Rediscovering My Neighborhood – Algiers Point, New Orleans – and Transforming Myself
We are now in our 4th month of a stay at home, or what’s been now re-dubbed here in New Orleans, a “safer at home” mandate. In the first month or so of the order, I viewed it as an adventure, of sorts, even as a personal moment of transformation that we were all going through together. I appreciated the quiet. I noticed the cardinals landing in my backyard, as they traveled along their springtime migratory path, even capturing a rare picture of one (they are notoriously skittish). I cooked something interesting for myself every day (more about that in the next few posts). I watched a lot of great shows on Netflix. And I walked in the evenings, using the time to rediscover my lovely neighborhood – Algiers Point – noticing that we were, ironically, in the midst of a particularly beautiful spring, in what would have been the height of New Orleans’ festival season. I am lucky – it’s a neighborhood full of 100 year old+ homes and lush beautiful gardens. I shoot pics of colorful plants, which my Facebook community has schooled me in when it came to their names. We have a couple of lovely small parks tucked amidst the tree lined streets. In those cooler days of spring, people sat out on their front porches – more than I seen since I was a child – sharing a drink, waving at passersby. Sometimes musicians in the neighborhood would grace us with a porch concert as we stood in front of our houses. Park at the Center of Algiers Point Calladiums Hibiscus Variegated Ginger Trumpet Plant There’s a lovely view of the French Quarter, and its heart, St. Louis Cathedral from a walking/bike path atop the levee, just two blocks from the house. St. Louis Cathedral And near the entrance to the ferry terminal, there’s a rare statue, in this city, that no one wants to tear down. Nearby, there’s also, sadly, a reminder of the area’s darker, shameful past – a plaque marking the spot where captured Africans were off loaded from ships and held, waiting to be ferried across the river and sold into slavery. Satchmo’ Louis Armstrong That reminder, in a circle of history, brings us back to this moment – a transformational moment, a shifting paradigm, if you will, for our country. I marvel that, in my 60’s now, I am witnessing now another time of societal upheaval. I find myself saying to friends that our generation’s lives are bookended by this time, as I reminisce about the era of the late 1960’s, comparing the unfinished work of that time to the work taken up by a younger generation today. I find myself chafing a bit, anxious to get back to my life. I use the time to transform myself, as best I can. And I wonder how I can best care for myself, and my...
read moreVisiting Montgomery, Alabama
This is the sign that greeted me, painted on the side of the building as I drove up to the Legacy Museum. On a long winter’s weekend – before this period of “self-isolation” we all currently find ourselves in, before Ahmaud Arbery, Breanna Taylor and then George Floyd, before this momentous period of civil unrest, and after a couple of days in Pensacola, Florida, I headed north to Montgomery, Alabama – the first home of the Confederacy. It was mixed kind of weekend getaway. Pensacola is mostly a beach town – although, as it was the first settlement by Europeans in the U.S., one visits the town center for the early American history. While Montgomery is mostly – maybe only – a town one visits if interested in civil rights history. It wasn’t like the issue of our civil rights history didn’t come up in Pensacola, either, though. The Florida Panhandle is still the Deep South. I signed up for a local historical tour of the old town area while there. In chatting with the tour guide, my interest in history became clear to him – he liked that, but (don’t ask me how it happened) it wasn’t long before the issue of Confederate monuments and the Civil War came up. He told me that the Civil War was fought over taxes. I said, everything in this country – taxes, the electoral college, gun rights and the 2nd Amendment – they all have their roots in slavery. Thankfully, the only others on the tour were a couple from Canada. They knew where I was coming from, and I felt silent sympathy and support from them. I don’t think I could have stood a Southern couple traveling along. And thankfully the tour guide was amiable, and ended by saying “well, at least you love history, and I can see that you’re passionate about this”. So it was from there, that I headed to Alabama, into the belly of the beast, “the coffin” as Ta-Nehisi Coates calls it in his newly released novel, The Water Dancer: A Novel, which I had recently read. There was a line stretching down the block to enter the museum when I drove by. And after wandering a while around downtown Montgomery looking for a parking space, I finally made it there by mid-afternoon. The area is a somewhat jarring mix of civil rights monuments (the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Monument designed by Maya Lin, the Rosa Parks Museum) right alongside Alabama state office buildings and ever present reminders of its Confederacy past. Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Monument I decided after being told tickets to the museum had to be purchased at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, commonly referred to as the lynching memorial (The Legacy Museum and the Memorial are two parts of the museum at separate locations a few blocks from each other), and that there was good chance I wouldn’t get into the museum that afternoon, I decided to go to my hotel and try again early Sunday morning. It was a drizzly morning, as I drove through Montgomery, trying my best to follow the GPS, when there – I saw them in the distance, peeking through the houses of the nondescript...
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