Coffee to Go

One of the things my husband and I do for fun is to attend monthly meetings of the Foundation for Historical Louisiana, an organization we joined to get the cheaper rate for their annual bus trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. They do have some interesting speakers as well. In the last few months we’ve attended a talk on native plants and heard the author of From Animal House to Our House talk about how he and his wife restored a historic Baltimore row house that had previously been owned by a fraternity. Last night’s speaker was Elizabeth Williams, president of The Southern Food and Beverage Museum of New Orleans, giving a talk titled Louisiana: The Coffee State.

For the last few weeks we’ve been having late afternoon thundershowers, so we found ourselves stuck in traffic on our way downtown to the Old Governor’s Mansion. We got there early enough to nibble on a few light refreshments, and to be told that our speaker was also stuck in traffic and would be running late. The person who told us this added, “I don’t know if I could talk for a whole hour about coffee.”

“Perhaps if you drank enough first,” I murmured.

Ms. Williams arrived, and began by stating something I had half realized, but never completely though about: that somehow people have begun associating the city of Seattle with coffee, when it should be Louisiana’s claim to fame. 

I didn’t start drinking coffee as a regular thing until I was almost out of college, so when I moved to New Orleans for graduate school I quickly learned what real coffee is supposed to taste like. Unfortunately, that has led to decades of ordering coffee on the road and being given what tastes like dishwater. Louisiana coffee preferences run to dark roast coffee that can be brewed strong without tasting like bitter sludge.   There is a large group which likes coffee with chicory, especially when it is served as cafe au lait, but coffee without chicory is served throughout most of the state and is, of course, the basis for Cafe Brulot. 

There is a good reason why Louisiana is The Coffee State. Of all the coffee beans shipped to the U.S, one-third come in through New Orleans and one-third through New York. That leaves one more third to be divided up among all the other ports, including that city somewhere in Washington State. Since coffee beans are shipped to New Orleans, a lot of them are also roasted in New Orleans. Folger’s brand, according to Ms. Williams, not only has a plant in New Orleans, but has also closed its Kansas City plant and transferred those operations to New Orleans. Louisiana also has its own brands, Luzianne (which is what I started drinking back when I lived in Buffalo), Community Coffee, which has a chain of CC’s coffee houses throughout the state, CDM, the Cafe du Monde brand, and Mello Joy, operating out of Lafayette.

Oddly enough, in its earliest days, coffee was not a beverage, but a snack. It began in Ethiopia, where people chewed the coffee berries. Arab traders acquired the plants and began making brewed coffee. From the mid-East, coffee was imported to Italy through Venice and from there spread throughout Europe.  Louisiana coffee drinking habits, including the use of chicory, were most influenced by the French. By the early 1600’s, coffee, tea, and chocolate as a beverage all became popular, which meant that, of course, the demand for sugar grew as well.

The Dutch were responsible for getting coffee berries, which unlike coffee beans, will germinate when planted, from the Arabs, and encouraging planting around the world in suitable locations. French planters began growing coffee in Martinique and shipping to New Orleans. 

Other fun fact that I did not know: the process of vacuum sealing coffee started in Louisiana.

So if you ever find yourself in our interesting little state, swatting mosquitos and sweating in the January heat, find a CC’s or a PJ’s or a Cafe du Monde and get yourself a cup of coffee.

Or maybe not, because it would really be unfair of us to spoil you for Starbuck’s forever.

Turf Wars in New Orleans

Tuesday was Mardi Gras. Three years ago my friend D found out about a group that organizes bus tours from Baton Rouge to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. The bus leaves from our large mall and parks at Le Pavillion hotel, from which it is a two block walk to the parade route stands at Lafayette Square, across from Gallier Hall. Included in the package are tickets to the stands and a late buffet lunch at Le Pavillion. For the past two years, John and I have been going along with her. 

John grew up in New Orleans, so up until the year after Hurricane Katrina, we usually went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. While his mother lived there, we stayed at her house the night before and went to the big potluck lunch at the house of a friend who lived just a few blocks off the uptown parade routes. For two years, we paraded ourselves as members of a small crew who owned a float in one of the truck parades. After Katrina, we began going to Lafayette for Mardi Gras instead. 

Since we had always been uptown for the parades, I had never seen the Zulu parade. From our vantage point near Napoleon and St. Charles, we could see the Rex parade and the truck parades. I had actually attended two Zulu balls back when I lived in New Orleans during my first marriage, but never seen the parade. I know there was always a lot of grumbling on the part of members of our Mardi Gras crew about our parade getting off to a late start because the Zulu parade kept holding up Rex. The truck parades follow the same route as Rex immediately after. Zulu starts off at another point, but uses the same route as Rex downtown, which means Rex can’t start until Zulu is out of their way.

The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club is the outgrowth of of a Benevolent Aid Society, a group of theater goers called “The Tramps”, and the Mardi Gras culture of New Orleans. They first paraded as Zulu in 1909 and first used floats in 1915. As the story goes, many of the floats were sponsored by local bars and the parade had to stop at each of these bars and mingle with the drinkers, leading to the parade having a somewhat chaotic and unpredictable route. It wasn’t until 1968 that they began parading on St. Charles and Canal Streets. 

The Krewe of Rex is an older and more privileged organization. Rex was first organized and paraded in 1872, in honor of the visit of Russia’s Grand Duke Alexis Romanov. A song written for the Duke’s amusement, “If Ever I Cease to Love”, is the Rex theme song to this day and played by His Majesty’s Calliope, the last float of the parade. The first ball was held in 1873, presided over by the first Queen of Rex.

Aside from the obvious racial and social differences between the two groups, they also embody two different sides of Mardi Gras. Zulu is raucous and inclusive. You can pay your way onto a Zulu float. This year's Zulu parade took 3 and a half hours to pass the viewing stand where we were camped, more than long enough to leave everyone feeling “enough already”. So far as I know, no one stopped at bars, but there were a lot of floats, bands, and groups of other kinds, like the Buffalo Soldiers. Zulu projects the attitudes of “Yes, we do have all day” and “Join us up here, why don’t you.” The Zulu Mardi Gras is Mardi Gras of the people, by the people, and for the people. 

King Zulu 2012

The only way you can ride with Rex is to join Rex, and the only way you can join Rex is by birth or marriage. This year’s queen of Rex, or as they put it, Queen of Carnival, is Ella Monstead Bright, the great, great, great niece of the 1879 King Rex, William Mahle. Her cousin was queen last year. King Rex is always a rich old white guy distinguished member of the business community. The queen is a debutante. 

The insularity of New Orleans’ Mardi Gras krewes led to the formation of two super krewes, Endymion and Bacchus in the late 1960’s. Endymion parades the Saturday night before Mardi Gras and Bacchus on Sunday night. They are known for their innovations in float design and for selecting celebrities for the reigning monarch. Endymion and Bacchus represent new blood and new money, as opposed to Rex’s old blood and old money or Comus’ old blood and no money. Comus used to hold the last parade on Mardi Gras night but stopped in the 1990’s.

The Rex floats, while not as expensive or expansive as those of the newer super krewes, are beautiful to look at and always tell a story. This year, it was Ancient American Lore. Fifty years ago, it would have been “Indian Legends”. The Rex parade is Mardi Gras by the right people, of the right people, and for the tourists. In the minds of not only Rex, but those tourists and the citizens of  New Orleans and the surrounding area, the Rex parade is Mardi Gras.

Rex Float

For those of us with no blood and no money, there are the truck parades. Sponsored by the Elks Krewe of Orleanians and the Krewe of Crescent City, the truck parades comprise individual truck floats decorated and staffed by small krewes or social clubs, organized under one umbrella organization which purchases insurance, sets the rules for how floats are decorated and how riders are costumed, and otherwise keep things organized. The two oldest parades in Baton Rouge, the Southdowns and Spanish Town Mardi Gras parades, are truck parades. Like Zulu, they got longer and longer until the city-parish government finally set a limit to how many units each parade could have.

John and I spent two years riding in the Elks Krewe of Orleanians parade with a krewe that unfortunately collapsed the third year when most of the elderly members either retired or died. Being in the streets on Mardi Gras is fun; riding on a float is even better. I got a phenomenal rush of power watching all those people in the streets begging for the cheap plastic beads in my hands. It also gave us something to do with all the cheap plastic beads we collected from the parades leading up to Mardi Gras. My usual parade experience consists of trying to catch everything within reach and plotting long, hard deaths for the people who catch the beads that were headed for me, and then two hours later asking myself, “What am I going to do with this crap?” Turf wars are not just for the krewes.

So it was with trepidation that my husband noticed me perusing the “Ride with Zulu” link the other day. “Why are you reading that?” he asked. “I was just trying to figure out why the parade was so long. If you don’t have to be a member to ride, that may be why.”

He seemed content with my answer, but it only took me three years to get him to accompany me to Antarctica. New Orleans is a whole lot closer. I’m biding my time.

A Pall Hangs Over the City

Two, in fact. Last week, a fire began burning in a marsh to the east of New Orleans. Usually such fires are allowed to burn themselves out, since they don't pose a threat of spreading to homes and businesses, and it's hard to get into the marsh to fight the fire. As days passed, the smoke became a serious hazard to those with allergies and asthma. Yesterday evening, the smoke began clouding the air over Baton Rouge, roughly 80 miles from the marsh as the crow flies. An acrid smell hung in the air as John and I left the house to go to dinner.


This morning, helicopters are battling the fire.


Another pall has been hanging over Baton Rouge for the past several weeks, this one due to a bar fight resulting in serious legal charges being filed. Two weeks ago several LSU football players, drinking in a local bar after curfew, became involved in a bar fight. Several people were injured, two of them with fractured bones. Two LSU players, one the starting quarterback, have been charged with second degree battery. That much everyone agrees on. What happened next is the subject of dispute and conjecture.


One of the victims insists that the team quarterback, JJ, is the person who kicked him in the face while he was down on the ground, causing a fractured maxilla and other injuries. His story is confirmed by the victim's girlfriend. There is a blurry video of the fight in the parking lot taken with a cell phone which shows a tall man in black kicking a figure on the ground. There is also recently released security video taken inside the bar before the fight started showing JJ wearing a light colored shirt. However, there is a "second kicker", in a light shirt, in the video but he seems to be wearing shorts and possibly is of a different race. With the poor lighting and poor video quality, it's hard to tell.


Another complication is that the victim's ex-girlfriend obtained a restraining order against him a few days after the fight, claiming that he is harassing her and her friends. The bar video does show the victim arguing and getting physical with a young woman in the bar. Two bar employees have told the press that the victim took a punch at someone in the bar before the fight started outside. The victim's account of himself has been that he intervened in a fight that was already occurring to help someone in trouble.


The two players who have been charged with battery are out on bond but have been suspended from the team. Sides are being taken, and on the local sports message board, Tiger Rant, have been labelled Team Sweep and Team BRPD Sweep. One side believes that by being out in a bar after curfew, the players were asking for trouble. One side believes the Baton Rouge Police Department are behaving incompetently. As often happens in such cases, the murky gray area between the two sides is rapidly being ignored.


Let me be clear: when I say, "gray area", I am not proposing that there is any moral gray area regarding kicking someone who is down on the ground. He may have been spoiling for a fight, he may have mistreated his ex-girlfriend, he may have bit off more than he could chew, but he did not deserve to be kicked in the face while he was helpless.


No, I am referring to the murky gray area that is human memory and eye witness testimony, and the murkier gray area of how do you treat people who have been accused but not yet tried for crimes. The rule "presumed innocent until proven guilty" is a rule of courtroom law that does not have to apply to the university and the football team. There isn't any good answer that I can see to the question of whether the two players should have been suspended. People of good sense and good faith can be found on either side of the issue. If nothing else, they can be suspended for breaking curfew, but if that were all that had happened, it is likely they wouldn't have been.


Then there is that notoriously tricky form of evidence, eye witness testimony. The victim is sure that JJ is the one who kicked him, but was he really in a position to tell? He was down on the ground with someone kicking at him, it may have been hard to tell just who. He may be convinced that the most identifiable person in the group was the one that kicked him, even though he couldn't really know. His girlfriend's memory of events may be completely independent of his, or it may not. It may have been shaped by hearing him say, "Remember how JJ kicked me next?" or some such.


The memory of the accused may be equally fuzzy. JJ insists that he didn't kick anybody. That may be true. That may be a conscious lie. That may also be his memory of the truth. It's not impossible that alcohol and adrenalin interfered with his memory of events, and that what he remembers is what he presumed he would or would not have done in such circumstances or what he wanted to think he did in such circumstances.


It is sad to think that a guilty person may go free because reasonable doubt of his guilt can be raised or that an innocent person may go free but with an acrid cloud over his head because he can never be completely exonerated. That's the reality of our justice system. We more often than not have to deal with cases that are not open and shut. Often we deal with them by pretending that in fact they are open and shut, and that the people who can't see it just have smoke in their eyes.


Update, September 2: A tropical storm-in-the-making is now headed toward us. It could put the fire out, along with our power.

The National World War II Museum

The World War II Museum opened as The D-Day Museum in New Orleans on June 6, 2000, the 56th anniversary of D-Day. It was the brainchild of Dr. Stephen Ambrose (1936 – 2002), a historian at the University of New Orleans and biographer of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Besides Dr. Ambrose, there was another New Orleans connection that made New Orleans the logical spot for the museum. The Higgins landing craft, designed by Andrew Jackson Higgins, based on boats made for operating in the swamps and marshes of Louisiana, was the boat that made D-Day possible. As Eisenhower himself said,

Andrew Higgins ... is the man who won the war for us. ... If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs, we never could have landed over an open beach. The whole strategy of the war would have been different. 

The original museum had displays that showed the buildup to the war, the effect of the war on the home front, and the planning and execution of D-Day. There are mini-theaters throughout the museum that show short documentaries on various aspects of the war as well as oral histories from soldiers and people who worked on the home front. There's a map with lighted displays that show timelines of the invasion.  There is a Higgins boat and other military equipment on display in the lobby, which also hosts lectures and programs.


A second exhibit, describing the war in the Pacific, opened a few years after the first, highlighting the many D-Days of the war across the Pacific, which required amphibious landings on islands using the Higgins craft.  It also has a display of propaganda used by the Allies and the Axis. Even the newspaper headlines displayed throughout the exhibit use the terms "Japs" and sometimes "Nips" in headlines.  


In 2004, Congress designated the museum as The National World War II Museum .


My husband and I first visited the museum shortly after it opened, in August of 2000, and then took my brother Frank there for a visit in 2001. We also went again when the Pacific exhibit opened. After that, we did not visit again until last week. When the Beyond All Boundaries multi-media presentation opened on November 6, 2010, I realized I wanted to see the museum again. John suggested we wait until this month, when we would be in New Orleans for his high school reunion anyway and have most of Saturday free. 


The museum sits on one and a half city blocks on Magazine Street and what used to be Howard Dr but has been renamed Andrew J. Higgins Dr. It sits across from the old Civil War Museum, which I have never visited. It's not far from the French Quarter, and close to the Superdome and New Orleans Arena. We could have walked to it from our hotel if it had not been for my still healing foot.


The museum is a must-see if you visit New Orleans, but I have some reservations about taking young children there. I'd say it's worthwhile for those 10 years old and up, depending on your child, but it's a war museum. It depicts war as realistically as it can. Some of the exhibits are quite graphic and disturbing. One of the sections talks about the brutality of war and shows two black and white photos of severed heads, one mounted on a tank and one hanging in a tree. Since the exhibits are hung almost floor to ceiling, not just adult eye level, these were about waist high for me, and I apparently overlooked them on my first three visits, but they would be at eye level for a young child.  There are also pictures of concentration camp survivors, the dead from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and pictures of the dead and wounded from the D-Day and other invasions. 


The multi-media presentation, Beyond All Boundaries, gives a good overview of the war, but again, it contains some disturbing images and bursts of loud sound and flashes of light that could be scary to a young child. I think the intent of Beyond All Boundaries was to give as realistic a view as possible of what the war was like. Instead it made me realize the enormous gulf that exists between those who experienced combat and those of us who have not.


Admission for World War II veterans is free. I was surprised to find out from the museum website that there are 1.7 million WWII veterans still alive. A sixteen year old who lied about his age and enlisted just before the war ended, would be about 82 or 83 today. When the museum opened, there were several WWII veterans who volunteered at the museum, and we did see one visiting the museum the day we were there. I wonder how many veterans would prefer not to be reminded. I doubt my dad would have gone to such a museum if it had been in existence when he was alive.


It took us about four hours to go through the museum and see Beyond All Boundaries. You could take less time, but you could also take more. We skipped all of the oral histories, having seen them before.


Overall, I'd say see it if you can. Just be cautious about bringing young children.

Goin' to New Orleans

I used to live in New Orleans. My husband grew up in New Orleans. His mother lived there in his childhood home until an injury forced her to relocate to a retirement community in our town, an hour or so up the road. So I feel a little protective of New Orleans. When outsiders criticize, I get a little testy.

A few months ago, I read some comments on a message board about a trip the writer, C,  had taken to New Orleans with her husband and children. It was a business trip for him, and she does not like him taking business trips, so he arranged to bring her and the children along without asking her first. I get how infuriating that is. You bring up a problem to your partner, you offer your solution, and then zie imposes a solution that does nothing but indicate zie wasn't listening. So, yeah, I probably would have gone into this trip with a bad attitude, too. 

What I wouldn't have done was go into it without any research into what to do with the children while I was there.

This past weekend, we were in New Orleans for hubby's high school reunion. Being there reminded me of  C's comments on her trip:

I was shocked at the pornographic/vulgar displays, not only on Bourbon, but in the little convenience stores, too. We went in one to buy sodas and they had a big display of "F'ing Hot Sauce" and "Generic Condoms for Cheap F'ers" (all spelled out, mind you), and that was way down at Canal and Tchapitoulus (sp? I kept calling it Chipotle, lol). What a strange town. Vegas never appeared so blatantly crude to me. Vegas is lovely and respectful in comparison!

For those without a map, Canal and Tchoupitoulas is one block outside of the French Quarter, about 18 blocks or one mile from the furthest point on Bourbon Street that's still in the French Quarter and maybe a dozen blocks from the heart of Bourbon Street, so calling it "way down on Canal and Tchoupitoulas" exaggerates how far out of the Quarter they were. That's the edge of the Warehouse District, still more tourist territory than family friendly New Orleans. 

But to get there, you almost have to walk right by the Aquarium of the Americas, which she never mentions going to. She talks about walking along the river and wanting to take the Algiers Ferry, but her kids didn't want to go. You know what? If your whiny, entitled kids reject perfectly reasonable recommendations for new experiences in a strange city, don't blame New Orleans for their attitude. I'd look a little closer to home.

So what to do with children in New Orleans other than haunting the tourist gift shops and reading the rude slogans on the wares?

That's a tough one. Because after you see the Aquarium of the Americas, the Audubon Zoo, the Louisiana Children's Museum (where you can pilot a towboat down the Mighty Mississippi, shop until you drop in a pint-size Winn-Dixie grocery store, dine in a five-star, role-play café, ride a bike with Mr. Bones, lift 500 pounds, hoist yourself up a wall, trap your shadow and stand inside a gigantic bubble) and after you pedal or row a boat on the lake in City Park, visit Storyland and the train garden, and ride the flying horses (antique carousel) at the City Park Amusement Park, after you visit the Musee Conti Wax Museum, Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World and Preservation Hall, you're going to be stuck for something to do.

Roman Candy cart at the Audubon Zoo

Unless you want to visit the Insectarium, take a ride on the St. Charles streetcar, splash in the Audubon Zoo Cool Zoo water park, learn how money is made at the Old U.S. Mint, and eat a pizza or a fried bread pudding po'boy and do some bowling at the Mid City Lanes Rock 'n Bowl (the bands that put the "rock" in "Rock 'n Bowl" start 8:30 or 9:30 in the evening, and there is a cover charge for that). 

Or you could go to the World War II museum, which is getting its own separate post, because it's awesome but scary.

Of course, I understand C's problem in getting to these places, because how would she get to them, stuck as she was in the French Quarter with no transportation? If only New Orleans had street cars and buses that you could ride for $3.00 for a one-day pass or $12 for a 3-day pass. Oh, wait, they do. The passes are hard to find though, as the only places you can get them are Walgreens drugstores in New Orleans, The New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau at 2200 St. Charles Ave, various hotels, grocery stores, banks, and retailers.

Okay, I know, enough snark. 

It just seems obvious to me that wherever you go on vacation, there are children who live there, and at least in privileged countries where children do get to have a childhood, there are places where their parents take them to entertain them. Whether its New Orleans, Las Vegas, Pocatello, Idaho or Anchorage, Alaska, the locals are doing something with their kids. Why not use the mighty power of the internet and find out what it is?

I Have a Homework Assignment

Hubby and I went to a music festival today but left early because it was about to storm.  We did hear two bands and got to see the arts and crafts booths.  One of the booths belonged to a photographer from New Orleans named Joshua Lee.  He had a booth in the same spot last year and we had begun talking about photography.  He gave me a lot of encouragement despite the fact I didn't buy anything.

This year I looked to see him again and this time I bought a DVD called Katrina Revealed:Rebuilding Lives in the Big Uneasy.  We talked a little about my recent trip and how I took over 1200 pictures, and he gave me a homework assignment: take 100 pictures, but none of them can be between my knees and my eyes.  I need to be either down low or up on something when I take the pictures.  When I'm done, Josh wants me to email him and tell him what I learned.

When I left the booth I marveled that there are people like this in the world.  He's seen me twice in his life, he's never even looked at a photograph I've taken, and yet he was willing to offer help and encouragement not just to me, but to other people who stopped by his booth. Whenever I think about all the bad in the world I also try to remember all the Joshua Lees - the people who help other people just because that's what they do.  It's more than just their actions, it's the way they see the world.

And now I have to learn to see the world from a different perspective, as in the picture above, which I took while down on one creaky, arthritic knee.  Wish me luck, and learning.