February, 20 - New Orleans

“America has only three cities.  New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans.  Everything else is Cleveland” – Tennessee Williams

The fog lay heavy on the bayou and the Mississippi when I got up early to ride into the city of New Orleans.  Crossing into the city at 7am revealed the low tide mark in humanity.  The massive parties of Saturday night had ended and all that was left was the detritus and human barnacles.  This is a city that was simultaneously handling and NBA All Star game, the presidents day holiday, and Marti Graz all in a perfect storm of reverie.  Early on Sunday morning the shit was being scrapped off the dance shoe before the next round.  Shopkeepers were hosing off the streets and garbage crews were roaming with trucks removing the thick layer of plastic cups broken beads and confetti trash that lined every parade route and main thoroughfare in the French Quarter.

Present as well were comatose inebriants and the homeless.  Many youth who chooses the “crunchy” lifestyle of living on the streets in grey and brown attire with pit bulls and other large companion dogs were present as well.  An exceptional quality of this city is how quickly it picks itself up again and is ready for another dance.  These same grungy elements would still be here today when the parades and drinking began they just wouldn’t be as visible being hidden by all the other revilers and tourists that would swell into the city with the warm sunlight.

My timing for an entrance was perfect as I found a Sunday legal parking spot for the bike right off Jackson Square, and made my way to a table at Café Du Monde for coffee.  Within a few hours the line to get a table in this iconic café would stretch around the block.  At this hour there was open seating and I slid into the corner of the patio where direct sunlight could be had.  This is where I sat, listening to the hawk calls that scare off the pigeons and a sleepy trumpet rendition of America the beautiful played by an early rising street musician. 

There are few points around which the world of man rotates.   Café Du Monde is one of them.  Our memories, being constructed by association, are drawn again to places where we have experienced strong emotion before.  This creates a sort of gravity.  This gives us a mask with which to filter the world.  Why upon revisiting this city am I looking for the same club where I saw Delfayo Marsalis play in the 1990’s?  Today I will make new memories but still my brain is drawn to the familiar so that I have some context to hang new memories on.  Café Du Monde is unchanged, it is fixed point in time, allowing every patron to adorn it with simple memories of crisp pastry and the first time they tasted chicory in their coffee.

Within hours the French quarter will be packed with people again.  I make my way to secure lodging and decide I will stay till Tuesday, past the holiday weekend, when the Delgado Community College will be open again.  In the mean time, I play the tourist, by 9:15 I encounter my first wandering parade and am hit with beads.  It is Marti Graz after all.

In New Orleans Marti Graz is a season not an event, and it is a massive undertaking.  Streets are closed off grandstands are erected along the routes and Krews compete for who can make the best showing of floats, marking bands and dance troupes.  While fat Tuesday will still not arrive for 9 days, parades and events have been going on for two weeks now.  In the afternoon I wander through downtown where NBA events are going on, to find a spot along the main parade route.  Families and children have already encamped.  As the parade arrives, I am unprepared for its scale and duration.  The first wave of the parade, organized by Krew Femme Fatale, and in and of itself it would be an entire event.  I lost count of the number of marching bands and every dance school in town appears to be parading by with toddlers to teenagers in different age groupings.  I notice that baton and flag core majorettes all have the same ridiculous pom-poms on their tap boots. (is this dictated by marching band fashion vogue or is there some regulation?)  Looking at the grandstands, which are ticket only and have been constructed one story above the street, I have some thoughts on racism, but I will not expound upon that topic until I get a chance to address this issue with some people who live here.  (It’s hard to go up to someone at a party and say “hey let’s talk about the state of racism in your community” but that’s what I would like to do.  Just to better understand how the national temperature is playing out here locally in a community I have always admired for its inclusivity.) 

Just when the first parade ends, and I think we are done, another parade follows it with bigger and more elaborate floats and bands.  This continues… and wears me out as a spectator.   Even my cell phone runs out of charge in my futile attempts to capture the moment.   I was not looking for beads but am now covered in them…

I return to my room exhausted.  With sore feet from walking all day, only to get swept up again when I go out to find food in the evening.  The music district has live music coming from almost every venue.  There are multiple open art galleries with stalls for individual artists to show their creations.  I hesitate in choosing which band to see long enough to get swept up again into a seemingly impromptu performance by a young group of jazz musicians playing on a street corner.  Their number grows as more horns, drums and a tuba arrives to join in.  Soon the street is blocked from traffic with the swelling crowd of onlookers dancing in the street.  The music is excellent infused with energy, testosterone and jazz chops.  The musicians try to out do each other on solos and the crowd responds.  It is controlled improvised chaos one song breaking into the other with multiple band members stepping up to signal conduction changes.  When they finally break to massive applause there is a subtle scrabble to whisk the large cardboard tip box away down the street where out of sight from the crowd it is stuffed quickly into bags.  When I return to the same spot about an hour later the crowd building cycle is repeating itself again.  Good musicians and smart businessmen….

The next day I plan to rest.  I get up and after a leisurely breakfast at a local café, I decide to do the tourist things I missed when I was here the last time.  New Orleans makes a big deal out of its cemeteries and its dead.  The closest cemetery to downtown is within walking distance from the French Quarter….   I take the bike to visit the sites farther out as well.  The closest cemetery comes with a city mandated tour guide who is very informative as to the burial customs in the city which are much more European in nature.  Bodies are buried above ground for a few years and then remains are moved below in a sedimentary fashion for the next occupant to occupy the top space in the tomb.  This is what gives the cemeteries their above ground disposition.  After the tour, I continue by visiting some cemeteries farther out, which also gives me the opportunity to give myself a motorcycle tour the city itself beyond the tourist center.  New Orleans really is under water the entire city being encircled by earthen levies.  At one point I stop to walk up the berms only to be rewarded with a view of trees, not the river on the other side.

Delgado Community College

As I was heading back from my cemetery tour I found myself passing Louisiana’s oldest and largest community college, Delgado Community College.  I had planned on visiting there the next day but, the parking lots were all full, and it looked like the College was open.  I stopped and was informed that indeed classes were in session on presidents day.  Spring break is also truncated to make room for a break during next weeks Marti Graz holiday.  

Oddly life keeps giving me themes for my random college visitations.  If you look at the Campus map for Delgado Community College it is laid out on a square plot of land, like so may other Colleges, except this one has a cemetery cutting into the middle part and it backs up onto at least three other more modern cemeteries and a large park.  As I wandered the hallways looking for information, the first display I encountered in the main building was for an Associate of applied Science Degree in Funeral Service Education…

Eventually I was directed to the Building where the Biology Labs were and was introduced to the Department Head of Sciences.  Timing was both fortunate and unfortunate in that he was just preparing for a seminar meeting for the biology faculty.  Fortunate in that I was lucky enough to get a few minutes to talk with him and the Department Head of Science and Math at another site who was there for the seminar.  

Of all the colleges, I have visited so far Delgado is the most similar to CCSF in terms of size, urban diversity and offerings of classes at multiple sites within one urban center.  They too have a MWF, TR block scheduling of classes with Monday afternoons being held clear on the schedule for departmental business and seminars.  They have good enrollment in labs that meet on Wednesday and/or Fridays to make this possible.  Like us they have the same peak demand times (mid mornings, and evenings, with a lull in the mid to late afternoons), which is why the Monday 2pm Dept. meetings work well for them.

I really wanted more time to speak with these nice people.  I’m sure there are many areas where we would have things in common.  In a short meeting there is barely time to break the ice, especially when one shows up right before a departmental function.  Let’s face it my methodology of showing up on my travel time scale and my purpose for being there is …let’s say nonstandard.  Why would anyone who works at a community college spend his or her time going back to a community college?  I ask myself that a lot and I’m sure those I meet are thinking it as well.  

Never the less I very much appreciated the time and advice they gave me.  For example Delgado is dealing with very similar challenges as CCSF with a main campus supporting the majority of the ~5000 biology students, and a new satellite campus scheduling classes for ~65 students.  Familiar with this issue with the CCSF centers and the difficulties in starting new labs I inquired about resources and scheduling issues, FT and PT faculty, and equipment etc.  In the course of our brief meeting, I came to understand this new location, had a lot to do with Hurricane Katrina.  Prior to the storm there was another technical college on the site.  In the aftermath Delgado rebuild a site there with the help of federal funds and is now in charge of maintaining programs there for the community.   The advice I received was something like just do it, move foreword and make your programs happen.  

Of course being I was speaking with two biology chairs, and I appreciated the way this sentiment was phrased.  Something like “Adaptive Radiation only Takes Place After a Disaster” but that’s how things move forward.   Change is always taking place, but it is only in times of turmoil and shifting of fundamentals that we see long lasting effects of that change as new systems are established.  

This idea strikes me in two ways that I have yet to work out…  On the one hand seeing the mechanics of Darwinian theory in context of a school system give me hope in that what we do, education, is fundamental and like evolution it will survive and adapt even when given the greatest challenges… So just move forward and things will work out.  On the other hand if you’ve read the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, that same Darwinian notion of change through disruption can have a dystopian connotation to it, when the influential forces in the aftermath are not to your liking.   As in evolution there are going to be winners and losers.  CCSF has definitely gone through disruption; the question now is what plants and food chains will establish themselves in the aftermath… 

Prior to my visit to the Delgado main campus, I wanted to know the post hurricane state of this city, but the tour guides to not include maps to the ninth ward.  After I left I decided to take a quick motorcycle tour out to the satellite campus that was just completed.  Just to see what it was like.  The campus is brand new, small and stately.  The neighborhood however was enlightening.  Some houses have been rebuilt, but many remain half torn down and there are many empty lots with just foundations.  I can only imagine the challenge of establishing a community college in an area where it is the community that has taken such a direct hit.  

In my experience so far, a college is a reflection of the community that built it.  And from what I saw and inferred from my experience today, put CCSF’s challenges in context.  It must be an extreme challenge to deal with the process of receiving and managing federal funds to put a nice building and programs in place while at the same time responding to a community where residents still need to rebuild their homes.  It was however, heartening to see so many churches re-established in the area. 

I did find myself asking the question, which is more important, the college itself or the community.  I’m not trying to express and opinion on this issue, just trying to illustrate how much I admire in retrospect the work of the people and faculty I met with today.