We're drawing to the end of our time here in New Orleans - I'm flying out Friday morning - and we're having to think about how to share our experiences. (We're currently in stage three of study away experiences: Planning, Actually Being There and Never Sleeping, Debriefing, and then Continuing To Blab About It For The Next Year.)
So, sharing:
- Pictures will be getting posted, here and perhaps on Flickr; more info on that when I decide.
- More videos (and then embarassed explanations thereof) will be getting posted, just as soon as I steal the camera back from Sarah B.
- This blog! which, er, if you're reading *this* post, presumably you're reading anyway. Sound off in the comments: have you learned anything from reading? Do you have questions?
- A reflexive (probably) essay - which I'll post here, too, once I write the darn thing.
- If I see you in person on a regular basis, man, you're going to get your ear talked off.
Read More......
Monday, May 25, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Longue Vue Gardens
This was - huh. I'll have to come back and add some reaction-y bits, but seeing as the peanut gallery is rioting about the lack of pictures, I thought I'd throw this up. In any case, the garden was beautiful, we've met the head gardener and and eaten at her house, and the photography project (see news snippet under the cut) made me cry. So here, have some video of us wandering around the green:
Pontchartrain Park Photography Project Opening
Thursday, May 21
5 – 7 p.m.
Cost: Free
Longue Vue, the students of Coghill Elementary School, and the residents of Pontchartrain Park welcome you to the opening of the Pontchartrain Park Photography Project, which will be on display through summer 2009. Funded by a History Channel Save Our History Grant, this project is executed by Longue Vue and its project partners, The New Orleans Kid Camera Project, Tulane University, and Delgado Community College. Project partner members worked with seventh and eighth graders at Coghill Elementary School to document the history of the school’s neighborhood Pontchartrain Park. The students oral history collections and photographs are featured at the exhibit, as well as a documentary on Pontchartrain Park. Longue Vue is one of eleven history organizations nationwide to receive a Save Our History Grant. This grant funds innovative preservation projects designed to bring communities together, actively engage children in the preservation of their local history, and communicate the importance of saving local history for future generations.
Contact Jen Gick at 504.488.5488, ext. 320 or jgick@longuevue.com for more information.
(taken from here.)
Read More......
Pontchartrain Park Photography Project Opening
Thursday, May 21
5 – 7 p.m.
Cost: Free
Longue Vue, the students of Coghill Elementary School, and the residents of Pontchartrain Park welcome you to the opening of the Pontchartrain Park Photography Project, which will be on display through summer 2009. Funded by a History Channel Save Our History Grant, this project is executed by Longue Vue and its project partners, The New Orleans Kid Camera Project, Tulane University, and Delgado Community College. Project partner members worked with seventh and eighth graders at Coghill Elementary School to document the history of the school’s neighborhood Pontchartrain Park. The students oral history collections and photographs are featured at the exhibit, as well as a documentary on Pontchartrain Park. Longue Vue is one of eleven history organizations nationwide to receive a Save Our History Grant. This grant funds innovative preservation projects designed to bring communities together, actively engage children in the preservation of their local history, and communicate the importance of saving local history for future generations.
Contact Jen Gick at 504.488.5488, ext. 320 or jgick@longuevue.com for more information.
(taken from here.)
Read More......
Sunday, May 17, 2009
So a professor, a post-graduate, and and undergrad walk into a martini bar...
Surprisingly, that isn't the start of a raunchy joke. Well. It could be, but I'm too lazy to make one up, and 'raunchy' would be kind of awkward, anyway. That said, since I last wrote, I have:
- drunk my first martini (the Bombay Club in the French Quarter; pomegranate, yum. tasted weirdly like drinking jello)
- tried bourbon (in a mint julep; have yet to drink it straight)
- tried a hurricane at Pat O'Briens on Bourbon Street (ew, cherry cough syrup, but it Had To Be Done, although Pat O's was choc-full of Tulane graduates, which made standing upright difficult. Their website says "Step off the well worn path of Bourbon Street into our tranquil paradise!"; I say "HAH.")
- walked down Bourbon St on a Saturday night, which, wow. (Wow.)
- learned about Jean Lafitte and his, er, alliance with Andrew Jackson. Sometimes.
- hiked through a swamp (Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve in Marrero, just outside the city proper)
- taken a car-tour of several of the worst-hit parishes, including Lakeview and Lake Pontchartrain, and a few streets of the Ninth Ward. There are no trees left.
- spent two days carving new rows for a community garden just past I-10 (see the class blog, http://furmannola.blogspot.com/, for more details), and getting a lovely archeological cross-section of the average New Orleans housing lot at the same time. (Clay. More clay. Packed oyster shells. Bricks. Parts of bathtub.)
- been on an Abita pub crawl
- tried raw oysters in the shell
- ate brunch at Arnaud's (dear assorted deities: the original creator of Bananas Foster can be nominated for sainthood, please)
- made friends with a bass fiddle player who's been in the business for sixty-four years ("They dropped the bombs on Tuesday and Friday, and on Saturday, I got my first paying gig - I was thirteen years and eight months old, and I played for four hours and made $4.28. That's when I knew my bass fiddle and me were in this for the long haul.")
- escaped my group and ridden the trolley on my own (okay, okay, I had permission. still: silence. it's beautiful.)
- taken refuge in a Borders! woo! Which is where I'm typing from.
It's a beautiful day - thundering, pouring down rain, and quiet.
Tomorrow we're volunteering at St. Margaret's nursing home.
And I actually typed an additional paragraph here, but it was depressing me, so let's just say this is far outside my comfort zone and leave it at that. I know that the most important thing is to be present, to smile and to listen and to pay attention, and to make the residents feel like someone cares - and that is something that I can do.
That said, family, expect a phone call tomorrow night. I love you!
Read More......
- drunk my first martini (the Bombay Club in the French Quarter; pomegranate, yum. tasted weirdly like drinking jello)
- tried bourbon (in a mint julep; have yet to drink it straight)
- tried a hurricane at Pat O'Briens on Bourbon Street (ew, cherry cough syrup, but it Had To Be Done, although Pat O's was choc-full of Tulane graduates, which made standing upright difficult. Their website says "Step off the well worn path of Bourbon Street into our tranquil paradise!"; I say "HAH.")
- walked down Bourbon St on a Saturday night, which, wow. (Wow.)
- learned about Jean Lafitte and his, er, alliance with Andrew Jackson. Sometimes.
- hiked through a swamp (Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve in Marrero, just outside the city proper)
- taken a car-tour of several of the worst-hit parishes, including Lakeview and Lake Pontchartrain, and a few streets of the Ninth Ward. There are no trees left.
- spent two days carving new rows for a community garden just past I-10 (see the class blog, http://furmannola.blogspot.com/, for more details), and getting a lovely archeological cross-section of the average New Orleans housing lot at the same time. (Clay. More clay. Packed oyster shells. Bricks. Parts of bathtub.)
- been on an Abita pub crawl
- tried raw oysters in the shell
- ate brunch at Arnaud's (dear assorted deities: the original creator of Bananas Foster can be nominated for sainthood, please)
- made friends with a bass fiddle player who's been in the business for sixty-four years ("They dropped the bombs on Tuesday and Friday, and on Saturday, I got my first paying gig - I was thirteen years and eight months old, and I played for four hours and made $4.28. That's when I knew my bass fiddle and me were in this for the long haul.")
- escaped my group and ridden the trolley on my own (okay, okay, I had permission. still: silence. it's beautiful.)
- taken refuge in a Borders! woo! Which is where I'm typing from.
It's a beautiful day - thundering, pouring down rain, and quiet.
Tomorrow we're volunteering at St. Margaret's nursing home.
And I actually typed an additional paragraph here, but it was depressing me, so let's just say this is far outside my comfort zone and leave it at that. I know that the most important thing is to be present, to smile and to listen and to pay attention, and to make the residents feel like someone cares - and that is something that I can do.
That said, family, expect a phone call tomorrow night. I love you!
Read More......
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Woo, Second Day and I'm Still Sunburn-Free!
Also, my feet don't hurt!
We're camped out in the Community Coffee House on the ground floor of the Pan Am building. Mmm, chicory coffee. Just what I needed - a new caffeine obsession, whee!
Today was a lot of fun - we worked with an AmeriCorp volunteer at the City Park.
(Which also means driving through the mid-city sector - which looks precisely like that generic functional bit of every city I've ever been in. Car dealerships, fast food joints, churches, Wal-Mart, etc. The Home Depot, though - man, I've never seen so many day-laborers like that. Not East of Albuquerque, at least. It's a heads-up to how much of the city is still unemployed - and possibly how much of a call there is for semi-professional construction work. Either way, wow.)
The point of the day was wetlands restoration of the Big Lake (a man-made estuary). We planted bulrushes and cord grass, which grow in deeper water, and pas palum, which grows along the shore. I'll have to come back in a few years and see how it does! There were, as usual, shenanigans. And most people fell in the lagoon. Rubber overalls that come up to your armpits are hard to move in! Especially in six inches of water over two feet of squishy, clay-rich mud; it was unexpectedly much more fun than I ever could have predicted.
Around 5:30 or so, we wandered over to Lafayette Park - there's a Wednesday in the Square sort of festival, presumably every week, and it was pretty awesome. There was a live rock band, whose name I have yet to look up, with a female vocalist/violinist - they played Journey, and Jefferson Airplane, and Charlie Daniels' "Devil Went Down to Georgia," which was incredible.
They also had slushie/daquiri things, and ginger-marinated soy-basted shrimp, which were much more exciting.
Well, that ended up being more straight-forward than most of my posts. Huh. *waves*
Read More......
We're camped out in the Community Coffee House on the ground floor of the Pan Am building. Mmm, chicory coffee. Just what I needed - a new caffeine obsession, whee!
Today was a lot of fun - we worked with an AmeriCorp volunteer at the City Park.
(Which also means driving through the mid-city sector - which looks precisely like that generic functional bit of every city I've ever been in. Car dealerships, fast food joints, churches, Wal-Mart, etc. The Home Depot, though - man, I've never seen so many day-laborers like that. Not East of Albuquerque, at least. It's a heads-up to how much of the city is still unemployed - and possibly how much of a call there is for semi-professional construction work. Either way, wow.)
The point of the day was wetlands restoration of the Big Lake (a man-made estuary). We planted bulrushes and cord grass, which grow in deeper water, and pas palum, which grows along the shore. I'll have to come back in a few years and see how it does! There were, as usual, shenanigans. And most people fell in the lagoon. Rubber overalls that come up to your armpits are hard to move in! Especially in six inches of water over two feet of squishy, clay-rich mud; it was unexpectedly much more fun than I ever could have predicted.
Around 5:30 or so, we wandered over to Lafayette Park - there's a Wednesday in the Square sort of festival, presumably every week, and it was pretty awesome. There was a live rock band, whose name I have yet to look up, with a female vocalist/violinist - they played Journey, and Jefferson Airplane, and Charlie Daniels' "Devil Went Down to Georgia," which was incredible.
They also had slushie/daquiri things, and ginger-marinated soy-basted shrimp, which were much more exciting.
Well, that ended up being more straight-forward than most of my posts. Huh. *waves*
Read More......
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Aand... we're here! In New Orleans, I mean.
Or, well, more specifically, in the lobby of the Pan Am building stealing wireless. Anyway.
Rambling under the cut!
One ten-hour van ride later, we've left South Carolina and arrived in the deep(er?) south. Strangely, most people here have accents that would otherwise place them in, say, Jersey. Or Ohio. And, just for posterity's sake, you have to specify Sweet Tea within the French Quarter - dunno yet outside of there, but I will report back!
Being back in New Orleans is strange. I've been here twice, I believe - the first time was as a three-year-old tagging along to a chemistry conference; I ran afoul of some fire ants, and spent most of the trip scratching in agony and then throwing up cheerios everywhere. Mom does not have very fond memories of that trip. Happily, I have very few memories, period. I remember buying a small harlequin doll in one of the shops - porcelain face, white-and-silver jester suit, priced half-off because one thumb was broken - and having a complete stranger hand me a mask on the street, possibly because I was cute? Or because it was a full week after Mardi Gras and he was tired of carrying it? I'm not sure.
The mask has hung on my bedroom wall ever since, the purple, green, and yellow feathers cheerfully clashing with everything else. The second time I visited New Orleans, I was about fourteen and one a family roadtrip. I was right at that age where you try to walk five yards ahead of or behind the family, because they're all just so embarrassing, god, and most of what I recall is food-based. Beignets at Cafe du Monde - which I didn't actually like that much, I hate doughnuts, but their hot chocolate was awesome. Jambalaya somewhere - I honestly can't recall - that jump-started my fascination with creole cooking. My poor family and assorted roommates are still living with the consequences. ("You put garlic and onions in what? Why does the macaroni taste like cajun seasoning?" Oh, Tony Chachere, you are so co-culpable here.)
I remember the architecture much better from this second trip. Mom has some graduate studies in history and architecture, and even hanging far back and pretending she didn't exist, I was able to pick up a great deal about Queen Anne roofs and wrought-iron balconies. I remember the colors - salmon and brick red, sunflower orange and cheerful avocado greens - and the sleek roofs, with gables and cool twisty bits. It makes driving into the city now feel very strange - patches and tarps and mismatched tiles abound, even if the balconies are still trailing greenery and most of the paint has been touched up.
Thus far - I've been in the city less than 24 hours - we've seen only a small segment of the business sector and perhaps half of the French Quarter. (Expect pictures, uh, sometime.) Repair efforts have been fast and thorough, and this is the highest-altitude part of the city. I don't know what the rest of the city is going to look like. I know what the houses and apartments lining I-10 on the way into the city look like, yes - normal, with Lease Now! banners and cookie-cutter suburbs, until, wham, there's a house with no roof, or an apartment complex that hasn't repainted, and this is no longer Anywhere, USA but a city that is still recovering from a massive disaster less than four years ago.
Today was touristy - hence the French Quarter tours, and man, my knees are not happy - but tomorrow we start the service section of the course. I'm... waiting, I guess? Not worriedly, or anxiously, or anything, I just... we'll have to see.
Read More......
Rambling under the cut!
One ten-hour van ride later, we've left South Carolina and arrived in the deep(er?) south. Strangely, most people here have accents that would otherwise place them in, say, Jersey. Or Ohio. And, just for posterity's sake, you have to specify Sweet Tea within the French Quarter - dunno yet outside of there, but I will report back!
Being back in New Orleans is strange. I've been here twice, I believe - the first time was as a three-year-old tagging along to a chemistry conference; I ran afoul of some fire ants, and spent most of the trip scratching in agony and then throwing up cheerios everywhere. Mom does not have very fond memories of that trip. Happily, I have very few memories, period. I remember buying a small harlequin doll in one of the shops - porcelain face, white-and-silver jester suit, priced half-off because one thumb was broken - and having a complete stranger hand me a mask on the street, possibly because I was cute? Or because it was a full week after Mardi Gras and he was tired of carrying it? I'm not sure.
The mask has hung on my bedroom wall ever since, the purple, green, and yellow feathers cheerfully clashing with everything else. The second time I visited New Orleans, I was about fourteen and one a family roadtrip. I was right at that age where you try to walk five yards ahead of or behind the family, because they're all just so embarrassing, god, and most of what I recall is food-based. Beignets at Cafe du Monde - which I didn't actually like that much, I hate doughnuts, but their hot chocolate was awesome. Jambalaya somewhere - I honestly can't recall - that jump-started my fascination with creole cooking. My poor family and assorted roommates are still living with the consequences. ("You put garlic and onions in what? Why does the macaroni taste like cajun seasoning?" Oh, Tony Chachere, you are so co-culpable here.)
I remember the architecture much better from this second trip. Mom has some graduate studies in history and architecture, and even hanging far back and pretending she didn't exist, I was able to pick up a great deal about Queen Anne roofs and wrought-iron balconies. I remember the colors - salmon and brick red, sunflower orange and cheerful avocado greens - and the sleek roofs, with gables and cool twisty bits. It makes driving into the city now feel very strange - patches and tarps and mismatched tiles abound, even if the balconies are still trailing greenery and most of the paint has been touched up.
Thus far - I've been in the city less than 24 hours - we've seen only a small segment of the business sector and perhaps half of the French Quarter. (Expect pictures, uh, sometime.) Repair efforts have been fast and thorough, and this is the highest-altitude part of the city. I don't know what the rest of the city is going to look like. I know what the houses and apartments lining I-10 on the way into the city look like, yes - normal, with Lease Now! banners and cookie-cutter suburbs, until, wham, there's a house with no roof, or an apartment complex that hasn't repainted, and this is no longer Anywhere, USA but a city that is still recovering from a massive disaster less than four years ago.
Today was touristy - hence the French Quarter tours, and man, my knees are not happy - but tomorrow we start the service section of the course. I'm... waiting, I guess? Not worriedly, or anxiously, or anything, I just... we'll have to see.
Read More......
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Ada Lovelace comics!
Ongoing and awesomeness! (Seriously, if I were to list off my current semi-academic obsessions, the list goes something like 1. tea, 2. gender politics and bias in science, 3. comics omg, 4. really weird anthropology, and 5., TEA.)
So this is exceptionally cool. Here is the first part - the origin story - and here is the second, which begins the adventures of Lovelace and Babbage! Whee!
Mm, Ada Lovelace. Read More......
So this is exceptionally cool. Here is the first part - the origin story - and here is the second, which begins the adventures of Lovelace and Babbage! Whee!
Mm, Ada Lovelace. Read More......
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