New Orleans Memories: Contrasts

Leading up to our trip to New Orleans this weekend, I'm sharing some memories and photos from our other visits to my favourite city.  You can see the earlier entries here.

--

There is so much grandeur and beauty.

There is so much heartbreak and damage.

What is unexpected is that sometimes there is such beauty in the damage, too.

New Orleans Memories: The Writing is on the Wall

Leading up to our trip to New Orleans this weekend, I'm sharing some memories and photos from our other visits to my favourite city.  You can see the first one, about Peter Bennett here.

--

Self expression is a huge part of the culture...there is a lot of interesting graffiti and public art in New Orleans.

Some of it is inspirational...

Some of it is political...

Some of it makes no sense at all...

New Orleans Memories: Peter Bennett

This time next week we'll be landing in New Orleans for our first family vacation, avec Lenny.  It will be my fourth visit since Katrina.  Each time I have the opportunity to visit I fall a little more in love with the place. We were there last Easter and I talked a little bit about the trip here, but there was so much going on a year ago with the house and the pregnancy and the fact that it was right on the heels of my first trip to New York in over a decade that I didn't take the time to share many of my pictures with you guys.  In an effort to rectify that and to get myself pumped for the trip I'm going to share some of my favourite shots from the last trip every day until we take off next Saturday.  

Think of it as the blogging equivalent of listening to that Dave Matthews record every day for the week leading up to the concert in Buffalo that you drove to in the pouring rain with your friends crammed into a Ford Taurus.  Everyone did that at least once in 1995, right?  Right?!

This Gent had a table set up near Jackson Square after midnight on a week night where he had an elaborate display of twinkle lights and goblets filled with water.  He was playing beautiful music on the "glass harmonica" and engaging everyone who passed by in conversation.  His willingness to take requests and his efforts to encourage his audience to try their hand hand at his instrument only added to his charm. 

See that wagon behind him?  That's what he uses to cart his glass harmonica home in, hitched to the back of his bicycle.  He works all day, almost every day.  And he loves it.

His name is Peter Bennett, he's a retired teacher (from the Midwest, if memory serves) and a true entertainer, living his dream in New Orleans, the only place I can think of where this lifestyle is an acceptable and attainable dream for one's retirement.

I hope we can visit with him and enjoy his renditions of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and Stairway to Heaven again this year.