So I had pretty much kept it together

Until now.

The lovely people from Cork & Bottle http://www.corknola.com/ posted on their site that WWOZ is webcasting, "WWOZ in Exile."

I'm sorry, when I heard the music of my city, the music that makes me happy when everything else fails, I just cried. I am crying now and I keep saying to myself "Just stop it!" but I can't. I can't.

My father is a Georgia Cracker, a redneck who grew up in Resaca. He never went to college and he never lived more than 20 miles from the place he was born. He grew up in a segregated South where black folk were treated horribly.

Yet my earliest memories include my father bringing a black co-worker and his sons to the First Baptist Church in Dalton in the early 1970s and us sitting on the closest row the to the front of the church as we could, at a time when they would have been as inconspicuous as a fly in a sugar bowl. Sometimes I don't even know how my father became the person he is, he is almost supernatural

Well, anyway, this same father of mine has always loved New Orleans jazz. Among the old vinyl collection were records by Sweet Emma and Kid Thomas. He tells stories of going to Chattanooga to hear them play and he got Kid Thomas and his band's autographs on one of the album jackets. (Side note: This is one of the things I stupidly left behind when I left NOLA.)

I don't know if my father's love of this music infected me or not. I do VIVIDLY remember watching Satchmo on TV as a child and loving the music too.

And of course, as soon as I got to NOLA I discovered the music. I could go on for days about Troy Andrews, Shannon Powell, Kermit Ruffins, Detroit Brooks, Dr. Michael White, Maurice Brown, Nicholas Payton...

I can't tell you how much I miss New Orleans. I can't. My words would fail. If NOLA were a woman, I would marry her and never stray.

Please, everyone, help save my city. Save New Orleans. Nothing else has ever been this important to me.