SEB left today and I’m feeling quite sad. Having had her here for 3.5 weeks I’d grown used to and even reliant on having someone to meet me off the trolley of an evening, and accompany me on the walk home. She cooked for me, cleaned for me, even did my laundry! I had my very own housewife and now I’m like a newly divorced husband without a clue as to how many quarters I need for the Laundromat. She did however leave my freezer well stocked with enough leftovers to last me until Kiffie gets here. Thank you SEB!
It made life a lot easier having someone to explore this new and exciting city with – let me tell you Bourbon is not a street you want to walk down alone, particularly on a Friday or Saturday night. It is, as I mentioned before, the tourist trap – it is closed off to cars each evening and at the weekend its basically one massive street party heaving with people skipping from one bar to the next slurping an alcoholic slushy along the way. What you have to watch out for though is the people who have positioned themselves on balconies along the road so they can shower people with mardi-gras beads. Its as though they are trying to play that fairground game of throwing the hoop over the bottle, or maybe lassoing a cow would be more a more appropriate simile – they sling out a strand (or not infrequently multiple strands) of beads at the people below – I’d like to say trying to get the beads over their target’s head, but it is probably more likely they are aiming for a cleavage.
Alpha took SEB and I for an explorative afternoon one day. First stop was a cemetery. This may seem like an odd tourist attraction but they are something quite incredible here. There are a number of cemeteries around the town, and there is usually an organized tour going to any one of them as they have a reputation of being quite a dangerous place to visit – known for muggings and attacks. I had heard from a number of people that one should not go to a New Orleans cemetery alone – Alpha herself was one of these people, so when she offered to take us I jumped at the chance to be safely escorted through the corpses lair. The sad thing about the organized tours is that none of the money they earn goes into the cemeteries.
We went to the Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 in the Garden District, established in 1833, and incidentally where Interview with a Vampire was filmed. We were lucky enough to happen upon one of the cemetery workers (he had a very official sounding title which I neglected to note down) who offered to guide us around. The problem was we had arrived at about 2.30 when the cemetery was being cleared for closing at 3pm, consequently our guide was in less than top form and somewhat inebriated or intoxicated by drugs or alcohol. The Southern-drawl is still rather hard for me to understand, adding too it the drunken-slur, and we were lucky if we caught every tenth word – thankfully we had Alpha to whisper a translation. I will upload some photos of the cemetery so you can see what I mean when I tell you they are quite spectacular. They are not home to fields of headstones, it is more like row upon row of tombs. The bodies are buried above ground – and there is plenty of controversy as to why – the most reasonable explanation is that there is a “high water table” in New Orleans which means a, that its hard to dig graves deep enough without them filling up with water before anyone is buried in them and b, that when there is a storm or heavy rainfall anything in the ground gets picked up by the water and washed away causing quite a site with corpses floating all over town. Each tomb can house 10 or 20 or even more people depending on how long it is between burials in the tomb – basically the body is put in the tomb, sealed up and left to rot, after enough time the tomb is reopened, the remains pushed to the back or side and another body is ‘laid to rest’. Sometimes a tomb is emptied out and the remains sent elsewhere to make more room, but the names of the people laid to rest in the tomb remain carved into the stone. We were shown an open tomb which had recently been emptied, I will load that photo too – the strange man crouching inside the tomb was our guide.
Alpha also took SEB and I to the Ninth Ward which was the area worst affected by Katrina. On the drive there we saw many abandoned homes with numbers and crosses spray-painted on them – this is what the emergency services did to indicate when the house was checked for bodies, by whom and how many were found. As we approached the ninth ward there were fewer and fewer houses until eventually there were none but the odd couple of new houses recently erected. When Katrina hit the river swelled and the banks (or Levy) on the side of the Ninth Ward broke. The water rushed through with such force that it literally picked the houses up off the ground and swept them away. In some spots you can tell where a house used to stand as only the steps which once lead up to the front door remain. The Ninth Ward is now being rebuilt, with help from Brad Pitt who has commissioned architects to design eco-friendly housing which will stand up to the force of nature. However, hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 and it is only this year that people have started moving into the newly built houses, and many of the houses are still in the process of being built. The problem with this is: the people who had nowhere to live after their houses were swept away have by now made a new life somewhere else, and its hard to give everything up again to return. The population of New Orleans has almost halved since Katrina hit, and many of the numbers who live here now are made up of immigrants who came to help rebuild after the hurricane.
We did get to meet one man who has pretty much made rebuilding the ninth ward his life now. He lost his mother and granddaughter in Katrina, and watched his home being swept away. He now lives in a beautiful house, but only just moved in, in July. From 2005 to this year he lived in a little caravan next to the site of his house with a memorial to his mother and granddaughter. You can imagine the toll such devastation and loss could take on a man, but when we met him he had a massive smile plastered over his face. He showed us a picture of his children and remaining grandchildren. “I lost a lot, but look what I’ve still got – plenty to be thankful for!” He says. I am hoping that when Alpha’s volunteer team return to New Orleans next year I will be able to help out in the rebuilding of Ninth Ward Homes.
Okay work – well I have my own office! Quite exciting! But not a whole lot to do in it yet. So far I have just been reading up on our cases and familiarizing myself with the procedures. Boss Man did buy me a whole puncher and ring binder the other day and let me loose on one particular case which was basically just piles of papers in boxes – sadly enough I get such a thrill out of organizing things. It definitely helped me get to know the facts of the case and the evidence we have which meant that when I was invited to sit in on a meeting with one of the experts I was actually able to contribute to the discussions.
And now I find I’ve just been babbling/rambling away again… and not really told you much about the people or work, but alas it is time for me to sign off once more. Perhaps if you tell me what you want me to write about I could attempt to steer myself in a defined direction.
It made life a lot easier having someone to explore this new and exciting city with – let me tell you Bourbon is not a street you want to walk down alone, particularly on a Friday or Saturday night. It is, as I mentioned before, the tourist trap – it is closed off to cars each evening and at the weekend its basically one massive street party heaving with people skipping from one bar to the next slurping an alcoholic slushy along the way. What you have to watch out for though is the people who have positioned themselves on balconies along the road so they can shower people with mardi-gras beads. Its as though they are trying to play that fairground game of throwing the hoop over the bottle, or maybe lassoing a cow would be more a more appropriate simile – they sling out a strand (or not infrequently multiple strands) of beads at the people below – I’d like to say trying to get the beads over their target’s head, but it is probably more likely they are aiming for a cleavage.
Alpha took SEB and I for an explorative afternoon one day. First stop was a cemetery. This may seem like an odd tourist attraction but they are something quite incredible here. There are a number of cemeteries around the town, and there is usually an organized tour going to any one of them as they have a reputation of being quite a dangerous place to visit – known for muggings and attacks. I had heard from a number of people that one should not go to a New Orleans cemetery alone – Alpha herself was one of these people, so when she offered to take us I jumped at the chance to be safely escorted through the corpses lair. The sad thing about the organized tours is that none of the money they earn goes into the cemeteries.
We went to the Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 in the Garden District, established in 1833, and incidentally where Interview with a Vampire was filmed. We were lucky enough to happen upon one of the cemetery workers (he had a very official sounding title which I neglected to note down) who offered to guide us around. The problem was we had arrived at about 2.30 when the cemetery was being cleared for closing at 3pm, consequently our guide was in less than top form and somewhat inebriated or intoxicated by drugs or alcohol. The Southern-drawl is still rather hard for me to understand, adding too it the drunken-slur, and we were lucky if we caught every tenth word – thankfully we had Alpha to whisper a translation. I will upload some photos of the cemetery so you can see what I mean when I tell you they are quite spectacular. They are not home to fields of headstones, it is more like row upon row of tombs. The bodies are buried above ground – and there is plenty of controversy as to why – the most reasonable explanation is that there is a “high water table” in New Orleans which means a, that its hard to dig graves deep enough without them filling up with water before anyone is buried in them and b, that when there is a storm or heavy rainfall anything in the ground gets picked up by the water and washed away causing quite a site with corpses floating all over town. Each tomb can house 10 or 20 or even more people depending on how long it is between burials in the tomb – basically the body is put in the tomb, sealed up and left to rot, after enough time the tomb is reopened, the remains pushed to the back or side and another body is ‘laid to rest’. Sometimes a tomb is emptied out and the remains sent elsewhere to make more room, but the names of the people laid to rest in the tomb remain carved into the stone. We were shown an open tomb which had recently been emptied, I will load that photo too – the strange man crouching inside the tomb was our guide.
Alpha also took SEB and I to the Ninth Ward which was the area worst affected by Katrina. On the drive there we saw many abandoned homes with numbers and crosses spray-painted on them – this is what the emergency services did to indicate when the house was checked for bodies, by whom and how many were found. As we approached the ninth ward there were fewer and fewer houses until eventually there were none but the odd couple of new houses recently erected. When Katrina hit the river swelled and the banks (or Levy) on the side of the Ninth Ward broke. The water rushed through with such force that it literally picked the houses up off the ground and swept them away. In some spots you can tell where a house used to stand as only the steps which once lead up to the front door remain. The Ninth Ward is now being rebuilt, with help from Brad Pitt who has commissioned architects to design eco-friendly housing which will stand up to the force of nature. However, hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 and it is only this year that people have started moving into the newly built houses, and many of the houses are still in the process of being built. The problem with this is: the people who had nowhere to live after their houses were swept away have by now made a new life somewhere else, and its hard to give everything up again to return. The population of New Orleans has almost halved since Katrina hit, and many of the numbers who live here now are made up of immigrants who came to help rebuild after the hurricane.
We did get to meet one man who has pretty much made rebuilding the ninth ward his life now. He lost his mother and granddaughter in Katrina, and watched his home being swept away. He now lives in a beautiful house, but only just moved in, in July. From 2005 to this year he lived in a little caravan next to the site of his house with a memorial to his mother and granddaughter. You can imagine the toll such devastation and loss could take on a man, but when we met him he had a massive smile plastered over his face. He showed us a picture of his children and remaining grandchildren. “I lost a lot, but look what I’ve still got – plenty to be thankful for!” He says. I am hoping that when Alpha’s volunteer team return to New Orleans next year I will be able to help out in the rebuilding of Ninth Ward Homes.
Okay work – well I have my own office! Quite exciting! But not a whole lot to do in it yet. So far I have just been reading up on our cases and familiarizing myself with the procedures. Boss Man did buy me a whole puncher and ring binder the other day and let me loose on one particular case which was basically just piles of papers in boxes – sadly enough I get such a thrill out of organizing things. It definitely helped me get to know the facts of the case and the evidence we have which meant that when I was invited to sit in on a meeting with one of the experts I was actually able to contribute to the discussions.
And now I find I’ve just been babbling/rambling away again… and not really told you much about the people or work, but alas it is time for me to sign off once more. Perhaps if you tell me what you want me to write about I could attempt to steer myself in a defined direction.
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