I arrived in New Orleans on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Adrienne, who I know from the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP)
http://www.nedap.org/, picked me up from the airport, and we drove into the French Quarter to meet her boyfriend in a bar where he was watching the Saints game. There was basically no traffic on the streets, and Adrienne explained that the city shuts down for the Saints. Even the courts schedule times around games. When I explained to her that the Packers have a similar cultish following, Adrienne couldn´t believe it. This is something I have now seen in other people: it seems that New Orleanians have difficulty accepting that any other team can inspire a similar level of fanaticism. Even though I´m really not a sports fan, it is sort of annoying to be constantly told that your beliefs or fandom are of inferior quality. I guess that New Yorkers also often have this attitude, whether about the city or the Yankees (who suck, by the way), but the narrow-mindedness behind this attitude annoys me.
For the first day or so, my feelings swung back and forth between the aesthetic pleasure of New Orleans and resistance to abandoning my whole life. In some moments, I felt the door to return to New York was closed because returning would mean failure. In others, I just allowed myself to be in a sunny, warmer place. Now that a week has gone by, I am more comfortable, and those swings have disappeared.
Chris, a high school friend of my New York roommate, Sarah, has been letting me couchsurf. He has two roommates, David and Maura. But Chris mentioned almost as soon as we entered his home that David was like the secretary on Murphy Brown: every episode someone new was in that spot. Not surprisingly, on Saturday night David told Chris that he would be moving out, and Chris offered that room to me. So now I have an actual home and not just a couch to surf.
Maura lent me her bicycle. It´s an old beater, and the seat doesn´t actually stay attached to the springs, which means that I have to pay attention to more than the usual number of elements when riding, otherwise I risk getting the flesh of my upper leg caught between the two. In spite of this challenge, having a bike to ride has been fabulous. It has allowed me to get all over the city independently, not to mention getting a little exercise, and it is a great way to get to know the city and to take in its amazing architecture.
In New York, riding a bike often felt intimidating. Here, although of course I still pay attention to opening car doors and drivers who blow through stop signs, it just feels safer. Considering that New Orleans has only about 350,000 people compared to New York´s 8 million, that is probably not really too surprising.
Before coming down here, I kept telling everybody that I would be volunteering with an organization called the Kid Camera Project.
http://www.kidcameraproject.org/ Last Monday I met with the two founders to talk about their work and what I could do for them. My idea was to help them raise money and to do some volunteering with the kids. I came out of that meeting feeling disappointed. The organization only has one group of kids that they are working with right now, and there wasn´t any room for me to observe it during their final session of the year this week. Additionally, since KCP began in response to Katrina, they are in the process of re-thinking their focus.
The following evening, I was in the supermarket and ran into one of the two women. Here was a tangible introduction to how small a community New Orleans really is. She confirmed that my misgivings were appropriate, which was not really what I wanted to hear. I´m hoping to help KCP publish a book with photos and writing by the children who documented the impact of Katrina on their neighborhoods, but it also looks like I´m going to have to find another place to volunteer with kids.
As I returned to Chris and Maura´s from this grocery run, I heard an ad on the radio for a fundraiser for a program called Art Docs.
http://www.artdocs.com/ Art Docs provides healthcare (preventative treatment, chronic condition management, and emergency services) to artists and musicians in the New Orleans community who earn less than $20,000/year. It is a private organization that started because people recognized that art and music are a big part of what makes New Orleans special. Listening to this ad, I asked myself why this kind of program isn´t national, since healthcare is something that is so clearly important to everyone. Beyond that, though, I was really struck at the practical effort being made to create a supportive environment for artists. Although Bloomberg touts the "creative class" and its economic impact, I frankly don´t see him doing much to make it easier for creative people to make a life in New York.
One of the silly things about the home where I´m living now is that Maura has two cats and a dog. The cats are just cats who do their own thing, but the dog, Lily, is really a dog. Although she´s about a year old, Lily, who looks like a golden beagle, has all the energy of a pup. She is constantly climbing on our laps when we sit at the kitchen table, and she pees with excitement when someone comes home. I´m sleeping in the living room, and so when Maura comes back from an early morning walk, Lily will jump onto the futon (and me), walk all over me, and stick her cold, wet nose in my face as she tries to lick me good morning. Actually, it´s kind of amusing. It´s clear that nothing can tone that energy down, so, while I do try to get Lily to behave sometimes, at others all I can do is laugh and give in to the tail-wagging excitement.
There is certainly more to tell about this first week, but suffice it to say that I am settling in and appreciating the environment. While I think that New Orleans is not as international as New York (which, I admit, is a tough act to follow), I did hear people speaking Arabic in a neighborhood café last week, and I have met some other people from outside the US who aren´t here as tourists.
Thus endeth week one.
