New Orleans Mardi Gras: Oshun

New Orleans Mardi Gras: Oshun

New Orleans Mardi Gras: Oshun's The Color Purple

New Orleans Mardi Gras: Oshun

New Orleans: Cafe du Monde

Cafe du Monde, the unforgettable experience of delicious coffee and three sugary beignets while seated outdoors watching the world of New Orleans stroll by. Morning, noon or night....

Who Dat?

This is a roofing slate painted by a high school student from New York state who is volunteering in St. Bernard Parish east of New Orleans this week with Operation Southern Comfort. This and dozens of other beautifully painted slates will be sold to raise funds for OSC at the 4th Annual Crawfish Festival at the New York State Fairgrounds on Saturday, May 7, 2011. Please come and enjoy yourself!

The slates were original roofing material from a creole farmhouse in St. Bernard Parish. The roof didn't survive Katrina but the individual slates have.

Who Dat?...

Lately the Saints and their fans came to love it, sing and cheer it, and adopt it. Eventually the Saints copyrighed the rights to it for T-shirt purposes. They were recently more or less forced to give up that position, though the story isn't over yet. Who Dat? seems to be returning to the public domain. There is justice in the world.

And the history of Who Dat?...

Who Dat? was originally written in a poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, for whom our Dunbar Center in Syracuse is named, in the 19th century. There are a million stories about  minstrel show and jazz iterations of Who Dat?  Along the way it made its way into a Marx Brothers routine. And of course it is found widely in music today.

This version is from 1937:

Who dat up there who’s dat down there
Who dat up there who dat well down there
Who’s dat up there, sayin’ who’s dat down there
When I see you up there well who’s dat down there Who dat inside who’s dat outside
Who’s dat inside who dat well outside
Who’s dat inside, singin’ who’s dat outside
When I see up there well who’s dat out there Button up your lip there big boy
Stop answerin’ back
Give you a tip there big boy
Announce yourself jack Who dat up there who’s dat down there
Who dat up there who dat, well down there
Who’s dat up there, singin’ who’s dat down there
When I see you up there you bum
Well who’s dat down there Who dat

Bob Crowe and St. Louis Daily Photo featured Who Dat? on May 14, 2010. Hi Bob!

Mississippi River Levee East of Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish

New Orleans from I 510 on the Way to Chalmette

Six Flags New Orleans: Abandoned

Six Flags is prominent by the roadside coming into New Orleans on I 10 from the east. It has been abandoned since Katrina, forever held up in courts by high stakes insurance and ownership questions. Even the most recent plans have crashed. 

You can find lots about it via Google on Wikipedia and elsewhere. The following site shows truly sad, even macabre shots of damaged, fallen ornamentation. It is a cartoon of what happened to so many of the people in NOLA. 

http://weburbanist.com/2010/03/17/uber-creepy-tour-abandoned-six-flags-new-orleans-69-pics/

Boat Building in St. Bernard Parish

Los Islenos of St. Bernard Parish

People immigrated to the Mississippi Delta before 1800 from the Canary Islands and found a new home rich on land and in the sea. They came here from other parts of the Spanish peninsula as well, and the rest of southern Europe too. Descendants of los Islenos, the Canary Islanders, still live here today and have formed an important cultural center at el Museo de los Islenos in western St. Bernard Parish.

Hurricane Katrina destroyed every building in the complex. Some were original to the Islenos and had been moved to this site from the surrounding countryside.

Rebuilding was imperative. Operation Southern Comfort has had a hand in some of the projects. Pictured are some of the buildings showing typical early architecture and ways of life.

A thorough history of los Islenos is at the following interesting site:  http://www.losislenos.org/history.html

St. Bernard Parish LA Houses

Every building in St. Bernard Parish LA, just south and east of New Orleans, was inundated during Hurricane Katrina. No building was spared. These homes, all within 3 blocks of the Mississippi River, are behind the levee and on slightly higher ground than those farther from the river, and all of these sat in water 8-10 feet deep (which came from the opposite direction, not from the river) for a period of up to two weeks. 

Almost all of the homes in this particular area in Old Arabi have been rehabbed. The crew with which I worked gutted a house here during our week in St. Bernard with Operation Southern Comfort. It was among the last to be saved before the Parish would have condemned it and taken it down.

Gutting a house means removing the interior down to wood walls, and beyond if there are termites (of which there always are some), pulling nails, taking up tile and linoleum, and hauling everything outside and into the biggest dumpster available. Next steps include steam cleaning for mold and fumigation against termites.  Then the rebuilding can begin.

Most of the houses are shotguns, meaning that, in the most literal sense, one could look through the front door and out the back door with 4-5 rooms between.

There are also double shotguns for two families. These were traditionally built for multiple generations of the same family, a couple and the parents of one of them, and later a child of the couple with his or her own family.

Shot-guns may have a camelback attached to the rear of the house...a single room addition, or two stories and several rooms.

The appearance of the front of the home, facing the street, remains the same. The effect is lovely. No two homes are quite alike; paint combinations are personal choice and pleasing; trim is unique. 

Did We Go To a Hornets Game on Our Evening Off? Yes, We Did!

My first (and perhaps only) NBA game! What a riot of sights and sounds. We were high up in the Arena, so the overall effects of visuals, light, color, digital displays, 4 Jumbotrons, and a wildly happy crowd were intense. And, and! The Hornets won by one point in overtime. Confetti, streamers, fireworks!

During breaks we danced with random crowd members featured on the Jumbotron and excellent music on extremely effective speakers.