Six years ago I went back for my 10 year High School Reunion. It was very much smaller than I expected. My house I grew up in got smaller as I would go back during college. But this was a shock.

It was the 2nd event of our reunion a crawfish boil in the cafeteria, which also shrunk in size. I was always amazed and daunted when walking those halls those 20 some odd years ago. How big it seemed with it's 3 storeys of classrooms & labs, auditorium, gymnasium, atriums, balconeys.

There we were about maybe 3/4 of our class came back for the weekend's festivities. We filed into the cafeteria & filled our plates. After some good eating & catching up my best friend Shannon & I decided to take the "Reunion Tour" through our old little hangouts through the school.

It was then I realized how much smaller everything seemed. The lockers weren't as high, but I was about the same height as I was in HS. The bathrooms were smaller too, that was crazy. The hallways & stairways seemingly closed in on us.

What's worse is that recently, my alma mater, Benjamin Franklin wasn't listed in the US News & World Report List of the top schools in the US. Previously we weren't even on the main list but listed as an asterik on another side list for consistently producing high achieving national merit scholars, etc. It always showed up every year so USNWR had to create another list for it & schools that are similar.

Not only has the building shrunk but so has our status as an elite high school coming from the depths of what many outsiders call hell, New Orleans, but most who still love it call home.

It's true you can never really go home again.........

old radio

I'm waxing nostalgic about radio. I remember many nights patiently waiting for my favorite songs to come on so I could record them on my tape recorder which was poised ever so steadily next to the speaker of the small radio mind you.

In college I had my own car that I listened to the radio incessantly. I listened so much that one day I was driving to class & Faith Hill's Breathe came on the popular country station, by that time it had played itself out, too much for me. I changed the station, adult contemporary format, & low & behold it was playing on the next station too. I changed the station close to 5 more times, 5 different radio stations, in Baton Rouge there were 3 major country stations, 3 Top 40 stations plus that adult contemporary one. Each & every one was playing that dang song!

I was so glad when I got my next car that had a CD player in it finally that I could listen to what I wanted. Before I was the mercy of tapes that were obviously on the way out.

My next car had satellite radio for a year. I lurved my Sirius radio, no commercials. When I let the subscription lapse & had to go back to regular radio I couldn't believe how much commercials had become a part of programming, it had truly gotten worse than before.

Therefore I long for the days when I propped my tape recorder up against my stereo speakers to record the brand new NKOTB single, lol. It was the right stuff!

I began watching reality tv with the original Real World in New York back in the early 90's. I watched Julie & Kevin argue under a NY city scaffold. I watched Eric model & shoot to stardom dating Pam Anderson later.

I watched as David dropped his drawers as an answer to Tami's comments. I watched Beth drool over every single guy she came across. I watched Dom make fun of all the Americans in the house.

I also watched Puck lick peanut butter off his fingers. I watched as he irritated & offended every single person in the house in San Francisco. I watched Judd crush on Pam and wait her out until she fell for him. I cried during the Season 3 marathon that was dedicated to the life, that's right LIFE, of Pedro Zamora.

Those were the real reality tv, not the contrived series that we see now, hello Jersey Shore. Don't get me wrong I still watch my share of current reality television, but it will never come close to those first few seasons of The Real World, when the people were achingly real.

Those first few seasons defined an era & opened an entertainment door that had good intentions, but as with all things in the US, we tend to exaggerate the best things & make them cheap & tawdry.

Maybe one day things will turn around, all things come full circle, someday reality tv will be gritty & relevant again.

It's hard to choose just one memory. I had so many growing up in the house on Dupre St. It was your typical New Orleans Shotgun house. When my grandparents bought the house they made certain renovations to make it inhabitable since my parents & siblings were going to be living with them.

They blocked off their front room & cut a doorway through the wall giving my parents another bedroom so that my sister didn't have to share her room with the boys. They also installed closets. You may think, what a house without closets, well back in the day taxes were charged based on how many rooms a house had & closets were considered rooms. Later on they also added onto the back of the house & gave each side an extended kitchen/dining room & shed.

Since it's the end of Mardi Gras time it's brought back a lot of memories from the times we had open house. Mom would cook, usually it was hot tamales, so yummy!!!

Also, every Saturday night my parents had friends come over & they'd play cards til 12-1 at night. They'd let us hang around for a little bit, but then they'd run us out & we'd have to either retire to our rooms or watch tv in the living room.

Those nights when I'd have sleepovers & the next morning my friends & I would play in the backyard.

When I went home for a family function a couple years ago we drove past & that's when I took this picture. It was right around the time Miranda Lambert's song "The House That Built Me" had just come out. I was jonesing to see the house again. We didn't get to go in, but it was enough.

Not necessarily beautiful, but it was the first building where I had a physical reaction to. I was in Nashville, trying to show my independence by taking my very first trip alone without family or friends to guide me.

I had done my duties for which I had gone on the trip, interviewed a exec dir of a Native American advocacy group, hoofed my way through a job fair, in a previous life I thought I could actually get a job working in music/entertainment.

So I decided to play tourist & see the city. I went downtown & parked so far away from everything, lol. I walked around bought a Nickel Creek CD at the Ernest Tubbs Record Shop & even made my way to country music holy ground, the Ryman Auditorium, the original site of the Grand Ole Opry.

However, the building that really struck me was the full scale Parthenon replica. Situated next to Centennial Park. It was a gorgeous day, brisk for a mid-March day & sunny, just beautiful. You go in on the ground floor & traverse the museum like display of how & when the building came about. One can either take the stairs or an elevator. I took the elevator, duh!

Looking back maybe taking the stairs might've prepared me better for what I eventually saw. I got off the elevator & walked around the corner into a room where I felt literally 1 inch tall. The columns were massively lined up leading the way to a 40 ft. statue of Athena. I immediately got dizzy & felt as if I was going to pass out. I actually had to feel my way around the room until I got my bearings.

Then I was overtaken by the sheer feat of the details & care taken to replicate one of the most important buildings in ancient history. I stayed there for hours just absorbing it all in. Being that I minored in art history, I was in paradise, well at least as close as I could get on a college student's budget.