Cenla

So my time in Nashville was relaxing and mostly spent leisurely strolling around the campus of Vanderbilt. A fine campus indeed. Along with several students and professors, I had lunch with Alberto Fuguet, their visiting filmmaker/writer for the next month. Interesting fella who, from the sound of it, is going to make an interesting film up there later in the month. Before the screening last night, I joined some students for dinner...the same students who designed the fine artwork featured here in this post. See above, see below.

We had a fine turnout for the show...especially a surprise contingent from Clarksville, TN...some old friends from Baton Rouge who now work at Mission Clarksville.

Right now, I'm sitting in a coffeehouse called "Tamp and Grind"...oh yeah. Downtown Alexandria seems abuzz this afternoon...is it because the populace has grown restless with the knowledge that God's Architects will play at the Kress Theater this evening? Or is this typical of a Friday afternoon in the hub of Cenla? Or is it because warm weather has finally arrived down south? Or perhaps it's anticipation for the food and music festival Que'in on the Red that begins but one hour before the start of my film? Whatever the case, downtown Alexandria is more bustling than I would have thought possible, and it is certainly more pleasant than the place I see in my own dim memory from a wedding celebration I attended here nearly a decade ago. Perhaps my memory is more, or less, dim because of that celebration and not because of the place...for whatever reasons.

Two things, however, are certain:
1.) I will go a-wandering around this downtown soon, and have a stroll along the Red River, only 3 blocks from where I now sit.
2.) Where I now sit, in the "Tamp and Grind" coffeehouse, is a place better for sitting than any I know of in Lafayette, Louisisana, my hometown, and the generally-considered cultural center of Southwest Louisiana.


My two-night stay in Mobile begins tomorrow night and will include a lately-scheduled, nearly-midnight screening of God's Architects tomorrow night at 11pm at the Crescent Theater. Then Sunday afternoon, the film screens at Bernheim Hall (Behind Ben May Library), at 2pm. Check out Thomas Harrison's article about God's Architects in the Mobile Press-Register.