If I could put my finger on it, I’d bottle it and sell it. I came down here originally in 1972 with some drunken fraternity guys and had never seen anything like it — the climate, the smells. It’s the cradle of music; it just flipped me. Someone suggested that there’s an incomplete part of our chromosomes that gets repaired or found when we hit New Orleans. Some of us just belong here.

Actor John Goodman (“Roseanne,” “Treme”) in an interview with the L.A. Times in response to the question “What makes people so passionate about New Orleans?”

Dang it if I didn’t <3 John Goodman before, I definitely do now.

There is great faith here, and living in the breach, under different flags, has taught each generation that suffering is as much a part of life as great feasts and celebration. The joy of Mardi Gras cannot exist without the sacrifice of Lent.

Wright Thompson captures the city those 43 words. He has several hundred more in his piece Saints the soul of America’s city, on ESPN.com [via Visit New Orleans].

I first visited New Orleans for my friend’s law school graduation in 2001 (maybe 2002, I can’t remember). I went with my sort-of-but-not-quite-ex boyfriend. When I stepped out of the airport to get a cab to our hotel, the warm, humid, funky late-May air grabbed me around its shoulders with both its arms. For a moment, I forgot where I was. Stepping out of LaGuardia Airport in the summer time (I’m a Long Island native) feels and smells much the same way. In that moment, I decided I loved New Orleans.

I don’t think there is a more sensual city in America. The French Quarter and Vieux Carre are visually enthralling. Most of the year, the weather is warm and humid and the air sits on your skin. You can navigate your way to Bourbon Street by the strength of the piss-and-vomit smell. The food culture — beignets, crawfish, chicory coffee, gumbo, etouffee, the sazerac, the hurricane, and bourbon milk punch — is incredible and unparalleled by damn near any city in the United States. The city is the birthplace of jazz music. Art and artists can be found all over the French Quarter and the Warehouse district. Magazine Street is on fire with local artists and crafts people. There’s the old creak of the street cars, and Canal Street is lit up by neon at night.

But it’s also a city with a heavy heart. I think what I love most about New Orleans is its melancholy. Laissez les bon temps rouler is one of the city’s catchphrases, and yes, they let the good times roll. But you get the sense that the reason they let the good times roll is because if the city doesn’t laugh, it will surely cry. New Orleans has a history of natural disasters, tropical disease, stagnant economic growth, high crime, and poor governance. Even before hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a sense of sadness was a palpable part of the city’s mood.

My upcoming trip will be my third visit to New Orleans this year. It’s a beautiful place. It’s a crazy place. At times, it is also a dangerous place. But more than anything, it’s a special place — possibly my favorite city in America.

New York, and LA are bad for traffic, but according to a new survey by GPS maker TomTom, Seattle takes the cake.

TomTom used data from Tele Atlas speed profiles to determine the percentage of congested roadways in a given city.

[Via Elliott.org]

But that answer wasn’t always the most satisfying one for the asker. You see, I am black, but my skin tone is kind of beige. I’m the same shade of golden tan as most North Africans. S. is what Brits would call Desi. She’s 100% of Indian descent, but several generations removed from Indian culture and customs. To the Moroccans we encountered, our appearance and our answers were more confusing than enlightening. And for us, it raised old questions about our own ethnic identity.

In my case, "the United States," or "American" is the shortest, truest response to the questions "Where are you from?" and "What’s your ethnicity?" I have a sense of place here. The roots of my family tree reach down at least five generations into U.S. soil. My family’s history is murky, obscured by time and slavery, but it’s American — distinctly so.

In the rest of the world, however, people have an ethnicity or a nationality, even if their nation doesn’t have its own state. When I answered "American," the follow-up question was, as often as not, "but what are you?" particularly because I looked like a long-lost cousin. I’m not even brown-skinned like the images of black people we send abroad. But "black" is as good an answer as I can give.

S.‘s family history, however, is entirely clear. She knows that her great-great-great grandparents left India for Guyana as indentured servants. Her peoples are straight-up "GuyanIndian." Yet she was born in the United Kingdom, becoming a U.S. citizen when she was six. What’s murky is her ethnic and national identity. From which of India’s 14 major ethno-linguistic groups does she hail? Are her family’s traditions Indian, Guyanese, or some fusion of the two? And how accurate an answer is "American" when she’s the immigrant child of parents who emigrated to the country of her birth?

Define “black”

I remember a conversation from years ago that I had with a Malian woman named Fanta about blackness. She said "In Mali, there is no such thing as ‘black.’" In places where everyone has the same skin color, notions of ‘black’ or ‘white’ are unnecessary and non-existent (though, as with the Roma in Europe, ethnic markers still hold sway). Fanta said that when she came to the U.S., she found herself wrestling with a new set of expectations, assumptions, unspoken rules, and judgements — ‘blackness’ —that were applied to her as a dark skinned African woman in the United States.

Our conversation taught me that concepts of race, color, and ethnic identity are often fluid, culturally-dependent, and self-determined.

There are black people in Morocco, mind you: the Gnawa. The Gnawa are an oft-marginalized group descended from sub-Saharan African peoples, some of whom were slaves, some of whom were merchants along cross-dessert routes. They even have their own distinctive form of music. Y’all know that’s about as black as black gets.

But race is a culturally-specific concept, isn’t it? And I got the sense that in Morocco, race and color is almost wholly replaced by ethnic identity. The Gnawa aren’t "black" per se. They’re "Gnawa." Arabs and Berbers aren’t "white," they’re Arabs and Berbers.

So when you say "black" in Morocco, what does the listener hear and understand?

Does she/he have a concept of what "black" means in the States? Does she/he know that any African ancestor in your known family tree makes you legally black no matter what your phenotype says? Does she/he understand that blackness in the U.S.. often comes sans ethnicity? Does she/he realize that you, your parents, your grandparents, and probably your great- and great-great-grandparents grandparents come from United States and/or parts unknown?

Or does she/he view it through African eyes — eyes that think of "black" as "from the south side of the desert and a few shades darker than you?"

So you’re not Indian?

And what to make of S.? She is racially (for lack of a better way to put it) Indian, but not ethnically so. While I am wholly convinced that her peoples are descended from some long lost tribe of Indian nomads with all the continent hopping they do, S., has never been sure of how to define her ethnic identity.

I remember having mad conversations about it when we were checking boxes on our college applications. "Asian" wasn’t culturally accurate. For her, it didn’t even feel racially accurate. To this day, even calling herself Indian, she says, makes her feel like an imposter (Guyanese isn’t much better).

But because of her Indian looks (which, like mine, also look a little bit Latina depending on who’s doing the looking) she was pressed quite a few times about where she was from — you know, really from.

For both of us, "American" was not enough.

Thanks to George for inspiring the title.

At least the hotel was a 2 minute walk from the beach.

We spent our last two days in Morocco at Club Val d’Anfa Hotel, located in the La Corniche / Aïn Diab section of Casablanca. The hotel sits at the corner of Boulevard Ocean and Boulevard Corniche, and backs up to the beach. You can even see the ocean from some of the hotel’s rooms.

Its proximity to the beach, however, means that it’s pretty far from the center of the city. Taxis are cheap, but if your plan is to hit the Habous or visit the Hassan II Mosque, you are better off staying somewhere else.

The room was clean, and nicely outfitted with twin beds, a minibar and satellite television. All rooms also come with free WiFi, and it’s pretty reliable. Some of the bed linens were old and worn, but the beds were quite comfortable.

The hotel itself was in the midst of being renovated. Contractors were working on the hallway outside of our room. We were there on the weekend, so work noise was minimal. Unfortunately that’s not the only source of noise at Club Val d’Anfa Hotel. The neighborhood surrounding the hotel features lots of nightclubs, bars and restaurants. It’s also very close to a major intersection. Saturday night, we heard lots of honking horns and loud bus motors, even though we were on the third floor and our windows were closed.

It got better — or should I say worse? Our room was also over a Moroccan restaurant that featured a roughly 45-minute belly dance performance. Ordinarily, this would not be a problem. But according to S., the music was so loud Saturday night that the room was vibrating (I managed to sleep through it thanks to some Tylenol PM and a serious cold).

The worst part is that when S. went down to talk to the front desk about the noise, they shrugged it off, telling her it would be over in 30 minutes. Now while I don’t expect the hotel to shut down the restaurant because we wanted to sleep (it was about 10 or 11 pm local time when the music started), I do expect better soundproofing and/or a room that isn’t directly over a restaurant that plays music loud enough to make your bed thump.

Given the location and the noise, I’d suggest passing on a stay at Club Val d’Anfa.

This was the only day during our seven night stay that we could see Saba from our balcony. It’s a beautiful view.