Ironic, isn't it, Louisiana's Superdome being on The State's political and business hit list, though it is our most successful community effort since the Battle of New Orleans? The plan is to sell the name built and paid by the people of Louisiana, then hand over the money - after fees, thank you - to the saintly Saints organization.

Will the saintly Saints use their multi-million windfall fixing City potholes and funding State education? Will they build us a new hospital? Or even pay a fee to Louisiana for the right to sell what the taxpayers own? Fat chance!

They will use their ill-gotten profits to buy themselves private islands, leaving the rest of us to sink in the Gulf of Mexico.

Not asked to join the Governor's committee of select bagmen, though hopelessly damned to its folly, there was nothing left to do but ride my bike to the mighty Superdome and observe one of the other events held on the three hundred and fifty nine days of the year when the saintly Saints are not there. On this day nearly forty thousand milk-fed Lutheran youth gathered inside its gigantic circle.

Lutherans are followers of Martin Luther, a German whose Reformation emphasized good works, among other things. His ideas immigrated to America in no small number through the mostly unreformed Port of New Orleans. Incidentally, some stayed here and built Faubourg Marigny's Lutheran Churches.

Those seeking higher moral ground followed The River up to Saint Louis, where they formed the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church with a world wide membership weighted towards Northern European immigrant seed. (Creole Northern European Americans, if you will.) That seed returned to pray in the Superdome and do us good deeds, like painting and cleaning our ragtag non-football parts of town.

At Café Du Monde in the New Orleans Shopping Centre`, I met with a Blanc de Blanc group of these youngsters. They listened politely to my musings on the beneficial, but nonetheless bazaar, nature of Martin Luther's thesis (e.g., he thought constipation and foul breath were the spirit of the Devil). A blond young woman squeezed her boyfriend's hand, fixed dazzling blue eyes on mine and said, "But we don't worship Luther."

"Touché, cher," I said, "touché." Her boyfriend sparkled stardust from a smile bigger than The Dome outside the window by our table.

At an August Lazarus House party for July Fourth's LazFest volunteers, Lazarus House spokesperson Larise LeBlanc said, "The Lutheran kids were hard working youngsters, cleaning the grounds and visiting with residents. And they were so very polite." As Lake Woebegone Lutherans should be, Garrison Keillor would say.

Speaking of Garrison Keillor, his web site, www.prairiehome.org says he has undergone open-heart surgery, is doing well, and the family would like their privacy respected. That also sounds rather Lutheran, does it not?

Joshua Clark, a non-Lutheran blond, blue-eyed graduate of Yale, who lives in the nearby-faraway French Quarter, is accepting submissions for the latest offspring of Gutenberg's printing press. "It will be a journal titled, 'French Quarter Short Stories', published by Light of New Orleans Publishing. It is open to any writer, regardless of location of residence or anything else," Clark said. "The focus is literary. The only criterion for submissions is that they evolve in some manner around the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana - physically and spiritually." For more information go to www.frenchquarterfiction.com.

At the National Performance Network's Sixteenth Annual Meeting and Convocation at Faubourg Marigney's New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, Jan Clifford and her husband Philip told us the arts organization had moved its headquarters to New Orleans' Entergy Arts Business Center, 225 Baronne Street. NPN, under the leadership of New Orleans native M.K. Wegmann, is the recent recipient of a one-and-one-half-million-dollar grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Other funding is provided by The Rockefeller Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Louisiana Division of the Arts, and AmSouth Bank. A few of the artists performing at NOCCA were Delfeayo Marsalis, Jose Torres-Tama, New Orleans Dance Collective, Lula Elzy Dance Theatre, Sarah Skaggs and Gams on the Lam. NPN's web side is www.npnweb.org

The only fitting thing to do, if you ask me, Bubba, is sell The Dome's name to Oscar Mayer Lunchmeats, then every time the saintly Saints ask for a few more millions, we can all yell, "The Dome is full of baloney!"

Think of performance artists dancing "The Superdome Story", a giant little Oscar Mayer boy sitting with his chubby legs dangling over the edge of a domed stage, while around him dance rings of the Governor's select bagmen pulling wads of green bills from the pockets of bent over citizens. As they gather their hay they sing, "My baloney has a first name it's S-a-i-n-t / My baloney has a second name it's B-u-l-l- …."

ONE MORE LITERARY DANCE: The Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society's annual festival honoring Faulkner, et al, has gained yet another name. It is "Words & Music: A Literary Feast in New Orleans". This year, September twentieth to twenty-fourth. Information at www.wordsandmusic.org.

Finally, let us not forget to say thank you to the editors at New Orleans City Business for their glowing articles and editorial on the gentrification of Faubourg Marigny. You can search their files at www.neworleanscitybusiness.com