Day 3: Sights & Sounds

I continue to learn things about New Orleans.

Such as that the predominant religion here is Catholicism, even among African-Americans!

Such as effective rhetoric, when speaking to a crowd: if you're losing them, throw in a "God said" or "It ain't right," or if it's a really bad situation, say, "God said, 'It ain't right.'" (That I learned from my boss D, who attributed it to the concluding keynote speaker at the "Reforming Schools"panel yesterday, Dr. Andre Perry.)

Such as that the city streets, while they seem like an orderly concentric pattern on an aerial map, are actually a bit hard to navigate sometimes, because the streets run parallel to the river, in a Crescent shape. This last bit I learned from my coworker A, when I went to hang with two of her friends last night where we had red wine in antique glass teacups and cheese-- some that A made from scratch (there's a "Local food challenge" going on in NOLA right now), and some that another girl made from gouda cheese wrapped in Pillsbury crescent roll dough and baked-- YUM! BTW, how often in your life do you use the word 'crescent' twice in the same paragraph, in different capacities?

I made 13-bean chili yesterday. It was laborious, but with Tony's creole spice, it was easily redeemed. That reminds me of what EH said that her husband, a Louisianian, said to her about her cooking: "Anything can be good when you just add some Tony's to it."

I have so much more that I intend to write about, but here's a few more pics and now I have to go to do my job!

This is what street corners look like. Some intersections may lack signage, but at least there are tiles for pedestrians. Note also the steel support for the curb--cool.

Went exploring yesterday and found MEGP's elementary school! (Actually, it's K-8.) The funny thing about all these charter takeovers of formerly district schools is that they have banners of the new name, but over the front door remains the school's old name.

Wow-- what's the story behind this lineup of water holes in the sidewalk? Does it serve a lot of separate tenants within one small apartment building? It was in front of a beautiful mansion that appears to me to have been divided up into about 8 apartment units.

For you to visualize what a Shotgun style house floorplan looks like from the inside. My bedroom is in the way back of the first floor. There are two other bedrooms too, upstairs and downstairs. It's a great house, feels new.