Lafcadio Hearn in New Orleans, life in a sackcloth.

Herbert Asbury, Tennessee Williams, and Lafcadio Hearn have one thing in common... they all dissed Ohio in expressing their love of New Orleans. At least Lafcadio lived in both and could compare—he worked as a journalist in Cincinnati before coming down the Mississippi. The other two were just being jerks.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UoeG074Yuzk

TLafcadio's most famous quote. Read by someone smarter than me. You can tell by his glasses with no lenses.

I disagree, like Ohio. I like the state and I like the Pretenders song. DEVO is from Ohio... but Lafcadio Hearn left Ohio 100 years before DEVO's first album, so he had no idea what he missed.

He did love New Orleans the same way I do—not only warts and all, but celebrating those warts. He loved the smell, the beauty, and the lackadaisical lifestyle, and like me, his main fear was New Orleans being dragged into the modern day...a fight we have been waging for hundreds of years with mixed results.

I should throw a Lafcadio Hearn party next year for one of our cities great forgotten literary heroes... but more likely, I'll just dilly-dally and hope someone else does it. Lafcadio would respect that.