"The museum is so excited to have children here once again!" exclaimed Grace Wilson, director of communications at the New Orleans Museum of Art. "A lot of our exhibitions have been so adult-centric, but for this one, adults as well as children will enjoy it."

Wilson is, of course, talking about NOMA's new Disney exhibit, Dreams Come True: Art of the Classic Fairy Tales from the Walt Disney Studio. New Orleans is the exhibit's only North American stop, a fact for which we can thank the charm of our fair city. Evidently, the artists working on Disney's newest, The Princess and The Frog, fell so in love with the city while they were drawing it that they knew the exhibit had to come here.

The weather outside has been just glorious lately, no? The deep blue of the sky and - finally! - fall crisp in the air make me want to get outside and stay there until the sun goes down, longer if I have a blanket handy.

You think so, too? Well, you're in luck; I have an excuse for you to do exactly that!

From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, North Rampart Main Street, Inc. presents its third annual North RampART Festival, complete with all of the New Orleans festival necessities: food, music and space for a lawn chair. Even if the sun isn't shining, the festival will go on and promises a good time.

Last Thursday night inside the Cabildo's eerie Arsenal, New Orleans' own voodou priestess, Sallie Ann Glassman, presented a Ya Ya History lecture on the twisted, complicated, give-and-take relationship between voodou and the New World. After walking across the echoing flagstone on the first floor, my voodou-curious friend and I made our way to the third floor of the building, where we found a completely packed house eagerly waiting to learn. 

The crowd was a mixed bag: young, old, black, white, men in tweed business suits, a 20-something guy in a Led Zeppelin hoodie. A marching band was practicing in the Cabildo courtyard, making it easy to imagine a sacrificial drumbeat as slides of voodou rituals flashed in front of the room. And then it started.

"This is the story of the battle between the visible and invisible worlds," Glassman began. 

Even though the big health care debate has moved past its former fever pitch, the issue of thousands upon thousands of uninsured Americans is still omnipresent. These people are in dire need of medications, check-ups and prenatal care, but have no way to afford the overwhelming costs of health care.

The National Association of Free Clinics, a D.C.-based non-profit, has taken it upon themselves to serve these citizens, along with the doctors and nurses who have made it their mission to help the uninsured.

The year: 1946. The place: Edinburgh, Scotland. The crime: Some snobby artists decided to exclude eight other performing groups from the annual arts festival.

The result: Said excluded artists bind together and journey to the fringes of Edinburgh, where they performed their art for free and eventually became even more popular than the original festival. Thus, the original Fringe Festival was born.

Much more recently - last year to be exact - New Orleans became one of those cities lucky enough to carry on the tradition of art on the fringe, with a Fringe Festival of our very own. Starting tonight and going through Sunday, our second annual Fringe Festival will take over the funky galleries, converted shotguns and old churches of the Bywater, filling the city streets with sounds of poetry, puppetry and performance art.

Now that we've got a few half-marathons under our belts, my running buddies and I have turned our attention towards February's Mardi Gras Rock & Roll Marathon. We started training a few weeks ago, which means we run at least three days a week, mixed in with some cardio and strength workouts. Due to the time constraints of the workweek, we save our long runs for Saturdays and Sundays, which means one thing: post-run brunch!

Long runs, often around 10 miles or more, leave us absolutely ravenous, so four of us have taken to trying a different restaurant every weekend, and - this is the best part! - we order whatever we want. After all, French bread stuffed with scrambled eggs, sausage gravy, American cheese and bacon is easily rationalized when you've just burned off 800 calories.

The weather this past Saturday was everything that the World War II Museum's family fun day planners could have asked for: the clear, blue, sunny skies brought lots of young couples, big families and war veterans out to celebrate the grand opening of the museum's new building. The Victory Theater, Stage Door Canteen and Besh's new American Sector restaurant are all now officially open to the public, and this weekend's fanfare was perfect for the occasion.

The big window at the front of the original D-Day Museum building had been opened wide to share the weather with the roomful of veterans seated inside, enjoying the 40s-style music provided by Linnzi Zaorski and her four-piece string band. Zaorski's flirtatious, uber-girly voice hearkens directly back to the days when she would have been wearing seams up the backs of her tights, and her perfectly coiffed hair and red lips made me wish that women still dressed to the nines for an afternoon out.

One of the amazing things about artists is that they can look at problems we face as a society and not only come up with an effective solution, but a solution that is creative and fun, to boot.

Take Houston-born artist, Mel Chin, for example. According to his online biography, he is a classically trained artist who likes to produce art in the least likely of places. He also tries to create works or movements that "can provoke greater social awareness and responsibility." His current project, Fundred, is doing exactly that all over the country, and it's got New Orleans at its heart.

Starting last night, the World War II Museum has been celebrating the opening of its three new buildings big time, complete with celebrities, premieres and red carpet walks. Last night, Tom Hanks, Patricia Clarkson and James Cromwell attended a special screening of "Beyond All Boundaries," the 4-D movie that will be playing at the new Victory Theater. Hanks himself directed the film, and it features the voices of more than a dozen celebrities.

All this glitz and glamour is exciting for our small city, but the real fun starts tomorrow at 10 a.m., when the opening celebrations turn into a family affair.

I first met Gumbo Tales author, Sara Roahen, at the One Book One New Orleans launch party and book singing at the Latter Memorial Library. We were both overwhelmed, me by being so close a real, published author, her by the size of the crowd there to meet her. We quickly introduced ourselves, I told her I was excited about reading her book, and that was that.

The next time I saw Roahen, though, she was much more in her element. We sat in the living room of the Uptown house she and her husband, Matt, are renting while they renovate their actual home. Occasional peeps from their brand-new baby echoed down the stairs, followed by Matt's footsteps, and a laptop sat closed on the coffee table. It was a particularly appropriate setting to talk about her book of non-fiction food stories, since all of those things - the husband, the baby, the laptop - have a role in the book's journey from author's first effort to a citywide literacy tool.