Before flying to New Orleans, I went to Tour de Fat with some friends, Emily and Ryan. This fun affair encourages bicycle riders to ride their bikes there (Tour de). Then they can enjoy music, food booths and Fat Tire beer (Fat). The attached picture is of a performer on stilts from the March 4th band, the same band that played at Evergreen’s graduation.
I parked my car at Emily’s house and took a bus at 1:30 in the morning to the airport then waited for my 4 a.m. flight.
New Orleans:
The account of my trip is divided into sections – so you can scroll down and read any section you prefer, or all of them J. This account is from a combination of memory, notes on scraps of paper and photos.
Over view
New Orleans was a mixed bag. This won’t be a starry-eyed tale. Perhaps I’m getting older or something. Or maybe I wanted to explore outside the tourist areas to see more of the city. Sure, I purchased the perfunctory t-shirt, sticker, refrigerator magnet, postcards and shot glass. The French District was beautiful and where I could explores shops, restaurants and sit by the Mississippi for some quiet and a bit of a breeze.
India House
I stayed at a hostel called India house, a bohemian place with a mural of Buddha on the wall of the women’s room, where I stayed with 6 other women on bunk beds. Music usually played in the living room, sometimes too loud. The house cat, which looked skinny, walked around. The best thing though was the swimming pool – after walking around New Orleans in hot humid weather, a dip in the pool was heaven. The pool was also a good place to talk to other people staying there. One man from England was pretty funny but ended up getting blisters on this shoulder pretty bad and looked like a lobster.
Unfortunately, there was no air conditioning in the kitchen or dining room. Basically the air conditioned rooms were the living room and television room. A fan blew in the dorm, but mostly everyone either slept in their underwear or very light clothing. The bathroom floors were wet from the showers, with hair.
I liked the murals though and have attached pictures here so you can see them. Some show the tradition of Jazz and other music genres, which originated in New Orleans (N.O.)
I go into detail about this hostel because if you go to New Orleans I would recommend finding another hostel to stay at. If your ok with staying in a large college-like house with a refrigerator devoted only to beer, can tolerate noise and not-so-tidy bathrooms, then you might like India House. Also, you need to be heat/humidity tolerant, or else you might find yourself never eating in the dining room or using the kitchen, unless it is in winter.
Getting into downtown from India House was easy (the hostel was about 4 miles from downtown and the waterfront). A trolley system was right outside and took people to downtown and to other areas, such as the garden district with its mansions, and the warehouse/art district.
The first priority each morning was coffee. I tried to find local coffee shops because I can get Starbucks anywhere. I managed to find a few.
This is one of most popular place for a lot of people visiting New Orleans; I ate at some catfish, gumbo, jambalaya, Southern Pecan Pie (to die for), a shrimp po-boy sandwiches, and coffee and French donuts with as much powered sugar on them as the donuts themselves. I wanted to eat more local foods, since there is Cajun, Creole, and other foods. This is because the area was colonized by French, Spanish and then Europeans. The restaurant where I had the pecan pie, “Pierre Maspero’s” used to be an old slave trading quarter.
Other highlights: shops, art galleries, and French-style buildings with terraces. Supposedly, Bradjolie have a chateau there.
I spent a lot of time there because of its many shops, restaurants, music and galleries, plus the breeze from the Mississippi. You could see people going on ghost tours, city tours, and people singing down the streets.
Probably my favorite experience there was a man on a bicycle who began singing the song “Lean on Me.” He then began singing it to a group of high school students and chaperones, who joined in. Then other people walking by started singing. “I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on.” Soon about twenty or so people were singing the song. This was through the narrow bricked streets with the sun going down.
This gave me a taste of the culture of music in New Orleans, which I read about in the history museum. It is a big part of people’s lives there.
After four days and three nights walking around the main city area of New Orleans, I lucked out by meeting a woman who was going to help out with a non-profit organization in the lower 9th Ward, one of the hardest hit areas of Katrina, which flooded much of N.O. You may have seen the footage on the news of a barge hitting a levy and pinning a school bus underneath it. The non-profit, Common Grounds (no affiliation to the Seattle Common Grounds), is located one block from this, where most of the homes were swept away off their foundations or else flooded and destroyed beyond salvage.
Julie, from the hostel, and I took a taxi to the Lower 9th Ward and split the fair. The bus systems are still not running to many of the places they used to for lack of people who were displaced to other states or cities in Louisiana because of the hurricane. A bus did run there but we had no idea how far we would have to walk in the 90+ weather. I’ve never sweat as much as I did there; and this was only from walking around and talking to people in the few houses that have been built there.
Because I was helping out with the newsletter Common Grounds publishes, I was trying to find out if anyone had been fined yet under the city ordinance entitled ‘Sec 28-33 Duty to Mow Grass and Remove Debris.’
I was trying to find out if any of them had been fined for the city ordinance that fined property owners for not mowing their laws - $100 per day or something like that. Even if your house is gone or razed or boarded up, or a pile of wood, baby cribs, scattered household items, and you were re-located to Utah, you still get fined
Apparently, and this is all second
-hand information, so please don’t take this as the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the city wants to reposes land and is enacting crazy laws to do so. So people who suffered a major tragedy and who were sometimes split up within families and shipped to other states, and who may or may not have lost loved ones, were having insult added to injury.
Hurricane Katrina exposed the have and the have-nots. Remember the news where black people were called looters, even if they were trying to get water because they had none for days. But whites were described as just finding water to drink. There is a lot of detail I could go into, such as the delayed response of FEMA and Bush and the implicate racism involved, or the fact that the rescue of people in flooded areas was left to locals and Sean Penn, navigating boats and risking their lives to save people. But I will try to keep this account from becoming a book.
I could mention that the national response to the biggest national disaster the country has ever had came days after people’s homes were flooded and more than a thousand had died in their attics, from heat exhaustion or from drowning and other causes. But I don’t want to sound like the day I spent in the 9th Ward effected me so much, like the woman mentioned below, who said to me she became an activist in August of 2005, the month Katrina pushed a surge of salt water up the Mississippi, depositing what seemed like
thousands of sea shells in this neighborhood. (see pictures)
These photos show: (writing one: the codes that the army corps of engineers or national guard put on the houses when they checked them -- they put the date, the district and how many people died there, if any. The red zero means no body died in this house.) (top and right photo: house foundations where the water took out the houses)
One woman I talked to, whose house Nancy Pelosi visited about a month ago, said she calls her neighbors in other states to help them mow their lawn, either by doing it herself or by hiring someone.
This is where this story gets a little interesting. Imagine a dozen or so young hippy-looking high energy idealists going around the ravaged neighborhood, using machetes to cut down weeds; now imagine broken down and smoke-emitting lawn movers utilized to save home owners from being fined the ludicrous amount the city could fine them for allowing their property to look unseemly, even though the place is deserted and property values are worth nil.
Without living in N.O.s there isn’t much I can do to help on a budget. But, I have volunteered to help copy edit Common Ground’s newsletter via email.
There wasn’t much I accomplished in a day for lack of contacts and adequate understanding of what was going on down there. Houses are being rebuilt though, thanks to Brad Pitt, who set up pink tents for each house to be rebuilt next door to Common Grounds. Remember that? Movie stars filling in where the federal government did not do much for the homeowners. The levies are being rebuilt, which is a whole nother story. I learned a lot from reading local newspapers, such as the hope of the reconstruction efforts, the contractors who are taking people’s money and running, and the hundreds of volunteers who care.
OK. That is enough about the politics. But aren’t most things political anyway?
The living quarters there reminded me of a certain staff cabin at Camp Don Bosco, which had a tilted toilet, nasty kitchen and staff coming in and out. In the lower 9th ward, I stayed in one of the houses for volunteers in a room that smelled like a combination of vinegar and puke. There was some kind of experiment in large wine jugs that looked orange and murky and had condoms as lids. One room was the smoking room, a guy slept on one couch and kittens roamed around.
Progressive literature filled the bookcases and one bathroom almost made me puke. At least the other was ok.
The other option to sleep would have been in the main house and office building, with a bunch of bunk beds, but the volunteers were coming in and out and were planning on staying up and drinking.
Pretty much after that and the bohemian India House, I treated myself to a night in the French quarter in a nice hotel with a pool and clean room. I almost cried and almost took pictures to remember the feeling. But they had the brochure to keep so I didn’t take any.
Just in case any one from Common Grounds ever reads this: you are doing great work there for the community and I had a short, but informative stay.
I visited the Museum of Southern Art and a historical museum about New Orleans history. At the Southern Art museum, they had local artists, mostly those who came from other places and decided to stay. Unfortunately they didn’t allow cameras.
But in the historical museum I took some. I hope that was allowed.
They discussed the slave trade and the subjugation of Native Americans as well. Other things were displayed, such as the history of music, the civil war, a Hurricane Katrina photo series, a video narrated by Morgan Freeman, and the major founding rich families.
A photo of an old bench where they displayed humans to be auctioned as slaves. And, a photo that I thought went well with this one, although they were on different sides of the museum.
Alligator Tour This was an exciting, beautiful and overpriced tourist trap. But, I had fun and got to touch an alligator, and that was pretty good considering I had never seen one in person. The tour guide was an interesting guy, who kept making beer references and got the alligators to stay around for the tourists by feeding the creatures marshmallows. Along the river and tributaries, I would say there were two adult alligators and some baby ones. Each time we stopped, the alligators got their allotment of sugar. I took one picture of a marshmallow on one’s head. Also, the tour guide told us that much of the wildlife in the swamp, such as turtles, alligators, armadillos were killed during Hurricane Katrina. The swamp we toured was what he referred to as “ground zero” of the hurricane. But, he said that slowly the animals are repopulating. Did you know that barely any of an alligators off spring live to adulthood? Birds and bullfrogs eat them as well as animals in the water. We heard one bullfrog – man those are loud.
The most interesting part for me, was when we went into a narrow channel into the swamp, where I took a lot of pictures of the Cypress, whose roots are bound in the water pretty tight. This is why barely any of them were affected by the hurricane. Also, we saw this blue house up in part of the swamp where there aren’t any channels to get to it. The house used to be on another part of the river, but during Katrina, it was lifted off its foundations and pushed across the river into the foliage/swamp area. A guy named Bob used to live there. Little tree stubs protruded near the trees, with a little foliage on them. These are called “knees”, which give oxygen to the tree roots, since the trees are submerged under water.
Walking around, stomping through rain puddles and weird police guy
I lucked out, according to the locals, who said that it was cooler than usual. If that was cooler, I am glad I wasn’t there for normal. Sometimes I walked a few miles between places to see things. Mostly the humidity was different – something I had never experienced on that level. The heat on a few days was just about the hottest I would have wanted it to be. It’s interesting to be in a place where August is its slow period for tourists and travelers. But it makes sense now.
The pictures above I took while walking around New Orleans: A palm leaf, mardi gras beads on a tree and a tree with many knots and one that looked like a face, with a leaf as the mouth
On one day, we got the outer part of a storm that was headed for Texas. I was attempting to take a train to a grocery story 5 blocks away. The trolleys weren’t coming very often, so I pretty much got soaked in the downpour. At which point a police officer driving by stopped and asked if I was ok. ‘Yes, just waiting for the bus.” “Are you sure?” He asked. “I’m from Seattle,” I replied, “Where this is normal. He then offered to give me a ride to the grocery story, which creeped me out, especially, since he was just driving up and down about a four-block area, blaring his siren and not really doing anything.
I’m not sure if he was concerned about my safety or not because certain areas are considered not safe to be in and the India House was outside the main downtown. I didn’t go out after dark, but I was pretty much really tired from doing everything during the day anyway. (I didn’t get to go out to jazz clubs at night but instead listened to bands that played in the market place along the Mississippi.)
After waiting 20 minutes and realizing everything on me was dripping wet, I headed for a convenience story two blocks away; well, I ran actually. I had my Tivas on, so I ran and splashed in the puddles that had quickly formed on the tilted and cracked sidewalks. It was fun. And there was Vietnamese deli there! They really wanted me to try their Vietnamese menu, which I figured they didn’t have much luck doing. There were many Southern choices. So, I had chicken vermicelli, which was good. I bought convenience store priced groceries and headed quickly back to my Hostel since it was getting late. By that time, the down pour had ended and it was 80 and humid again.
Atlanta, Freaky woman on airplane, and sugar caffeine exhaustion-induced huge airport navigation anxiety attack
The Atlanta airport is so large you have to take a subway train between terminals. Getting out of the airport was really difficult it gave me an anxiety attack. Granted I was exhausted and hyped up on sugar and caffeine. Luckily the airport and rail system personnel were very helpful, otherwise I might still be there crying over my bagel and cream cheese.
I flew back to Atlanta from New Orleans, which was a nice smooth flight. I sat next to a teacher, so our conversion was good – at first. Then she asked me if I went to church. I made the mistake of continuing the conversation. I will never make that mistake ever ever ever again – at least not while in flight.
Anyway, when I told her I didn’t, she asked me “have you ever considered what would happen if you didn’t make it off this flight.” She went from a nice pre-school teacher to a freaky Southern Baptist with the utterance of that fear-inducing question. Not about its underlying assumption that I actually believed in hell, but in the not making it off the flight thing. Sitting next to us was a guy who was flying for the first time.
This was probably what set off my anxiety that was further blown up trying to navigate the miles of the Atlanta airport.
Anyway, the only other time I have met a Southern Baptist (who told me they were one), was in Edmonds of all places, at my apartment there. The first thing she asked me when I opened my door was: “If you died today, do you think you would go to heaven or hell?” I just said “I think heaven and hell are states of mind with hell being the particularly difficult mind f**##@@,” which stopped them and made them look at me like I was an alien. I promptly shut the door.
Later, Wyatt (Jen’s husband) told me that that was one of their tactics – the shock one where they ask a freaky scary question then set in with the preaching hell fire and damnation stuff. I can see where if you already fear hell that you could pretty much be taken advantage of and freaking out even more than I did and I don’t even believe in hell. But of course I was mid-flight.
This is my limited exposure to Southern Baptists. I am sure there are many that are fine and I have met the few freaky ones.
Atlanta Hostel I stayed one night in Atlanta at the Atlanta Hostel, which was nice and quiet and cleaner. In a veranda with couches, I fell asleep waiting for check in. The weather felt great compared to the humidity of New Orleans. The veranda and the couch (at the far end) where I napped for several hours.
The highlight of this stay was watching the opening to the Beijing Olympics, which was gorgeous and beautifully choreographed. It was fitting that I was watching an international event with internationals from different parts of the world: China, Australia, England, Austria, Germany, France and I am sure more. The woman from China gave us more information about the culture and philosophical symbolism I the opening.
Watching the opening with other Hostelers
I am going to order a DVD it to show my students when they learn of the three ancient major Chinese philosophies and various dynasties.
The last leg of my journey was visiting my friend Jen and her husband Wyatt, who was transferred to FortBenning in January.
My stay with Jen was too short, but we did go out to breakfast at Ihops and walked around the historical downtown area with a lot of brick buildings. We also walked along the ChattahoocheeRiver. That’s its real name. If you don’t believe me you can look it up online, which I had to to get the spelling right and to find out where it got its name. According to one website, “The name Chattahoochee is derived from the Creek words chatto, meaning stone and hoche, translated as flowered or marked. It is believed to have been named for an Indian town located near present day Heard County, Georgia.”
Also, there’s this you-tube video called Chatta Hoochee, which appears to be some kind of dance.
I
Sums It Up
Luckily on the way back to Atlanta I got a different bus driver, much mellower but at times veering a bit. I had a much easier time getting into the airport than out, and I had time waiting for my flight to look through the 150 pictures I had taken on my cell phone. I am excited now to do more traveling in the summers. Next summer to Italy and Greece, but this time with travel buds. I have joined an online site called TravelBuddies where you can get a lot of tips and advice as well as meet people to travel with.
Of course, if anyone can go with me next summer, that would be awesome!!!
sy (the hostel was about 4 miles from downtown and the waterfront). A trolley system was right outside and took people to downtown and to other areas, such as the garden district with its mansions, and the warehouse/art district.
