I think it was the same night as the previous post... January 6th where my gal friends and i bumped into a parade for Joan of Arc's 598th birthday, and then stumbled into this little cafe called Sound Cafe which is another coffee place very close to where we are staying. While walking around outside for a while we started hearing strings playing from somewhere and we kept walking and walking and found Sound Cafe. We found the sound of a raw fiddle with two women playing them and one lady on the piano. They played some irish tunes and let us listen... it was such an experience because i rarely go out and another reason i rarely hear/hear of great live music in Milwaukee.

Besides the fact this is Hurricane city it would be such a nice place to live. The community aspect of it is not anything i can even describe. I can give an example from Milwaukee.... in Milwaukee no black person has ever just started talking to me other than hit on me, and i have never seen a black waitress that i can remember in Milwaukee... down here everybody talks with everybody and there aren't any weird looks and winces and i see black people working wherever.. and i find it strange because i am accustomed to seeing black people on the streets or in the "bad neighborhoods" but i feel none of that kind of attitude down here and i love it.

So on January 6th I stayed home from all activities which from what it sounds like from the group i did not miss much. At around 4pm that day i decided it would be good for myself to get outside while there was still light and get some fresh air. By myself i walked about 2 minutes east of where i am staying and landed in a jungle on the corner. I ordered a green tea and heard a piano playing. I walked through an open doorway and sat down in the middle of the room. A young gentlemen was hitting the ivory and his music just sounded so raw.. he sang some song i do not know of but it sounded really nice.. bluesy and mellow slightly sad but inspiring. Then he doodled or dabbled a little and with his friend he started singing some Bob Dylan... "kneeling at your window babe i think i've been here before...you know i want your lovin baby why are you so hard." and another now i cant remember, but i do remember how this guys voice sounded so much like the stereotypical Dylan voice without him trying. He played a little Chuck Berry "Nadine" and then brought out his harmonica and the harmonica holder and played a duet with himself finishing with a song i havent heard before. My entire stay there was completely foreign it felt like i was in another country.. or in another mind.

I got the flu in between the lecture at Dillard and eating at Lil' Dizzy's i started to get a very bad headache and my throat where the glands are started throbbing every time i swallowed. After getting very nauseous and increasingly doused with skin aches we finally arrived back at our bed and breakfast around 4:30pm when all i could do was take off my pants where my cuddle duds were hiding underneath and sleep. Some body was nice enough to make a run to the walgreen's to purchase me some medicine. So i woke up at about 6:30 or so? I popped an ibuprofen and some water and tried sleeping. I succeeded for a good hour when i woke up with the worst headache i could imagine getting which hasn't seized yet at 8:04pm. My brain feels like its on fire with the rest of my body and skin hurts, that scratchy awful feeling when you get the flu like i do. I don't really get sick a lot but when i do it hits pretty badly. I hope this terrible pain stops soon. Now i really miss being home. Never before have i missed being home as much as i do now.. so much so i was already looking for flights out of here. Who knows though.. i might get better soon.

So I arrived in New Orleans at about 4:30pm on January 4th finally after a wily trip taking a group of us through Baltimore, Maryland instead of Atlanta, Georgia, and getting us here at 4:30pm instead of 10:22am as originally planned. As many small groups are inclined to do when put into tight situations with each other we got to know each other a little better and easier than we might have if it would have been the huge group all lugging around our stuff through airports.
Well i have never been to Maryland and I have never been to New Orleans so i was excited either way to just be, wherever i was. We got a big bus to get to our bed and breakfast. Going through the downtown area where the convention center is, made me a little nervous actually. It is like in New York City where at every corner a movie pops into your head because it looks as if it was filled right there, but instead of a movie popping into my head it was the documentaries and interviews that had me on the verge of crying after watching. We went through the French Quarter and I geeked at the sight of a levee, i have never seen one so close before and those even made me cringe.
We got food from Mona's, i got something called musabaha, which tasted just like hummus with bits of whole chickpea and i ordered a lentil soup. We ate sort of as a group and then spent the rest of the night celebrating getting/being here. It was an adventurous day and I hope those days do not stop.

௫5:05am

I have been awake since 4:30am but i am locked out of the living room that was accessible last night I am not sure how to get to the kitchen otherwise but I do not want to walk outside because its got to be cold right now. I am just waiting because i thought i heard that Floyd, the man who owns this place needs to wake up at 5:30 this morning? I hope I hear him down there soon because I need my daily dose of coffee soon! I will report more when there is more to report. Thank you everyone for finding this blog and I miss you!

The video here is the first I saw that led me to look more into both the human suffering during and after Hurricane Katrina and the political disappointment following the tragedy. This is at the same time appalling and not surprising. I hope you watch.


This is a PDF file, this is a published piece named The Race to Rebuild: The Color of Opportunity and the Future of New Orleans. It is very informative and enlightening.
http://www4.uwm.edu.ezproxy.lib.uwm.edu/libraries/ereserve/volz/trtroc.pdf

This is a Democracy Now! episode centered around Michael Brown the director of FEMA during Hurricane Katrina.
http://www.archive.org/stream/dn2005-0928_vid/dn2005-0928_512kb.mp4

I found this video and I hope you find it too.

Week Away

Alright so I am leaving in a couple hours and a week from today...getting prepped for the adventure ahead is exciting most people that know me know that I get very excited whenever traveling is involved (case in point.. i started packing for this trip November 30). This is not a vacation, this is a research and active learning adventure i like to call it to New Orleans. I hope to purchase an external cd-rom drive so I can post videos of my days in the crescent city. More updates and excites will reach this page whenever they choose to come through my fingertips onto the keyboard.