Our first full day in New Orleans started with breakfast. We were greeted by Zeke, the owners’ dog, taking a nap just outside the door of our room. I think Zeke takes lots of naps when he is not eating.
We had a pleasant – and reasonably low-calorie, I hope – breakfast of yogurt and granola in a parfait glass. I read the paper and John chatted with the other guests.
We then went off to Palm Sunday services. I figured we would just go to the local Episcopal church for this area. I heard that they did a big procession for this last Sunday in Lent, but I was really delighted by what we found. We had the Storyville Stompers, a Dixieland band, leading us!
We marched up and down Espanade Street, the area which divides the French Quarter, the Faubourg Marigny, and the Treme districts. Along the way parishioners – there were about 100 of us – handed out extra palms to neighbors and others who had come out to watch.
We had a few stops along the way – stations, if you prefer your terminology correct – for psalms, songs, and prayers. The music was not particularly “Episcopal”. The band played “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and “In the Sweet By and By.” But it was fun.
The service was not as much fun as the procession. The rector preached a passionate sermon about the passion continuing with victims of violence in modern times. There were particular reference to a family here in New Orleans who were senselessly shot by a young relative earlier in the week. This has been the big story dominating the news here as it really illustrates how the social fabric of this city seems to have disintegrated in the aftermath of Katrina.
We stayed for coffee and chatted with some of the people. We had a particularly interesting talk with several young white guys who had come here to be part of the post-Katrina reconstruction effort. One was with Teach for America and the others were working for similar kinds of organizations. They talked about the “brain gain” which has characterized New Orleans in recent years. I hope it continues.
After Mass we went to Jackson Square where we took a walking tour of the French Quarter. It was a bit of a dud. The group was quite large and it was hard to hear the guide at times. There were a few things she pointed out that I had not seen before but not much.
Hardly disappointing, however, was the Stanley and Stella screaming contest which concludes the annual Tennessee Williams festival. Here a number of volunteers try their hands at doing a Marlon-Brando style yell. It was fantastic. There was even a mime who did it silently!
We did not quite know what to do after this, so we decided to do our own walking tour of the garden district. On our way to catch the Saint Charles Avenue streetcar, we saw one of the “Mardi Gras Indians.”
The Garden District is one of probably my favorite neighborhood in the city. (I like my urban environments clean, green, and affluent. I am just not cut out for India.)
We were disappointed that the Lafayette Cemetery was closed, but we did get a snapshot over the fence.
The Garden District is famous for its collection of homes from the 1840’s and 1850’s, many, like the one below, in a Grecian Revival style. They are all beautiful.
We had dinner at Luke (it’s supposed to have an umlaut over the u but I can’t figure out how to do that in HTML), a restaurant owned by local celebrity chef John Best. I had this amazing dish of local prawns in a spicy sauce over grits.
