love these cold steely colors though.

Next up: the end of the Mississippi! Bye for now!

The chicken gizzards were kind of chewy

So we went down to the crossroads, and the last time Ping had been in this area, she'd become a big fan of the deep fried chicken gizzards they sold in Clarksdale. So we went down to the crossroads and tried to find some chicken gizzards. Here's the sign signifying that you are at the crossroads:

"Clarksdale is famous for their deep fried chicken gizzards," Ping said. "You have got to try them."

Not too many people in Clarksdale seemed to know about the gizzards. Here's one of the places we asked about the chicken gizzards:

Finally we found someone who knew about the chicken gizzards. You can buy them at the gas station. So we went down to the gas station, and it turned out we went to the wrong gas station and the right gas station was down the road. The trouble was there were like five gas stations right there. Here's another place we asked about the chicken gizzards.

As luck would have it, though, the first place we went to had the chicken gizzards and they were pretty chewy. Ping was thrilled but me and Lina, our videographer, preferred the more edible parts of the chicken.

We also got chicken livers. This might actually be the chicken livers. They were a little less chewy. If you switch the first letters of gizzards and livers, you get lizard giver.

We're okay! Just a quick update

Howdy folks, Oliver here, your adventure buddy/blogger extraordinaire. Remember when I said I was going to keep you updated on this Mississippi River trip, and then never posted anything else? Does that sound familiar? Like a couple days ago?

Well, we're okay! We're having a blast. We went kayaking in the Achfa- Achafalaf- Achafalaya Basin, dancing in New Orleans, and boating around the bayou with a 74-year old Cajun deer hunter and catfish fisherman who just two days ago caught a 60lb catfish he mentioned at least three times.

Anyway, it'll take a few posts to bring you all up to speed and show you all the sweet pictures we've been taking, so hold tight as I blog as fast as I can while Ping finishes packing her stuff together before we shove off for Venice, Louisiana, the end of the Mississippi River!

Sold my soul to the devil for extra hits on this blog post!

Hey folks, Oliver St. John here, blogger extraordinnaire and your adventure buddy on this trip us Kinship of Rivers explorers have just shoved out on. We just woke up in bluesy Clarksdale, Mississippi where most-famous-bluesman-of-all-time Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the devil at the intersection of Highways 49 and 61 in exchange for becoming the most famous bluesman of all time.

There ain't much in Clarksdale, Mississippi aside from lots of blues clubs that are not open after midnight, which is the time one tends to arrive in Clarksdale after driving 14 hours straight from Minnesota. Out of all of us, I was the only one to get caught for speeding, which was pretty good considering we were hitting a pretty solid 95 mph all the way from Iowa to Tennessee.

We'll be camping for the next several nights, so you'll have to catch up with us once we have an internet connection again and some power outlets, and that'll be after we pass through 49 and 61, so you might read about our #1 hit blues album on the front page of the arts section first.

The tackiest thing in the world/Getting on Chinese TV

Well, after a night we wouldn't forget, or at least had thought so through most of it at the time, we got up groggy, a little bit drunk still, and way later than the bus to Qinghai Lake was supposed to have left Our Mississippi Bluesman and I sat down to two bowls of granola, which we ordered because we figured they'd probably come with spoons. Sure enough they did, and right after we were done, I treated everybody at the hostel with a vigorous bout of solo spoon music, which I played right on out the door, and that's how I got some new spoons to play at tonight's concert.

The poets were all staying at a resort by the Yellow River about two hours outside of Qinghai lake, somewhere off in Qinghai province. We were so late getting out the door it turned out, we had not only missed the bus to Qinghai Lake, but if we were to hire a car to get to Qinghai Lake, everybody else would probably have left already to get to the resort, so we went straight there.

Now, that meant we had about two hours to practice our music at the resort. I wish I could show you some pictures right here of this resort, because it was something else. Why there was a big marble lobby with big Chinese vases and the like in the middle of a huge campus, but the sign only had three stars on it.

Here in China, rating hotels and resorts works very much like it does in the U.S., except in China, I suppose they're a little more lenient about the presence of fiberglass squirrel and panda sculptures deteriorating in the glass. This place hadn't had business in years. The swimming pool was not only drained, but slowly turning into a terrarium, despite neatly swept decks. The lawns were lush and freshly mowed, but the exercise course was rusty and poorly painted. The greenhouse was full of weeds. Also nobody was there but us and five staff members. Three of them were sitting out back eating sunflower seeds out of an actual sunflower, watching kung fu movies. They gave me a huge sunflower and invited me to watch kung fu movies with them. It was a strange place to have a poetry conference, and something of a change from the luxurious five star Qinghai Hotel we'd performed in the day before. I wish I could have shown you some pictures, but despite my dedication to charging my camera battery the previous night, the charger had somehow not made it all the way into the wall.

Yet, the river was beautiful   Here are our Mississippi Bluesman and our Poet setting up for an interview after a brief dispute with our Wiz Kid Videographer who only wanted to interview the Bluesman in this beautiful spot and had to be reminded whose project this was.

Where were we to perform? We were to perform at Guide, the site of the worlds largest prayer wheel! The site actually holds two simultaneous world records: the largest prayer wheel in the world, and the tackiest thing in the world!
Here it is folks, over 200 tons of spray painted metal, about three stories tall on top of a large concrete plinth before a glorious reflecting pool festooned with vibrantly colored plastic flowers. Once the sun went down, the spotlights went up into the sky and the LAZER LIGHTSHOW LIGHTS turned on!!! This prayer wheel has nothing to do with the monks, it is sponsored by a real estate firm.

But what a stage for us to play on! The stage was IN THE REFLECTING POOL! Mississippi Bluesman, Alex Wand performing with Wang Ping, the poet. Our Mississippi Bluesman had to concentrate very hard to impress the crowd and could only allow our Poet, the leader of the project a couple minutes on stage at a time.
The crowd loved us! I played the spoons. I played the spoons so hard we made it on Chinese television!!

And it was here that my camera died.

Partying with Tibetan celebrities, and how I lost my spoons

First off, I apologize sincerely for the silence on the blog. It's just been too darn busy. These next couple entries should be a real treat for you all though, so hang in there!

After we left Lhasa, our next stop was the Qinghai Lake International Poetry Festival. There were poets there from China. There were poets there from the U.S. There were poets there from India. There were poets there from Argentina. There were poets there from Hungary. There were poets there from Spain. You name it, they had it! Everyone you met was either a famous poet or a journalist documenting the thing. I asked everyone I met if they were a famous poet. They asked me if I was a poet at all, and I said, why yes I was, would you like to hear a poem of mine? Then I read an unprintably vulgar poem I wrote. Only He Zhong thought it was funny.

They sure had some famous poets reading at the festival, too. Name your favorite international contemporary poet, and I bet she was there too! Everyone was there! They even had this guy! No need telling you who he is:

And here's a guy who needs no introduction. These are the pre-festival speeches by the way. There were nine hours of straight speeches! Everybody liked this guy's speech the best because it was only thirty seconds long.

The speeches were plumb fascinating. All nine hours of them

This was the real deal folks. The place was crawling with reporters, photographers, videographers, documentarians, cameramen -- just about everything but bona fide audience members.

Our Mississippi Bluesman Alex Wand got invited on to play a couple of his Mississippi Blues songs. Our Mississippi Bluesman rockin' out.

Everybody just loved it, not only because the music was so good, but also because he didn't give a single speech. Right here in this picture is just about half the audience. The other half had their tripods set up behind us.

After all the speeches were out of the way, it was time for the banquet! That was the real reason everybody came. Lots of good food, and free refills of Tibetan barley wine! Here we are with poets Lu Eean, and Yu Jian, some personal friends of our Famous Poet, Wang Ping.

The food was good, that Tibetan barley wine was really good, but the entertainment was lousy. The lineup for tonight? More speeches. Downing the rest of the carafe of barley wine, Mustachioed Tibetan poet He Zhong promished to take us to where the real party was at. Next thing we knew we were driving off into someone's Hummer. This guy sure knew how to drive a Hummer. Traffic jam? No problem, we'd just roll right onto the sidewalk and drive around the whole thing. I rode in the trunk.

Who owned the Hummer? (You don't see too many Hummers in Xining.) This guy! He's one of Tibet's most famous singers! He drank an entire bottle of Tibetan barley wine all by himself!

And oh boy could he sing!

Here he is rocking the fuck out with Mississippi Bluesman Alex Wand. You can't see me in these photos because I was too busy taking the pictures to be in any myself, but in between photos I was banging out some wicked rhythms on the spoons!

Wang Ping, the Poet dancing flamenco

This girl? Another famous Tibetan singer. Her songs kept on coming up on the radio! Alex Wand, getting pretty cozy with the famous Tibetan singer.

We kept seeing her posters around town!

He Zhong, the mustachioed Tibetan poet. What eyebrows!

 He Zhong just kept pouring us drinks

And more drinks

And more drinks

And more drinks

He Zhong, ladies and gentlemen. I just couldn't stop taking pictures of that mustache. What a guy!

Well, needless to say, the beer kept on pouring and we all got pretty shwasted. Except for Alex who got rip-roaring sober.

See that girl on the far left, almost out of the frame? (That's the best picture I've got.) As I was walking back from the bathroom, she took my hand, lead me away to a bench around back of some bushes and kissed me! Well, I was pretty thrilled, and once I got back to the table, I stopped hitting on the girl second to the left and started cozying right up to the girl who kissed me, when our Wiz Kid Videographer Alex Howard grabbed me by the arm to take me for a walk -- that girl was somebody's wife! Things were getting awkward.
Well, we decided the best thing to do would be to take a stroll around the premises and wait for things to cool off. On that stroll of ours, who should we run into but some nice Chinese guy, all smiles and high fives, drunk as a skunk. I tried teaching him a couple fancy high-fives and handshakes, and he kept on trying to get us to come with him to whatever party he was at, and I was tryna convince him to come to the party we were at, when all of a sudden, Alex Howard, the Wiz Kid Videographer, rip-roaring sober just bolted.
"I think we lost him," says the Wiz Kid Videographer when I catch up with him. That we did. And ourselves. And my spoons had fallen out of my pocket somewhere along the way. Somehow we made it back.