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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

New book! Handwriting improvement continues! Now it's all German and Very Orderly. Thank goodness.

A series of baptismal records on yellowing ledger paper, each handwritten in dark ink, all in German with a bit of flourish to the script.

Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

And a third priest has entered the records: Rev Fr Peter Berthet, who, after he left New Orleans, had a colourful history in Texas, apparently:

"Besides bishops Neraz and Forest, who were colorful characters
themselves, there are a few outstanding characters among the French
clergy of Texas at this time to point up the colorfulness of these Frenchmen in an alien land. Here are some of them.

Father Peter Berthet accidentally shot off the index finger of his
right hand. The source does not indicate the circumstances of the accident, which accident occurred in 1869 near Galveston."

From Diekemper, Fr. Barnabas (1983) ""French Clergy on the Texas Frontier, 1837-1907"," East Texas Historical
Journal: Vol. 21: Iss. 2, Article 7.
Available at: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ethj/vol21/iss2/7

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Another priest has stepped in, I think because the previous pastor has passed or retired. These are the records of Fr J.C. Ferec, who would go on to tend the sick in Shreveport in the 1873 yellow fever epidemic. He died a year later, accidentally drowning.

A series of handwritten baptismal records in dark ink on a yellowed page from September 1866, each signed J.C. Ferec.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

We went past the Skeleton House on St Charles on the way home, and they are Ready For Halloween.

A somewhat hazy photo of a large white New Orleans mansion lit up and covered in skeletons, each dressed up in some sort of funny/punny getup, such as the skeleton playing a violin on the roof with a sign that says "L'chaim!" (A Fiddler on the Roof joke, in case it wasn't obvious). The lawn is covered, wall-to-wall skeletons. They mean spooky business.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I've included my foot in here for scale, because Weence is getting to be a sturdy gal. I wear a men's 7, for reference.

A Weence, that is to say a black and fawn tabby cat, laying on her side on a tiled floor. Her head is tiny. The rest of her is huge. My slippers are in frame and she somehow seems bigger by comparison. She might devour an entire Japanese fishing village on accident before giving Godzilla cuddles.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

This image I found during my research today is truly incredible. A+ work, boys. Very weird, very racist. "We’ve fought in the open – bubonic plague, yellow fever, tuberculosis–now venereal diseases" by Horace Devitt Welsh (American, 1918).

A propaganda poster that says, "We’ve fought in the open – bubonic plague, yellow fever, tuberculosis–now venereal diseases," painted in 1918 by Horace Devitt Welsh. It depicts a half-nude woman with grey skin, red hair, a red billowy fabric covering, and a gold chain on her wrist that connects her to a sleepy vulture. In the background, a grey, skeletal figure with a lute, a white huddled figure, and a dark-skinned figure with big lips swathed in yellow -- bubonic plague, tuberculosis, and yellow fever respectively and racistly.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

I'll even add some Cat Tax, because our pets put the "aaaww" in N'aaaawlins.

A slumbering Weency: a black and fawn tabby laying on her side, mostly asleep, her fluffy underbelly and velvety black paws shown to the viewer. All is bliss in the court of Weency the Great.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

We received some updates from the overnight vet tech: Jellybean is eating and will even accept pets from the peasants. Hopefully, we'll get good news from the blood work this morning and we can bring her home today. We just have to pay for it all.

Jellybean, a perfect tiny black void with big yellow eyes and long white whiskers, in a cone of shame inside a vet kennel full of soft red blankets, looking inquisitive and a bit forlorn.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Weencycat has decided to go to school to become a pharmacy tech.

A Weency, who is a brown and black tabby cat with yellow eyes, sitting amongst brown pharmacy prescription bags and tags scattered across a grey duvet, her front leg slid under some. She looks attentive.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Weency says, "Why should you never take sides in an argument at the dinner table? Trick question. It's the perfect time to take sides because no one's paying attention. Bring Tupperware."

A lounging Weency: a brown and black tabby curled up on her side, showing her creamy taupe belly. You desire to pet. It is probably not a trap.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Okay, y'all, I know what this is depicting, but it looks like a weird little robot to me. What do y'all think this Certified Little Guy is? Interpretive/creative answers encouraged.

A little guy, vaguely amphora-shaped, with two black dots at the top like eyes. He's a jaunty little teapot in pose and demeanour.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

It used to be that government poster art was done by skilled artists. It was respected, even masterful commercial art. You're probably familiar with more of it than you think. Like these posters, for example.

A 1930s park service poster for Yellowstone with Old Faithful shooting up into a windswept sky, very stylised with a blue palette.

Credit: "Yellowstone National Park, Ranger Naturalist Service." C. (Chester) Don Powell, 1938, Screen, color, 48 x 36 cm., Washington DC, Department of the Interior, National Park

A familiar image of Uncle Sam in a blue coat, red bow tie, and white top hat with a blue ribbon with white stars, sternly pointing at the viewer. The caption reads, "I want YOU for the U.S. Army."

Credit: "IWant You For U.S. Army," James Montgomery Flag, 1917.
Size: 39.75 x 25.5 inches (102.9 x 64.7 cm)
Issuing Agency: U.S. Army
Medium: Lithograph

Rosie the Riveter, in her denim shirt and red polkadot bandana around her head, flexing her bicep for the audience, her speech bubble reading, "We Can Do It!"

Credit: "We Can Do It" or "Rosie the Riveter," James Howard Miller, 1943. Office for Emergency Management, War Production Board.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Since this factoid about C19 medicine and slavery lives in my brain now, it gets to live in y'all's, too.

"Physicians themselves purchased enslaved individuals. The 1791 city census documented that all eight doctors were enslavers. The 1830 federal census listed eighteen New Orleans physicians as enslavers, with a total of 144 enslaved individuals. Some doctors enslaved people suffering from an illness for relatively cheap in the hope of curing them and then selling them again for a large profit. Other physicians purchased enslaved individuals to conduct medical experiments. In Louisiana in the 1850s, a doctor bought a man named John Brown to conduct sunstroke experiments on him, and later developed a pill that he sold for large profits based on this work. As detailed in a subsequent section, medical experimentation on enslaved people became a common practice, with many such incidents occurring in the hospitals of New Orleans." - from "A City Without Care: 300 Years of Racism, Health Disparities, and Health Care Activism in New Orleans" by Kevin McQueeney

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

Green onion Chee-Wees. The original, often imitated, never duplicated.

A green bag of Elmer's New Orleans Chee-Wees, green onion flavour. A mouse drunkenly leans against a Bourbon St light pole in a suit and bow tie. Cheese doodles fall like streamers at a Mardi Gras parade. It is an exuberant snack of a bygone age. It lingers. It is loved.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

Today, I learned an anecdote about how Aaron Burr screwed New York City out of a functional municipal water supply in order to fund his own bank, in peak Aaron Burr fashion. Very on-brand. (From John Duffy's "The Sanitarians," pg 48.)

In 1798 the city council, after approving a report suggesting that water be brought into the city from the Bronx River, recommended building a municipal water system. Unfortunately, Aaron Burr, whose reputation for chicanery is well deserved, was chairman of the legislative committee to which the city's petition was sent. Burr and his Republican associates wanted a bank charter, which the Federalist-dominated legislature was not willing to grant. The story is somewhat involved, but basically Burr persuaded the legislature to charter a private water company, and he managed to insert a clause in the charter that permitted the Manhattan Company to invest its surplus capital in "moneyed transactions or operations." Thus he was able to use the water company's charter to establish his bank. To their sorrow, the civic authorities discovered that the charter said nothing about supplying the city with water for municipal purposes, nor did it even contain a provision requiring the company to repair and repave the streets dug up to lay pipe. For the next forty years the water company concentrated on banking and supplied only enough poor water to maintain its charter.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

Today, I was blessed with Jellybean cuddles first thing after waking up.

A beautiful little black cat with big yellow eyes, curled up on a human lap that's beneath a grey duvet colour.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Regardless, there are plastic babies and each year, new fillings emerge. A local favourite is Duong Phong's coconut. (They also offer durian.) Regardless, the cake goes away on Ash Wednesday. Then it's another year before they come to shelves. Remember to finish your cake by Mardi Gras day!

A float with a masked jester's head rolls down Canal Street past the palm trees on the neutral ground. The riders in white throw beads and trinkets to the crowd, all packed in and reaching up towards the float for throws.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

One bakery, Haydel's, revived the ceramic tradition in 1990, putting Frozen Charlottes in their cakes for an anniversary year. They were so popular, Haydel's began making collectable Frozen Charlottes, each based on a Mardi Gras figure or New Orleans icon, and introduced a new one every year. +

Four porcelain Haydel's Frozen Charlottes: a saxophone player in a chicken suit, a lady in polka dots holding a sign saying "doubloons please," a man holding a sign for flowers while wearing a blue domino mask and beads, a skeleton wearing a top hat with a voodoo doll, and a grey uniformed old-fashioned police officer with a baton.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

The baby represents the infant Jesus that the Magi were trying to find. Whoever finds it is traditionally obliged to bring the king cake to the next gathering. The baby has been a bean in the past, and they were ceramic in late C19/early C20 when they arrived here, usually little Frozen Charlottes.

A 25-odd count cluster of small, white bisque doll figurines, some with painted eyes and mouths, some with painted hair, all without clothes. One figure is pitch black, in the middle of the cluster.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Today is Epiphany or Kings' Day, the day when the Magi finally visit the infant Jesus. In New Orleans, it's the first day of Carnival Season -- and the day when you can start eating king cake! These tri-colour rings are ubiquitous in Louisiana come January, and delicious, too. +

A slice of king cake topped with purple, green, and gold sugar, a plastic baby figurine sitting on the plate next to the cake. The whole cake, some Mardi Gras beads, and a mask are in the background.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Today's Complaints from Weencycat, Aged 3: Why is she not allowed to go in the crisper drawer with the vegetables? So cruel! She wants to commune with carrots!

Weency, a black and brown tabby cat, draped dramatically on a chaise, showing her belly to the camera, staring wistfully off to the left, surrounded by pillows, none of which ease her sorrows or l'ennui.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

New Orleans has been in loads of movies. But we still love our Joan of Arc statue. She's called Joanie on a pony here, and her annual parade to kick off Carnival Season is tomorrow night. She will fight unsafe space heaters.

A photo of the golden statue of Joan of Arc on her horse, wearing armour and hoisting a golden banner high, a golden crown of laurels like a halo over her head.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Found a really exciting book of poetry at the new French bookstore in the Quarter. It's one of the earliest anthologies of Afro-Creole poetry ever published, and possibly the first anthology of African American poetry published, called "Les Cenelles," edited by Armand Lanusse.

An olive skinned hand holding a paperback book with a painting of a medium skinned Creole woman on the front. The title is "Les Cenelles" by Armand Lanusse, from the séries Les Cahiers du Tintamarre.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

In other news, this matcha latte with rose syrup and rose cold foam is divine.

A white table with a large hardback book with medieval knights and bishops on it, an open notebook with handwritten notes on the bottom left, and centre, a beautifully green matcha latte in a glass with heaps of pale green foam.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

"We have come this far, always believing That justice will somehow prevail This is the burning, this is the promise And this is why we will not fail." Chag sameach, y'all.

A fully lit blue and white floral ceramic menorah, sitting on a latke tray, a blue and white floral ceramic ginger jar vase with multicoloured roses sitting next to it, a darkened window beyond.

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Aleksei I. Valentín (he/they) ✡️♿🏳️‍🌈 @aivalentin.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Coffee get: a delicious coquito latte, which is so sweet but so comforting on a cool, damp day. Now, French.

A large book laying open on a dark wood table. A black fountain pen is diagonally laid over a page, a white cup of coffee with lineart of a shotgun house on it sits to the side, with green headphones and a white and green mechanical keyboard in the upper left corner.

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