Just a block or two from the Hotel Monteleone was an antiquities display like a museum, but with more like a gallery of artifacts– paintings, table inlays, appliances of the 19th century, and canes for walking or defending from attackers. Here is a personal selection of artifacts of another century:

Chess pieces made of semi-precious stones in  Mardi  Gras  colors.   Tables inlaid with stone.  Amazing  depth  evoked  in  the  table  of  ruined  stones.

The Ansonia clock with a pendulum functioned in railway stations, shortening the days as they waned in the winter solstice.  It was supposed to keep the trains running on time.

The jockey scale was designed to check whether jockeys were too light, giving them  an unfair  advantage over their competitors.

An unusual collection of canes included some prepared as weapons for the stroller in need of protection. This one  looks  like  it  could  be  loaded.

This museum of antiquities was an unscheduled stop on our stroll through the Quarter, but so typical of the exotic world of 19th century New Orleans.

Breakfast on Friday, our last Road Scholar day, was accompanied by a talented trio, a clarinet virtuoso, steel guitar and string bass. If you click twice on the link, you’ll get 22 seconds of H. B. Musclemouth, with a little street traffic thrown in for authenticity.

I managed to get two short excerpts of the Tom Fisher Band (not sure if that is their name), which have their own links below.

What appears to be our sunset is actually another sunrise outside our hotel window. We had a decent view of the Mississippi and the morning sun at the Hotel Monteleone. It was a pleasure to live there for a week.

Tom Fisher1

Musclemouth Performance

MapleLeaf

First a word about Ignatius Reilly the hero of A Confederacy of Dunces. The book is set in New Orleans, so I started reading it before flying to New Orleans. I didn’t finish until wheels down in St. Louis on February 18.  Reilly is like a folk hero in New Orleans, because of his great appetite and grandiosity. His inflated ego makes him both humorous and pathetic, although

I admit to favoring the pathetic. The photo below portrays Reilly standing regally in his famous green hunting cap in front of the Hyatt on Canal Street. I think the sculptor reduced Ignatius’ proportions considerably, since the book’s author, John Kennedy Toole, consistently described him as huge, as on p.2 “Shifting from one hip to the other in his lumbering, elephantine fashion, Ignatius sent waves of flesh rippling beneath the tweed and flannel, waves that broke upon buttons and seams.” I cannot picture Reilly as svelte as this statue.

On Canal Street we saw a night parade with brilliant illuminated floats, many with political themes.  The “Big Gas Hole” was a caricature of Vladimir Putin with his hand on “the button.” Another shows a man in a bath tub (possibly with a horn) with the name “Hunter,” which I assume refers to famous grifter Hunter Biden. Another shows some Latino caricatures inside a plane called “DeSantis Air,” probably referring to Governor DeSantis’s famous export of immigrants to Washington, D.C.

Others just represent organizations like the Naval band and the Knights of Columbus. Many other middle school and high school bands were represented with baton twirlers and dancers marching in time to the bass drums. Every so often the brass chimed in with some short fanfares.

We stayed until about 9 p.m., when one parade ended before another came up St. Charles on its heels.  The night parade was a little spectacular than the day parade we  saw on the 11th when we arrived. They were bookends to our sojourn in New Oreans.

Friday makes me think of old friends, like Richard Louth and his wife (have not met her yet). Richard goes back to a Leadership Retreat of the National Writing Project–must be twenty-five years. He introduced me to Abita Turbo-dog, a smooth dark beer– and ever since I remember him every time I raise a Turbo-dog. He is the father of the NWP Writing Marathon, and continues leading them decades later.

This week I e-mailed him when I finally arrived in New Orleans, his turf, and immediately received a raft of sights to see and places to eat and drink. Below I toast a Sazerac to him at the Ice House in the French Quarter. He knows James, the bartender, like a brother and actually owns an apartment around the corner from the Ice House.

Richard lives more in Cajun country, but he knows New Orleans, especially the cool places. He was my online guide for a week, and I followed up on his recommendations like the Ice House, Faulkner House, and Antoine’s.    

Below a talented street band, K. B. Muscle Mouth. Spotted them on the way to Antoine’s. Bluegrassy with a bit of ham-my performance. I’ll post their music if the software will manage it.

After the street band we went to Antoine’s for  lunch. It was packed, but the food was great!

On Friday we moved on to Jackson Square, the Cabildo, Faulkner House and then on to Frenchmen Road, where the Jazz acts play. I’ll save that for the next blog.

In New Orleans the Catholic Church is a political institution.  When the first settlers arrived they were christened Catholic or they didn’t get in.  The juxtaposition of Andrew Jackson the Cathedral below is my political statement about the church.

When you tour the stained glass on either side of the church, you see St. Louis portrayed as king. As a Protestant/ reformed believer, I find this arrangement too cozy for the king. The church and state are too close for my taste. To see Jesus portrayed in the Cathedral, you have to look heavenward, and that is where he belongs in the local theology.

As much as I love New Orleans, I think they have sold out to the secular. You can see it in Jackson Square and the St. Louis Cathedral.

In the stained glass you can see a king, an army, and possibly a priest at the right. The center shows two  Crusader’s shields, symbols of power. Kneeling is a wounded man, receiving a blessing.

Not sure what the priest holds, but nowhere can we see the scripture or hands of healing. It is about conferring of power.

The ceiling of the Cathedral portrays Jesus showing his wounds to Thomas, the doubting disciple. The cross is vacant, the dove is descending from the Father above.  It portrays the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This is just the beginning of the hyper-diversity of people migrating to New Orleans, making the races and cultures harder to distinguish. But architecture has made the “Creole”/ “American” distinction.

Creole Cottages: roof pitched forward,

two doors, two windows, no hallways,

w2 bedrooms, two parlors, courtyard in back.

For thirty years the city was divided at Canal Street with the Americans living to the west and Creoles to the east. today known as the “French Quarter.”  American Townhouses used imported, more durable brick with an open front hallway. These populated the “Garden District,” which also brought in the Greek revival style of columns and the Italianate style of ornate design around windows.

Our walking tour included several American townhouse, Queen Anne and Gothic style of Victorian homes. We observed several large homes being restored like the one above.

Below Trinity Episcopal Church placed right in the midst of these Garden District homes.

Looking downriver as the Mississippi winds right

Tuesday evening we stood at the back of Preservation Hall for a virtuoso jazz performance by five men and a woman. The photos had to be taken at the start and end of the performance, since photos were not allowed during the performance.

The photo below shows two performers at the end of the concert: at right the young white lead trumpet player; slightly more in the background center is a the black trombone player, easily the most flamboyant, playfully pushing his slide into the front row of the audience and swinging his instrument left and right almost like a weapon. Every performer played their own licks and two of them sang with somewhat less skill. Really a highlight of the week.

Our first morning began with breakfast in the roof-level Riverview Rooom, a buffet breakfast with good coffee and the same excellent oatmeal, a signature of the Monteleone.  Robin Rocque, our tour guide throughout, introduced herself.

Then came Harriet Robin, the TV cooking personality and advocate for the Big Easy, who had that James Carville accent that I had been hoping to hear. From her we got the story behind the story–how a city with an average 8′ below sea level land mass manages to keep the water out. Mostly with 25 canals, bayous, water pumps (taking water to Lake Ponchetrain) and levees that started at five feet high and grew to 30 feet after a Hurricane Katrina.  It is a 24-7 preoccupation.

The rest of her talk featured the cuisine of beans, rice, fish, crawfish, and bourbon that makes the Big Easy, easy to stomach. I thought of her Tuesday evening as I devoured my latest bowl of Jambalaya. NOLA is my food favorite. Spicy is a virtue here.

The Market Cafe was a destination for my first muffuletta, the Big Easy answer to the Reuben, with a spicy kick amidst the sauerkraut.  From my prime New Orleans source, I found I could get an Abita Turbodog here, an old favorite I shared with Richard Louth of the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project. Below I toast Richard, who sent me ample advice about touring NOLA.

Street art: Harry Connick’s blue mentor

Our guide on the Monday bus tour was Milton Carr, proud of his Creole heritage and qualified to explain the intricate process of burial in New Orleans.  First they place you in an “oven,” which resembles a morgue holding unit. After a year and a day, you can be placed in tomb like the ones he stands before here. After you have nothing to show, but bones, they bag you up and place you in the bottom of the tomb , so that your whole family and succeeding generations can be housed in the same space, sometimes dozens of remains. It all happens with complete respect for the deceased, the goal to keep them above ground where the water table cannot get to them.

We had a delightful walk in a sculpture park, with a variety of artists, portraying modern themes like giant safety pins and the “Overflowing” of the sitting man encrusted with letters, a great symbol of saturation of media.

The Rene Magritte stump and ax portrayal of “The Labors of Alexander” reminds me of the cutting of the Gordian Knot by a man with no patience for puzzles, but used the tool he had at hand– an ax.

The drummer looks a bit Spartan and sinister, maybe modern and Classical at once.

The spider is an enormous  monster, easily twenty feet in diameter. The Park used reflecting pools and expansive lawns for helpful backdrops and made a delightful break from a long bus tour of the edges of the city, the old Creole shotgun house neighborhoods and bayous that veined the outskirts of the city.

Harry Connick’s Teacher

Heroic Man

The Drummer

The Spider

Turns out New Orleans starts partying six weeks before Mardi Gras, right after January 6 — Epiphany. We arrived to blocked streets and jammed traffic Saturday night, February 10.  Jumped out of the taxi two blocks before the Hotel Monteleone, our resting place for the Road Scholars’ week in the Big Easy. The streets leading to it were blocked for parade access.

Everyone was wearing the gold, green and purple of Mardi Gras–masks, beads, hats, dresses. We felt a little late to the Party, but we settled in to the Carousel Bar Lounge for drinks and Bar Bits. The hotel was old, preserved with new plumbing, only a couple of blocks from the Mississippi.

Our room looked out on a bend in Mississippi where we could view sunrise. We had a fantastic breakfast Sunday morning with rich oatmeal, real maple syrup, and something called a Cajun omelette, andouille sausage, crawfish and something spicy.

Victoria effortlessly matched the purple and green and gold of Mardi Gras colors at breakfast.

The Marquis de Lafayette stands proud in Lafayette Square near our location to watch the Femmes Fatales parade on St. Charles Street. We secured an open curb seat near Girod Street about an hour before the first band came up the street.

Our hotel is perched on Royal Street, which connects Canal St. with the French Quarter. We have upscale art and antiques shops and a Four-star restaurant Brennan’s. Just a few blocks to the north is Bourbon Street, which throbs with ear-splitting music and restaurants with grinning barkers waving you toward their entrances. It is a pedestrian way, no cars allowed during Carnival. You feel like you left Boomer land for Freak land in just a couple of blocks.

But the typical street–Canal, St.Charles, Market— is happy, decorated with beads, banners, bunting and lightly vibrating blues and jazz, trademarks of New Orleans.  It’s joyous to walk and listen and smell these streets, not intrusive or abrasive. The weather is turning toward spring. The prelude to Mardi Gras is Carnival.