Days 45-49: New
Orleans
At last we arrived at our final destination: New
Orleans. Lying between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, the
reputation of this sizeable city has of course, been tarnished by the dreadful
after-effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
However there is far more to New Orleans than Katrina. It has a fascinating cultural history, it is
the home of jazz, played a major role in the American Civil War and is the home
to Mardi Gras.
Our hotel was the Sheraton and, like all the hotels we
have had on both organised coach tours, it was right in the heart of the
city. This time we were on Canal St, the
road dividing the modern city and the
French Quarter. Our literally floor to ceiling window from the 30th
floor looked straight down to the street – quite unnerving!
With New Orleans being the home town of the
great ‘Sachmo’ Louis Armstrong, how appropriate it is for our hotel to have
this great sculpture of him.
What an interesting city New Orleans is. It is a true melting pot of peoples of many
nations and cultures, brought together by political buying and swapping over time.
The first people in the area were the Natchez Indians
before the French came and imposed their laws, customs and system of
government. The city was laid out by a nineteen-year-old military man,
Bienville. He had been sent from France,
together with his older brother but the brother died on the way. Bienville then took on the task alone,
setting out the city in French military style, with a parade ground at the
centre. This parade ground is now
Jackson Square named for General Andrew ‘Stonewall’ Jackson.
During the late 1700s, French immigrants heading to
Louisiana stopped on the way in Haiti to find slaves to bring with them. They were offered free coloured people to be
purchased under contract. Thus is was
that many of the teachers, doctors and tradesmen in New Orleans, although of
African descent, were free people. Many
of them had slaves of their own.
The city was then taken over by the Spanish, bringing
a Spanish population and customs. To
enforce Spanish law, an general of Irish descent, by the name of Alejandro
O’Riely was engaged and so Irish began to populate the city.
So it was that, with the inhabitants being of French,
Spanish or Irish descent, all were Catholic and all spoke French. No surprise then, that the fleur-de-lis is
seen prolifically throughout the city. Apparently it had gained new momentum
since Katrina as a symbol of rebirth.
In 1803, Spain gave the city back to France but then Napoleon
sold it as part of the Louisana Purchase.
Costing the USA $15 million, the funds for the purchase were borrowed
from the Bank of England – ironically for a transaction designed to keep the
British out!
New Orleans has red trams (called street cars)….
….and green street cars. Made in Melbourne – yes our Melbourne- these ones are on the National Historical Register.
City Park in New Orleans is, in area, larger than
Central Park in New York. It houses an excellent botanical garden and also a
sculpture garden. Following Hurricane
Katrina many of the trees were threatened because they had been exposed to a
mixture of fresh water and salt water.
Arborists from all over the world volunteered their time and skills to
make an inventory of which trees could be saved and which would need
replacing. In all, more than two
thousand trees needed to be replaced.
Cuisine in New Orleans is commonly ‘creole’ cuisine. This was explained to us as a combination of all the different cuisines from the contributing cultures. It is stew type of food, cooked in a large pot and typically served in small portions.
We spent time in the French market –opened since 1791. Reminiscent of Victoria Market, there is much
Chinese junk sold there. However, there is also, if you look for it, hand
crafted jewellery also. I delighted in
picking up one pair of earrings made from recycled paper and another pair from
recycled vinyl records.
Of course, we spent much time in the famed French
Quarter.
External staircases very common in the
French Quarter
1373
Jackson Square, in the centre of the French quarter,
was originally a parade ground. At its head stands beautiful St Louis Cathedral. Now
beautiful parkland, people gather around its perimeter to play music, sell
artwork, tell fortunes etc.
There is a huge fortune telling and voodoo presence in
New Orleans. Apparently this stems from its Caribbean heritage.
Jackson Square is named for General Andrew Jackson,
the hero of the Battle for New Orleans.
Along with other excellent museums, I spent a wonderful 2.5 hours in one in the former Courthouse.
Along with other excellent museums, I spent a wonderful 2.5 hours in one in the former Courthouse.
0571 Napoleon’s death mask is a reminder of the French heritage
The Battle for
New Orleans
It seems that well after they had lost America in the
War of Independence, Britain kept niggling at North America. In 1812 they were
at war again. The final battle that war
was the Battle for New Orleans, a month-long battle ending in January
1815. Once again we see a rag-tag
disorganised US army of 3,500 regular soldiers, frontiersmen, free people of
colour, volunteers and Indians soundly defeating a well regimented British
force, preventing the loss of all the land they had bought from France in the 1803
Louisiana Purchase. Major Andrew Jackson
was the hero of that war. The British had intelligence that the US forces were
ill-prepared to defend New Orleans but Jackson’s tactics were to outsmart
them. The US forces suffered only
seventy-one casualties in total (dead, wounded and missing) while the British
casualties were around two thousand.
Huge Eugene Lami 1839 painting of the 1814-15 Battle for New Orleans. Occupying an entire wall of the museum, the painting measures around 8m x3m.
The left half of Lami’s wonderful painting of the 1814-15 Battle for New Orleans. This half mostly depicts the British troops …
…while this is the depiction of the makeshift US troops.
The War of 1812, while unknown to those of us who have
not studied North American history, is, in some circles, considered second only
to the American War of Independence. It
has been immortalised on film and in song.
Here’s Johnny Horton’S 1959 song, well familiar to me
as a teenager
Movies such as Cecile B. de Mille’s 1939s ‘The Buccaneer’ and immortalises the relatively small contribution to the victory by pirate Jean Lafitte
Yes,we are in
the south so some public Trump support is inevitable
Along with jazz, what New Orleans is probably best
known for is Mardi Gras. There is an excellent museum dedicated solely to Mardi
Gras – its history, its development, the costumes the balls etc. Intending to
spend only a short time in the museum, I found that it just went on and on and
it easily consumed ninety minutes of my day.
It is common to see trees hung with coloured beads around the city. This is custom is obviously a nod to both the Mardi Gras, where strings of coloured beads are thrown from the floats, and the Spanish Moss that drapes the trees in southern parts of the US.
On a wide street feeding into the city centre are many wonderful Antebellum homes. I went for a street car ride on our last morning in order to photograph some of them.
Here we again see Resurrection Fern, that we had previously seen in Savannah, Georgia. This parasite lies along the branches of the oak trees, appearing as a dead mass of leaves and branches until a fall of rain causes it to spring into fresh green life.
It is not only the homeless bedding down for the night that
brings shock to the senses. It is the
number of people lying helpless in the hot sun in and on a pile of stinking
rags. It is the countless number of those with just a stump for a leg, sitting
at street corners asking for compassion.
Of course, the urge to help is strong and I could do little except buy
lunch parcels for a few and hope that others might do the same.
Is poverty worse, I wonder, since Hurricane Katrina, or has
New Orleans been a forgotten city, always with a high percentage of poverty and
homelessness? That, of course, is the
subject of more research than I currently have time to conduct.
Hurricane Katrina
The hurricane hit in the heat of August in 2005. But it was
not the power of the hurricane that caused the major devastation, but the
failure of the levee banks holding back the waters of the Mississippi (and I
guess Lake Pontchartrain). Our local
guide told us that 80% of the city was under 4 ft of water. All communication was lost and so families
could not check on each other’s welfare for days. She said that when people did meet up the
questions was not ‘did you get flooded?’ but ‘how high did the water come in
your house?’
Immediately after the storm, the population dropped from
482,000 to just 150,000. It has now gone
back to 305,000. There was a dilemma for
the education system – do you rebuild schools for a population that may never
come back? The result is now a series of
centralized schools and there is now a requirement to deliver a higher standard
of education.
She told us of the trap many who wanted to rebuild their
homes were caught in. The insurance
companies would not pay out until the underpinning of a house was repaired and
the house was level. Because this is
such a costly exercise, many could not afford to do it and so they could not
claim insurance and subsequently rebuild.
Apparently, many homes that have been restored have been
bought by younger people with the income to be able to do so. Many have been beautifully restored to be
historically correct.
Although our local guide was very informative about Hurricane
Katrina, she said very little about the evacuations to the Superdome and the
subsequent disaster that turned out to be.
It was not until I visited the museum that is dedicated to Hurricane
Katrina that the memories of horror came flooding back: the despair, the
looting, the abandonment by the rest of the world. I was reminded of some words
I penned at the time in response to my horror of the situation:
On New Orleans
We are immune now –
Another disaster, another country
News for a moment
Then forgotten
But no – this is different
What’s that I hear?
A whole city trying to flee
From the impending disaster
Not just any city –
Not a third world city
People of a different language,
A different lifestyle
This is New Orleans-
A city of our culture
Our language
Somehow that makes it different.
Katrina hits and we assume
That all is now well.
Many got away
And those who stayed
found shelter in the superdome.
How oblivious we are
To the fragility of the line
between
The third world and our world.
In Katrina’s wake
the line becomes muddied
Suddenly it’s us under siege-
people are starving, dehydrated, dying
‘God help us!’ we hear their desperate cry
Why have we been deserted?
Deserted they are-
left to rot in their gulf hell hole.
Aid is slow in coming
Food and water gone
temperatures rise – the ambient
and the emotional
Desperation surges
And with it the looting,
raping, terrorism in the streets
They cower, huddled together
against the enemy
that only last week
was dressed in decency
A first world city-
How easily it has slipped
into that third world indecency
that now seems so much closer.
Miriam Peck
September 2005
Resident Tommie Mabry was forced to evacuate his home in which he had shelterd during the storm and subsequent to it. He had diarized his experience on the walls of his house.
This was the sort of scene that reached our TV screens.
Humanity Street is one of a cluster of streets with similarly ironic names: Abundance, Pleasure, Treasure, Benefit.
This guy wrote his details on his jeans incase his lifeless or unconscious body should be found.
We went on a lunch cruise on the last true paddle steamer
still working on the Mississippi. The width the Mississippi is astounding. It makes the Murray River look like a creek!
The aspect of New Orleans that we were most looking forward
to was the jazz. We were told that we
must not miss Preservation Hall, a venue that has hosted live jazz every night
since 1961. At least three shows are
held each night and we were warned that we would need to line up to get
tickets.
Preservation Hall
These are the faces of two happy people at the head of the queue for the 9pm show.
The warning to line up was well given. For the 6pm show, we were way back with no chance to get in, so we took turns to stand in line for 2.5 hours.
These are the faces of two happy people at the head of the queue for the 9pm show.
This is it – the very grungy interior of Preservation Hall
But the jazz didn’t
disappoint. This photo is from the internet because photography is absolutely
forbidden once the show gets underway.
In pursuit of more great music, the next night we went to see
dueling pianos. It was a great
experience.
The huge wall mirrors behind the pianos gave
us a great view of the keyboards.
(This is another internet photo because although I took extensive video, neither of us thought to take a photo of them.)
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