I have just returned from a visit to Louisiana, my first visit to that state. I spent a couple of days in Baton Rouge with a friend and then two days in New Orleans.
Traveling there was remarkably easy. I’m glad to report that Dulles has moved to the 21st century at long last. I was able to take the Silver Line all the way to the airport, instead of having to stop at Reston and catch a shuttle bus, as was previously the case. And the airport is finally phasing out the clumsy and uncomfortable shuttle coaches that passengers were forced to use upon deplaning from return flights: the train within the airport now runs in both directions. The airport at New Orleans was a very pleasant surprise as well. I was expecting a dirty, chaotic, run-down facility like the airport at Miami. Instead I found a remarkably clean and efficiently-run organization that would not be out of place in Germany. The plane landing at the airport was nearly ½ hour early; but instead of the plane being forced to hover in the air until a gate was available (as has happened to me at Dallas and Atlanta), space was readily obtainable and we got off the plane without encountering anything to nullify the advantage of the early arrival time.
My friend RW met me at the airport and we went to his place in Baton Rouge. First, however, we spent the better part of the afternoon at Oak Alley, the former home of a sugar plantation owner. It derives its name from the impressive series of oaks lining the avenue that formed the house entrance (which were full-grown when they were transplanted to the area when the house was first built and which are now well over 200 years old). The house itself is built on the usual plan of such mansions: the front door opens onto a main corridor wide enough to function as a ballroom, with openings on either side to large rooms such as the main dining room, drawing room (we would call it a living room today), study, and so on. Bedrooms were located on the second floor. Most of the furnishings of the house were from the period in which it was built, but some few items actually belonged to the family that originally owned it. Oak Alley passed through several hands after the original owners were no longer able to maintain it and eventually, though the energetic efforts of the last owners, it was preserved from being razed by means of a grant that made it possible to sustain itself by holding tours.
Sugar, of course, was intimately intertwined with slavery; and the management of Oak Alley, far from concealing this aspect of the mansion, goes out of its way to highlight it – noting the hardships of the slaves’ lives and also the fact that slaves were used as collateral when the owner first took out a loan to build the house. Interestingly, the owner’s brother, who was a member of the Louisiana legislature, did not wish Louisiana to enter the Confederacy. His attitude was that the other state economies were primarily based on cotton, and that the only cause that Louisiana had with these states was its pro-slavery position. He was overruled, of course, but it is striking that he felt that the cotton interests would prove as detrimental to the state as the abolition of slavery. Louisiana, or at any rate its southern region, is certainly not suitable for such a crop. The area is flat and much of it is swamp. There are no hills to mitigate the effects of windstorms as they sweep through the area. The rains from the Gulf can be unrelenting, lasting days at a time, to say nothing of the hurricanes that the inhabitants must endure every summer.
On the following day RW took me on a brief tour of Baton Rouge itself. Baton Rouge is a fairly pleasant city, although I would not make a special trip to see it. The architecture is not particularly distinguished, apart from the Capitol, which is magnificent. It was somewhat startling to see how Huey Long, who is generally cast in a villainous role by the history books on account of his opposition to Franklin Roosevelt, is here venerated as a hero. Certainly he did many good things for the state, ensuring that schoolchildren had access to free textbooks, breaking up the dens of prostitution and gambling halls that infested New Orleans, and constructing roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, and state buildings on a scale unprecedented in the economically backward South at the time: much of the infrastructure in Louisiana today is based on what Long established during his tenure. In short, he is such a mass of contradictions, such a mixture of monumentally good and monumentally bad, so it is impossible for me to come to a firm conclusion about him without more intensive study.
During the afternoon I went around the lakes in the vicinity of the campus of Louisiana State University. The trails are lovely, sometimes skirting past palatial homes and offering views of a great variety of waterfowl, including gulls, egrets, herons, swans, ducks, and cormorants.
RW told me about his experiences during Hurricane Katrina. Baton Rouge was not devastated in the manner that New Orleans was, being slightly above sea level and further inland as well. But it went without power for weeks on end (the neighborhood in which RW lives was without power for two weeks, which was far less than the outages many other parts of the city endured) and the overflow of people fleeing from New Orleans swelled the populations there from approximately 500,000 to more than five times that number. He himself at one point had no fewer than seventeen guests in his house for over a week. Foraging for food during that period was a major undertaking. To this day he avoids the various museums in both cities whose exhibits center about this event, having no desire to be reminded of what he underwent during that time.
On the following day RW dropped me off at New Orleans. The earlier part of the day was rainy, and I spent much of it at Mardi Gras World, a fascinating exhibit of the history of how Mardi Gras evolved into its current manifestations in New Orleans and of the process used for manufacturing the floats used by the “krewes” in the Mardi Gras parades. The weather cleared afterwards and I spent the later part of the afternoon and some hours in the following day to explore the French Quarter. The French Quarter is not large and one can easily cover all of its blocks in the course of a few hours. It is noted for its distinctive architecture, with verandas on the second and third stories supported by narrow pillars on the ground and ornamented by elaborate wrought-iron railing.
My appraisal of New Orleans is somewhat ambivalent. The architecture is certainly worth seeing, even though it is less varied than that of Old Town Alexandria or Annapolis, and many of the less-frequented streets are beautiful. The much-famed Bourbon Street, however, is an unmitigated nuisance. Imagine a dozen ghetto-blasters all blaring at once and striving to out-rival each other in volume, and you can get some idea of the hideous cacophony that ensues. Bach and Mozart themselves would be intolerable at so high a decibel level, and the strains that the musicians were playing were anything but Mozartean. Why are Americans so intent on destroying their sense of hearing? And they are doing so in full knowledge that they are condemning themselves ultimately to deafness, for there have been warnings without number from various physicians about the deleterious effects of subjecting oneself to an unceasing stream of clamor,
The cuisine of New Orleans has likewise been over-praised. The seafood is fresh and varied, and shrimp dishes in particular benefit by the fact that the main ingredient does not have to be frozen before the chef has access to it. But I regret to say that the beneficial effects of French influence on the cuisine are minimal. The quality of the coffee is no different from that of other regions in the U.S., and is often worse. The breads are displeasingly soft, cottony in texture, and all but flavorless, like much of the bread in this country. Any native Frenchman would turn up his nose in scorn at the croissants and rolls sold in New Orleans. The delicate touch that French chefs use in preparing vegetables has fallen by the wayside in this former French territory: vegetables tend to be over-cooked here as they are in most of the other parts of the South.
The part of my tour of the area that I enjoyed the most was the ride on the St. Charles Avenue streetcar, which goes through the greater part of the city, including the campuses of Tulane and Loyola. There are many imposing mansions, churches and synagogues of historical interest, extensive parks, and lively bustling neighborhoods along the way. The usual practice is to ride the full length of the streetcar Journey from Canal St. and then ride back again in the opposite direction, but I walked back on my return in order to explore at my leisure some of the areas I had passed earlier. (The distance of the streetcar route is about 6½ miles, so the return on foot is not arduous.) I also went through the Marigny district, which borders the French Quarter and is notable for the gaily painted exteriors of many of the residents, rather like those of Cape May. Finally, the Riverwalk along the Mississippi provides impressive views of the width of the river, with numerous barges and ships and boats passing along its surface.
I do not care for the New Orleans drivers, although I realize that the greater part of them are not native to the city. Suffice it to say that their habit of treating STOP signs and crosswalks as if they were Mardi Gras decorations greatly impair the pleasures of walking through the French Quarter. The drivers are not as bad as those of Philadelphia or Boston, but the drivers of both New York and Washington are much more courteous towards pedestrians in comparison.
Much has occurred on the political scene during the past few days, but I will reserve reflections on these for later entries, after I have the chance to download my photos.
Today’s statistics as of 9:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 669,332,725; # of deaths worldwide: 6,717,570; # of cases U.S.:103,151,843; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,121,725.
