New Orleans Stuff: May 2008 Archives

While reading the e-newsletter of the Seelos Center, I came across their announcement that they're selling a poster by Riece Walton of St. Mary's Assumption Church, location of the Seelos Shrine. For those unfamiliar with the church, St. Mary's is one of three churches that serviced the parish of St. Alphonsus, in the Irish Channel. The Irish built St. Alphonsus church on the lake side of Constance St., between Josephine and St. Andrew Streets. The Germans in the neighborhood, not wanting to share the same church as the Irish, built St. Mary's Assumption on the river side of Constance, right across the street. The old-line Creole families, along with weatlthy Irish who lived in the Garden District didn't want to go slumming at either church, so they worshipped at a small church on Jackson Avenue. The Redemptorist priests staffed all three churches.

The graphic above is a black-and-white shot of the poster. The posters for sale are full-color prints available in 20x24, 12x16, and 11x14 sizes, for $40, $30, $20, respectively.

This is a gorgeous depiction of the church. Anne Rice fans might remember St. Mary's from Rice's "Lives of the Mayfair Witches" novels. While I never taught at Redeemer in Gentilly rather than Redemptorist uptown (I graduated uni in May of 1980, and the uptown school closed and moved that fall), I've always felt a strong spiritual connection to the neighborhood and the two churches.

You can order one of the prints here.

Houston-based wine blogger and fellow twitterer, John Martin (@off_focus), is in town this week. I can't think of a better reason for a New Orleans tweetup, perhaps Wednesday?

Let's talk about where and when, either comments here or on Twitter.

Anyone, Bueller, anyone?

Coping of Andrew Jackson Higgins, founder of Higgins Industries and inventor of the Higgins Boat, in Metairie Cemetery.

"Andrew Higgins ... is the man who won the war for us. ... If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs, we never could have landed over an open beach. The whole strategy of the war would have been different." --Dwight D. Eisenhower, General of the Army, President of the United States of America.

Almost more importantly to me personally, Professor Ambrose agreed 100% with Ike. Amphibious landings were a key component to the Allied strategy in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters, and Andrew Higgins was the man who made that happen with his design of an easy to build landing craft:
  The development of the Higgins Boat came from Higgins' experience building tugboats for use on the Mississippi River and crew boats that serviced the oil industry in South Louisiana. Built of plywood, the boats were easily constructed, and used most notably in the Normandy landings on D-Day.

A fully-restored Higgins Boat is on display at the National World War II Museum.

Mr. Higgins' coping is simple and understated by New Orleans standards. Perhaps this is a reflection of his Nebraska upbringing that he preferred an in-ground burial. The coping's headstone is very modest:
 

As we honor our active-duty troops and veterans this Memorial Day, let's not forget the hard-working men and women who dedicated their lives to making the tools of victory.

Perley A. Thomas streetcar 962, running on the Riverfront segment of the Canal line.

A bit of an update as to what's going on with CanalStreetCar (dot com) and the New Orleans Street Railway Association.

First of all, welcome to everyone who has made their way here because they saw Angus Lind's piece in Da Paper! Thanks for stopping by, please join the CanalStreetCar (dot com) mailing list, which is returning to production this week.

It's been a wild beginning of 2008 for me personally. I've been traveling again, teaching computer classes for Hitachi Data Systems. (Take a look here for a description of the sort of stuff I teach.) Being out of town during the week for the classes has slowed down progress on developing the nonprofit, and the project is further behind than I'd like it to be. Still, I'm committed to getting it moving and we'll press forward.

If you've arrived at CanalStreetCar (dot com) by going to nosra.org, you'll see that the regular NOSRA server is currently down. It suffered a hard disk failure and needs to be rebuilt. I plan on doing that in a week and a half when I'm home long enough to do that properly. Some links to photos in the NOSRA wiki won't work properly until that's repaired.

In the meantime, both sites will point to CanalStreetCar (dot com). I'll have more thoughts on where both CanalStreetCar and NOSRA are going on this site in the next few days.

NOLA-disu's post on the behavior of the criminal organization known as Tulane's chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha brought me back to memories of being in a fraternity at University of New Orleans.

I'm a member of Lambda Chi Alpha, initiated in December of 1976 at UNO. We were (and still are) the only fraternity to own a house. Since it was off-campus, we didn't have any sort of obligations to the university or monitoring from them. It was up to us to maintain standards of proper behavior at social functions and in daily life around the house. Sometimes we succeeded, sometimes we failed. Still, we never crossed the line to criminal. Of course, most of us were local boys, not out of town kids with no ties/roots in the city.

The pikes are one of the reasons we rarely went to uptown bars back in the day. We'd go to Bruno's on Thursday nights because one of our fraternity brothers had a gig spinning oldies there, but that was about it. I never set foot in "The Boot" until I was something like 26 years old, mainly because it would be like going into a pub near White Hart Lane in London with an Arsenal shirt on. What scares me is that the current crop of pikes aren't just guilty of "high spirits" as they call it in English public schools, they appear to be pathologically violent:

One of the alleged assailants in the hazing incident, Kevin Dunn, has a previous battery conviction. Dunn and another man were booked on charges of second-degree battery and negligent injuring in March 2006 after kicking and punching another student after they got into an argument, according to court records.

In terms of the current hazing incidents, we see a clear example of why stupid white boys from the Middle Colonies shouldn't be allowed near Creole cuisine:

The fraternity, commonly called PIKE, now faces allegations that members poured boiling water on the bodies of pledges and caked them with flour, crab boil, vinegar, cayenne peppers and wasabi sauce. The victims were treated at a local hospital with second- and third-degree burns, according to New Orleans police.

Crab boil? These boys are idiots. That stuff is so concentrated that it stings when it comes into contact with the skin. And it got in the eyes and on the genitals of those pledges? Incredible.

Still, I'm guilty of the one thing that the rest of the fraternities and sororities bemoan when incidents like this happen, focusing on the negative. I like this quote from a guy in ZBT:

Gibson, sitting on his fraternity house's stoop Wednesday afternoon, likened fraternity life to an airport. "Planes land and take off all the time, but only the crashes get magnified," he said.

So true. I enjoyed my fraternity experience and am proud to be a Lambda Chi. My first born (a sophomore at the Georgia Institute of Technology) isn't a fraternity kid, but that's OK. The oldest kiddo of one of my best friends is a Theta Xi at UL and is loving it. We have to chalk up the pikes in the "shit happens" category. Hopefully Tulane will flush this shit down the toilet and pipe it back to New Jersey.

From the N to the O to the L to the A, Renard Poche's CD, "4U 4ME" is simply incredible. I was humming "Same Old Thing" by the Meters the other day when LisaPal told everyone on Twitter to check out the website and give the tunes a listen.

Old-school funk is where I well and truly reveal that I'm a musical mutant. i went to Brother Martin in the early-mid 1970s. One of my debate team partners introduced me to War, in between us listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. The Meters actually played a BMHS homecoming dance, a big gig for them (over 1,000 people). Hanging around the basketball team (I was a sports statistician) turned me on to the Brothers Johnson, Parliament, and the Ohio Players. Then I'd go home and listen to Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Total schizo. 30+ years later, however, I'm more likely to queue up a bunch of those old-school funk tunes. My son's a big part of why that happens. My 13-year old bone player's band does a lot of old school music. In fact, he told me today the BMHS band will be playing "Apache" by Sugar Hill Gang next football season. This on top of the Gap Band, Funkadelic, EWF, and DAZZ band stuff they already play.

But I digress as I listen to "Tumba." It's one thing to re-live the music of one's youth; it's another altogether to discover that someone has run with that music, updating it, kept it fresh, recharged the funk. The mixture of old school, a little of rap, classic jazz rhythms, and oh so much love and soul blend together as only a New Orleanian can make them.

The "intro" surprised me, because usually a commercial CD puts its best musical foot forward on the first track. I grabbed "4U 4ME" as a digital release, and the approach there is different. The intro is the teaser to get you to buy the other tunes. It worked on me, you can just hear the promise of good tracks in the background.

And Renard delivers, first with "Funk 4U," bringing me back to riding the basketball team bus, voice box and all. "I Thought" and its smooth sax combined with a bit of rap goes good with a Hubig's pie. The groove is definitely in full session by "Flavr," and ready to march down the street in "We R"

If "4U 4ME" was a dining experience, it would be a platonic meal.

Support NOLA musicians. Buy these tunes.

When going to JazzFest, I always park in the 100-200 block of Canal Blvd., right next to Greenwood Cemetery. No meters, usually not parked up at all. From there, cross into the neutral ground and catch the Esplanade bus line. Get off near the Mystery Street entrance to the Fair Grounds.

Reverse this on the way out.

Happy Festing!

Dear Mr. Morial.

Shut up.

Please. You're embarassing yourself when you try to act as an elder statesman and spokesman for your family.

Your credibility in this town is so poor that, yes, the Convention Center wants to downplay the Morial name because the first thing people associate with that name isn't your father's legacy.

It's YOUR reputation they think of when they hear "Morial," and that plays into the whole New Orleans-is-corrupt meme.

Your associates have been convicted of federal crimes, are cooperating with federal investigations that still may lead to your indictment, and some are already in federal prison. Corrupt activities on the part of your closest advisers have even brought down one of the city's best leaders and most promising politicians.

Your activities and those of your associates have resulted in your own brother becoming a federal felon.

In the wake of the storm, you've abandoned the city to live in New York City. When your name comes up, it's usually in either that context or within the context of criminal activity.

You're an embarassment to us, sir. Please just stop talking.

Sincerely,
YatPundit