"Hello," from a Google+Plus refugee

Since 1999 I've been trying to put-together & develop an online publication I call a 'net-paper, located here: The VCTimes    Hope springs eternal, right? (:   For example, here's the latest from the VCTimes'  "Editorial Page": Go to Hell, #IMPOTUS if you think you're gonna send my son off to war in Civilization's Cradle! The VCTimes' cartoonist is the great New Orleans musician & artist Jim Smith. Check out his fantastic music on the Times' "Music & Art" section, such as these Jim Smith recordings I made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn0jckzhnPQ&list=PLVh6T6ziwJgKp5DvXx3wwPCw-vsIaqj2R Enjoy! ~thomas balzac, editor & publisher,  The VCTimes   Email: vieuxcarretimescom@gmail.com   

"Genius" is found in every corner of New Orleans, Louisiana. Its vessels toil in Architecture, Art, Music, Poetry....and, usually -- when they go "over to the other side" or leave this City for whatever reason -- only the local people miss & remember them, these "locals'" musicians, artists, poets.... My video today highlights locals'-musician and friend Brett Richardson, tearing-up the new piano installed at The Spotted Cat Music Club on Frenchmen Street, with this 1914 classic (music by Maurice Abrahams; lyrics, Grant Clarke). He ends his set with a classical-style piece but its title escapes me at the moment, sorry.

"Louder, Gents!" ~New Orleans' freestyle music This video could be from a hundred years ago on a typical hot mid-summer day in "the city that care forgot." I personally can't get enough of New Orleans' uniquely-original "free"-style, street music, and am amused when newbie-locals sometimes clamor for volume-controls on instruments played by "street musicians" such as the band in today's video. For generations, most of New Orleans' local musicians have performed on the banquettes and in the many bars of New Orleans' historic Vieux  Carré (" old square").  Today known as "The French Quarter," it's a historic residential neighborhood and Louisiana's most-profitable tourist district. Sadly, and partly as the result of gentrification, today in the Vieux Carre' there are many "naysayers of music" (as I label them); many are wealthy residents of the French Quarter (a