As you can see, I am back north for Christmas, and enjoying one thing that just still doesn't feel right about Louisiana - holiday weather.
It's been nice catching up with a few of my readers over the holidays. I was appreciative of your comments about the blog, and that many of you want me to do more with it. I promise to do so in the new year - I have a list of topics, just haven't had a lot of time to get out and do the photography. In the meantime, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours.
My activity has been picking up as expected, and today I made a trip to Gretna, just across the Mississippi River from New Orleans - an area known as the Westbank (even though some areas are east of areas of the "Eastbank" - Louisiana geography is not an exact science). To get to Gretna from Baton Rouge (or New Orleans, for that matter), you take the delightfully named Crescent City Connection over the river. I had never done this before, and discovered that there is seemingly no charge to go over to the Westbank, but there is a $1.00 toll on the way back. Interesting.
If Gretna and the Crescent City Connection sound familiar, it may be because it was the scene of one of the most controversial stories in the aftermath of Katrina. Evacuees from New Orleans attempted to cross the Crescent City Connection on foot, into Gretna, which is in Jefferson Parish. The Gretna Police Department, along with Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Deputies and the Crescent City Connection Police, blocked their passage across the river. It is also alleged that officers fired weapons over the heads of the evacuees. You can read more about the incident in this New York Times piece.
The location of my appointment was not far from the bridge, so I can't say that I explored much of Gretna, but I did stop to take a few photos.
The first photo shows a few homes that are fairly representative of the area I was in. It was clear to me that it wasn't a high income area. There were plentiful vacant lots, and many of the homes were in disrepair. However, there was evidence of what I might have called urban pioneering - a neatly painted and decorated shotgun house tucked in amongst several that had seen better days, and a few unusual storefronts.
This one appeared well-kept from a distance but is showing some distress close-up. By the way, if you weren't aware, the term "shotgun" house (a distinctly New Orleans type of architecture) refers to the fact that one could fire a shotgun in the front door and have it go clean out the back door.
The Crescent City Connection looms over these two.
The Wikipedia entry on Gretna indicates that the town's development was tied to the railroad. In this photo you can see the New Orleans skyline in the background, with a couple trains taking a break under the bridge.
In retrospect, I'm not sure if this is bad photography or a house with a failing foundation. You make the call. Either way, this was another cute shotgun house.
This place was remarkably busy.
A shotgun church?
Finally, a quick shot snapped on my way back over the bridge.
I have appointments next week in Lafayette and Houma, so I'll do my best to do some more exploring.
Hello, dear reader! It’s been a lazy summer for me, as evidenced by the lack of activity on this blog. By lazy, I mean that I haven’t had the opportunity to take many interesting photos – partly a symptom of not making many trips around the region to make my calls. Concurrent with a glorious break in the heat here in south Louisiana, my activity is starting to pick up again.
I had the occasion to visit Raceland, LA earlier today for a call. Unfortunately, little Raceland did not offer many opportunities for photography, but I did snap a few today. So let’s consider this a downpayment on some more significant activity on this blog this fall.
Here is the only photo I took in Raceland-proper. There’s an interesting story behind Houma Nation – they are recognized by the state of Louisiana, but not the federal government. You can find out more here.
I’ve passed this restaurant on Highway 90 many times, but I’ve never seen it open. Cute looking little place.
Feel the excitement of oil spill damage claims!
This is next door to the restaurant above, not sure what type of business it is (or was).
This is another spot I’ve passed many times. In fact, I’ve stopped to take photos before, but never liked the way they came out. It’s hard to put in perspective how huge this boat is, just sitting next to the highway. For some bit of perspective, you can see the roof of a house next to it. This is located along Bayou Des Allemands, and I’m extremely curious how it arrived in this spot – I have a hard time imagining it sailing through the bayou.
Since Raceland was a disappointment, I decided to take a slight detour through Des Allemands. I’ve passed the town a few times, and noticed the roofs of the buildings as I went over the Highway 90 overpass (shown in the first picture below). I had been wondering if there was anything interesting to see within the town, so today was a good opportunity. There wasn’t much in the way of businesses or interesting homes, but I did find a couple spots near the bayou that afforded pictures, including a fishing vessel.
Especially if you live in Louisiana, it’s been hard to forget that this weekend marks the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The first thing that reminded me was seeing a program on NBC last Sunday called “Katrina: The First Five Days.” (You can watch the episode here.) Setting aside Brian Williams’ tone during the show (which came across to me as a bit holier-than-thou), it was powerful to see the images of the aftermath again after a few years. The second reminder came when my dad sent me a chain email containing some photography of the storm. He and I exchanged a couple emails and I told him that I had considered doing a post for the blog about Katrina, but I was concerned that it would not seem authentic or interesting to my friends and family in Louisiana – after all, we didn’t move to Baton Rouge until a few months after Katrina. However, as we emailed, I realized I did have thoughts and feelings about the storm. So take this for what it's worth – the perspective of someone who did not live here at the time, but moved to Louisiana in the months following the disaster.
As I’ve reflected on Katrina this week, the biggest revelation I’ve had is how much harder the stories and photographs hit now that I’ve lived in South Louisiana for four-plus years. I had only visited New Orleans a handful of times before Katrina, but over the last few years (as I’m trying to chronicle on this blog), I’ve had much more time to learn about the city, its people, and its culture. I used to think I didn’t like New Orleans much, but as I’ve spent time there I’ve grown quite fond of it. Not to say I would prefer to live there, but you realize pretty quickly that New Orleans is like no other place in the U.S., perhaps the world… and it’s a culture that deserves to be respected and preserved.
On that weekend in late August of 2005, my wife and I were still living in Chicago, but we had been talking casually about what life might be like if we lived in Louisiana. Everyone will remember the media coverage of the aftermath of Katrina, but I recall watching the news very carefully in the days preceding the storm – certainly more carefully than my friends in Chicago. The most vivid memory I have of my worrisome feelings is of reading this from the National Weather Service:
000
WWUS74 KLIX 282139
NPWLIX
URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
413 PM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005
...EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE KATRINA CONTINUES TO APPROACH THE
MISSISSIPPI RIVER DELTA...
...DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED...
MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT
LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL
FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY
DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.
THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL.
PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD
FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE
BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME
WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.
HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A
FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.
AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH
AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY
VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE
ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE
WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.
POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN
AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING
INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.
THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY
THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW
CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE
KILLED.
AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WATCH IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR
HURRICANE FORCE...OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE...ARE
PEARL RIVER-PIKE-POINTE COUPEE-ST. HELENA-WALTHALL-WASHINGTON-
WEST BATON ROUGE-WEST FELICIANA-WILKINSON-
413 PM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005
...INLAND HURRICANE WIND WARNING IS IN EFFECT...
HURRICANE KATRINA CONTINUES TO APPROACH THE AREA. TROPICAL STORM
FORCE WINDS ARE CURRENTLY MOVING INTO THE COASTAL MARSHES AND WILL
SREAD NORTHWESTWARD INTO THE GREATER BATON ROUGE AREA AND
SOUTHWEST MISSISSIPPI LATER THIS EVENING. TROPICAL STORM FORCE
WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO ONSET AROUND 9 PM TONIGHT AND PERSIST
FOR 22 TO 26 HOURS. HURRICANE FORCE WINDS WILL ONSET AROUND
DAYBREAK AND PERSIST FOR ABOUT 5 TO 10 HOURS. MAXIMUM WIND
GUSTS OF 80 TO 90 MPH ARE POSSIBLE IN EAST-CENTRAL LOUISIANA
AND SOUTHWEST MISSISSIPPI.
DO NOT VENTURE OUTDOORS ONCE TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS ONSET!
$$
I still get chills reading that. Of particular concern to me at the time were my in-laws living in the Baton Rouge area. My wife will probably recall me asking her whether she should have been encouraging her family to move out of the way of the storm. This was sloughed off, of course, and thankfully it didn’t matter much. My wife had always told me that hurricanes in Louisiana were just another reason to party – fill up the bathtub with ice, and sit around on the porch drinking beer until the power came back on.
(Not a party.)
Another memory I have from those first few days was sitting in our lunchroom on the 15th floor of an office building in Chicago on Monday morning, August 29, watching CNN’s coverage of the storm. A few people strolled in and out casually, but I was the only person in the office that seemed genuinely concerned about what was happening. Let me say that I’m not trying to go all Brian Williams here, implying that I realized something that others didn’t. There were obviously plenty of people (including the National Weather Service, obviously) that knew that Katrina was going to be devastating. But what still sticks with me is that feeling I had on Sunday and Monday that people weren’t paying enough attention. I guess those feelings were tragically prescient when you consider the state of New Orleans and its remaining residents as the storm left them behind.
The anniversary of Hurricane Gustav is coming up in a few days as well. I’ve realized that having been through Gustav has also given me some perspective on Katrina. A direct hit by a hurricane is miserable. Gustav was arguably the most devastating hurricane ever to strike Baton Rouge, but it pales in comparison with Katrina. Yet I found the aftermath of Gustav to be nearly unbearable. In the 24-48 hours before Gustav, New Orleans was evacuating, and Baton Rouge was starting to swell in size. The high school in my neighborhood was set up as a temporary shelter for evacuees, and its parking lot was full. Traffic around the house started to get choked, and I noticed stores and restaurants shutting down or cutting back operations. The storm itself knocked down some trees in my neighborhood and did some damage to our fence, but that was about it. The bigger problems were outside our neighborhood. Trees around the capitol region, including hundreds (if not thousands) of majestic live oaks were knocked down, taking the power supply with them. We lost power for a week, and we were relatively lucky. It took much longer for some.
As you may know, it’s pretty hot in August/September in Louisiana. To add to the miserable heat, it quickly became evident that life had changed in Baton Rouge pretty dramatically. There was no place to get food. Driving somewhere to get away from the destruction might have been an option, but there were few places to get gas, and the roads were pretty snarled anyway. The gas issue became problematic quickly – I had planned ahead and had a generator ready… but I only had about 10 gallons of gas. When I left the house a few days later looking for more gas, little did I realize that it would be an all-day affair – waiting in line with hundreds of other people for a crack at a gas pump.
I share some of these memories because I wish to wrap up my perspective on Katrina by making this point. When something like this happens, it makes you realize that modern life is, in so many ways, a delicate a balance. Days before Gustav, I completely took for granted the fact that I could run down the road for gas, groceries, or Happy Meals for the kids. I took for granted that my fridge worked and I was able to stay cool in my own home. Even as the storm hit, I thought to myself, “you have a generator, plenty of canned food, and a couple cases of water, so you’re going to be fine.” But a few days later I realized, while sitting at a gas station with a few hundred new friends and their gas cans, that life can sometimes brutally strip you of pretense.
I normally wouldn’t have ever spent a moment talking to people that live in the trailer park down the road, but on that Wednesday, we were all in it together, fighting for the same basic staple that days earlier we had taken for granted. And that was just gas! The people stuck in the Superdome or Convention Center in the days following Katrina had no food, water or medications. After a few days, they didn’t even have functioning restrooms. Therefore, when I saw the images of the Superdome and Convention Center again this week – the hunger, the grief, the desperation – it hit me much harder than it did five years ago. Whereas I originally looked at the people who rode out the storm in New Orleans as foolish and at least somewhat deserving of their fate, I now look at them with a great deal more sympathy. Perhaps they should have left, yes. But no one deserves to live through that kind of misery. I remember feeling, in the days following Gustav, amazed that I was in the richest country on the face of the earth, with a good job and money in the bank, but yet I was helpless to go get food or gas. It has helped me relate much better to the soundbytes from the Superdome asking, "how can this happen in America?"
Photo: Ted Jackson/New Orleans Times-Picayune
For my readers in Louisiana, as I mentioned at the top, I hope that none of this comes off as lacking authenticity. For my readers elsewhere, I hope that this narrative lends some small bit of perspective to the photos you will see this week. Remember the prediction from that National Weather Service warning: “human suffering incredible by modern standards.” It came true, and all it took was a storm. So I hope that you will think about your own preparedness for a disaster, both physically and emotionally. After some self-reflection about your own survival if your creature comforts were taken away, I’d ask you to reflect again about Katrina – your thoughts then and your thoughts five years later. Re-evaluate your feelings about the faces you’ve seen on TV, and most importantly, remember the over 1,800 people who lost their lives to the storm.
I was recently in a bookstore looking for a couple books to bring on a trip, when a book called In the Sanctuary of Outcasts caught my eye. The book, written by Neil White, promised to discuss the last leper colony in the U.S., which I had heard was located in the town of Carville, LA. White was convicted of bank fraud and sentenced to serve time in a low-security federal penitentiary. At the time he was sentenced he didn't realize that he would come to meet, and later accept as friends, those with Hansen's Disease - more commonly known as leprosy.
The book, of course, spends a lot of time talking about White's redemptive journey from being a selfish, serial check-kiter to someone who is somewhat less selfish and very understanding of those who suffer from Hansen's Disease. (It's a fine book overall, but I was a little unconvinced of any deeper transformation.) More interesting to me were the bits he included about the facility itself.
The colony welcomed it's first patients in the 1890s. Unfortunately for the patients, moving to Carville was usually not their choice. Many were ripped from their homes as children, and lived their entire lives at the leprosarium. The stigma of Hansen's Disease is strong – a stigma that dates as far back as the Bible or beyond. In the beginning, most residents faced mandatory quarantine at Carville. Decades later, residents were given the option to leave. Most chose to continue to live at Carville – perhaps knowing that the outside world would not be accepting.
In 1921, the U.S. Public Health Service took control of Carville, and it became the National Leprosarium of the United States. In 1986, the facility became the Gillis W. Long Hansen's Disease (Leprosy) Center, named after a U.S. Congressman who advocated for those with Hansen's Disease. In the late 1990s, the center officially moved into Baton Rouge, although a museum remains. The rest of the grounds, as I understand it, are now primarily used by the Louisiana National Guard.
In the airport on the way home, I decided to look at a map. I had heard of Carville, and knew it was fairly close to Baton Rouge, but for some reason I thought it was on the other side of the river. I was surprised to see that not only is Carville on the same side of the river as me, but it was shockingly close to my house. In fact, when I recently rode the White Castle ferry, I needed only to take a left turn to see the compound. I knew immediately that I needed to do a blog post about it.
After doing some research the last couple of days, I decided to set out toward Carville this evening. Unfortunately the pictures are not my best work. The compound is completely fenced in and there is virtually nowhere to stop and take pictures. I was also a little flustered by the military police around. Nevertheless, here is what I saw.
Getting close.
These photos are of Indian Mound Plantation, the sugar plantation that became the leprosarium.
White discusses the Catholic Church located on the colony several times. I assumed this was it.
Note the covered walkway on the right. At one time, it was thought that avoiding sunlight was helpful to those with Hansen's Disease. Thus the covered walkways throughout the compound.
This appeared to be one of the dormitories. It may have been home to Hansen's Disease patients, federal convicts, or both.
Although it was almost chilling for me to see these buildings in person, I know that these photographs may not satisfy your curiosity. More photos of the colony can be found here, if you'd like to learn more.
I've been jotting down ideas for more posts lately, just need to find time to get out and do the photography. Hope to do another post soon.
In prior posts, I've mentioned that my in-laws have a camp in Jarreau, LA, on False River. False River is an oxbow lake – formerly part of the Mississippi River that cut itself off in approximately 1722. Today, in addition to the many people that live on the lake year-round, it is also home to scores of “camps.” The term “camp” was a new one for me when I moved to Louisiana. I was used to “cabins” or “cottages” in the Midwest. Pretty much the same concept.
Each year on Independence Day, False River holds a boat parade. In many ways, it's similar to a Mardi Gras parade, in that there's an over-arching theme, plenty of music, and things being hurled from the floats. Oh, and lots of booze. The things being hurled are typically water balloons. More on that during today's photo exposition. The theme this year was “What Does BP Mean to You?” Here we go – happy birthday, America!
These first few picture the boats as they were staging a ways down the lake. Note the two people floating in the water in the first picture. This is a key part of the strategy – you put swimmers in the lake to collect any water balloons that didn't reach the pier.
One of the BP-themed boats.
“Miss Oily 2010.”
This was my favorite one of the day.
Boat-to-boat combat.
These flags were flying at a nearby camp. The dixie flag is rendered in LSU colors.
Take note of this boat. Many of the boaters carry nets so that they can catch incoming water balloons, or fish unbroken balloons from the water.
This young man is pictured launching a water balloon toward my beloved family.
Two direct hits below.
These guys were keeping things safe.
This party barge was built from pure Cajun ingenuity. It looks like more fun than a barrel full of monkeys – it has a bar, ceiling fans, a killer soundsystem and a bathroom. However, it definitely looks like it's testing the limits of buoyancy.
Your scribe and photographer.
This is “Deuce.”
Things were starting to settle down, all the water balloons had been used.
SOLA, Solo is a blog (primarily a photoblog) about South Louisiana. When I moved to Baton Rouge from the Midwest a few years ago, I thought I understood the rich cultural heritage and unique geography of this part of the world. I was wrong - it's far more interesting than I had imagined. Most of my adventures and photography happen while I'm out on my own, on little business daytrips. Thus the name of the blog - discovering SOuth LouisianA, solo.
