Weirdness in Louisiana

 

The Abita Mystery House is just plain weird (and cool).  It’s also called the UCM Museum (you-see-um mu-se-um).  A quote from yelp “I love this place, it’s like a flea market and a circus house of oddities had a love child that grew up and married a hoarder.”  It’s full of bizarre collections and folk art using recycled items by artist John Preble. 

There are many paint-by-numbers paintings (some that John recognized from his youth).

 

This is the “House of Shards”.  It’s a building covered in broken tile in a mosaic.

It’s not often I take a picture of a bathroom, but the wall is covered with bottle caps (over 250,000 in the total museum) and computer boards on the ceiling.

 

Finally, Buford the Bassigator.  Don’t ask.
 

 

If you are ever in the area, you need to visit.

Back to Nature

After Bourbon Street and the stress of city life, it was nice to travel north of New Orleans to do a little hiking.  We hiked in both the Northlake Nature Center and the Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge.  While it was cool, that’s OK since we didn’t have to worry about mosquitoes, snakes, or alligators.

I love a big live oak tree filled with Spanish moss.  Sometimes it almost glows.

 

 

I’m not sure of the terminology here (it's certainly not surfboarding), but there were two people along with a teacher learning to board the swamp .  I guess it’s pretty simple.  The boards are wide enough and rough enough to stand on then you use a paddle to move around.  The newbies legs were shaking a bit at first trying to keep the board stable, but no one fell in.  Looks like a gorgeous thing to do.
 

 

These are bald cypress knees (the short cones sticking up from the water around the tree).  There are two theories why they exist.  One is to provide a stable support in the swamp.  The other is to allow the tree to breathe when the swamp is flooded.  No one really knows. 

 

 

One of the parks had a camellia path.  There are a little damaged by recent cold, but still beautiful to see a few days before Christmas. The close-up is a Christmas Camellia!

 

To get there we traveled across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway which is the world’s longest overwater highway bridge.  It is 24 miles long.  A long drive but pretty cool!

Drugs in New Orleans

No Christmas tornadoes in Pensacola. There was one that hit in Mobile an hour away.  We just had wind and rain.

Hidden in the French Quarter is the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum.  It was built as a pharmacy and home by the first licensed pharmacist in the United States in 1923. It’s full of useful and not so useful medical treatments.

It starts with an ornate soda fountain .

 

 

There’s a lot of discussion on drugs that were acceptable years ago and not-so-much today like the “pain-killer” heroin (sold by the Bayer Company) as a substitute for the addiction of morphine.

 

Real live leeches. I’m amazed how popular blood-letting was in the past.

 

There’s a section on voodoo medicine like these voodoo dolls. There was also some discussion of love potions.  People didn’t want to be seen asking for love potions, so they were numbered and you could ask for Potion Five.  That’s where you get “Love Potion No. 9”.

 

There’s even a section on glasses.  I didn’t realize (or forgot) that Benjamin Franklin developed the bifocal.  Thanks, Ben!

The Pharmacy Museum was a good break from the hustle and bustle of the French Quarter. It was interesting to comtemplate the work pharmicists and doctors needed to do to find the right treatments for diseases.
 

 

 

Street Scenes in New Orleans

Happy Holidays to everyone! 

We're back in Pensacola but I have several posts on New Orleans to catch up on over the next few days.  BTW, we're looking at possible tornadoes for this afternoon.  Should be fun!

Everyone know about New Orleans cooking.  I enjoyed the alligator sausage po-boy for lunch.  New Orleans also has its own unique look.  There are statues in small parks.

Old fashioned gas lights.  As an environmentalist, it's wasteful to have lights on during the day using a non-renewable resource and forming greenhouse gases.  OK, it's pretty.

Wonderful wrought iron and balconies.

 

 

A lot of the houses are very colorful.  Shotgun houses are named from the ability to open the front and back doors of the house and shoot straight through (don’t try this at home!).

Laffitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar is listed as the oldest bar in the U.S and was built between 1722 and 1732.  It is named after Jean Laffitte who was the leader of the group of pirates (or privateers or smugglers) that helped supply and fight in the Battle of New Orleans.  He may or may not have had a base at this bar.  It looked like a nice quiet bar, but it was too early in the day for us to start drinking.

Very large and old live oak trees in the streets.  These trees are plenty strong enough to have survived several hurricanes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Details on a downtown firestation.

Even burnt out buildings are interesting.

High Culture in New Orleans

 

Surprisingly, there are cultural aspects to New Orleans.  Yesterday we visited the New Orleans Museum of Art along with the outdoor sculpture garden. 

The museum had a great exhibit that made it just fun to visit.  It was called “Lifelike”.  Very bizarre looks at life!  The first room had a working one foot high elevator doors (the doors worked, but it wasn't a working elevator) along with a card table and chairs that were 10’ tall or so.  You never knew what was art and was the museum.  Art included a room of construction material or pencils on the ceiling.  We were positive we saw a hopper of trash to find out it was made of wood and canvas and hollow behind it.  This picture from the website isn’t really a body or even a sleeping bag.
 

(from the museum’s website http://noma.org/news/detail/187/Lifelike-is-All-About-Context)

My personal favorite in this exhibit was a 32 minute film showing a $20 bill with a guy on a ladder painting/erasing the windows of the White House . He's under the porch in the picture.  The movie has to be seen to be believed!
 

Outside was sculpture garden.  Some of my favorites included these people on the bench, a LARGE spider, and this piece of stainless steel.

 

 

 

Our late lunch was recommended to us at Nonna Mia’s. Great lobster ravioli and Italian pizza.  I love being able to sit outdoors during Christmas season!
 

The Battle of New Orleans

Do you remember anything about the War of 1812 except for the fact it started in 1812?  I don’t either.  But I’m still learning while traveling.  We visited the battlefield of The Battle of New Orleans.  It was the last major battle of the war and a major victory for the United States.

My summarization of the war: Britain was fighting France.  Along with some other disagreements, Britain stole several U.S. ships and impressed U.S. sailors to fight in their war. The U.S. objected (duh!) and declared war on Britain.  The first couple of years of the war was half-hearted (sounds very weird) since Britain was busy fighting France.  After they won that war, their more experienced military came to the U.S.
 

In August 1814, they attacked Washington D.C. and burned down the Capital and the White House .  The British now planned to attack New Orleans and gain control of the Mississippi River. 

With over 8,000 experienced soldiers, they headed for New Orleans.  Our general Andrew Jackson had around 5,000 but these included some experienced American soldiers along with recruited militia, freed blacks, slaves, Choctaw Indians, locals, and even pirates (really!) to protect New Orleans.  Long story of the battle on January 8, 1815, but anyhow over 2,000 Brits were killed, wounded, or captured while 13 Americans died. At one point, a group of British soldiers were leaderless after several senior officers were killed.  Without orders to advance or retreat they were left in the open and shot down by the entrenched Americans.  I have to comment that I'm always shocked to watch movies of the wars of this time. Why anyone would have thought it was smart to march across a field standing upright in a straight line amazes me.  I guess the line was used for flat fields (like this one) to demoralize the enemy and keep your soldiers from deserting since you wouldn't want to be seen leaving the line.  You would definitely have to be brave (and a bit stupid).  

 

Andrew Jackson was a hero, had a square named after him in New Orleans along with the statue, and became president a few years after. 

 

Interestingly, diplomats in Belgium had signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814.  The British ratified the treaty on December 27.  The treaty didn’t arrive in Washington until February 17.  Officially the War of 1812 was over on February 18, 1815.  If we had had better communications, the Battle of New Orleans (January 8) wouldn’t have been fought.

Nearby is a National Cemetery.  Only 1 person here fought in the Battle of New Orleans.  The rest are from the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the World Wars, or Vietnam War.

 

 

Naughtier New Orleans

We visited the French Quarter on Tuesday and were surprised at some of the things we saw.  This time we visited on Friday right before Christmas and on the last day of the world (12/21/12).  Even in the afternoon things were a bit raunchier.  The street was full of businessmen and women out for the office Christmas party. I have to say it’s a pretty cool office to have the party on Friday afternoon on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. This guy did not appear to be a businessman, but it was an interesting outfit!


It was difficult walking down the sidewalks since more people were out in front of their bars hustling to bring people in.  More people were begging on the streets but also more people were playing music.  Almost everywhere in the French Quarter you can hear music from bands inside the bars or someone playing in the streets.

 

Being tourists, we did some pretty silly things.  We had to test the open container laws.  It’s OK to drink alcohol in a plastic cup as you walk along the streets anywhere in New Orleans.  We saw businessmen drinking and families drinking (well, we don’t think the kids were drinking alcohol!).  I was so proud that we had a drink in hand while the police drove by.  BTW, there are people somewhere in these feather outfits.
 

If you go to earthcam.com, you can see several cameras on Bourbon Street.  We found where the camera is and remembered the time so we could find the picture of us on Bourbon Street.  I had to wave at the camera (though it turned out I waved at the wrong camera).  These pictures are from online.
 

 

Oh, and happy new world!  Maybe the world did end yesterday on 12/21/12.  This may be just another world that looks the same.