tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10910357321230906392024-03-18T21:51:54.864-05:00What's So Special About New Orleans?A blog about the special cultural, but little known, aspects of New Orleans.Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.comBlogger640125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-72719336339145035202018-11-08T14:08:00.004-06:002018-12-14T15:20:18.300-06:00Doc Hawley: The Captain at the Calliope<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEaT6Thzf9DmPXtpWdRtJ2ltDdxD3h-1UB9NIlvqxeSHjx3sw1FmxeA7Kkc6uVrZvV7LBpkgDrinUSsxhHSfw_F6pEfA0fxr5z6x4o5ZPu4H0p01EhzRQ2W6w9z3e7jvixSxS6nUoy3Ojt/s1600/DocHawley-c2d96c76.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1050" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEaT6Thzf9DmPXtpWdRtJ2ltDdxD3h-1UB9NIlvqxeSHjx3sw1FmxeA7Kkc6uVrZvV7LBpkgDrinUSsxhHSfw_F6pEfA0fxr5z6x4o5ZPu4H0p01EhzRQ2W6w9z3e7jvixSxS6nUoy3Ojt/s320/DocHawley-c2d96c76.jpeg" width="243" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Greg Miles</td></tr>
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By Bill Capo</div>
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<b>New Orleans Magazine</b></div>
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The Steamboat Natchez floats brilliantly on the Mississippi River, white sides gleaming, flags waving, the 26 ton red paddlewheel churning the brown water, black smokestacks reaching skyward in celebration of her power over the giant river. And she sings, her voice a melodic cry from the calliope.</div>
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When Clarke “Doc” Hawley touches the calliope keys, the French Quarter hears the music. Few listening know they are hearing not just a musician, but a Mississippi River legend. Doc climbs to the top deck behind the pilothouse, flips the lever to send steam from the boat’s boilers into the instrument, then begins playing the 32 keys to create the bright sound from the showboat era.</div>
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As Doc plays, the hot steam swirls around him, causing the brass whistles to sweat, their shriek so loud up close that he has to wear ear protection. His fingers pound the keys, because while modern keyboards activate the steam whistles electronically, the calliopes he learned on were hand powered. His fingers had to hit the keys hard enough to pull wires that opened valves to emit the steam. On the dock, passengers in line for the cruise look up and applaud.</div>
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“That goes to my mother’s era, the music,” said Barbara Robillard of Springhill, Florida.</div>
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“I’m really excited to go on there, because I haven’t been on a steamboat,” added Moe Robillard.</div>
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Doc has been playing the calliope for 63 years, yet it was a career that started accidentally in 1952, when the 17 year old saw the steamboat Avalon arrive in Charleston, West Virginia, but her calliope was silent. When he learned the boat had lost its calliope player, he applied for the job.</div>
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“I taught myself to play the parlor organ,” Doc recalled. “When I interviewed for the job, I told the captain I don’t need music, in fact, I don’t read music.”</div>
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He got the job when he played “Mairzy Doats,” a well known song at the time, and one he still plays, along with “Alexander’s Rag Time Band,” “Here Comes The Showboat,” and other songs from an earlier time.</div>
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“I had no dream of ever working on a steamboat,” Doc said. “The Avalon went everywhere. She was like a floating carnival, a circus. In the winter, we went down to New Orleans. In the summer, we went up north. My first year, I worked on nine rivers in 17 states. I was working with guys who got their pilot’s licenses in the 1880s and 90s.”</div>
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He learned steamboat history and operations from them, and Doc was hooked, beginning a career of 13 hour workdays, six to seven days a week, becoming a deck hand, then a mate and pilot. By age 22, he was a captain. But the steamboat masters of legend were big, burly guys able to impress a crew by their size. Doc was only five feet, seven inches tall, but he was no pushover, and earned respect in multiple ways.</div>
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“On that boat we had a lot of fights,” Doc remembered. “I could duke it out. I ended up with a sore lip.”</div>
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“I had plenty of respect,” he added. “Mainly reputation. I had a good reputation in the passenger boat world, first for the calliope.”</div>
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“I worked with the crew,” he continued. “I knew everybody’s name. It’s something my father, who was a boss, told me: ‘Treat everybody like you want to be treated. It’ll make your job a whole lot easier.’”</div>
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Now Doc is welcomed like a legend, crew members and dining room staff smile and shake his hand in admiration.</div>
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“He is the most knowledgeable, has the most experience of anybody on the whole river system alive today. I’m so glad he’s around, so glad he’s here,” said current captain Don Houghton, who was hired by Doc as a deck hand 36 years ago, and worked his way up to master of the boat, with his mentor’s help.</div>
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“He was very important to me,” Houghton said. “When I first started here, I didn’t really have a father figure that taught me the ropes. I started here when I was 19, and he taught me about the ropes on the boat, and the ropes in real life.”</div>
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“He’s a fine young man, and a damn good pilot,” Doc noted succinctly.</div>
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Doc became pilot of the steamboats American Queen and President, captain of the Delta Queen, and returned to the Avalon as captain when she became the Belle of Louisville. But as he steamed across the heartland of America, he never forgot one town: New Orleans.</div>
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“I made 63 trips down here on the Delta Queen, as a mate, master, and pilot,” Doc said. “Every one of those trips left me thinking ‘This is an amazing place, this is the best town I’ve ever been in.’”</div>
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In 1975, the New Orleans Steamboat Company hired Doc as captain of their brand new steamship Natchez, the ninth to carry that name.</div>
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“I quit the Belle of Louisville, and took this job,” Doc said, “simply because I was going to live in New Orleans full time.”</div>
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Doc bought a French Quarter town home that was built in 1829, and he treasures the shady courtyard, balconies, and curving stairway. His shelves are filled with steamboat books, including some he has written, and the walls are covered with paintings and pictures of the Natchez, and other legendary boats. His hands caress nick-nacks that came from steamboats.</div>
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Doc loves the Natchez. He knows every inch of her, and he even painted the boat name on her sides in 1975. He did a lot of media interviews that spring, including one with a college student, me, for one of my very first television reports. Doc treated me like I was Edward R. Murrow, and I remember the huge excitement he had for his new job, and new boat, and it is still evident today as he mentions the steam engines that date to 1927.</div>
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“It’s a very, very maneuverable, powerful boat,” Doc said. “The engines are actually from a boat that pushed barges, just perfect for a boat like the Natchez.”</div>
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Doc points out an eddy, a giant swirl in the current close to the Natchez dock. He knows the Mississippi may look placid, but can be unexpectedly violent. He learned to master immense, unpredictable rivers like the Mississippi and Missouri.</div>
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“They’re really tough, you can get in trouble easier, especially downbound (heading down river). You are going with the current. Going upbound it is easy to stop your boat, going downbound it is hard to stop your boat. You’ve got to back up a whole lot more.<br /> “The Mississippi is as clear as drinking water from St. Paul to St. Louis, and when you pass the mouth of the Missouri, then you have mud from there on to the Gulf, café au lait water.”</div>
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He still feels pain about the worst day, three decades ago, when a ship lost steering and struck the Natchez where she was tied up at the dock. “She had a big hole in the hull,” Doc recalled. “She’s got 33 compartments, and just enough of those compartments had been damaged that we thought she was going to go down. We were really afraid of that. But the Fire Department helped pump her out.”</div>
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She went to the dry dock for repairs.</div>
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“The biggest catfish that I had ever seen floated out of the Natchez’ hull.”</div>
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Doc has seen so much of America up close.</div>
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“Different foods, different variations in the English language,” Doc said. “Omaha has great steak. Omaha and Kansas City are steak, that’s beef country. Get a little further north, St. Paul area, a lot more lamb, and stuff that the Norwegians, and the Swiss, and Swedish, would eat. The best chili is Cincinnati, Ohio.”</div>
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“Nothing compares to New Orleans. Nothing food-wise can equal New Orleans’ different varieties in the same city. I eat everything.”</div>
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He got the nickname Doc as a teenage soda jerk in a drug store.</div>
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“I gave my school chums lagniappe. If you were nice to me, I might give you two cherries instead of one. They called the druggist ‘Doc,’ and I was ‘Little Doc,’ that’s how I got the name.”</div>
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Steamboats are irresistible, even to celebrities.</div>
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“I’ve met President Bush, father and son, I had Gerald Ford on the Natchez, I had Ronald Reagan on the Belle of Louisville, and Jimmy Carter on the Delta Queen, and lots of movie stars,” Doc said. “On the Natchez we’ve had more than any other boat, we’ve had Muhammad Ali.”</div>
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I heard you arm-wrestled Muhammad Ali?</div>
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“Yeah, Yeah!”</div>
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You beat him?</div>
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“He let me beat him.”</div>
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But Doc still raves about the visit one star made to the Natchez for a TV show.</div>
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“Dolly Parton, absolutely my favorite person that I’ve met,” Doc recalled wistfully. “Dolly came on the boat, and the first thing I said, ‘Hello Miss Parton,’ and she said ‘Captain, there’s one thing: I am Dolly. Dolly. Don’t call me Miz Parton, that’s my Momma’s name.’ I said ‘Well you call me Doc then.’”</div>
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Doc retired as Natchez captain in 1995, but still loves playing the calliope, and living in New Orleans.</div>
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“I didn’t leave New Orleans. I’m still here, I wasn’t about to go up north. I didn’t want any more winters.”</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-73258665806331617702018-08-23T08:57:00.000-05:002018-08-23T08:57:30.343-05:00Louisiana Lovin'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn7P5150kbXsN7nioW2X6hiQOo9vtP6YmlvdwiJf2FFMzafh5OkOcT3HnqwKrO2_3D97QSpKUdwrs1YZCPe1Ok9t4OJNYtbv6vlqDaSvNtR3niaEpBUQGvAs5jTfeSs-QKFFPDGxITn2yR/s1600/The+Jukes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="958" data-original-width="1280" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn7P5150kbXsN7nioW2X6hiQOo9vtP6YmlvdwiJf2FFMzafh5OkOcT3HnqwKrO2_3D97QSpKUdwrs1YZCPe1Ok9t4OJNYtbv6vlqDaSvNtR3niaEpBUQGvAs5jTfeSs-QKFFPDGxITn2yR/s400/The+Jukes.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10313" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;">By Paul Tamuburello</span></div>
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<span class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10316" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;"><a class="yiv6551371553" href="http://yvettelandry.com/about-yvette/" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10315" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Yvette Landry</a> had a coming out party last night. The Yvette that’s been on slow boil for about eight years, creating her singing voice, her stage persona, her style, got stoked to a full rolling boil tonight. She has sung with lots of really great musicians and been part of shows with lots of other fine voices.</span></div>
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<span class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10322" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;">She’s always sung with whatever the song called for, tender Cajun ballads and frisky two steps, classic country, Americana, dyed in the wool rock ‘n roll, a touch of rockabilly, and classic swamp pop.</span></div>
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<span class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10324" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;">A <a class="yiv6551371553" href="https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/entertainment/2018/07/23/yvette-landry-jukes-cd/810324002/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">couple of years ago</a>, Yvette’s teaming up with <a class="yiv6551371553" href="http://roddieromero.com/web/the-band/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Roddie Romero</a> and his band to create The Jukes sparked a transformation. Roddie Romero, guitar; Eric Adcock, keyboards; Chris French, standup bass; Beau Thomas, fiddle; Derek Huston, saxophone; and Gary Usie, drums, can light up any stage with the best of them.</span></div>
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<span class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10326" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;">When they play together as <a class="yiv6551371553" href="https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/entertainment/2018/07/23/yvette-landry-jukes-cd/810324002/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">The Jukes</a>, the stage all but ignites….and they are decidedly Yvette’s band. </span></div>
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<span class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10328" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;">“This group met at 4 PM for a sound check. We've played together at different times but not on the same stage. What ever you hear tonight is going to be the first time we’ve done it together,” she says.</span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10331" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10330" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;">You could’ve fooled us. What ensued was full-bore heavenly music that traversed genres from one end of the rainbow to the other, swamp pop in one pot of gold and southwest Louisiana rock 'n roll dating from the 1950's and 60's in the other. </span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10331" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10333" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10332" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;">The sense of occasion is not lost on the band. Born and raised in <a class="yiv6551371553" href="http://breauxbridgela.net/about/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Breaux Bridge</a>, Yvette has an ardent following. Playing to this particular audience, they were damn well going to pull out all the stops. The solos from Roddie Romero, Eric Adcock, Chris French, Beau Thomas, Derek Huston, and Gary Usie, can always mesmerize with sheer talent. Tonight they dug in to deliver inventive, inspired musicianship that all but levitated the Whirlybird and at its peak sprinkled us with rapturous fairy dust.</span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10333" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10335" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10334" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;">The Jukes sang every song from their new album and a bunch of rock and country classics, including Yvette's rowdy rock 'n roll-y “Do Anything But Stay Offa My Cowboy Boots.” When Yvette and Roddie launched into <a class="yiv6551371553" href="https://www.louisianatravel.com/music/articles/swamp-pop-music" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Swamp Pop</a>, Louisiana’s gift to the American songbook, the thermal capacity pegged the meter on the compact Whirlybird's dance floor. </span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10335" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10337" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10336" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;">If the seven stars of the <a class="yiv6551371553" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Pleiades</a> were to form a band, Yvette Landry would be its most luminous. Tonight, in the hothouse August atmosphere inside The Whirlybird, she sang from a deep place in her core that I’ve never heard before.</span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10337" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10355" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10354" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;">I said as much as she signed the cover of “<a class="yiv6551371553" href="http://yvettelandry.com/merch/louisiana-lovin/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Louisiana Lovin’</a>” after the show.</span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10355" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;">“I didn’t have to play guitar that much, it gave me time to let it all come through my voice,” she says after the show. Oh, yes.</span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10353" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10352" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;">Yvette has always had a streak of Loretta Lynn in her. Tonight she unleashed her inner Wanda Jackson. She went from singin’ pretty to singin’ gritty.</span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10353" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10347" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="yiv6551371553" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1535031839029_10348" style="font-family: "times new roman", times; font-size: 12pt;">Roddie and tonight’s band were the gasoline. Yvette was the match. To my ears, this was a defining career moment, a voice and a presence whose depth that quite possibly took her by surprise, a new benchmark from raw, to raucous, to lyrical, to lonesome and back again. She’s never gonna’ be the same. And that’s a good thing.</span></div>
</div>
Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-50910569247324801592018-05-11T08:55:00.000-05:002018-05-11T08:55:19.406-05:00New book explores spirit of Fi Yi Yi and Mandingo warriors<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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By Katy Reckdahl<br />
New Orleans Advocate <br />
<br />
On
Saturday morning, Big Chief Victor “Fi Yi Yi” Harris and his mighty
percussionists, the Mandingo Warriors, sent the sounds of African
drumming and Mardi Gras Indian chants far across the Fair Grounds, site
of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.<br />
<br />
Red was the color
of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi tribe this year. Nearly everyone on the Jazz
& Heritage stage Saturday morning was dressed in Indian suits made
with red feathers and marabou, including the chief’s shadow,
granddaughter Calsey Harris, 10, who has masked since she was a toddler.<br />
Calsey,
a student at Arthur Ashe Charter School, summed up the artistic and
political sensibility she’s gained by sewing for hours with her PawPaw.
“He’s showing everyone our culture so that they understand how we live.
But he’s also trying to make a change,” she said.<br />
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Harris
and his tribe are the subject of “Fire in the Hole: The Spirit Work of
Fi Yi Yi & the Mandingo Warriors,” a 190-page oral history published
this year by the Neighborhood Story Project and the Backstreet Cultural
Museum. The coffee table book includes many photos, some from archives
and friends and others snapped over the years by cultural anthropology
professor Jeffrey Ehrenreich of the University of New Orleans.<br />
<br />
On
Saturday afternoon, Victor Harris was interviewed by Maurice Martinez on
the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage about the book and about his 53
years of "masking Indian." Since 1984, he’s reigned as big chief of the
Spirit of Fi Yi Yi tribe.<br />
<br />
But on Saturday morning, the chief
walked onto the Jazz & Heritage stage wearing yet another of his
acclaimed suits. Harris’ suits differ from other local Indian suits in
key ways: They are made entirely of layered beads and cowrie shells,
without glue, staples and the sculpted cardboard sometimes used to
underpin the three-dimensional Indian suits in his native 7th Ward.<br />
<br />
Also,
instead of the feathered crowns that typically frame the faces of
Indian chiefs, Harris wears an African-style mask that covers his face
and gives him more of a mystical look. He sews each intricate mask with
careful detail, creating elaborately outlined openings for his eyes and
mouth.<br />
<br />
This unique needlework, which Harris designs and creates
along with his “committee” of sewing hands, landed him a Prospect.1
retrospective at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2009.<br />
But on
stage, his shamanic side takes over. As others from his tribe chant
traditional Indian numbers like “Shallow Water,” Harris preaches; he
sermonizes; he calls to people’s better instincts.<br />
That’s classic Fi Yi Yi.<br />
<br />
On
St. Joseph’s Night, when Harris roams the streets of New Orleans with
his tribe, he’ll often stop under a streetlight and unleash poetic
speeches backed by the beats of the Mandingo Warriors, including drummer
Wesley Phillips and sewing committee stalwart Jack Robertson, who picks
up a drum whenever the tribe hits the streets.<br />
<br />
Asked how his
activism fits with being an Indian, Harris gave a puzzled look. “It’s
all together,” he said, describing the revolutionary and civil-rights
spirit that he said fuels every Indian he knows.<br />
<br />
That “won’t bow
down” Indian mentality is what first made him into an activist, he said,
recalling how he’d marched on City Hall along with others from the
Tambourine & Fan Club during the early 1970s. The group demanded,
successfully, that Mayor Moon Landrieu create a park from the abandoned,
untended land under Interstate 10 at St. Bernard and North Claiborne
avenues.<br />
They dubbed the new green space Hunter’s Field, after the
Hunters, a nickname for the Yellow Pocahontas tribe, where Harris got
his start, "running flag" under legendary chief Allison “Tootie”
Montana.<br />
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The new book makes clear that Harris’ ultimate
focus is his community. Before Hurricane Katrina shut down Charity
Hospital, he was a food-service supervisor there and the person to call
whenever anyone in the 7th Ward needed to check on a hospitalized family
member.<br />
<br />
As a young man, he coached on the newly created Hunter’s
Field, becoming a beloved, widely known figure whom children called Duck
because he entertained them by imitating Donald Duck and waddling
across the football field.<br />
<br />
So by the early 1980s, when he formed his own Indian tribe, Harris already had a broad base of people who supported him.<br />
<br />
In
1983, after a misunderstanding about a credit on a record, Harris was
ousted from the Yellow Pocahontas. Though he later reconciled with
Montana and other members of the Yellow Pocahontas, it was a rough
moment. Harris had chanted on the tune, but instead of crediting Harris
by name, the record producer had labeled it “Yellow Pocahontas,”
angering other Indians and leaving him tribe-less.<br />
<br />
Then, in 1984,
he said, he had a vision one night and formed the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi,
with a robust sewing committee to help sew his suit and a legion of
children’s suits.<br />
<br />
Over the year, deaths, sickness and arthritis
have taken their toll on the committee, leaving just two. “It’s just me
and Chief,” Robertson said Saturday.<br />
<br />
Then there’s Calsey, the future of Fi Yi Yi, who plans to someday become one of the vaunted needles of the committee.<br />
<br />
“When I’m ready, I will,” she said, with the confidence of a child who’s grown up as part of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi.<br />
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-63638947579743336782018-02-05T11:30:00.000-06:002018-02-05T11:32:01.457-06:00Blaine Kern, the float maker<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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By Keith Spera<br />
<b>New Orleans Advocate</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
As Blaine Kern Sr. eyed the gaggle of tourists filing into Mardi Gras World’s gift shop, he flipped on his Mr. Mardi Gras grin, his calling card for nine decades and counting.</div>
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"I'm the guy who started this whole joint 70 years ago!" he announced, the opening line of his sales pitch for "A Tree in the Sea," the new children's book he created with his fourth wife, Holly.</div>
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The tourists smiled, listened politely, and moved on to the next attraction. Mardi Gras, it seems, is bigger than Blaine Kern.</div>
<div class="tncms-region hidden-print" id="tncms-region-article_instory_top" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">
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Once upon a time, he might have disagreed.</div>
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What Popeyes kingpin Al Copeland was to chicken, Kern is to Carnival: a brash character who came from nothing, launched an unconventional empire in New Orleans, and lived large as a result.</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Lora, 'Libre Baskerville', Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 24px;">
Wrestle anacondas in Peru? Buy an aircraft carrier in Spain? Build a gondola over the Mississippi River? Marry a woman nearly 50 years his junior?</div>
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Kern has done that. He also almost single-handedly ushered in the modern era of Mardi Gras.</div>
<div>
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Blaine Kern Artists, the studio he founded in 1947, crafts the floats for more than a dozen of Carnival's most prominent parades, including Rex, Endymion, Muses, Bacchus, Orpheus and Zulu. Kern pioneered such parade razzle-dazzle as giant prop figures, double-decker floats, multi-unit floats, splashy lighting and animatronics. Inclusivity was another of his innovations.</div>
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Now 90, he is no longer directly involved with the studio's operation. But he still keeps tabs on the company and is still the legendary figurehead. Tourist buses still park beneath his name, spelled out with imposing, 6-foot-tall black letters on the exterior of Mardi Gras World’s massive riverfront studio/warehouse.</div>
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In decades past, his ego was just as imposing. But age has mellowed him. So, too, did several brushes with mortality, and a legal battle, resolved in 2015, that transferred full control of the studio to his son Barry Kern.</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Lora, 'Libre Baskerville', Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 24px;">
But in his reluctant retirement — and thanks in part to his wife’s gentle prodding — Blaine Kern has rediscovered who he was long ago: an artist.</div>
<h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 0px;">
Growing up poor</h3>
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On Wednesday afternoon, Kern shuffled past Orpheus floats inside the Mardi Gras World warehouse, his jacket discreetly emblazoned with “Mr. Mardi Gras.” He exchanged warm greetings with artisans, tour guides and gift shop employees.</div>
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"This little girl ... she's a helluva sculptor," he said, introducing a young woman flecked with Styrofoam dust.</div>
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"Coming from you, that means a lot," gushed Alexandria McCrosky, whose mother, Tina, has painted Kern floats for more than 20 years.</div>
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In a chamber near the gift shop stood a different breed of Styrofoam sculptor: Pixie, a robot named for longtime, much-loved Kern Studios administrator Jerelyn "Pixie" Naquin, who died in 2010. A similar high-tech robot sculpts Space X rocket fuselages; Pixie sculpts Muses' float-sized rubber duckies.</div>
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Imagine if Kern had possessed such a robot when he started out.</div>
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"He <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">was</em> the robot,” Holly Kern said.</div>
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He grew up poor on Algiers Point with three sisters, now deceased. Their father, Roy, was a painter who liked to fish and drink. Blaine still remembers watching his dad fashion a primitive float atop a garbage wagon in 1932 for the inaugural Krewe of Alla parade on the West Bank.</div>
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Drafted into the Army in 1945, Blaine was shipped out to Korea at the end of World War II. He returned home to Algiers nearly two years later.</div>
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In exchange for medical services for his mother, he painted a mural for Dr. Henry LaRocca, the captain of Alla. LaRocca was so impressed that he invited Kern, then 19, to decorate Alla’s floats.</div>
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Recognizing a potentially lucrative business, Kern founded Blaine Kern Artists Inc. in 1947. Alla was his first steady client; he became the krewe's captain in 1957, a position he held for five decades. </div>
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Blaine Kern Artists, the studio he founded in 1947, crafts the floats for more than a dozen of Carnival's most prominent parades, including Rex, Endymion, Muses, Bacchus, Orpheus and Zulu. Kern pioneered such parade razzle-dazzle as giant prop figures, double-decker floats, multi-unit floats, splashy lighting and animatronics. Inclusivity was another of his innovations.</div>
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Now 90, he is no longer directly involved with the studio's operation. But he still keeps tabs on the company and is still the legendary figurehead. Tourist buses still park beneath his name, spelled out with imposing, 6-foot-tall black letters on the exterior of Mardi Gras World’s massive riverfront studio/warehouse.</div>
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In decades past, his ego was just as imposing. But age has mellowed him. So, too, did several brushes with mortality, and a legal battle, resolved in 2015, that transferred full control of the studio to his son Barry Kern.</div>
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But in his reluctant retirement — and thanks in part to his wife’s gentle prodding — Blaine Kern has rediscovered who he was long ago: an artist.</div>
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Growing up poor</h3>
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On Wednesday afternoon, Kern shuffled past Orpheus floats inside the Mardi Gras World warehouse, his jacket discreetly emblazoned with “Mr. Mardi Gras.” He exchanged warm greetings with artisans, tour guides and gift shop employees.</div>
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"This little girl ... she's a helluva sculptor," he said, introducing a young woman flecked with Styrofoam dust.</div>
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"Coming from you, that means a lot," gushed Alexandria McCrosky, whose mother, Tina, has painted Kern floats for more than 20 years.</div>
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In a chamber near the gift shop stood a different breed of Styrofoam sculptor: Pixie, a robot named for longtime, much-loved Kern Studios administrator Jerelyn "Pixie" Naquin, who died in 2010. A similar high-tech robot sculpts Space X rocket fuselages; Pixie sculpts Muses' float-sized rubber duckies.</div>
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Imagine if Kern had possessed such a robot when he started out.</div>
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"He <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">was</em> the robot,” Holly Kern said.</div>
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He grew up poor on Algiers Point with three sisters, now deceased. Their father, Roy, was a painter who liked to fish and drink. Blaine still remembers watching his dad fashion a primitive float atop a garbage wagon in 1932 for the inaugural Krewe of Alla parade on the West Bank.</div>
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Drafted into the Army in 1945, Blaine was shipped out to Korea at the end of World War II. He returned home to Algiers nearly two years later.</div>
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In exchange for medical services for his mother, he painted a mural for Dr. Henry LaRocca, the captain of Alla. LaRocca was so impressed that he invited Kern, then 19, to decorate Alla’s floats.</div>
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Recognizing a potentially lucrative business, Kern founded Blaine Kern Artists Inc. in 1947. Alla was his first steady client; he became the krewe's captain in 1957, a position he held for five decades. </div>
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At the dawn of the super-krewe era 50 years ago, Blaine charged $5,000 per float. In 2013, Endymion's dazzling, 370-foot-long, nine-part re-creation of the Pontchartrain Beach amusement park made its debut. The price tag? $1.5 million.</div>
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Mardi Gras floats account for only half of the Kern company’s tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue. Under Barry Kern's stewardship, <a href="http://www.kernstudios.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Kern Studios</a> has expanded globally, constructing elaborate props and parades for such clients as Disney, Six Flags and Universal Studios. This weekend, Universal Studios in Orlando kicks off a 68-day Mardi Gras celebration featuring Kern floats.</div>
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Those three-dimensional, black-and-white-spotted cows that populate Chick-fil-A billboards across the country? All were born at the Kern Studios complex in New Orleans.</div>
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Opening <a href="https://www.mardigrasworld.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Mardi Gras World</a> to visitors created a major tourist destination. The facility is also leased for private functions, such as the Buku Music + Art Project each March.</div>
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Grand visionary</h3>
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In the early days, Blaine got his hands dirty, drawing and painting floats. He eventually ceded such tasks to the company's growing stable of artisans, assuming the role of grand visionary.</div>
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Being Blaine Kern was its own full-time job. He started referring to himself as “Mr. Mardi Gras” after a trip to Portugal. In 1988, the Rex organization issued a proclamation making it official. “I'm not going to fight that," Kern said. Instead, he trademarked the term.</div>
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He could be loud and boisterous, and he rubbed some people the wrong way. More showman than businessman, administration was never his forte.</div>
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Not all his schemes panned out. He built much of the 1984 world’s fair in New Orleans — including the famous bare-breasted mermaids at the entrance — only to get stiffed by the fair’s financial failure.</div>
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The gondola he strung across the river for the fair never attracted enough riders to be viable. He lost money on the failed Jazzland amusement park in New Orleans East. In the 1980s, he partnered with a New York real estate tycoon named Donald Trump to develop property on the West Bank; the project fizzled.</div>
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And then there was the aircraft carrier.</div>
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The light carrier USS Cabot, known as the "Iron Woman," saw heavy action in World War II, surviving kamikaze hits. It was transferred to the Spanish navy in the 1960s and rechristened Dédalo.</div>
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In the 1980s, Kern bought the decommissioned ship for $1. He planned to turn it into a museum and casino docked at Mardi Gras World; investors included his pal Harry Lee, the longtime Jefferson Parish sheriff.</div>
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It cost $344,000 in fuel to sail the ship to New Orleans; Kern also had to fly nearly 400 sailors home to Spain. The Cabot lingered on the Mississippi riverfront for years. But, Kern said, he and former Gov. Edwin Edwards couldn’t cut a deal on a casino license. In 1999, the carrier was sold at auction for scrap.</div>
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Kern fathered five kids during the first two of his four marriages. But in his own estimation, “I was young, filthy rich, and an (expletive) of the first magnitude where women were concerned.”</div>
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But very late in life, he finally found what he was looking for.</div>
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Two 'old souls'</h3>
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He and the former Holly Brown have been a couple for 16 years; they were married in 2010 in Hawaii. Now 41, she knows his stories by heart and tries to edit his more impolitic utterances.</div>
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Their conspicuous 49-year age gap, they say, is no impediment. “We’re both old souls,” Holly said.</div>
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“She was raised by her grandparents,” Blaine noted.</div>
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They met in 2002 after being seated across from each other during a Bacchus event at Brennan’s. Young and pretty, she owned a dance studio, Planet Dance, in Metairie, and was going through a divorce.</div>
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Blaine was drawn to her blue eyes and creativity. “She’s a choreographer, she dances, she sings — she’s a genius,” he said. “She’s exceptional.”</div>
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After she and Blaine started dating, he lobbied her to give up her dance studio to focus on him. For two years, she refused. "That would be like me asking him to give up art," she said.The cost of all those trips came up in the legal dispute between Blaine and Barry that first flared in 2010. Just as Tom Benson's family battled over control of the Saints, the Kerns clashed over Carnival. Their power struggle was major news in New Orleans.</div>
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“Unfortunately, what was a family issue became a very public issue,” Barry Kern said. “Everybody in New Orleans feels that they own a piece of Mardi Gras. Because of that, a lot of things that happened to us, which in other families and businesses would have been private, were public.”</div>
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The leaders of Bacchus, Rex and Endymion, not wanting the production of their parades to be disrupted, brokered a temporary truce between father and son.</div>
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In 2015, the conflict was finally resolved for good. Blaine sold his 50.1 percent stake in Blaine Kern Artists to Barry, putting the son he'd groomed as his successor firmly in charge.</div>
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More than two years later, Blaine and Barry insist, all is well.</div>
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“My relationship with my father and Holly is much better than it was when all that negativity was happening," Barry Kern said. "We’ve all had time to let things go.</div>
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“I think she cares for him, and he cares for her. When a relationship like that starts, people will be circumspect. But it’s different than what I thought it initially was. From my perspective now, they have a really good relationship.”</div>
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Creative juices revived</h3>
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Case in point: The couple's collaboration on "A Tree in the Sea."</div>
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Holly had wanted to author a children's book ever since a first-grade teacher at St. Catherine of Siena School praised her writing. But Blaine initially dismissed her proposed storyline — about a friendly tree in the sea that saves fish from sharks — as "ridiculous."</div>
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She was hurt, and indignant: “The king of whimsy is telling me there'd never be a tree in the sea? This is a children’s book!"</div>
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He thought the project was beneath him: “I didn't feel like illustrating a book. My company’s worldwide. This was, like, nothing."</div>
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Holly conceded that "it was not the time. He was busy traveling the world and being Mr. Mardi Gras."</div>
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He’d also fallen out of the habit of drawing. “I’d lost confidence in myself,” he said.</div>
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In 2016, they realized one of Kern’s dreams by attending Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The trip reignited his creativity. “He was like a kid in a candy store,” Holly said.</div>
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Back home in Harvey, she encouraged him to paint an undersea scene in a guest bathroom. (He eventually agreed to cover the mermaid's prominent breasts with a seashell bikini top.)</div>
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With his creative juices flowing, she resurrected her book idea. For months, they debated the content. Finally, Kern put colored pencils to paper, conjuring up an undersea world with an older Neptune and a younger, buxom mermaid.</div>
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River Road Press published “A Tree in the Sea” last fall. The couple is already planning their next book.</div>
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Not that they lack for activities. Kern still needs to stay busy. “He hates the ‘r’ word,” Holly said. "Retired."</div>
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His father “is a lot more low-key than 10 or 15 years ago, but he’s not like many other 90-year-olds,” Barry Kern said. “His age never had anything to do with the way he thinks and feels and lives. He’s not a person that was acting his age, ever. He’s been referred to as Peter Pan many times.”</div>
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Last fall, Kern reigned over the Krewe of Boo Halloween parade. Also in 2017, he and Holly traveled to Cuba, where, in 1960, he had staged a mini-parade for Fidel Castro.</div>
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He hopes to ride in a car in several Carnival parades this week, depending on the weather.</div>
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"He's going to want to mingle with the crowd," Holly said. "For him to sit in a car and not interact with people, that's torture."</div>
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The couple realizes that time is not on their side. Before he got a pacemaker in 2008, Holly resuscitated him with CPR at least three times. "Breathing life into somebody, that really strengthens your bond," she said.</div>
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These days, they spend time at home with their five small dogs and three cats. At the gym, Blaine pedals a stationary bike for 40 minutes. He draws. Holly is teaching tap dancing again. They post wacky videos of themselves on Facebook and Instagram.</div>
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“We have fun,” Holly said. “We’re creative people, and goofy people. But we’re on a social media break right now. Our time together is limited. We need to spend time face to face.”</div>
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Still looking ahead, Blaine doesn’t spend much time on reflection. But does his Mardi Gras legacy make him proud?</div>
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“It does and it doesn’t,” he said. “Let me tell you why. People walk up to me and hug me and congratulate me. Somehow, I don’t feel like I deserve it. I’m very Catholic. God’s given me this talent, but it’s embarrassing a little bit.”</div>
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This is the new Blaine Kern talking. Ten years ago, he still craved attention.</div>
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“He’s a totally different person now,” Holly said. “I like this Blaine Kern a lot better. That (court case) changed both of us. It’s made us better people, more spiritual.”</div>
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Kern used to strut into church hoping to be noticed. Now he's more likely to keep his head bowed.</div>
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“So many people know me and they’re waving at me … it’s disconcerting,” he said. “I don’t like it. I’d hate to be a movie star.”</div>
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But being Mr. Mardi Gras? That he still enjoys.</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-36772067176938542382018-01-31T18:43:00.002-06:002018-01-31T18:43:42.519-06:00Lost Bayou Ramblers win Grammy for best regional roots<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Lora, 'Libre Baskerville', Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;"><b>By Keith Spera, New Orleans Advocate</b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Lora, 'Libre Baskerville', Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;">The Lost Bayou Ramblers are having second thoughts about their planned hiatus. A Grammy win will do that.</span><br />
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Last week, members of the adventurous contemporary Cajun band announced that, after 20 years of almost non-stop touring and recording, they’d take an extended break starting in May.</div>
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But on Sunday in New York, the Ramblers’ eighth album, “Kalenda,” won the Grammy Award for best regional roots music album.</div>
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“We had decided on the hiatus even before we got the nomination,” fiddle player Louis Michot said Monday. “We were not expecting to get nominated, and especially not to win. Now we’ll have to reconsider.”</div>
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They may push back their break until the fall, to reap the benefits of the publicity windfall from the Grammy win.</div>
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“You can’t deny that,” Michot said. “You’ve got to do what comes naturally, and do what the universe is telling you.</div>
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“Which is what we’ve done since the beginning. We’ve been doing it naturally for 20 years. We’re going to keep going with what comes naturally. If the universe doesn’t want us to stop just yet, we can’t deny the universe. But there’s definitely a hiatus coming.”</div>
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Led by Michot and his accordionist brother Andre, the <a href="https://www.lostbayouramblers.com/home" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Lost Bayou Ramblers</a> are a Cajun band that is rooted in tradition but progressive by nature. As evidenced by “Kalenda,” with its electronic percussion and other contemporary flourishes, they are unafraid of innovation. All the band members except the Michot brothers live in New Orleans.</div>
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They were first nominated for a Grammy 10 years ago. They fared better this year than other nominees with strong ties to south Louisiana.</div>
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Dwayne Dopsie lost out to the Ramblers in the regional roots music category. PJ Morton, the St. Augustine High School graduate who plays keyboards in Maroon 5 and crafts his own albums of contemporary R&B and soul, lost to Bruno Mars, the night’s big winner, in two R&B categories.</div>
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South Louisiana slide guitarist Sonny Landreth didn’t win for contemporary blues album. Arcade Fire’s “Everything Now,” much of which was recorded in the Uptown home studio of Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, didn’t win for best alternative album.</div>
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The Lost Bayou Ramblers received their Grammy during an afternoon ceremony before the televised portion of the show began.</div>
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“You don’t want to get your mind set on winning. You’re there for the experience,” Michot said. When presenter Zac Brown “started to say ‘Kal…,’ I thought, ‘That’s not us.’ Then people start yelling, and you hop out of your seat, and there’s lots of action and noise.”</div>
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All five Ramblers took a turning speaking from the podium; Louis Michot delivered part of his speech in French.</div>
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They were then ushered to the press room to pose for photos. Afterward, legendary producer and composer Quincy Jones rolled up alongside them in a wheelchair.</div>
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“He gave us a nod. ... That was the ultimate Grammy experience for us,” Michot said.</div>
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He and his bandmates hoped to grab a celebratory drink before the start of the televised show. But they were told they didn’t have time. “We just won a Grammy, and we can’t leave and have a drink somewhere?” Michot said. </div>
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So over the course of the telecast, the individual Ramblers slipped out to an Irish bar near Madison Square Garden, where they watched the Grammys on TV and toasted their win.</div>
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The celebration capped off a whirlwind weekend. They performed last Thursday in New Orleans and Friday in Crowley, then drove to Houston to catch a flight to New York. On Saturday at noon, they performed at B.B. King’s club in Manhattan as part of a showcase presented by the Lafayette tourism board, which also funded their trip to New York.</div>
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During his first foray to New York City, in 2002, Michot busked on the streets. The Ramblers’ earliest gigs in the Big Apple were “subway tours,” as they hauled drums, fiddles and an upright bass around town on the subway.</div>
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Now New York is the band’s strongest market outside Louisiana. They’ve progressed “from the streets to the Grammys,” Michot said. “It only took 20 years.” </div>
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The Ramblers come home on Thursday to headline the “Save Our Sponge” concert, a benefit for the Woodlands Conservancy, a group that works to preserve south Louisiana’s coastal woodlands. Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. benefit concert at the New Orleans Jazz Market, 1436 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., start at $25; go to <a href="http://www.woodlandsconservancy.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">woodlandsconservancy.org</a> for more info.</div>
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Michot said he’ll likely display his Grammy atop an old cypress spice rack that he’s converted to a trophy case at his home in Arnaudville, a one-stoplight town along Bayou Teche northeast of Lafayette. “It’s not going to be on my living room table or anything like that,” he said.</div>
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“I’m still in a little bit of shock," he said. "It’s been a huge weekend. It’s going to take time to process.”</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-2803256373386484572018-01-17T08:43:00.001-06:002018-01-17T08:43:49.449-06:00A Distant Drum Beat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>On the Trail of the Mardi Gras Indians</b><br />
By Chris Rose, New Orleans Magazine <b><br /></b><br />
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So many spectacles compete to overload the senses during Mardi Gras. So many sights, sounds, colors, costumes, parades, songs, rainbows, fever dreams, unicorns and pounds of flesh to behold, light the eyes, satisfy appetites and quench every thirst.<br />
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It takes effort to stand out amidst the glitter and gold, baubles and beads, spandex and spangles, flashing lights and fairy dust. It takes money, time and commitment. Serious commitment.<br />
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It takes the Mardi Gras Indians. Those singular, mythic, mysterious and inscrutable men, women and children of color who preserve and perform a sacred 19th century ritual borne of slavery, emancipation and masquerade.<br />
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It's quite a challenge to try to describe the Indians to the uninitiated. They are tight-knit, turf-conscious, prideful working class black folks dressed up in flamboyant, meticulously hand-sewn, ceremonial Native American costumes, face paint and feathers, stalking each other through New Orleans back streets in some sort of concrete jungle war game. But instead of pretending to kill their rivals, they face-off in a ritualistic preening, drumming, dancing, chanting show-down, taunting each other and arguing over who is...prettiest.<br />
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What's not to understand about that?<br />
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How the Mardi Gras Indians came to be is a subject of much academic - and barroom - debate. It's all folklore, legend, history, mythology and braggadocio.<br />
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Are they a living tribute to local Native American tribes who sheltered their fugitive forbears from the indignities of lives waged in the fields of Confederate perdition? Or are they, as popular notion goes, a spin-off of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show from the late 19th Century? Or are they just a bunch of rowdy, ostentatious, over-the-top, half-cocked revelers who take this Mardi Gras thing...Way. Too. Seriously.<br />
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Collectively, they are the proverbial golden needle in the messy Carnival haystack. The Wild Tchoupitoulas, Wild Magnolias, Flaming Arrows, Uptown Hunters, Yellow Pocahontas, Burning Spears, Congo Nation, Guardians of the Flame, Creole Osceola, Fi-Y-Yi, Louisiana Star Choctaws and dozens more. From near extinction just four decades ago, Mardi Gras Indian culture has exploded in the new century, with new tribes forming every year to preserve this most elite, quixotic and exotic tradition.<br />
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On Mardi Gras morning, gangs of chiefs, spy boys, flag boys and wild men debut their new costumes, a year-long labor sewing, stitching and beading, memorialized in the song "New Suit," by legendary New Orleans composer Willie Tee:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Every year for Carnival Time, we make a new suit<br />
Red, yellow, green, purple or blue, we make a new suit<br />
They shine like diamonds and stars<br />
Gotta be sure we’re together<br />
‘Cause we the soul of Mardi Gras</i>. </blockquote>
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Indeed, they are the heart, the soul and the beat of the street. I
remember the first time my kids ever saw an Indian, one Fat Tuesday
afternoon many years ago, when we were driving back Uptown after
spending the morning basking in the colorful revelry of the Marigny and
French Quarter.<br />
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He was alone, turned out in Bimini lime feathers and mint green
rhinestones, staggering erratically on the Broad Street overpass, a
chief who seemed to have lost his way – and his tribe! He stumbled in
front of my car, I swerved wide around him and watched from my rearview
mirror as my kids asked: “Daddy, what was <i>that?</i>”<br />
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How do you tell someone?<br />
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Over the years, it became our Fat Tuesday tradition: We would not park
down near the Quarter until we found an Indian gang wandering around the
streets of the 6th, 7th or 8th Wards. And we always did.<br />
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The last time I saw a Mardi Gras Indian was last March, on St. Joseph’s
night, when the gangs and thousands of spectators annually pack the
streets of Central City for intimate neighborhood rituals far from the
wide prying eyes and intrusive cell phones of visitors and tourists.
This was a young man, junior member of his tribe, splayed out on the
sidewalk with a gunshot wound to the thigh.<br />
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I heard the shot. I joined the crowd of previously joyous observers now
looking on in wonder, fear and despair. Everyone wondered: What
happened. Who is he? Why was he shot? And: Who the hell shoots an
Indian?<br />
<br />
Another mystery of this town. It will build you up and tear you down.
It’s the ecstasy and the agony. It’s the beauty and the beast. It’s
laughter and forgetting.<br />
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It’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. With an ever-present menacing drumbeat out there in the distance.<br />
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And so it goes.
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0New Orleans, LA, USA29.951065799999991 -90.071532329.511172299999991 -90.7169793 30.390959299999992 -89.4260853tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-79995729832774234562017-09-05T09:30:00.000-05:002017-09-05T09:30:11.173-05:0063-year-old slave descendent begins college as a Georgetown University freshman<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Georgetown president meets slave descendents</td></tr>
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By Katy Reckdahl, New Orleans Advocate</div>
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A few weeks ago, at the unlikely age of 63, Melisande Short-Colomb packed her possessions into boxes at her New Orleans home on Upperline Street and sent them to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She began classes there Wednesday as a freshman.</div>
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But her story is remarkable for much more than her age.</div>
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In 1838, facing bankruptcy, the Jesuit priests who established Georgetown kept the school afloat by selling 272 slaves from their tobacco fields in Maryland to a pair of Louisiana plantation owners.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Among those slaves were Short-Colomb’s great-great-grandparents, Abraham Mahoney and Mary Ellen Queen.</span></div>
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Thanks to student protests and the work of dogged genealogists, about 3,000 people like Short-Colomb, many in New Orleans and the surrounding region, have discovered the intimate and troubled connection between the suffering of their ancestors and the financial survival of one of the country’s premier universities.</div>
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Georgetown two years ago began an effort to confront the school’s past and atone for the sale, one of the largest slave sales in U.S. history. One step was to offer descendants like Short-Colomb so-called “legacy status,” putting them on the same footing as the children of alumni in the admissions process.</div>
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“It’s a key moment in Georgetown’s history,” said Karran Harper Royal, a longtime education advocate in New Orleans whose own family can trace its lineage to the Georgetown sale.</div>
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As leader of a group called the GU272 Descendants Association, Harper Royal estimates there are more than 800 descendants of the sale living in the New Orleans area.</div>
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When Short-Colomb applied to Georgetown earlier this year, she was a little skeptical. “You can’t trust anyone who sold your family,” she said.</div>
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Yet somehow, going back to college felt like the right move for Short-Colomb, a retired chef and widow whose four children are grown. Since Hurricane Katrina, she said, she’s found herself restless and peripatetic, leaving town for long stints in Texas, Ghana and the Virgin Islands.</div>
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Now, through her work-study job in the campus library, which includes the newly created Georgetown Slavery Archive, Short-Colomb will help connect families torn apart during slavery.</div>
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She made her own connections in April, when she met a group of newfound relatives in Maryland. From them, she heard that an enslaved cousin named Louisa, tipped off by a priest, had avoided the trip by hiding in the woods for three or four days. “All she knew was that they were taken to somewhere known as Algiers,” Short-Colomb said.</div>
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Short-Colomb’s education has long been caught up in the question of race.</div>
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“My mother was holding me in her arms when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Brown v. Board decision,” said Short-Colomb, referencing the landmark 1954 ruling Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the court found that segregated schools for black and white children were unconstitutional.</div>
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Enforcement of that decision did not come quickly in New Orleans. When she attended McDonogh No. 6 Elementary School on Chestnut Street, it was still an all-black school. And she still worshiped at the all-black Church of the Blessed Sacrament.</div>
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Finally, in the sixth grade, her parents enrolled her at Sophie B. Wright Junior High, where nearly all of her teachers and many of her classmates were white. Bomb threats were common for the first few months of school, she said.</div>
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Suddenly, her world was no longer confined to the protective, tightly knit black community she’d known. “It was the first time I had teachers who didn’t know my name,” she said.</div>
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One thing that hadn’t changed was the pride that came with her name and her family’s deep roots in New Orleans.</div>
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Two public schools and the chapel at Dillard University bore the name of her mother’s uncle, the Rev. Alfred Lawless, a trailblazer for the education of black students in the city. Another public school was named for the Rev. Henderson Dunn, an educator who wrote about religion and schools for The Times-Picayune and was related to her by marriage.</div>
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Short-Colomb also knew she was descended from Abraham Mahoney and Mary Ellen Queen, of Lafourche Parish, because her grandmother, Geneva Ruby Taylor Lawless, was emphatic about making her recite the family oral history. “I called that ‘the begats,’ ” she said, referring to the term used in biblical genealogies.</div>
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She had been told that her Queen-family ancestors had sued their owners for their freedom in court, because their great-grandmother was an indentured servant who should have been let go once her period of indenture was over. As borne out by court records, their lawyer was none other than Francis Scott Key, who wrote the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner."</div>
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She learned that her grandparents, lured by the possibility of farmland, had traveled by ship to New Orleans before the Civil War, then traveled to Terrebonne Parish on a river flatboat — “followed by alligators.”</div>
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“I knew all of my history,” Short-Colomb said.</div>
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So when genealogist Judy Riffel texted last year, asking if she was related to a Mahoney family from Baton Rouge, Short-Colomb responded with a long message.</div>
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“I sent her my whole pedigree,” said Short-Colomb, who then discovered something she didn’t know — that her branch of the Queen family had been unable to win their freedom and had been part of the 1838 sale. They had traveled to Terrebonne by flatboat, she said, but as someone else’s property.</div>
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“I knew everything about my family from 1838 to 2017. But I didn’t know enough about 1704 to 1838,” she said.</div>
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In the coming four years, she said, she hopes to discover more about those missing years, perhaps from some of the 200 boxes of records that remain to be digitized for the Slavery Archive. Over the next few years, all the documents in those boxes will be scanned and indexed by the names of those who were shipped to Louisiana as human cargo in 1838.</div>
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Along with the increasing use of DNA to find enslaved ancestors, this type of research promises to create another shift in the country’s racial landscape, by providing a deeper awareness of how slavery kept wealthy owners afloat while severing enslaved families.</div>
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“She is there (at Georgetown) to find out more about all of our families,” Harper Royal said. “Her journey is for all of us.”</div>
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ast week, before Georgetown’s convocation for new students, Short-Colomb choked back tears as academic marshal John Q. Pierce briefly stopped the faculty procession at her aisle and doffed his academic cap in her direction, a gesture “intended as a sign of respect for her and a recognition of the special status of all the descendants of the 272,” he later explained.</div>
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During the same convocation, Short-Colomb was invited to receive the Georgetown College banner, which she carried high, with her ancestors and her GU272 friends in mind, she said. </div>
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Then, on Wednesday, as she walked to class amid a sea of 18-year-olds, Short-Colomb thought back to her childhood, when her grandmother, with much relish, would sit her down in the family house on Zimpel Street and make her recite “the begats.”</div>
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It was that woman, Geneva Ruby Taylor Lawless, who put her granddaughter on the path that ended up at Georgetown, Short-Colomb said. “She is the reason I have a story.”</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-59377971336753762852017-09-04T19:40:00.000-05:002017-09-04T19:40:46.758-05:001913 invention revolutionized New Orleans' water management<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC9je2DyCC8ySFTmY0wmDEjx7T4GBnjpJUKhjp6fLGC1oBFl6lmfuWuKlqaY-pUwdEOUNaqMqLvHgWCZ_Q4TF9wSj_YB1U3YIV3rlZ8hqyc-aopS93WUmqKV47Ko2AEFtKgEflAR1CKHtz/s1600/Baldwin+Wood+and+his+pump.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="718" data-original-width="960" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC9je2DyCC8ySFTmY0wmDEjx7T4GBnjpJUKhjp6fLGC1oBFl6lmfuWuKlqaY-pUwdEOUNaqMqLvHgWCZ_Q4TF9wSj_YB1U3YIV3rlZ8hqyc-aopS93WUmqKV47Ko2AEFtKgEflAR1CKHtz/s320/Baldwin+Wood+and+his+pump.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Benton Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; letter-spacing: 0.013em; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Times-Picayune is marking the tricentennial of New Orleans with its ongoing </em><a href="http://www.nola.com/300/" style="border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1565c0; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.125em; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">300 for 300</em></a><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> project, running through 2018 and highlighting the moments and people that connect and inspire us. Today, the series continues with the hiring of A. Baldwin Wood, a New Orleans-born, Tulane-educated engineer who designed pumps that proved key to the city's expansion.</em></div>
<figure class="image image--small image--left" id="photo-21743014" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; float: left; font-family: 'Benton Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1em; max-width: 33%; padding: 0px 18.3125px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 120.921875px;"><div class="image__wrapper" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: table; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; table-layout: fixed; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a class="image__link" href="http://media.nola.com/300/photo/2016/12/21/300-for-300-logojpg-0743a2a7ab590edb.jpg" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1565c0; cursor: pointer; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px -0.5625em; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px 0px 0.125em; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img class="image__content" src="http://media.nola.com/300/photo/2016/12/21/300-for-300-logojpg-0743a2a7ab590edb.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /></a></div>
</figure><div style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Benton Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; letter-spacing: 0.013em; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">THEN:</span> In 1899, A. Baldwin Wood, a freshly minted Tulane University graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering, was hired by the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board to improve the drainage of the flood-prone city. Among the devices he developed were flap gates, which let water exit a channel without flowing back, and his crowning achievement, the screw pump, which is capable of moving great quantities of water up an incline and over levees into Lake Pontchartrain. As a result of those inventions, new areas of the city could be drained and settled, dramatically expanding the city's footprint.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Benton Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; letter-spacing: 0.013em; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">NOW:</span> Wood's inventions remain an important part of the Sewerage & Water Board's weaponry against rising water. After Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, pump operator <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/arts/design/how-the-city-sank.html" style="border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1565c0; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.125em; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Kevin Martin told The New York Times</a> that Wood's original pumps at Pump Station No. 1 kept doing their thing throughout the storm. "The two new pumps (built in the 1990s) went out right away," Martin said. "They're the most powerful. They sound like freight trains. Four of the old ones kept going all night. The original two pumps (from 1913), those are the most reliable. I'd use those two before I'd use any of the others."</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">TRI-via:</em></span></span></div>
<ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Benton Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: inherit; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2.25em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wood acquired 38 patents for his inventions. His first screw pump, which he invented in 1913, was a 12-foot pump. He later designed a 14-foot pump.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There was lagniappe: Disease rates fell because fetid floodwater could be pumped out faster before mosquitoes had a chance to breed there and spread infections. The pumps also improved the quality of New Orleans' water supply.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There also has been a down side: Draining the city's swamps made the ground subside, and the newly dry areas of the city were as much as 10 feet below sea level, making them vulnerable to rising water and, as a result, dependent on the system of levees, outfall canals and pumps to fight rising water.</li>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="1" frameborder="0" height="360" id="player_IFXT_JwdIQM" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IFXT_JwdIQM?rel=0&autoplay=0&enablejsapi=1&origin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nola.com&widgetid=5" style="border-width: 0px; bottom: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; height: 86.0625px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: 0px; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; visibility: visible; width: 153px;" title="YouTube video player" width="640"></iframe></div>
<span class="video-data" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="title" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFXT_JwdIQM" style="border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1565c0; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.125em; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">New Orleans Pump Station 6</a></span></span></div>
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Wood's pumps have been installed in India, China, Egypt and the Netherlands. He also designed drainage, sewerage and pumping systems for other cities, including Chicago, Milwaukee, Baltimore and San Francisco.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In a 1974 ceremony at Pumping Station No. 1, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers hailed Wood's screw pump system as a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wood was an avid sailor who died of a heart attack on his sloop, the Nydia, in 1956. In his will, he left money to Tulane but on the condition that the university care for the boat for at least 99 years.</li>
<li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Nydia stayed on display in a climate-controlled case on the Uptown campus until 2004, when it was moved to Belle Chasse, home of Tulane's F. Edward Hebert Research Center, because the nearby University Center was being renovated. Wood's heirs sued, claiming Tulane wasn't living up to its obligation. The suit was settled out of court, and the Nydia was moved to the Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum in Biloxi, Miss.</li>
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It is impossible to imagine New Orleans' development during the 20<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span>century without Wood's screw pump, which made whole swaths of the city habitable, including nearly everything between the lake and the Metairie and Gentilly ridges. "With this invention, the city had entered an era of land reclamation that would revolution its geography, and nothing would ever be quite the same again," wrote Joan B. Garvey and Mary Lou Widmer in their 1982 book "Beautiful Crescent."</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">John Pope, contributing writer<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Sources: The Times-Picayune, NOLA.com, "Beautiful Crescent," by Joan B. Garvey and Mary Lou Widmer, staff research</em></div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-76423546457866657212015-11-04T18:42:00.001-06:002015-11-04T18:42:50.163-06:00Girls learn to walk the walk <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Charlene Buckner wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to go to work at Lil Dizzy’s Cafe from 6 a.m. until 3 p.m. and perpetually felt tired. She had sensed “something was going on” with her body, but “didn’t connect weight with fatigue.”</div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">But over the past three years, Buckner has lost 130 pounds, first by changing her eating habits and then pledging to walk 30 minutes a day as a member of GirlTrek. When she first began exercising, Buckner was unable to scale the incline of the Lower Ninth Ward levee. “Now, I run up and down,” she bragged.</span></div>
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“I’m in love with my levee. It’s so soothing and motivating. It’s stuff I can’t really pay for.”</div>
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GirlTrek, a national organization of more than 35,000 Black women, aims to re-establish walking as a tradition, healing bodies, inspiring daughters and reclaiming neighborhood streets. The nonprofit’s three-year goal is to inspire 1 million women to walk every Saturday morning and 250,000 to walk daily.</div>
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Buckner not only changed her own life, but became one of 10 GirlTrek neighborhood captains mentoring other women wanting to make lifestyle change.</div>
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“I’ve learned so much about food and am teaching women what I’ve learned. We eat a bunch of food that clogs our arteries,” Buckner said.</div>
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GirlTrek City Captain Onika Jervis started the New Orleans chapter after moving from New York where she was a marathon runner. Everyone can’t race, but the GirlTrek goal is just to get women up and moving, she said.</div>
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“Black women are traditionally caregivers, caring for families and working multiple jobs, Jervis said. “We know we need to exercise and be fit, but just don’t have time.”</div>
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“Exercise has become so technically advanced with pilates and spinning that it’s intimidating and seems expensive, but there’s a park and there’s streets,” said Jervis, emphasizing the importance of accessibility.</div>
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GirlTrek is a grassroots movement, which partners with churches, schools, community organizations and local companies, to address an unprecedented health crisis. More than 80 percent of Black women are overweight and 59 percent are obese, dying younger and at higher rates of preventable disease than any group of American women. Members recruit other women one-to-one and provide support to succeed via Facebook, Twitter and texting.</div>
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GirlTrek’s mission is not about recreation, however, but a campaign for healing grounded in civil rights history and principles. In March, for example, 65 New Orleans members<b> </b>met up with nine other groups to walk 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.</div>
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“That really ignited New Orleans,” Jervis said about reliving Martin Luther King’s historic march.</div>
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The New Orleans chapter conducted a tour of the historic African-American neighborhood of Treme from Congo Square to St. Augustine Catholic Church, and in September, 200 members attended GirlTrek Mountaintop organizer retreat<b> </b>in Denver. Coincidentally, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy<b> </b>unveiled “Step It Up,” a call to<b> </b>action, encouraging walking and walkable communities. Daily walking reduces the risk of heart disease by 50 percent and diabetes by 58 percent, as well as significantly improving mental health.</div>
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"We are facing an explosion of chronic illnesses. Seven out of ten deaths can be prevented by lifestyle changes including physical activity such as walking,” Murthy said.</div>
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Sheila Collins who attended the leadership conference, had suffered from Spinal Stenosis characterized by degenerating vertebral discs. In February, after surgery, she began walking to rebuild muscles and reduce her pain. Now a neighborhood leader, she often sends text messages to keep others going.</div>
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“It’s more enjoyable when you can walk with somebody - you can talk. It’s even better in a group,” Collins said. “I love the camaraderie and sisterhood.”</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-19905190446324768042015-08-22T20:36:00.000-05:002015-08-22T20:36:38.111-05:00Kids vie for social dancing championships<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Lyons Recreation Center was lit up like a music hall with cars parked helter-skelter along Louisiana Avenue’s neutral ground. No, the free event was not a local audition for “So You Think You Can Dance,” but a competition featuring elementary and middle-school students performing traditional salsa, waltz, tango, merengue and swing dance. The Second Annual MindSteppers Dance Championship showcased public and private school children who have diligently been practicing social dance techniques as an extracurricular activity.</div>
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“I did not expect that all the kids could be so excited,” said Claire Couvreur, a teacher-instructor at Lycée Francais.</div>
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The competition is the culmination of the MindSteppers Teacher-Training Program at six schools - Joshua Butler Elementary School in Westwego, Gretna No. 2 Academy for Advanced Studies, Immaculate Conception School in Marrero, International School of Louisiana in the Lower Garden District, Lycée Francais de la Nouvelle Orleans in Uptown and Harriet Tubman Charter School in Algiers. Nathalie Gomes Adams, </div>
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MindSteppers’ co-director, says partner dancing yields many benefits, including improving children’s behavior, building self-confidence and teaching social and life skills such as good communication, etiquette, and tolerance.</div>
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Owner of Dance Quarter and a champion swing dancer, Adams was also an instructor with Dancing Classroom, which was featured in the documentary, “Mad Hot Ballroom,” about New York City public school children learning to social dance. After moving to New Orleans, Adams created a similar program in 29 Jefferson Parish schools.</div>
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Friday night, she supervised the contest among 165 students. Competitors, dressed in fancy costumes, sat expectantly waiting their turns in the spotlight. Judges were already in place. The stage was set with golden trophies to award top dancers while parents and friends assembled in bleacher seats ready to be dazzled.</div>
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“They’ve been practicing a month strong,” said Mabel Ray, mother of La’Jae Todd, a fifth-grader at Harriet Tubman. “It’s all she’s been talking about lately.”</div>
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First-graders from several schools - girls in red tutus and boys in red suspenders - started swinging to “Frogman” Henry’s anthem, “Ain’t Got No Home.” Swoons to the tune of “Fernando’s Hideaway” elicited audience gasps and shimmies brought a burst of applause.</div>
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A first-grade trio from Hope Stone New Orleans rocked out to the Jackson 5’s “ABC” with pantomimed assistance from the sidelines. Every first grader got a prize.</div>
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By second and third grade, finalists demonstrated real panache, causing salsa judges to circulate for closer looks.</div>
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“I’m loving that they’re doing this with the kids - teaching them other cultures with dancing,” said Leontine Benoit, grandmother to Sanai Benoit who waltzed for Gretna No. 2.</div>
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To learn the dances, nine teacher coaches participated in monthly workshops at Dance Quarter, not only to get the steps, but how to be both leader and follower. Maria “Pepa” Lopez had already been a swing dance student herself at Dance Quarter.</div>
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“The hardest part is to recruit the boys - they don’t want to touch,” said Lopez, a Spanish teacher at Gretna No. 2. “It takes a month to get them to dance together.”</div>
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Her student, Ashley Sutherland, won a prize for salsa. “I love how I could express myself while dancing,” Ashley said.</div>
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Krista Rae Szaflarski, who heads Harriet Tubman’s after-school enrichment programs, used the school motto of “courage and grit” to encourage students’ commitment to dancing. Five Tubman couples placed in the competition. </div>
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“The kids were better dancers than myself by the end,” Szaflarski admitted.</div>
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“I expected them to like it, but didn’t expect them to fall in love with salsa and merengue!”</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-47887037041407419482015-08-17T21:18:00.000-05:002015-08-17T21:18:13.894-05:00Volunteers help Lower 9 family move home<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>By Mary Rickard</b></div>
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<b>New Orleans Advocate</b></div>
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A cluster of homes near the Industrial Canal, including that of Errol and Esther Joseph, is an oasis among scattered plots of willowy grass. A crew of volunteers wearing purple lowernine.org T-shirts stream in and out the couple’s house, laying down floor tiles, sanding and painting walls, informally supervised by Errol Joseph.</div>
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“I really like working on that house because it will make him so happy to live there,” said Kevin Panman, a recent graduate of The Hague University of Applied Sciences on a three-month tourist visa. Since 2008, visitors from 30 countries have signed up with <a href="http://lowernine.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">lowernine.org</span></a>, a local nonprofit utilizing volunteer labor to revitalize the historic neighborhood.</div>
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The Josephs named their home rebuilding effort “Project Grace & Mercy.” Ten years after 17-foot flood waters inundated their neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina, the couple will finally be back home by Aug. 29.</div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">“It is coming together by God’s grace,” said the 64-year-old licensed contractor.</span></div>
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Errol Joseph “went in circles” for five years, trying to negotiate with Allstate Insurance, The Road Home Program, and Federal Emergency Management Agency before meeting Laura Paul, executive director of <a href="http://lowernine.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">lowernine.org</span></a>. He had been unable to get a loan for reconstruction because authorities had already made plans to abandon the Lower Ninth Ward, and his mortgage company demanded to be paid in full right away.</div>
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“The land had essentially no value,” he said. In the meantime, the Josephs were forced to rent at more than twice the amount of their mortgage.</div>
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But in 2013, <a href="http://lowernine.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">lowernine.org</span></a> volunteers began working on the Josephs’ new home.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Esther Joseph</td></tr>
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With an operating budget of less than $150,000 year, the nonprofit has fully rebuilt 75 houses and renovated 200 more. Paul estimates <a href="http://lowernine.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">lowernine.org</span></a> has contributed an estimated $8 million in volunteer labor without which most families could never have afforded to rebuild. </div>
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The nonprofit welcomes and houses workers of all skill levels from across the country and around the world for a few days or a few months. Many volunteers were not yet teenagers when Hurricane Katrina struck the coast.</div>
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“At first, it was just me getting my home together. Now, it’s a ministry for me,” Errol Joseph said. “I get with these kids, they make me happy.”</div>
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Panman, 25, was shocked to see so many homes abandoned. When a storm caused massive flooding in the Netherlands in 1953, the Dutch government quickly stepped up to repair the damage.“It opens your eyes that this could happen,” he said.</div>
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Jeongmoon Lee, a college student from South Korea was also surprised by the lack of progress. His country moves quickly after a tsunami devastates its coast.</div>
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“It’s been 10 years now and I don’t really understand how the restoration is this little,” Lee said.</div>
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Despite hardships, the Josephs were determined to return to the neighborhood where his family lived for generations.</div>
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“I used to come and sit on the porch and just reminisce about my dad, my neighbors,” he said. Miss Effie would always be cooking and baking goodies to share. Miss Geniva had all the local gossip, and “Miss Almina made the best Heavenly Hash in the world.” The place holds special meaning for him.</div>
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To fund more <a href="http://lowernine.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">lowernine.org</span></a> home rebuilding projects, Alex Goldberg, a James Madison University junior and <a href="http://lowernine.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">lowernine.org</span></a> summer volunteer, launched a <a href="http://lowernine.org/50states/" target="_blank">#50States Campaign</a> online campaign to raise $1,000 per state.</div>
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“You don’t really know until you’ve lived here and seen it for yourself. It strikes an emotional nerve,” Goldberg said. The experience helped him decide to pursue a nonprofit career.</div>
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“This solidified what I want to do with my life,” he said.</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-29038269219210011592015-07-06T16:20:00.001-05:002015-07-06T16:20:48.766-05:00Rickie Lee credits New Orleans for her renewal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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By Alex Rawls<br />New Orleans Advocate</h4>
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When Bruce Springsteen brought singer Rickie Lee Jones onstage during his Jazz Fest appearance in 2014, it was the answer to a “whatever happened to” question.</div>
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In 1979, Jones’ self-titled debut album produced two hits, “Chuck E.’s in Love” and “Coolsville.” She was on the cover of Rolling Stone. She won a Grammy for best new artist and was enough of a celebrity to have a signature style item — her beret.</div>
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She pursued her love of jazz-inflected pop and soul through the ’80s and into the ’90s, but her audience dwindled along the way.</div>
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Her music stayed good and her voice became an even more distinctive, better controlled instrument, but Jones was out of step with the moment.</div>
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It was such a musically dynamic time that she had a hard time being heard</div>
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“To have been the foremost female pop singer and have no one know you is humbling,” Jones said.</div>
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Her generation still remembers her impact, but another has grown up without an awareness of her.</div>
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“The gift of something like that is that you have to harness an inner strength and an inner confidence,” she said.</div>
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Rickie Lee Jones is back with a new album, “The Other Side of Desire,” which was released Tuesday.</div>
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She has been a New Orleans resident since October 2013, and she credits the move for helping her reconnect to the joy of making music.</div>
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Before the move, Jones lived in Los Angeles, but it had become a dead end. She’d become discontented and hyperconscious of her work, second-guessing her musical choices. Even her friends became hard to see.</div>
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“I was so lonely there,” she said. “The thing that happened for me here was that wherever I went — and this must have something to do with what I was seeking and maybe changed myself — people looked me in the eye and said, ‘Good morning.’ They’re not doing that in L.A.”</div>
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Dr. John first introduced Jones to New Orleans in 1989 when the two recorded a version of “Makin’ Whoopie” together.</div>
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He sent her out to meet James Booker and the Neville Brothers, among others. That visit made enough of an impression that she was startled by the number of tourists she saw when she moved here.</div>
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“When I go to the Quarter, which is still really enchanting to me, every block has tourists,” she said. “I don’t feel the indigenous population like I did back then. I’m sure they’re still there, but I don’t feel them.”</div>
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Creatively, Jones had been in a bad place, but things started to turn around here.</div>
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She struck up a friendship with the Lost Bayou Ramblers’ Louis Michot, and that helped her think of songwriting not as a business or a sellable product but as simple creativity.</div>
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She came to think of writing songs as part of how people connect and communicate, and the process became easier.</div>
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Their friendship inspired her to write “Waltz de Mon Pere,” her first song for “The Other Side of Desire.”</div>
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She said her writing process has always been a slow one in which ideas come to her, get written down, and over time some lines get built on while others are removed and replaced. Because it’s laborious, she has traditionally written only when she needed to for an upcoming album, but that changed in New Orleans.</div>
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“I’m still writing,” she said. “Almost every day, I’m still hearing music. I’m trying to tell myself that it’s safe to leave the levers open and keep writing and listening.”</div>
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Despite its title, “Waltz de Mon Pere” and most of the songs on the album sound like they could only have come from Jones.</div>
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Since her debut album, Jones has populated her songs with the people life overlooks, people who look for and offer gestures of human warmth — frequently boozy ones — because that’s all they have to give.</div>
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The core band on the album is made up of longtime New Orleanians — Jon Cleary, James Singleton, Shane Theriot and Doug Belote — but they only exert mild gravitational pull on “The Other Side of Desire.”</div>
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Jones’ fans will very clearly recognize it as a Rickie Lee Jones album.</div>
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For the first time, Jones involved fans in the recording process. She funded the sessions with a Pledge Music campaign and kept contributors abreast of the album’s progress through a series of blog posts.</div>
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Some big donors got a chance to visit the studio, which took some adjustment for Jones.</div>
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“If it would have happened at some other time (in my career) it would have been intolerable,” Jones said. She thought of this album as a “family project,” and that helped her get her mind around the visitors.</div>
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“My family had just gotten bigger. As it turned out, every one of them was a really neat person. They were all OK.”</div>
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When Jones joined Springsteen onstage at Jazz Fest, it was as much of a surprise for her as it was for the crowd.</div>
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Springsteen guitarist Nils Lofgren and his wife are fans of Jones, and when Jones saw that Springsteen was playing Jazz Fest, she reached out to Lofgren’s wife to say hello. They invited her to visit them backstage, and when Springsteen saw her, he got a bunch of lyrics and went over some songs for her to sing.</div>
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“When I was up there singing, he came over and said, ‘Don’t leave the stage,’ ” she remembered. As the set continued, the band went into songs she didn’t know, but she stood with his wife and backing vocalist Patti Scialfa and did what she could. “I don’t think my mic was on,” Jones said, laughing.</div>
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“He said, ‘We love you, and we’re so glad you’re back,’ and I wasn’t back yet. It was, ‘All of us are waiting for you,’ and to walk up and say that to me was — oh, my heart.”</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-43075147891116710002015-07-05T14:48:00.003-05:002015-07-05T15:04:05.483-05:00Maafa ceremony recalls enslaved ancestors<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_UDPKrVeUqtL_f-EppB5guCGhJBzFNUYtj6wfVc1gDxSsPFbAT8QSSa4VvovmhcUOAa-2vzPh-ZfWQoPdbEUH8haVyvJ00awNC_6AltKPCdg694IIO1wcmKq6Hp8zeSZBonluK128zeAN/s1600/MAAFA+2014085.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_UDPKrVeUqtL_f-EppB5guCGhJBzFNUYtj6wfVc1gDxSsPFbAT8QSSa4VvovmhcUOAa-2vzPh-ZfWQoPdbEUH8haVyvJ00awNC_6AltKPCdg694IIO1wcmKq6Hp8zeSZBonluK128zeAN/s400/MAAFA+2014085.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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By Mary Rickard<br />New Orleans Advocate</h4>
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The millions of Africans and their descendents who suffered and perished in slavery will be remembered on the morning of Saturday, July 4, with singing, dancing, drumming and prayer during the 15th annual Maafa Commemoration. According to a statement from Ashe Cultural Arts Center, sponsors of the event, Maafa is a Kiswahili word meaning “horrific tragedy.”</div>
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The two-hour ceremony begins at 7 a.m. at Congo Square and will be followed by a procession winding though the historic Treme neighborhood, the French Quarter and ending at the Mississippi River, where slave ships landed. White carnations will be tossed into the river at Woldenberg Park where the procession will conclude. Participants are asked to wear white attire for the ceremonies.</div>
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Carol Bebelle, Ashe Cultural Arts Center executive director, said, “The local Maafa Commemoration offers an opportunity for the whole community to pause and reflect on this great transgression against humanity. It allows us to personally, and as a community, agree to distance ourselves institutionally, in word and deed, from that transgression, its legacy and the evolved practice of racism in our civic, social, spiritual and personal lives.”</div>
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The healing ceremony in Congo Square will include inter-faith words of healing, a tribute to the indigenous people of Louisiana and the release of white doves of peace. Senegal’s Morikeba Kouyate will play traditional music on the kora, a West African harp.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixMY686ExS6iz8z0O-2Dff6A3y6LaoBUxO7rMIipZIQfG3R0Pre_Jpje6yJYABv3vU863dOW-iJZE1oal34csMo8CuiBf3VjnBii7OfRQimttg4ApCK_Se4EVQzxfnlEql9NnfQxB_eKEo/s1600/MAAFA+2014270.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixMY686ExS6iz8z0O-2Dff6A3y6LaoBUxO7rMIipZIQfG3R0Pre_Jpje6yJYABv3vU863dOW-iJZE1oal34csMo8CuiBf3VjnBii7OfRQimttg4ApCK_Se4EVQzxfnlEql9NnfQxB_eKEo/s400/MAAFA+2014270.jpg" width="400" /></a>Ancestors will be honored by name, including victims of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, the levee breaches, bombings in Boston, the Mother’s Day shooting in New Orleans and other incidents of senseless violence.</div>
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According to Luther Gray, coordinator of Ashe’s community and cultural programs, Congo Square is important because it was the only place in the Antebellum South where enslaved African-Americans and people of color could practice their rituals and communicate in their own language.</div>
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“We’re 200 years removed, but the spiritual energy is still there,” Gray said. “It’s not just something in the past.”</div>
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According to Gray, American Indians in the area were the ones who made Congo Square sacred ground, with their rituals during the corn harvests, before the arrival of the French.</div>
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At the ceremony, Queen Chief Warhorse, chief of the Tchufuncta Nation, Chahta Tribe, will speak, while the Treme Fi-Yi-Yi Mardi Gras Indians perform, he said.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDajxFMZ-UpzQG9UObpsaFl21XHQi-b619-BqK0PErRuHFRxuyscyuBPjaceIjTakKfO6tPNGQ06FBPL29SgCMeGsN2vJSChV6jSHPUil_BPHnMXtACw6Akeq-e8U0id6h16t6k_WmpZJs/s1600/MAAFA+2014328.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDajxFMZ-UpzQG9UObpsaFl21XHQi-b619-BqK0PErRuHFRxuyscyuBPjaceIjTakKfO6tPNGQ06FBPL29SgCMeGsN2vJSChV6jSHPUil_BPHnMXtACw6Akeq-e8U0id6h16t6k_WmpZJs/s320/MAAFA+2014328.jpg" width="320" /></a>At 9 a.m., drummers, musicians, Mardi Gras Indians and African dancers will lead the gathering of participants in a procession, first stopping at the Tomb of the Unknown Slave beside St. Augustine Catholic Church. Guides will be stationed at several significant locations, including the former site of the convent of Sisters of the Holy Family, a Catholic order of free women of color founded by Henriette DeLille; former slave auction sites at Cafe Maspero and Royal Orleans; and the Louisiana Supreme Courthouse where Homer Adolph Plessy appealed a racial segregation law in the case, Plessy v. Fergusson.</div>
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Historically, slaves, American Indians and free people of color congregated at Congo Square on Sundays to sell goods and reaffirm their heritage. New Orleans was the only place in the South where drums had not been forbidden. To this day, members of the Congo Square Preservation Society meet weekly to continue the legacy of drumming.</div>
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The Code Noir created laws for slavery in French colonies, including rules for punishment but also gave slaves the right to marry, keep families together and have Sundays free from work. These laws affecting enslaved persons were unique to Louisiana.</div>
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“New Orleans is a Sunday city, based on the fact that it was a free day,” Gray said.</div>
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Celebrations commemorating African ancestors who endured the Middle Passage take place annually in many cities, including San Francisco; Houston; Montgomery, Alabama; Washington, D.C.; Detroit; New York; and Rio de Janeiro.</div>
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Shuttles will be available to return people to Congo Square after the ceremony concludes.</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-35143323164001697862015-06-29T16:09:00.000-05:002015-06-29T16:09:07.761-05:00Teacher learned about New Orleans 'specialness'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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By Mark Guarino</h4>
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NEW ORLEANS ADVOCATE</h3>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Lora, 'Libre Baskerville', Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25px;">The roots of Melanie Deffendall’s family go deep in New Orleans. Her ancestors arrived in the city in 1721 and generations since have stayed put. Before Katrina hit and the levees broke, she was enjoying a life she established in Gentilly Woods: gardening, enjoying her home, and teaching at nearby Delgado Community College. On May 5, 2006, her son Benjamin interviewed her about her past, the impact of the storm and what lay ahead. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.</span><br />
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<b>Benjamin Deffendall:</b> Mom, what was it like to live in New Orleans during the ’50s and ’60s?</div>
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<b>Melanie Deffendall:</b> I was telling my coworkers about the wagons that used to come down the street when I was 4 or 5. We had the waffle wagon, the rag wagon, the vegetable and fruit wagon. So it was a simpler time than it is now. We didn’t have a TV until I was about 5, which was OK. We lived in a working-class neighborhood. Segregation was still in place. We always lived in neighborhoods that were mixed, black and white. Different streets, but in close proximity to each other. I don’t know, I just don’t want to live anywhere else. I will probably stay here until we all have to leave. When you visit other places, you realize how different New Orleans is. Even at my age, I didn’t realize how different it was until we had to evacuate.</div>
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<b>BD:</b> What is it about New Orleans that makes you not want to leave?</div>
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<b>MD:</b> I think it’s because we have such a different attitude about things. If you think about all the hurricanes that have devastated Florida and Texas and Mississippi, nobody’s had blue tarp fashion shows, nobody’s had comedy on gutted refrigerators that you don’t dare open. People look at things differently here. They’re more relaxed, more laid back. I think it’s just a way of life and an attitude that attracts people to come here but they don’t take it home. And we just try to enjoy life. Not do things so rigidly.</div>
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<b>BD:</b> Tell me about your family.</div>
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<b>MD:</b> My family had a lot of characters. My grandmother and her sister were named Thelma and Louise. They ran liquor over to the Gulf Coast during Prohibition for money. My mother had one leg, she had a brother with one arm, and another brother who was deaf.</div>
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My dad made false teeth. And when I was a kid he would bring home all kinds of people that didn’t have teeth. There was a guy on Canal Street with no legs and he was on a little platform on wheels and he sold pencils during the day. But he didn’t have teeth so my dad brought him home. We lived in a house with stairs. And he had these two blocks of wood with handles and he would pull himself up the stairs like that. Well my mother had one leg but we didn’t know anybody with no legs. So we were just fascinated.</div>
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We had two old ladies that used to come that my dad made teeth for. And they would come every week to get them adjusted. They would bring stuff from the bakery. So we were always glad to see them. One day my dad said to me, “Go downstairs.” He had a laboratory down in the basement of the house. And he said, “Have a seat.” He didn’t do a thing to the teeth, all he did was clean them. He sat down and smoked a cigarette, took them back upstairs. They would say, “Oh, much better.” It was just an outing for them. Then we had another friend of my dad’s who was a plumber. He could do pushups with all four of us sitting on his back. We were really impressed because he was only about 5 feet tall but he was really strong.</div>
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[Jazz clarinetist] Pete Fountain was a friend of your grandfather’s. They grew up in the same neighborhood. When he finished playing a gig, he would go by grannie’s house. They were all younger. He would bring hot French bread and she’d make the coffee and they would sit up and just drink coffee and eat French bread. Two or three o’clock in the morning. They didn’t mind that.</div>
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<b>BD:</b> How has your life been different than you imagined?</div>
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<b>MD: </b>Since last August it has quite a bit different. We had a complete lifestyle change, all of us. You leave your house with three days worth of clothes and expect maybe two weeks without electricity. Then the storm passes and you wake up to find out how it’s going and find your entire city is under water. I don’t think the total catastrophic nature of the event sunk in. So we are still trying to figure out, “now what?”</div>
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I thought I had a pretty comfortable life. I was pretty set, liked my house, liked my yard, the garden was pretty good. Now I have studs in the roof. Furniture from other people, donations. I really don’t have a place to keep them because I don’t know what to do with my house until they tell us what we can do. Then FEMA says if you rebuild and you don’t meet code, we can fine you. We have nothing, and you’re going to fine us for fixing our house so we have a place to live?</div>
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Most of us feel like gypsies. We have things here, there and everywhere. It’s a hard time. And people are not getting better mentally. They are getting worse.</div>
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<b>BD: </b>What was the most important lesson you learned?</div>
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<b>MD: </b>Stuff is not important at all. It’s nice to have things, but it’s the people and your relationships with people. They don’t have anything either. They’re as wiped out as we are. But they share. Whatever you have, you just share with everybody else. I think people have now a new love for New Orleans. All things New Orleans, we have to go. If you have French Quarter Fest, people show up, Jazz Fest, people go. Small concerts, people go. People are going out and trying to be with other people. Because of course it’s not nice to be at your house now.</div>
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<b>BD: </b>What do you want to say to people about all of this?</div>
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<b>MD:</b> You can’t give up. You have to come back and you have to make it right. You can’t keep out whole sections of the population because you think they’re not worthy or poor or uneducated, or have some kind of past you don’t like. Everybody should be able to come back. I don’t think housing projects are a good thing, but they could have repaired some of those housing projects much easier than they dragged all those trailers in here.</div>
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It’s the people who make New Orleans. It’s not the place so much. You can’t transplant yourself somewhere else; it just doesn’t work. We have to join together. We need to get some clear answers. We all feel we have no leadership whatsoever. So everyone’s out there doing their own thing and we’re not moving forward as fast as we should. We feel great abandonment by the government. We don’t have enough mental health professionals here. People are really wigging out. We need help.</div>
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<b>BD: </b>Anything else you want to say?</div>
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<b>MD: </b>Let’s talk about All Saint’s Day. That bothered me a lot this year. I always went to the cemetery and put flowers. And I couldn’t. And it was my job to carry that forward. It was a big day, you got dressed up, you went to the cemetery and you went out to eat. It’s really pretty because the flowers are all over the whole place. Couldn’t get in there this year. I guess when I die you’ll have to do it. Because no one else does.</div>
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Deffendall returned to work at Delgado, where she teaches sociology and created the Irma Thomas Center for Women in Search of Excellence that empowers female students to stay in school and on a path to success.</div>
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Even though she says she is “dreading” the 10-year anniversary of Katrina, she finds she often talks about her experience with students. The stories, she believes, need to be told.</div>
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“I don’t think it helps me, I think it helps them,” she said. “For me, it’s like picking at a scab. Once you do it, things start bubbling up really fast. I think that’s true for a lot of us.”</div>
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It took three years for Deffendall, 63, to return to her home, which took more than four feet of water. Those early years of living in a FEMA trailer took perseverance but she says she is encouraged that her neighborhood is now just starting to look better. Abandoned lots are being purchased and empty homes are getting occupied.</div>
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But to her, New Orleans still has a long way to go. “I really don’t think we’re there yet,” she says. “I had a plan that my house would be paid for when I was retired. But now I will die probably owing money on this house,” she said. “Katrina had long-term effects that people don’t think about.”</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-36149526307802591702015-06-21T14:24:00.000-05:002015-06-21T14:24:48.754-05:00Harold Battiste, composer, producer, dies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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By: WWL-TV<br />
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Harold Battiste, the prolific New Orleans jazz musician whose work as a composer, producer and arranger helped shape the careers of Sonny and Cher, Sam Cooke, Dr. John and dozens of others, died Friday. He was 83.</div>
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Friends and family posted news of Battiste's death after a lengthy illness.</div>
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As a producer and arranger, Battiste was the man behind a string of number one hits by artists locally and nationally, including Barbara George's "I Know (You Don t Love Me No More)", Joe Jones' "You Talk Too Much," Lee Dorsey's "Ya Ya" and Sam Cooke's "You Send Me."</div>
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After moving to Los Angeles in the 1970s (where he spent 30 years in the music industry), he also shaped the early careers of Sonny and Cher, the singing duo with whom he worked for 15 years, earning them six gold records. Battiste also acted as musical director on their television series. He also made the arrangement and led the band for "I Got You Babe," the No. 1, million-selling song that made Sonny and Cher a hit recording act in the summer of 1965.</div>
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"Sonny wouldn't do anything without me," Battiste told The Advocate music writer John Wirt in a 2010 interview. "Sonny knew what I could do better than I knew. He told me, 'Man, you're better than most of these cats out here!' But I didn't know that anything that I did had that much value. I got $125 for 'I Got You Babe.' That's all."</div>
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According to Wirt, Battiste didn't reap big financial rewards from Sonny and Cher, but his work with the duo did mean he could fulfill his highest priority, supporting his family. He also genuinely liked Bono, Wirt wrote.</div>
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"He was a beautiful cat," Battiste said. "And he just wouldn't let me go. I didn't want to do that television show. But Sonny said, 'Look, Harold. Come and just do three shows.' 'OK, I'll try it.' And the producer really liked the music that I wrote and the opening show was wonderful. I said, 'Well, this is interesting, so I'm going to stick it out.' "</div>
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In addition to the artists above, Battiste's dozens of credits include the O'Jays, the Fifth Dimension's Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, New Orleans' Art Neville, Larry Williams, Lee Dorsey, Eddie Bo, King Floyd and Willie Tee.</div>
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Battiste also played a key role in helping New Orleans music icon Mac Rebennack develop his Dr. John stage persona in the 1960s and 1970s, producing the singer/pianist's early albums.</div>
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"His mama called me when he was on his way out to California. She said, 'Look out for him, because he can't come back to New Orleans.' But I had known him since he was a youngster. He came to me when I was still working with Specialty Records in New Orleans, about 15, 16 years old, when he was a clean-cut little Catholic boy," Battiste said in the 2010 interview.</div>
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Battiste worked with the bevy of New Orleans musicians who were in Los Angeles at the time to help craft the "Dr. John" persona, based on a character conjured from voodoo legend.</div>
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"That was the key to when I did the Dr. John thing," Battiste explained. "I just had to get a bunch of New Orleans people. I knew that we would make the vibe that we wanted." Dr. John the Night Tripper made his well-received debut in February 1968 with the mystically joyful Gris-Gris. Battiste arranged and produced more Dr. John projects, 1969's Babylon and 1972's landmark homage to New Orleans rhythm-and-blues, Gumbo.</div>
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A native of New Orleans and graduate of Dillard University, Battiste also worked early on as a teacher in the public school system. Later, as a music educator he also helped establish the jazz studies program at the University of New Orleans (alongside Marsalis) and can count among his proteges the Marsalis children (Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason) as well as Nicholas Payton, Victor Goines and others. Battiste also lectured on jazz studies at UNO and established the AFO Foundation to help preserve and document the heritage of New Orleans music.</div>
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Battiste was the subject of a 2010 memoir co-written by Karen Celestan and published by The Historic New Orleans Collection, titled "Unfinished Blues: Memories of a New Orleans Music Man."</div>
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"I worked on it about eight years, man," he said in The Advocate interview. "But I never thought anybody would publish it!"</div>
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Battiste said he felt overwhelmed upon seeing the book for the first time.</div>
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"It brought tears to my eyes," he said in the music studio in his small New Orleans apartment. "Seeing myself like that, in a book, I realized I didn't know who I was. It was that profound to me. I said, 'Did I really do all that?'"</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-18158313854341487972015-05-04T12:23:00.000-05:002015-05-04T12:23:00.140-05:00Napoleon House changes guard<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Friday will be a momentous day in the history of the <a class="type__font-weight--bold" href="http://www.napoleonhouse.com/" id="N0xde58c0N0xdb75a0:N0xde58c0N0xf93308" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; font-weight: 700 !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Napoleon House</a>, as the French Quarter landmark is slated to officially change hands from the Impastato family that founded it generations ago to local restaurateur Ralph Brennan.</div>
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Don’t expect much public fanfare, however, or even a change of pace as the plate-sized muffulettas and hazy Pimm’s Cup cocktails continue to make the rounds of its famously evocative dining room and courtyard.</div>
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“Hopefully, no one will notice the difference,” Brennan said. “We really don’t want to disrupt anything.”</div>
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Since the planned sale of the Napoleon House <a class="type__font-weight--bold" href="http://www.wwltv.com/story/news/2015/03/31/ralph-brennan-to-purchase-napoleon-house/70723442/" id="N0xde58c0N0xdb7660:N0xde58c0N0xf93590" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; font-weight: 700 !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">was announced</a> in late March, Brennan has <a class="type__font-weight--bold" href="http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/crime/12036739-171/napoleon-house-changing-the-guard" id="N0xde58c0N0xdb76c0:N0xde58c0N0xf93620" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; font-weight: 700 !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">maintained that he’ll bring a light touch</a> to the historic Chartres Street property, with the goal of preserving the character that makes the restaurant and bar so idiosyncratic and distinctive, even by the high standards of the French Quarter. Once the sale is finalized on Friday, Brennan said, the Napoleon House will simply continue with business as usual.</div>
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Initially, there will be only a few new faces. Brennan tapped Chris Montero, formerly his chef and general manager at <a class="type__font-weight--bold" href="http://www.cafeb.com/" id="N0xde58c0N0xdb7720:N0xde58c0N0xf93740" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; font-weight: 700 !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Cafe B</a>, to run the Napoleon House, and he’ll be joined by a team of three new chefs and managers drawn from Brennan’s company.</div>
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Montero has spent much of April working at the Napoleon House, essentially shadowing proprietor Sal Impastato to learn the particularities of the operation. Even with the sale completed, Impastato, his wife, Vivian, and sisters Maria Impastato and Jane Lala will stay on for a few weeks to lend more continuity to the change.</div>
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“They’re wonderful people, and they have a great tradition, and we’re honored that they picked us to continue it,” Brennan said.</div>
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The Napoleon House property was built as a mansion for a New Orleans mayor, Nicholas Girod, in 1814, when the city was just emerging from its colonial era. The Impastatos first operated a grocery there in 1914, when the French Quarter was a bastion of Italian immigrants.</div>
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From there, they gradually developed it into a bar and later a restaurant. After a century of ownership, the family was looking for a buyer to take over and continue the business, and Impastato said a mutual friend and accountant connected him with Brennan.</div>
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While Impastato acknowledged that some of his staff and customers were apprehensive about the change in ownership, he said the slow approach Brennan has promised and Montero’s efforts to learn the operation have made a difference.</div>
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“They’re coming in with people who have worked together a long time, so I think that’s going to help,” Impastato said. “We’re proud of this place; we always wanted it to grow, and I think they can do that.”</div>
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Montero and Brennan said an obvious area for growth is in banquets and private events. While the ground-floor rooms and courtyard are the best-known features, they constitute only a fraction of the total property, which has two more floors, an attic and wings that surround the courtyard. Some of these areas are now configured as small apartments.</div>
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The Napoleon House has long held private functions in a second-floor ballroom, though on a limited schedule. Montero said there is much more potential for these types of events in the future. The menu and operating hours may be up for revision, too, but Montero said any such changes will be decided later.</div>
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The Napoleon House will be <a class="type__font-weight--bold" href="http://www.neworleans-food.com/restaurants.php" id="N0xde58c0N0xdb7960:N0xde58c0N0xf93e00" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; font-weight: 700 !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">the eighth restaurant</a> for Brennan’s company, including his family’s historic Brennan’s Restaurant a block and a half away on Royal Street, <a class="type__font-weight--bold" href="http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/10869376-123/brennans-rebooted" id="N0xde58c0N0xdb79c0:N0xde58c0N0xf93e90" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; font-weight: 700 !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">which he reopened</a> with business partner Terry White in November.</div>
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While the Napoleon House is joining the fold, Brennan said it will remain a unique property.</div>
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“All of my restaurants are different; it’s not a cookie-cutter approach, and that’s what I like about it, and that will be the same here,” he said. “We’ll change some things; they have their systems, we have ours, but these are things that the guests will never notice.”</div>
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For his part, Impastato said change has long been a fraught topic at the Napoleon House, though by sticking to what they knew, his family built a business that still stands out.</div>
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“When I took over, they didn’t want me to touch anything, and that was 40 years ago. So we never changed; we never followed the trends. We just kept doing what we’re doing,” he said. “People come to New Orleans, and everything is new and gleaming these days, but we never touched anything here.”</div>
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Follow Ian McNulty on Twitter, <a class="type__font-weight--bold" href="https://twitter.com/IanMcNultyNOLA" id="N0xde58c0N0xdb7ba0:N0xde58c0N0xf94280" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; font-weight: 700 !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">@IanMcNultyNOLA</a>.</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-1791343980248359312015-05-01T12:17:00.000-05:002015-05-01T12:17:33.161-05:00Musician starts foundation to save lives<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Lora, 'Libre Baskerville', Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25px;">By Alex Rawls</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Lora, 'Libre Baskerville', Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25px;">For more than a decade, the Neville Brothers and the Radiators closed the main stages on the final Sunday of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell.</span><br />
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But the Radiators closed the Gentilly Stage for the last time in 2011, and the Nevilles were the last act for the last time on the Acura Stage in 2012.</div>
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Since then, the Gentilly Stage has seen a variety of closers, while Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue has settled into the symbolic space the Neville Brothers once occupied.</div>
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Shorty started a busy festival week Saturday when he headlined the Saenger Theatre for the first time for a show he titled<a class="type__font-weight--bold" href="http://www.jambase.com/Articles/124392/Trombone-Shorty-Announces-Treme-Threauxdown-Special-Guests" id="N0x2b84ca0N0x29e4490:N0x2b84ca0N0x2a59cb0" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; font-weight: 700 !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"> “The Tremé Threauxdown.” </a>He and Orleans Avenue started the show, but it became a jam with Allen Toussaint, Kermit Ruffins, New Breed Brass Band, and Mystikal — all people who were influential on his music, Troy Andrews said last week during a rehearsal for the show.</div>
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On Thursday night, he’ll host <a class="type__font-weight--bold" href="http://www.tromboneshortyfoundation.org/events-2/shorty-fest-2015/" id="N0x2b84ca0N0x29e44f0:N0x2b84ca0N0x2a59dd0" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; font-weight: 700 !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Shorty Fest</a> at Generations Hall, a fundraiser for The Trombone Shorty Foundation, before playing at the Fair Grounds Sunday.</div>
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Andrews had a good year in 2014. His stock rose nationally; he recorded with Foo Fighters and played before them when the rock band performed at Voodoo in City Park last fall.</div>
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When <a class="type__font-weight--bold" href="http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/9637837-171/prince-thrills-essence-festival-crowd" id="N0x2b84ca0N0x29e4550:N0x2b84ca0N0x2a59f80" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; font-weight: 700 !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Prince played the Essence Music Festival last July</a>, he brought Shorty onstage, then kept him there for the next half-hour to jam. Shorty’s blend of funk, R&B, rock and hip-hop can speak to those very different audiences, but it is also true to the New Orleans tradition.</div>
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He credits the broad reach of his music and his ability to fine-tune it for the audience in front of him to his musical upbringing in New Orleans.</div>
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“Playing with the Neville Brothers, with Kermit, with Danny Barker, you learn those skills,” Andrews said.</div>
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He wants the <a class="type__font-weight--bold" href="http://www.tromboneshortyfoundation.org/" id="N0x2b84ca0N0x29e45b0:N0x2b84ca0N0x2a5a1c0" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; font-weight: 700 !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Trombone Shorty Foundation</a> to be part of that education for the next generation. The organization aspires to “preserve and perpetuate the unique musical culture of New Orleans by passing down its traditions to future generations of musicians,” according to its mission statement.</div>
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For Shorty, it’s an extension of the kind of organic education he received from Tuba Fats, his brother James Andrews, and the countless musicians he encountered while growing up in Tremé.</div>
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The idea came to him three or four years ago while on tour in Miami.</div>
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“I was watching the news and it was talking about murders in New Orleans, and that made an impact to see how we were perceived outside New Orleans,” Andrews said. “I wanted to see if I could save some kids’ lives through music.”</div>
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His first response was to buy some instruments and approach Mayor Mitch Landrieu — Andrews calls him “Mitch” — about how to get the instruments to students who needed them. But that was a stop-gap effort. He wanted to do something more lasting, so the foundation was born.</div>
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Bill Taylor is executive director. His personal shorthand version of its mission is simple: “To create more Trombone Shortys,” he said.</div>
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“It’s to help provide a platform through which kids who have grown up in similar situations to Troy can follow their dreams, musical and otherwise.”</div>
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There are a number of organizations that focus on music education with an eye toward helping children beyond their musical dreams, and Taylor wants the foundation to be the bridge between high school band programs and NOCCA, which can only take a finite number of students.</div>
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“We want to give these children, who you’d call underserved, the opportunity to take it to the next level,” Taylor said. “That’s a combination of skills in performing as well as business acumen.”</div>
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Shorty Fest at Generations Hall is a fundraiser for the foundation. Students in the program will perform in a show that will also include a tribute to Big Chief Monk Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles, with an all-star band that features Bill Kreutzmann of The Grateful Dead, June Yamagishi, Kirk Joseph, Nick Daniels, Raymond Weber, Davell Crawford, and Luther Dickinson of North Mississippi Allstars. Corey Henry and The Treme Funktet, New Breed Brass Band, Tank and The Bangas, TYSSON, Sweet Crude, and MainLine will also perform, and Ivan Neville will sit in with Shorty and Orleans Avenue.</div>
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“He’s a part of the band when we can have him,” Andrews said. “We learn so much from him. Whenever he’s free, we’ll take him.”</div>
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Earlier this month, Andrews also became the subject of a children’s book. He and Taylor co-wrote “Trombone Shorty,” which was illustrated by Caldecott Award-winning artist <a class="type__font-weight--bold" href="http://www.bryancollier.com/" id="N0x2b84ca0N0x29e46d0:N0x2b84ca0N0x2a5a910" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; font-weight: 700 !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Bryan Collier.</a></div>
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Neither Andrews nor Taylor were thinking about a book, but when Taylor asked Shorty for stories to help align the foundation’s activities with his real-life journey, he realized they had possibilities.</div>
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“It’s an unbelievable story, and some of the things that happened to him early on are remarkable,” Taylor said. While listening, it occurred to him that it was an inspiring tale that would make a good kids’ book.</div>
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The book is on sale now, and Andrews will sign copies at Shorty Fest, with part of the proceeds from sales going to the foundation.</div>
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“I was reading it and felt like a kid again,” he said. “I looked at the illustrations without reading the words and it made my imagination create my own story, even though it’s my story. I was thinking about some things that really weren’t me.”</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-11550266972405483352015-03-31T21:34:00.000-05:002015-03-31T21:34:09.084-05:00McConaughey: 'What a big, beautiful mess'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
During the New Orleans Film Society gala, actor Matthew McConaughey stated his feelings in a speech about New Orleans:<br />
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"I said this years ago. A friend of mine asked, 'What is New Orleans like?' I said New Orleans is like a giant, flashing yellow light. Proceed with caution...but proceed. it is not an overly ambitious place, and that's being complimentary. It has a great identity, and, therefore, it doesn't look outside itself for intrigue, evolution or labels of progress. People here are proud of their home. You're proud of your Crescent City. You know your flavor. You know it's your very own. And if people want to come taste it with you, you welcome them with open arms. But you do not solicit."</blockquote>
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"The hours trickle by here.Tuesday and Saturday are more similar here than any other place I've ever been. The seasons slide into one another without any status quo. Yes, it is the Big Easy, home of the shortest hangover on the planet, where libation can greet you on Monday morning with the same smile as it did on Saturday night." </blockquote>
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"OK, (it's) home of the front porch. I don't know if y'all recognize this: It's home of the front porch. Not the back porch. Everyone everywhere else has back porches. The back porch is something different. The front porch is an engineering feat that lends itself to the sense of so much community around here and fellowship. Private property and lines of demarcation all land across borders. Here, you relax facing the street. You do not retreat into the seclusion and privacy of your backyard. No, you engage with the goings-on of the world that is in front of you. It's a great engineering feat that you've pulled off here. It really is."</blockquote>
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"What's my alarm here? My alarm here is church bells, sirens and a slow-moving, $8-an-hour carpenter nailing windowpanes two doors down. That's a good alarm. Do not honk your horn in a traffic jam here."</blockquote>
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"You do not sweat the misdemeanors, and, since everybody's getting away with something, the rest of us just want to be on the side of who's getting away with it. And if you CAN get away with it, good for you. You love to gamble. Rules are made to be broken, so do not preach about abiding. And, hey, if (they) don't get away with it, you're probably gonna let them slide anyway."</blockquote>
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"Where else do the dead rest eye to eye with the living? New Orleans is a right-brained city. Do not come to town wearing your morals on your sleeve unless you want to get your arm burned. Yes, it's oil and vinegar, but somehow they mix. The poverty, the humidity, they both gracefully suppress all the rationale. And if you're crossing a one-way street, it is best to look both ways."</blockquote>
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"Mother Nature rules around here. We all know that. (She's) the natural law queen who reigns supreme. She's a science to the animals, yet she's an overbearing and inconsiderate b--- to us bipedal humans. But here, you forgive her, and you forgive her quickly. You have to. You know any disdain for her wrath is going to reap more wrath, more bad luck, more voodoo and more karma, so you roll with it...actually you meander rather slowly forward, taking it in stride and never sweating the details."</blockquote>
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"See, the art is in the overgrowth here. Mother Nature wears the crown around here. Her royalty rules. And unlike in England, she has both influence and power. And, like the most authentic European cities, you guys don't use vacuum cleaners to give structure to anything, you use brooms. You use rakes to manicure, because everything here lends it soft edges."</blockquote>
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"Where it falls is often where it lays, the swerve around the pothole, the duck beneath the branch, the poverty, the murder rate, all of it is just how it is and how it came to be. Just like a good gumbo, the medley is in the mix."</blockquote>
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"Thank you, New Orleans; thank you, Louisiana. Cheers." </blockquote>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-7409427259011842402015-01-03T13:56:00.001-06:002015-01-03T13:56:07.969-06:00Sanchez Center to reopen in Lower 9th Ward<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2015 King Zulu, Andrew P. Sanchez. Jr.</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27.2000007629395px;">By Lauren Laborde, myneworleans.com</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27.2000007629395px;">When I pull up to the pale yellow Zulu Headquarters on Broad Street and before I even exit my car, Andrew P. Sanchez Jr. is holding the door of the club wide open for me, his matching yellow blazer and black-and-yellow striped bowtie gleaming in the sun. It is quickly apparent that the 2015 Zulu King has a gregarious personality and likes to make the people around him feel comfortable.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27.2000007629395px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27.2000007629395px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27.2000007629395px;">Sanchez’s father is the late Andrew Pete Sanchez, who served as property management director under former Mayor Moon Landrieu and was one of the first blacks to be appointed to lead a city department. A community center in the Lower 9th Ward was named after him, but it was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina’s floods. It is scheduled to reopen soon. Sanchez Jr. currently wears many hats; has worked in sales, marketing and consulting in several capacities; and still champions the revitalization of the 9th Ward.</span><br />
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Like many past Zulu Kings and members, being involved in the organization runs in the family. Sanchez Sr., besides being Zulu’s Big Shot in 1977, served as the club’s Chairman of Carnival Activities, as Sanchez Jr. has for the past 10 years of his 18-year involvement with Zulu. Other family members involved in Zulu includes siblings, cousins, daughters, nieces and uncles. Besides his role of Chairman of Carnival Activities, Sanchez Jr. seems to have served in virtually every other capacity of the organization. Being King seems a natural progression for him.</div>
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<strong>Q: What are some of the Zulu traditions you most look forward to?</strong><br /><br />One of my favorites is watching the King be saluted on Mardi Gras morning by the Soulful Warriors. It’s a tradition that a lot of the members don’t get to participate in because they’re getting ready for the parade that morning, but it’s a tradition that’s very beautiful. To see the King get ready to get into the limo and come out to the parade on Mardi Gras morning and to see the Soulful Warriors salute the King, I think that’s a big tribute and a quiet highlight in the Mardi Gras season.</div>
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<strong>Q: And what are your favorite Carnival traditions in general?</strong><br /><br />My campaign theme (while running for King) was “saluting all that is Carnival.” I chose the theme because there are traditions that take place in Zulu that are very exciting. We begin our Mardi Gras season with a church service, where we come together and have a lot of sincerity about being blessed to go through the Mardi Gras season safely. From there we have the Queen’s arrival, and there’s a tradition when we receive the Queen and officially announce the Queen of that year. And that evening it culminates with the King and Queen party. That’s where we more or less introduce the organization to the King and Queen and to society, because our friends and family are guests at this event. From there we … have different parties and events and the members come out and pay tribute to our characters. When you look back on Ash Wednesday, it seems like a blur.<br /><br />I think about all the people who have helped make the Zulu organization what it is. … we are right now a revitalized organization. Since Katrina, our organization average age is anywhere between 35 to maybe 55, whereas before Katrina we were an older club. So when I look at having an election theme saluting all that’s Carnival … I look at how over the years we’ve transformed Mardi Gras into this beautiful time of the year. Normally everyone’s excited about the holidays, but in New Orleans we’re almost happy to get the holiday season over so we can get into Mardi Gras – such as with Zulu.<br /><br />It’s really been, for me, an exciting time. When you’ve had a chance to work with the organization and all of these guys on the wall [the Zulu club walls feature photos of past Kings] I’ve assisted and prepared them to be King. And now I get a chance to stand with them.</div>
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<strong>Q: Growing up as a child in New Orleans, what are your memories of Carnival?</strong><br /><br />When I reflect back on being a child, my dad, Andrew P. Sanchez Sr., served as Zulu’s Chairman of Carnival Activities. I always looked forward to when my dad went to the ball; I used to always love to see my dad get dressed up in a tuxedo. Then the time came for me to attend the ball.<br /><br />As a child we always went to the parades; we’d get a chance to see Bacchus, Endymion. As a child your eyes light up and you’re jumping around for all those throws and at the end of the day you think, now what am I gonna do with all this stuff? But it’s the excitement, it’s the fun, it’s the thrill. When I reflect back on all the years I’ve been here in this beautiful city I’m excited, because I’ve enjoyed it ever since being a child.</div>
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<strong>Age:</strong> 56 <strong>Profession:</strong> Project manager and consultant <strong>Born/raised/resides:</strong> Lower 9th Ward <strong>Education:</strong>Alfred Lawless High School, John McDonogh 35 High School, Southern University <strong>Favorite Band:</strong> Earth Wind and Fire <strong>Favorite Restaurant:</strong> Acme Oyster House in Metairie <strong>Food:</strong> Seafood <strong>Book:</strong> Harry Potter series</div>
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True confession</h2>
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I love to swim. I don’t get to swim as much as I’d like to, but the Andrew P. Sanchez Multi-Purpose Center is about to re-open and it will have a pool, and I’ll really get back into swimming.</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-478132765218121902014-12-15T12:11:00.000-06:002014-12-15T12:11:42.440-06:00Post Katrina Christmas reminiscence <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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By Bruce Fleury </div>
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Christmas came as a big surprise this year. The usual onslaught of catalogs never appeared. Just a few strands of colored lights dot the town. The only Christmas card I've received is from the self-storage unit where my surviving possessions are stashed. Gone also are the long lines of my hopeful students, waiting to see if they were naughty or nice on their final exams. Life has changed.</div>
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My holiday reminder lately has been the cheerful little dog on the Dogpile Web page. When the doggie donned a pilgrim hat, we knew it was Thanksgiving, and we broke out the frozen turkey dinner. When I saw him sporting a big scarf and winter hat, I knew it was the season to be jolly.</div>
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But I'll admit being jolly is a real stretch this year.</div>
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If only we could rewind the tape to last Christmas, when we were standing in the street, our heads tilted back in disbelief as we watched snowflakes tumble from the sky, wrapping our neighborhoods in a Currier and Ives cloak. But fate had different plans.</div>
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This holiday season, instead of making cookies and wrapping presents, we've spent our time standing or sitting one the phone, arguing with insurance adjusters, bankers, Realtors and service reps, trying to get back all the things we took for granted, like fresh water, electric lights, cable TV, hot showers and home cooking. All of our energy is spent picking up the pieces of our shattered lives.</div>
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Normally, this time of year is full of excited calls from friends and loved ones. But for a while I stopped looking forward to calls from the folks I care about. The simple question "how are you?" would force me to relive the whole nightmare in my head, a low-budget science fiction film with my respirator serving in lieu of Darth Vader's helmet. There were moments when I felt like I had been sucked into a computer game like Doom or Half Life, when I was crawling through the moldy wreckage of my flooded Broadmoor home with my flashlight, keeping a weather eye out for zombies. That's the price you pay for being a survivor</div>
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As I tell the people who aren't here: It's as if you were nearly finished working on a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, a tranquil scene of pastoral family bliss. You left for a moment to answer the door, and returned to discover that some thoughtless stranger had swept the puzzle to the floor. Then the dog rolled around on the pieces, dragging the box away when he trotted off. Then the cat threw up on what remained. </div>
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Now you are left with a wet, sticky, stinking mess, coated with stuff you don't even want to touch. Nonetheless you grit your teeth and pick up as many pieces as you can find, carefully cleaning each one as you go, regretting those you cannot save. How will you ever find the strength to put it all back together? And you don't even have the picture on the box to guide you. </div>
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But all is not lost, though it might seem that way to many of us this Christmas. For me at least, the most important pieces of our puzzle have survived. We were able to sneak past the National Guard in a daring pre-dawn raid and rescue our stranded pets. And despite the roller coaster ride of hope and despair, I'm still happily married (at least as of this morning).</div>
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My teenage son will soon be back from his evacuation exile in northern New York, having learned what a white Christmas is really all about. Hopefully his French-Canadian lumberjack genes stood him in good stead. And we will soon be moving into our new home, leaving our tiny refugee condo perched high over St. Charles Avenue (you see, dear, I told you that if you stuck with me you'd end up on the Avenue!)</div>
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Things will never be the same, but we soldier on, because that is ultimately what life is all about. We put the pieces back together as best we can. We shake off the holiday blues and give thanks for what we have, even if it is not what we are used to.</div>
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We are grateful for all our good friends and relations, who helped us back from the brink. And we take comfort this holiday season in witnessing the true meaning of Christmas -- the spirit of giving, the importance of family and the rebirth of hope. </div>
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Bruce E. Fleury is a professor of biology at Tulane University. His e-mail address is bfleury@tulane.edu.</div>
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Originally published in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on Dec. 25, 2005</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-25484584317275507852014-10-07T11:50:00.000-05:002014-10-07T11:50:00.301-05:00Danny Barker's protégés kept trad jazz alive<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>By Katy Reckdahl, New Orleans Advocate</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Without Danny Barker, today’s New Orleans soundtrack would sound dramatically different.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1970, Barker, a seasoned jazz musician who had played in New York with jazz greats like Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter and Jelly Roll Morton, came home to start a youth band that is credited with almost single-handedly reviving traditional New Orleans jazz.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For his group, the Fairview Baptist Church Christian Band, Barker recruited New Orleans teenagers who — like teens across America — had turned their attention to rock ’n’ roll and R&B. Over the next few decades, he convinced dozens of young people that brass band music was both cool and worth preserving.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, 44 years later, Barker is considered a savior of one of the city’s most prized traditions, and the Fairview band is seen as an essential part of the city’s jazz history, having created a strong core of young players to carry on the tradition.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fairview’s original members went on to form the Hurricane and Dirty Dozen brass bands, which inspired the Rebirth, New Birth, Lil Rascals, Soul Rebels, Hot 8 and more.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Other original members, now in their 50s and early 60s, lead their own jazz ensembles. Altogether, the group’s alumni command key stages at every New Orleans music festival.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Later this week, Barker’s students and admirers will host a forum and two concerts to raise money for the first Danny Barker Festival, which will kick off in January, on what would have been his 105th birthday.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The event will give Barker’s students a chance to emphasize that traditional jazz would have withered without their mentor and that the city’s vaunted second-line parades would have few bands blowing along with them.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Brass bands were run by a bunch of old men, and they were dying and no one was trying to keep that tradition going,” said Fairview member Harry Sterling, the longtime guitarist for Big Al Carson, another Fairview alumnus. “So if Danny Barker hadn’t kept the tradition alive, there would be no Hot 8. No Algiers Brass Band or Soul Rebels. No Pinettes.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barker filled out his band’s ranks with church members, cousins, musicians’ kin and children from his 7th Ward neighborhood, including trumpeter Leroy Jones, then 12, who began hosting weekly rehearsals at his family’s garage on St. Denis Street, a few blocks from Barker’s house.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At its peak, the band had 30 members who would sometimes split up into three different bands to play three different gigs, Jones said.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“We can measure Danny Barker’s gift by the musicians that came out of that band,” said Fred Johnson, who was spurred by Barker’s traditional funeral procession to help form the Black Men of Labor, a social aid and pleasure club that makes a point of hiring traditional brass bands for its annual parades.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even young musicians who weren’t formally Barker’s students were influenced by him. Trumpeter Kermit Ruffins recalled Barker driving his big Pontiac “real slow” through the streets of Treme and stopping to talk about music with him.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rebirth snare drummer Derrick Tabb formed his Roots of Music marching band program partly because he saw the effect of Barker’s Fairview band. He has fond memories of Barker pulling over, especially if he saw young musicians at work. “He was always willing to teach, show or just have a laugh with you,” Tabb recalled.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Rescued from the water</span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After floodwaters deluged Barker’s Sere Street home in 2005, friends retrieved dozens of sodden boxes and gave them to the curators of the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University, who were able to salvage much of it: signature hats and shoes, letters, receipts, news clippings and countless longhand and typewritten manuscripts, edited and re-edited.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The collection’s contents reflect the Barker that his colleagues and students describe: a natural musician and writer. He published his own memoir, “A Life in Jazz,” and a book about African-American musicians called “Bourbon Street Black.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His handwritten notes are everywhere: The back of a church bulletin or a scrap from an envelope might include a set list for an upcoming Fairview event and random to-do reminders — to get a strap for Puppy (one of the group’s drummers), return a contract for Saturday, buy cat food and check on the lawn mower.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barker kept a pen handy and scraps of paper in his pockets and on the dashboard of his green 1972 Pontiac so that he could always scratch out a quick thought, said Jerry Barbarin Anderson, now 50, who was 6 years old when the band began and often tagged along with Barker after the Fairview rehearsals he attended with his grandfather, Charles Barbarin Sr., and teenage uncles, Lucien Barbarin and Charles Barbarin Jr.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barker had grown up in the one of the city’s best-known musical families, the Barbarins, and he spent all his life watching musicians in clubs and the brass bands who ruled the streets, with names like Superior, Imperial and Olympia.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He described the bands to Peggy Scott LaBorde in a WYES-TV interview that’s also part of the Hogan archive: “All these bands were jazz bands: six, seven men without a piano, see, and you could move all over with it, and they had this raunchy, laid-back rhythm that they played. Not in no hurry, they weren’t infuriated to go nowhere. This was get-down music, see.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Several decades later, that scene was in the hands of elderly men. Or so Barker observed in 1965, after moving back home with his wife, vocalist Blue Lu Barker, whose mother was ailing. They’d been gone for decades. In 1930, the couple had moved from New Orleans to New York, where Barker played banjo and guitar on stages all across the city.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barker continued performing until his death; he had a standing gig at the Palm Court Jazz Café in the French Quarter. He also became an assistant curator of the New Orleans Jazz Museum, whose instruments and recordings are now part of the jazz collection at the Old U.S. Mint. After work, as he stepped outside the museum, he worried that the music he performed soon would live on only in historical exhibits.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a handwritten essay in the Hogan Archive titled “The Fairview New Orleans Jazz Institute,” Barker described the band’s beginnings. “I had been wondering about the plight of New Orleans jazz, considered old and out of date — passé,” he wrote.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Part of the problem, he continued, was that the city’s brass-band musicians “rarely encouraged youngsters to join their ranks playing the street music, one of the most captivating, exciting scenes” for the “eyes, ears, feet — the heart.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He formed the Fairview band with the Rev. Andrew Darby to “revive the interest” in jazz for musically inclined young people, he wrote.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barker hadn’t set out to create a legacy for himself, said trumpeter Gregg Stafford, who was 17 when he joined Fairview. “But he knew he had to do something to keep the music going. He told me, ‘If you don’t teach the next generation and make them aware of their history and the history of their culture, it will be lost and someone else will be claiming it.’ ”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Jazz lessons</span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first non-cousin recruited to the band was Leroy Jones, a diligent student who practiced every day in his garage in the 7th Ward. One afternoon, said Jones, now 56, a big Pontiac parked at the end of his driveway and out walked “the hippest old man” he’d ever seen. Barker introduced himself and asked if Jones wanted to be part of a band. Soon, Jones’ garage was part of jazz lore.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“It was exciting,” Jones recalled. “When we didn’t have rehearsal, I’d do my homework and practice for four or five hours. We’d get together and jam, and Blue Lu would fix us little snacks.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The whole concept seemed so fresh and new, Jones said, noting that while Doc Paulin had some of his young sons playing in his band, a band made up entirely of teenagers was unheard of.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barker decided that the idea of reading music might seem too intimidating to some children. So there was no sheet music at Fairview practices, said trombonist Lucien Barbarin, 58, who started out on snare drum with the Fairview. Barker kept it simple: He would teach them melodies by playing songs on the banjo or guitar or spinning records of Tuxedo or Olympia brass bands.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Then we would follow by ear,” Barbarin said. Most would play the melody, and those who could improvise would provide harmonies and riffs beyond that.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First, they learned church hymns: “Down by the Riverside,” “A Closer Walk With Thee,” “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” Then they learned more secular classics, including Paul Barbarin’s “Second-Line” and “Bourbon Street Parade,” written by Barker’s uncle.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barker also taught stage presence.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sterling remembers his lessons: “Be the best musician you can possibly be. Always be on time. Learn to be a sideman before you become a leader. Dress well. Always look good. Be kind to people all the time. Kill them with kindness, and they’ll respect you.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In his way, Barker groomed the teenagers as they moved toward manhood. He also counseled them and kept them from delinquency.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He recruited Eddie Boh Paris to play sousaphone after Paris walked in front of him at a corner store and a shoplifted Hubig pie fell out of his waistband. Paris was unwilling at first, but Barker kept him in the band by threatening to tell his mother about what he’d witnessed.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The drummer Anderson, once a young hothead, remembers Barker working to cool him off: “If I got angry, he’d say, ‘Go practice.’ ”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For him, the lessons went far beyond the history and the art form. “I found what jazz can offer for musicians and people who love music: peace of mind,” he said. If not for Barker, he believes he would likely be in prison or in the grave. “Danny saved me,” he said.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once the Fairview band hit the streets, it grew exponentially, Stafford said. Barker would tell inquiring parents when the band rehearsed and they’d drop off their children at Jones’ garage in ever larger numbers.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As they gigged, Barker also taught his charges how to read an audience. At an early event, Lucien Barbarin recalled asking Barker why people in the crowd didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves. Barker assured him that the crowd just needed to loosen up. “Wait until they get a couple of drinks in them,” he said. “They’ll listen, and they’ll think you’re great.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Branching out</span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Fairview band was a hit locally, and it played prestigious gigs at places like the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Within a few years, however, Barker began to hear complaints from fellow musicians that his popular children’s band was taking their jobs.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While Barker continued to work with younger children for years to come, he decided to cut the older kids loose rather than fight the musicians’ union. In 1974, Barker helped Jones establish the Hurricane Brass Band, dubbed as such because they “came up the street and blew like a storm,” Jones said.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Soon, Stafford would begin playing in Barker’s band, Danny Barker & the Jazz Hounds, which he did for about 15 years before Barker, in failing health, asked Stafford to carry on the name through his own band, Gregg Stafford & the Jazz Hounds.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But for most of the original band members, the break had come earlier, in 1974, when Stafford remembers Barker handing Jones a stack of business cards that said “Hurricane Brass Band” on them and saying, “You’re on your own now.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They may have been on their own, they say, but they were following a track set for them by Barker, who kept New Orleans jazz young and swinging.</span></div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-75731398531500197212014-10-02T11:42:00.000-05:002014-10-02T11:42:49.642-05:00Fresh produce returns to the French Market<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfcHuLxrMuIOscM1Qxw07hk2Zl3yZehZmh-UMDZ2CEl20zh5JrVVHMoeFX1int7adDZL_f_79EX4AGIHkLj5pc502-Yx8l_Wlr-8lGL3bjAy93VA-mSFkREZuxkSPCeY_FzA7bKIr3e_xa/s1600/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfcHuLxrMuIOscM1Qxw07hk2Zl3yZehZmh-UMDZ2CEl20zh5JrVVHMoeFX1int7adDZL_f_79EX4AGIHkLj5pc502-Yx8l_Wlr-8lGL3bjAy93VA-mSFkREZuxkSPCeY_FzA7bKIr3e_xa/s1600/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls.jpeg" height="328" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: Matthew Hinton, The New Orleans Advocate</td></tr>
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By Ian McNulty, New Orleans Advocate</div>
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A riverfront location and access to overland portage routes made the site of the French Market a natural for trading and commerce among Louisiana’s native peoples long before it became the city’s first official public market in 1791. Today, market boosters say, a confluence of that long history and the modern appreciation for fresh and local foods recommends the site for a new weekly, year-round farmers market.</div>
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That market will debut Oct. 15, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., and will continue each Wednesday thanks to a new partnership between the city-run French Market Corp. and Market Umbrella, the nonprofit group that operates <a href="http://www.crescentcityfarmersmarket.org/index.php?page=markets" id="N0x25f4410N0x263acd0:N0x25f4410N0x2778720" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.3s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">three other editions</a> of its Crescent City Farmers Market around town.</div>
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Leaders of both organizations on Wednesday outlined details of their new market-within-a-market plan, which will begin with more than two dozen vendors selling a mix of fresh produce and seafood, locally raised meats, bread, pasta, grab-and-go snacks and handmade pantry staples.</div>
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The farmers market will take shape in a covered, open-air pavilion area near the French Market’s<a href="http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/beaucoup/9309834-171/while-festivals-and-events-highlight" id="N0x25f4410N0x263ad30:N0x25f4410N0x27788d0" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.3s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">bank of walk-up cafes</a> and a small stage used for live music and cooking demonstrations.</div>
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Jon Smith, executive director of the French Market Corp., said the idea is to provide local residents and chefs with a new venue for fresh foods direct from their producers and to give out-of-towners more tastes of local flavors to enjoy on the spot, to buy for picnics or to take home as edible souvenirs.</div>
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“I can’t think of a better way to honor the history of this place than with an open-air market like this,” Smith said. “We want the market to be something that people will plan a visit around. We’re hoping to create a mini-festival atmosphere.”</div>
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The French Market hosted a weekly edition of the Crescent City Farmers Market from 2004 until Hurricane Katrina. That venture attracted far fewer vendors and shoppers than the other local farmers markets, but both partners in this new effort said they feel better equipped today to promote and develop the weekly market day.</div>
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“We know this is no small task, but we have done our homework,” said Kathryn Parker, executive director of Market Umbrella.</div>
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Over the summer, her staff conducted surveys at the French Market and nearby businesses, circulated an online survey, polled vendors at other markets and conducted a focus group with local chefs.</div>
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This feedback guided the mix of fresh and prepared foods the market planners sought to achieve during an open call for vendor applications last month. The research also led them to add new features, like free parking for vendors and market shoppers, plus a designated loading zone for chefs collecting large orders for their restaurants.</div>
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As with the other local farmers markets, vendors at this new site will accept payment from people using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the government assistance program commonly called food stamps.</div>
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“We’re ready. Now what we really need is the people of New Orleans to show our local food producers your support and reclaim your food heritage,” Parker said.</div>
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While perhaps best known today for souvenirs and other retail items sold at its flea market area, the French Market was once an essential part of the city’s network of public markets.</div>
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The new farmers market plan is the latest in a series of efforts at the French Market to rekindle that legacy and update it for modern tastes and lifestyles. In June, the market <a href="http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/beaucoup/9300892-171/with-the-spotlight-to-itself" id="N0x25f4410N0x263ad90:N0x25f4410N0x2778f00" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.3s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">revamped its annual Creole Tomato Festival</a> with an expanded lineup of food and music. And last month its board approved a proposal from three well-known New Orleans purveyors of artisan foods — <a href="https://www.stjamescheese.com/" id="N0x25f4410N0x263adf0:N0x25f4410N0x2778f90" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.3s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">St. James Cheese Co.</a>, <a href="http://bellegardebakery.wordpress.com/" id="N0x25f4410N0x263ae50:N0x25f4410N0x2779020" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.3s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">Bellegarde Bakery</a> and the butcher shop <a href="http://cleaverand.co/" id="N0x25f4410N0x263aeb0:N0x25f4410N0x27790b0" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.3s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">Cleaver & Co.</a> — to open <a href="http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/home/10088789-123/butcher-baker-cheesemonger-headed-to" id="N0x25f4410N0x263b030:N0x25f4410N0x2779188" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.3s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">a new eatery at the market.</a> That concept, called Continental Provisions, is under development for an expected debut later this fall.</div>
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“I’ve been with the market since 2010, and we’ve seen such remarkable changes,” said Demetric Mercadel, president of the French Market’s board. “The addition of the farmers market, with all the delights it’s bringing, will be such a huge step forward for what we intended to do with the French Market.”</div>
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Some vendors on tap for the market’s Oct. 15 debut are familiar names from other locations of the Crescent City Farmers Market, like Pete & Clara’s Seafood and Monica’s Produce. Others are new to the New Orleans market circuit, like Feliciana’s Best Creamery, a dairy in Slaughter, and Iverstine Farms, of Kentwood, which will offer pasture-raised meats, including special-order turkeys for Thanksgiving.</div>
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Another market vendor, Bob Romero, owner of sugar producer <a href="http://www.threebrothersfarm.com/" id="N0x25f4410N0x263b0f0:N0x25f4410N0x2779458" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.3s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">Three Brothers Farm</a>, in Vermilion Parish, predicted the French Market venue would be a good way to reach new customers.</div>
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“You need more than belts and sunglasses for sale when visitors come here. They want something local,” Romero said. “I imagine my cane syrup going back to California with someone. That’s a whole new market for us.”</div>
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Follow Ian McNulty on Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/IanMcNultyNOLA" id="N0x25f4410N0x263b330:N0x25f4410N0x2779728" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.3s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">@IanMcNultyNOLA</a>.</div>
</span></div>
Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-35840860092591262422014-09-12T21:14:00.000-05:002014-09-12T21:14:12.112-05:00Fr. Tony's 2014 Prayer for the Saints<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<em>God of all unity,</em></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #363636; line-height: 24px;">We stand before you this day, ever grateful for the unifying spirit that has made us the Who Dat Nation!</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #363636; line-height: 24px;"><div style="text-align: left;">
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We hail from all across the South - united under the banner of the <a href="http://www.nola.com/saints/#/0" style="color: rgb(48, 92, 182) !important; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">New Orleans Saints</a> and blessed by the presence of every walk of life.</div>
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</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #363636; line-height: 24px;">We are One Coast. One Voice. One Dome!<br />
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We represent almost every group of people who have walked on the face of this blessed earth.<br />
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Among us are members of every faith community and every generation. We come from every race, creed and color. Stretching across the Gulf Coast and reaching deep into every state in America, we are the Who Dat Nation, unbowed and ever proud of our legacy.<br />
<br />
Some of us ride boats up the bayous while others ride horses in Mardi Gras parades. Some drive streetcars down St. Charles Avenue while others rock shrimp boats in the Gulf. Regardless of our home ports, occupations or ways of life, <b>we are</b> <b>united as Who Dats </b>and come before you with one voice of eternal praise.<br />
<br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #363636; line-height: 24px;">Lord, you said that where two or more are gathered together in your name, you would be in our midst. Well, as we gather as the Who Dat Nation in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome and in other stadiums across the land, we believe your words to be ever true.<br />
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As you unite with us in the Dome and in our Gulf Coast homes, we ask you to send your blessings down upon "Our Boys." Help each of them to be the best that they can possibly be.</div>
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</span></span><div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #363636; line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Guide our team's front office. Help them to make the best decisions and lead us into the land of great promise. Especially send your blessings upon Tom and Gail Benson. They are the heads of our Who Dat family. Shower them with great health and your undying spirit of love.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bless Rita Benson-LeBlanc and Mickey Loomis. Infuse them with wisdom as they continue to choose the path down which we march as one.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bless our coaches. Help Sean Payton, Joe Vitt, Pete Carmichael, Rob Ryan and Greg McMahon devise successful game plans that will ultimately get us to the Super Bowl. Allow each of them to teach and preach a message of success that will inspire "Our Boys" to be as united as the rest of the Who Dat Nation.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bless our players. Send your grace upon Drew Brees, Zach Strief, Junior Galette, Curtis Lofton and Thomas Morstead and all of our players. Keep them safe from all major injuries and allow them to victoriously represent us across this great land. They are our brothers and our sons. Let them know just how proud we are to call them "Our Boys"!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Bless the entire Who Dat Nation as we march under the banner of the Fleur-de-Lis. </b>Together with your grace, we will remain banded as one as we support and encourage the New Orleans Saints. May we always be One Coast ... One Voice ... One Dome!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Through the prayers of our heavenly New Orleans Saints, St. Francis Cabrini, St. Katherine Drexel, St. John Paul II, Blessed Francis Seelos and the Venerable Henriette Delille, may we be as united on earth as they are in the Kingdom of Heaven.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Together, may we always be one nation under God, undaunted and indivisible. May we stand tall before all as proud members of the Who Dat Nation!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Amen!</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;">
<em>The Rev. R. Tony Ricard, M. Th., M.Div., is the New Orleans Saints Catholic team chaplain and a theology teacher at St. Augustine High School. <a href="http://www.nola.com/religion/index.ssf/2014/09/new_orleans_saints_chaplain_fr.html" style="color: rgb(48, 92, 182) !important; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Read Sheila Stroup's interview with Fr. Tony</a> and the complete story behind his annual prayer for the Saints.</em></div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-3829576299556831742014-09-03T10:40:00.000-05:002014-09-03T10:40:49.196-05:00After 200 years, city's fighting spirit unchanged<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmLBw_2vlv_gsXc_4skDbuuJk_J06kLHFcBWP_UWMa2nniCc43IAHYtmMVgBamPVYWgn3H2Wg6lGY6B1f3_nWympdw79-1snaFVL9kPcaDFo8rX05UwmfBJA1ZRXB7_53NT8FWlfuM-9rs/s1600/IMG_6352.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmLBw_2vlv_gsXc_4skDbuuJk_J06kLHFcBWP_UWMa2nniCc43IAHYtmMVgBamPVYWgn3H2Wg6lGY6B1f3_nWympdw79-1snaFVL9kPcaDFo8rX05UwmfBJA1ZRXB7_53NT8FWlfuM-9rs/s1600/IMG_6352.JPG" height="400" width="323" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Author Morgan Molthrop at Jackson Square crediting 'the man.'</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Many marvel at New
Orleans’ miraculous rebirth, having assumed the struggling, honky-tonk Southern
city could never revive itself after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Yet,
the Crescent City is looking better than ever with sports and convention
industries booming, a vibrant music scene and social innovation outperforming
other areas of the country in job growth and economic prosperity. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In a provocative
new book, “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/AndrewJacksonsPlaybook" target="_blank">Andrew Jackson’s Playbook: 15 Strategies for Success</a>,” author Morgan
McCall Molthrop examines surprising tactics and innovations that have
contributed to the city’s rapid recovery, suggesting that contemporary civic
leaders have much in common with U.S. Gen. Andrew Jackson who soundly defeated
the “invincible” British Army at the Battle of New Orleans 200 years ago.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Dozens of books
have been written about New Orleans’ unique music, culture, and history, but Molthrop
analyzes the city’s remarkable resilience from an entirely new perspective. He
theorizes that character traits, tactics and determination Gen. Jackson
demonstrated in defeating the far better trained British army are the same
characteristics that helped catapult the city’s post-Katrina recovery. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
By interviewing a
wide array of notable local sources, Molthrop juxtaposes events from 1815 with
those of 2005, demonstrating unconventional attack plans that achieved
improbable victories. Success tips are categorized with military terminology,
including shoring up defenses, using guerrilla tactics, acting with bravado and
never forgetting the prize. Readers can valuable reap life lessons along with a
fascinating history lesson.</div>
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Gen. Jackson was a
frontier soldier who refused to follow traditional rules of European
engagement. </div>
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“Pesky Americans
refused to fight fair,” Molthrop wrote.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The
rough-and-ready American general formed alliances with unscrupulous Baratarian
pirates, free men of color, Choctaw Indians, Kaintucks and Creoles, each with
singular mettle. Similarly, New Orleans’ post-Katrina revival brought together
a motley coalition of business, government and educational leaders,
entertainers, tourism and sports promoters – even a Vodou priestess – to cooperate
in an entirely new manner.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Both crises called
for decisive action and for sidestepping rules. Real estate developer, Pres
Kabacoff, for example, saw an urgent demand for loft apartments for returning
artists and a Healing Center to create a new social hub. Putting together
federal historic tax credits and new market tax credits, he quickly built a
nexus.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“All the internal
politics and bickering – they are just sideshows to me,” Kabacoff told
Molthrop.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
With few troops
and weapons, Jackson understood the importance of shoring defenses. By
buttressing the port of Mobile, he cut off the easiest route for British
invasion and forced their ships up the treacherous mouth of the Mississippi. </div>
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In 21<sup>st</sup>
century New Orleans, the underlying defense is music – without which the city
could perish. So, entertainers Harry Connick, Jr., Branford Marsalis and
Habitat for Humanity teamed up to create Musicians Village, providing homes so
musicians could get back into the clubs to perform.</div>
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After Katrina, the
city needed to jumpstart its economy. New Orleans has always been a city of
entrepreneurs “because large corporations won’t headquarter in a place with a
poor school system and an annual summer evacuation,” Molthrop wryly commented.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
But in 2000, New
Orleans turned that hardship into an advantage, founding Idea Village, a
startup community with a vision to create “a self-sustaining ecosystem that
attracts, supports and retrains entrepreneurial talent.”</div>
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Above all, Jackson
had the charisma to unite diverse groups and convince them to follow his
leadership, pledging to die before surrendering to the British. The general’s
team approach solidly defeated the Brit’s top-down command structure,
slaughtering more than a thousand British troops in less than an hour.</div>
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“He’d beaten the
army that had beaten Napoleon,” Molthrop wrote.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Jackson’s
Playbook” was designed not only to reflect on one of the most important battles
in U.S. history on its 200<sup>th</sup> anniversary, comparing its indomitable
military leader to modern leaders, but also to help people understand and
manage complex issues in their workplaces, neighborhoods and in their daily
lives.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
If you think you
know the back-story on the War of 1812, “Jackson’s Playbook” provides an
entirely new insight into the events and the enduring culture of New Orleans.
Offbeat photos and insider perspective on this intriguing city make “Jackson’s
Playbook” a fascinating read and guide to life.</div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091035732123090639.post-57023809754000650242014-08-17T08:12:00.001-05:002014-08-17T08:12:21.326-05:00Bars provide havens from the summer heat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvCoXXL6FLznJu4LXw5ah8so9ItzJEYIFuISoBgDM-32yGRHuIZnO71thbaLFOenpJ7X0hbbdu7e1BImm0auv44VbCxWvRMivHfDK4H4xUg7X7_fsRORAj-DokYp04v5VJ8DL4nNNLyvHQ/s1600/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvCoXXL6FLznJu4LXw5ah8so9ItzJEYIFuISoBgDM-32yGRHuIZnO71thbaLFOenpJ7X0hbbdu7e1BImm0auv44VbCxWvRMivHfDK4H4xUg7X7_fsRORAj-DokYp04v5VJ8DL4nNNLyvHQ/s1600/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls.jpeg" height="275" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo credit: Veronica Dominach</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 23px; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="fn" style="box-sizing: border-box;">STEVE GARBARINO</span>| <span class="credit" style="box-sizing: border-box;">SPECIAL TO THE New Orleans ADVOCATE</span></span></span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 21px;">“Hot weather opens the skull of a city,” wrote New Orleans-born Truman Capote, “exposing its white brain and its heart of nerves.”</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Don’t it, though? The Crescent City in the soupy season has been known to bring on brain fever. Tempers flare, foreheads crack like expired pralines and businesses close shop until the school bell rings. Those “out there” look like “walkers”: feverish, half-baked, menacing. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Road rage, domestic abuse and killer-mime hallucinations ensue. Crime rates keep pace with the soaring mercury. Locals stuck in town hole up and wait it out, allowing the tourists to take over.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Relax, there is respite. August here is when Hell freezes over inside bars and restaurants, the city’s ice palaces, which provide just the chill-pill to meltdown.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> (Warning: side effects may include dizziness.) The city’s makeshift igloos ramp up their air conditioning like no other metropolitan hot pocket. And though, by average, most are set at 73 degrees, that seemingly modest figure invariably feels far more brisk when out on the street it’s frying.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">“When you go out to have a drink or eat here in the summer you know to bring a sweater,” said Genevieve Cullen, a bartender at Bud Rip’s Old 9th Ward Bar (est. 1960), which was cited as a cold front by several veteran barkeeps and night crawlers recruited as Advocate cold-front panelists. (None included their own digs as cold front candidates.) On a recent afternoon, Bud Rip’s proved more reasonable than chilly — though its new owners were in the throes of overhauling its AC system.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">“If you’ve lived here a while, you know to bring a light wrap to a restaurant or a movie theater,” echoed Susan Spicer, the chef of the French Quarter’s <a href="http://www.bayona.com/" id="N0x1da9a00N0x1e69ba0:N0x1da9a00N0x1fb88e8" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">Bayona</a> and <a href="http://www.mondoneworleans.com/" id="N0x1da9a00N0x1e69c00:N0x1da9a00N0x1fb8978" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">Mondo</a>, in Lakeview.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">Where to chill?</span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So what are the ultimate cold fronts for swilling and sustenance, day or night? (We wouldn’t dare to deem any of them THE sole cold rooms.)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">Check the temperatures on wall units all you like, but they’re not an entirely reliable gauge. There are mirages at play, deceptive but subliminally effective.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">Among the factors aligning to create snowball effects are an interior’s décor (spaces that are industrial, uber-Modern or simply sparse in furnishings exude cool), flooring (tiled or concrete are colder), ceiling height, and direct (or not) natural light exposure. If it’s a mole hole, it will likely be colder.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">And there are crannies suggestive of haunted “cold spots” in otherwise comfortable rooms, that deliver shivers up the spine. Case in point: <a href="http://www.thecolumns.com/" id="N0x1da9a00N0x1e69ea0:N0x1da9a00N0x1fb8c48" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">the Columns Hotel,</a> where an AC vent positioned under a certain corner perch at the bar blasts frigid air up dresses and trouser legs.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">New Orleans cold fronts, we discovered, invariably include sepulchral dive- and sports bars, sushi-and-steak houses, booze-friendly movie theaters, cigar lounges with their humidors and fat-cat clientele, vegetarian outposts, jacket-required establishments and all those f-f-f-frozen daiquiri factories indigenous to Veterans Highway and Bourbon Street.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“The challenge with daiquiri places is this: Are you cold because you are drinking them or because the bar is cold?” pondered Virginia Saussy, a marketing consultant for the Warehouse District’s <a href="http://www.lucysretiredsurfers.com/new-orleans" id="N0x1da9a00N0x1e69f60:N0x1da9a00N0x1fb8df8" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">Lucy’s Retired Surfer Bar & Restaurant</a>, known for its “Arctic Shelf Pleasers,” such as Tito’s Frozen Lemonade. “Boozer’s dilemma,” she shrugged.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As for perception-versus-reality venues, a case in point is Uptown’s Brothers III Lounge, which is cooled by multiple wall boxes and deemed “butt-freezing” by a quartet of social-coasters on our makeshift team, most with penchants for black-tie and for slumming it.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">On a Thursday afternoon at Brothers III, a surly barkeep growled, “I have no idea what the temperature is in here. Maybe 70? But we’re the coolest bar in town, and we got the coldest beer in town.” As evidence that it was “cold all right,” he added, “I may be the only bartender here who wears long pants and a long shirt to work in the summer.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">Not the only one, actually. At <a href="http://dosjefes.com/" id="N0x1da9a00N0x1e6a080:N0x1da9a00N0x1fb9038" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">Dos Jefes Uptown Cigar Bar</a> on Tchoupitoulas Street, a bartender pointed to the blue jeans he wore to work to keep warm. He explained the wavering mercurial conditions (72 at that moment). “It’s colder now because it’s slow. Once the bodies roll in, though, it’ll ramp up the heat,” he said. And the temperature setting is lowered.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">Source of pride</span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“It actually makes us pretty happy when someone eating at Mondo says, ‘It’s a little chilly in here,’ said Spicer, “because when we first opened four years ago, the AC wasn’t working right and it was hot, hot, hot. But once we added five more tons (of AC capacity) things got a lot better. Maybe we’re overcompensating now, but we do tend to keep thermostats set on 72.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">At the Riverbend’s <a href="http://www.fat-tuesday.com/site.php" id="N0x1da9a00N0x1e6a2c0:N0x1da9a00N0x1fb9278" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">New Orleans Original Daiquiris</a>, a server reached by telephone placed the average temperature at 72. “We keep the settings in locked boxes to keep customers from turning it down,” she said. But on multiple visits we found the double-meters, encased in plastic, holding steady at 69.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">Which is just how Tory McPhail, executive chef of <a href="http://www.commanderspalace.com/" id="N0x1da9a00N0x1e6a320:N0x1da9a00N0x1fb9398" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">Commander’s Palace,</a> likes it: walk-in frigid. “It’s certainly cold at that daiquiri place,” he said, “but it’s also a cool spot to hang out because it’s more of a broad swath of residents — from judges to junkies — than anywhere I can think of … except maybe Central Lock-Up, which is certainly cold-hearted.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He and others chose <a href="http://portofcallnola.com/" id="N0x1da9a00N0x1e6a500:N0x1da9a00N0x1fb95d8" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">Port of Call</a> in their top three of freeze-outs. “Besides being cold inside, the Monsoons have so much liquor in them that a layer of frost builds up around the outside of the go-cup,” McPhail said. “Cools me just thinking about it.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sean Meenan — a New York restaurateur and New Orleans transplant who’s feeling the heat from French Quarter residents over his envisioned Café Habana on Rampart and Esplanade — resides mere blocks from Port of Call. He too calls it “one cool oasis. You leave the outside behind when you enter.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It isn’t so much the AC setting (72), so much as the positioning of the vents, which blast from all directions, including from above. On an early afternoon visit, a herd of customers wallowed outside the door in the 96-degree heat. When this reporter attempted to shake pepper onto a cheese-cloaked spud, it blew starboard onto a neighbor’s burger.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">Back in the 60s</span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Likewise, beef people <a href="http://www.mrjohnssteakhouse.com/" id="N0x1da9a00N0x1e6a740:N0x1da9a00N0x1fb98a8" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">Mr. John’s Steak House,</a> the Lower Garden District fixture, made the coldest Top 3. “It’s a f---ing iceberg in there!” said Brian Bockman, a Garden District architect who frequents the St. Charles Avenue restaurant. On an early bird visit, the maitre’d allowed that the temperature was 69 inside.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">Restaurateur Robert LeBlanc — whose Lower Garden District whiskey bar <a href="http://www.barrelproofnola.com/" id="N0x1da9a00N0x1e6a860:N0x1da9a00N0x1fb9a58" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">Barrel Proof </a>keeps its AC set at 65 when the doors are open to the street — said Mr. John’s was gloves-down the coldest restaurant in town. “I don’t know any colder dining room … or steakhouse. And they’re all pretty cold.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Alternately, meat-averse <a href="http://seedyourhealth.com/" id="N0x1da9a00N0x1e6a980:N0x1da9a00N0x1fb9c08" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">Seed</a> on Lower Prytania is “completely freezing too,“ said Bockman, “Probably due to the fact it’s vegan.” A weekday lunch visit found the temperature set at 73, but ceiling fans, concrete floors and a melon color palette in the cucumber-cool room spread the crisp-air love.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">Then there’s the dress code-rigid Galatoire’s (owned by Advocate publisher John Georges), also a top ice pick. With its 60 tons of AC on the first floor alone, <a href="http://www.galatoires.com/home" id="N0x1da9a00N0x1e6aa40:N0x1da9a00N0x1f98ea8" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ce171e; text-decoration: none;">Galatoire’s</a> keeps the temperature at 68, said president and CEO Melvin Rodrigue. “It’s all about the humidity,” he said.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">“When August rolls around, I seek safe — and very cold harbor — at Galatoire’s, where they always keep the icy martinis and cold Sancerre coming,” said Julia Reed, vocal local and author of “But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Reed called it a tie between Galatoire’s and the AMC Elmwood Palace 20 for cold spots, the latter “where a frozen margarita makes even the most mundane summer blockbuster entertaining.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Tom Sancton, a clarinetist and author who gigs at the Palm Court Jazz Café, Preservation Hall and Snug Harbor, wholly concurred, seeking Arctic air at Elmwood. “None of the jazz clubs I play at really fit the freezing bill,” he said. “A lot of them on Frenchmen Street have open doors.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight: normal;">Also cold</span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yes, we know there are so many untapped cold spots out there that eluded our three-week sledding expedition. Try not to sweat it; lift a frosty mug instead.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Here’s our short list of freeze-factor runners up: the French Quarter’s Fahy’s Irish Pub (on Burgundy), uptown’s Superior Seafood, Grit’s Bar and Clancy’s, the Riverbend’s Cooter Brown’s, the Roosevelt Hotel’s Sazerac Room, Liuzza’s (Mid-City), and, as a whole, Harrah’s Casino … where, of course, cooler heads prevail when the chips are down.</span></div>
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Mary Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09094351073833746250noreply@blogger.com0