Gulf Islands National Seashore

February 16, 2013

We are staying at Davis Bayou at the Gulf Islands National Seashore near the town of Ocean Springs.

This is another wonderful national treasure. It is great to have some peace and quiet after New Orleans.

A very fine artist, Walter Andersen, painted the entire walls of the new community center in 1951.

 

Images from nature with pattern are characteristic of his work.

The French history of the area is in evidence on the walls.

In Ocean Springs a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home for a rich Chicago banker is now being renovated a few hundred feet from the shore.

View of the Gulf from the house

February 17, 2013

This is a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon. We went over to Gulfport to see the jumpers. Can you believe this is an iPhone 4 photo?

February 18, 2013

At the Visitor Center.

We are determined to have a beach picnic even though it began to feel as though a hurricane would blow us away.

World War II Museum, New Orleans

February 14, 2013

This monumental museum opened June 2000 to great fanfare with historian Stephen Ambrose, filmmaker Spielberg and actor Tom Hanks in attendance. It is huge with boats, planes, weapons and uniforms used in the Allied effort.

There is an enjoyable and educational film narrated by Tom Hanks. There are theatrical effects during the performance including shaking seats (remember when you put the quarter in the slot to shake the hotel bed in 1960?), flashing lights, etc.

This Army Air Force Uniform is the one worn by my Dad in WWII.

A new special exhibit is the USS Tang Submarine experience in which 27 people are given a card of the crew member of the patrol that last operated the Tang. Each one of us was assigned a station inside a submarine-shaped room according to the crew member's job. We were told we were in the China Sea in a battle. Loud noises, flashing lights, smoke effects, sudden floor movements were based on the actual battle. At the end we found out what happened to the soldiers on our cards.

Marvin didn't survive. Only five of the crew lived to tell the story.

Metairie Cemetery

February 15, 2013

The vast majority of the graves in New Orleans are aboveground, and while no small amount of grandiosity inspired the more extravagant high-rise tombs, this practice of building up rather than down originated out of necessity. The region's high water table makes for wet digging.

Family tombs are the most common type of tomb. They are privately owned and typically house the remains of several generations.. The grandest tombs are the society tombs often dedicated to particular 19th c. immigrant groups, who pooled funds to take care of their dead. The larger society tombs have more than 20 vaults, and as these are reused over time. the population within these monuments can reach staggering numbers. (I know, more than you needed/wanted to know.)

There are more than 40 cemeteries in New Orleans. Having visited other New Orleans cemeteries doesn't quite prepare you for the over-the-top extravagance and stunning architectural splendor of Metairie Cemetery.

Established in 1872 on a former race track, Metairie Cemetery is the most American of New Orleans' cities of the dead, and, like the houses of the Garden District, its tombs appear to be attempts at one-upmanship. This is a photo of the reputed 'tallest privately owned monument' in the entire country--the Moriarty monument.

There is an incredible array of expressive, creative and often strange statuary and ornamentation that adorns many of the crypts. (Hmm, a strange red tomb in the background.)

Who knew visiting the cemetery could be so entertaining.

 

Jackson, Mississippi

February 8, 2013

Leaving the Natchez Trace I drove over to Jackson, Mississippi, and this was my first stop. So many beautiful handmade items by Mississippi artists were on display.

 

 These two photos below are not mine but they capture the essence of what's inside this place.

 

 I really came to Jackson for the writers. A small, shrinelike room in the city's Eudora Welty Library is dedicated to Mississippi-born writers and poets, including William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Welty herself and Richard Wright along with authors Shelby Foote (The Civil War: A Narrative), and hundreds of others catalogued in author portfolios and video recordings available by request.

I really enjoyed these displays.

And then I headed to the home of Eudora Welty, herself.

Here is the beginning of her short story, "Why I Live at the Post Office" just to give you the flavor of her writing.


I WAS GETTING ALONG FINE with Mama, Papa-Daddy and Uncle Rondo until my sister Stella-Rondo just separated from her husband and came back home again. Mr. Whitaker! Of course I went with Mr. Whitaker first, when he first appeared here in China Grove, taking "Pose Yourself" photos, and Stella-Rondo broke us up. Told him I was one-sided. Bigger on one side than the other, which is a deliberate, calculated falsehood: I'm the same. Stella-Rondo is exactly twelve months to the day younger than I am and for that reason she's spoiled.
 She's always had anything in the world she wanted and then she'd throw it away. Papa-Daddy gave her this gorgeous Add-a-Pearl necklace when she was eight years old and she threw it away playing baseball when she was nine, with only two pearls.
 So as soon as she got married and moved away from home the first thing she did was separate! From Mr. Whitaker! This photographer with the popeyes she said she trusted. Came home from one of those towns up in Illinois and to our complete surprise brought this child of two.
 Mama said she like to made her drop dead for a second. "Here you had this marvelous blonde child and never so much as wrote your mother a word about it," says Mama. "I'm thoroughly ashamed of you." But of course she wasn't.

"To visitors from across America and around the world, the Welty Home provides a literary experience to enhance the understanding of Welty’s life and work. Welty’s fiction affirms that the imagination can be a powerful force to combat suffering, both physical and spiritual. Programming emphasizes Welty’s striking intellect and creative powers, her devotion to the humanities, the place of literature in our lives, and the role of the writer in our society."

 (They say it better than I can. I learned so much about her life as an author and her work coming here.)

I found Eudora Welty's photography to be excellent.

.

After touring the Welty house, I went to the independently-owned bookstore where she shopped, and what a wonderful bookstore Lemuria is! I would go here all the time if I lived in Jackson.

Camping while visiting Jackson was at a Mississippi State Park called LeFleur's Bluff. This is a photo I took along side the entrance road.

Mardi Gras Parade

February 12, 2013

The parade season is a 12-day period beginning two Fridays before Fat Tuesday.

 Fat Tuesday, the last day of the New Orleans-area parades beckoned us to the suburb of Metairie, less opulent, less crazy than the City, but no less enthusiastic crowds for the annual throwing of the beads.  This is a local holiday-- the post office, library, banks, nearly everything closed.

A lot of shiny tractors driven with pride. Kids on the shoulders of dads get the most stuff.

Here is some of our krewe, and a small amount of booty gathered. The lovely gal on the right shared her stuff with us. It was raining on and off throughout the morning but no one seemed to care.

Who is the Mardi Gras Queen with the Confederate flag necklace??

There were 175 floats, but we didn't see them all. We hardly saw them at all, trying to catch all the stuff being thrown at us. After two hours, we made our way through the crowds back to the car.

There is never enough to satisfy on Fat Tuesday!

Natchez, Mississippi

February 7, 2013

This photo was taken at sunset out over the great Mississippi River; this bridge links Natchez, Mississippi with Vidalia, Louisiana.

In the morning I took this photo in the opposite direction.

You can see Natchez is an old American town filled with history. Natchez had one of the busiest slave markets in the south and thousands of slaves worked on the local plantations, creating one of the wealthiest pre-war towns in the country.

Only one plantation home of the several in Natchez, Melrose, run by the National Park Service, has recreated slave quarters as a reminder of the source of its original affluence. The Ranger (below) was an enthusiastic historian using his iPad as a teaching tool.

The original owner of Melrose arrived in Natchez in the mid-1820s, established a profitable law practice, won election to the state legislature, married into a respectable local family, and acquired the first of FIVE plantations and slaves. In 1849 John McMurran and family moved into this house named Melrose and considered by many to be the finest home in all of the Natchez region. They furnished their home with "all that fine taste and a full purse" could provide.

Over the dining room table hung a magnificent mahogany "punkah" that, when operated by a slave, shooed flies away from the food. (Hmm, never heard of a fly swatter, I guess.) Most rooms were connected to bells hanging on the back of the house by rope pulls or small cranks. These bells summoned the domestic slaves quartered in the upper floors of the two brick dependency buildings just behind the main house. A hidden hallway in the rear of the first floor provided for discrete movement of house slaves. The ideal southern household was one in which the slaves were rarely seen but always ready to serve.

Training began early with children as young as six often tasked with watching the infants and toddlers of other slaves while parents worked. By the age of eight, children spent their day working with their parents and others to learn the skills required to serve their master.

Melrose was acquired by the National Park Service in 1990.

I decided to have a look at a privately-owned (owned by Pilgrimage Garden Club) antebellum mansion in Natchez that the Ranger mentioned, Longwood. This is the largest octagonal house in America, designed in 1859 in the "Oriental Villa" style, for a wealthy cotton planter Haller Nutt by a Philadelphia architect. Six stories high, it is crowned by a Byzantine-Moorish dome with a 24 foot high finial. Work progressed until April, 1861 when the Civil War began, and the Philadelphia craftsmen dropped their tools and fled North. The family had to live in the basement level (it was disorienting walking around that octagonal floor plan). Rich Mr. Nutt died in 1864 and left wife and eight kids without means to finish the place. They lived in the basement until her death in 1897.

No photos allowed inside.

Longwood floor plan.

This is the family graveyard.

Natchez Trace Parkway & Vicksburg

February 7-8, 2013

The Natchez Trace Scenic Parkway which commemorates the most significant highway of the Old Southwest. leads you 444 miles through three states between Natchez, Mississippi, and Nashville, Tennessee. I drove the south 60 miles or so up to Jackson, Mississippi. I was in good company; General Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Davis, James Audubon, Meriwether Lewis (who died on the Trace in 1809) and Ulysses S. Grant (and presumably a few women, too) traveled the Natchez trace before I got there.

I stopped at the Emerald Mound on the advice of a young Southern gentleman leading tours at the Longwood Plantation. The Natchez and their ancestors built and used this eight-acre ceremonial mound between 1200 and 1730.

Along the Trace I stopped at Mount Locust, a restored, historic inn.

By 1785, an increasing number of boatmen known as "Kaintucks" were floating flatboats down the Mississippi River to sell their goods at the markets in Natchez and New Orleans. Without an efficient way to navigate up the Mississippi River, the boatmen walked north on the Natchez Trace to make their way home. A day’s walk from Natchez brought the Kaintucks and their gold to Mount Locust.

Not exactly the amenities of the Hilton.

I enjoyed driving the Trace, but was ready to get up to Vicksburg, standing on a high bluff overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River. Vicksburg's strategic location made it a prime target during the Civil War. As Union troops worked their way northward from the Gulf of Mexico and south from Illinois, overpowering Confederate defenses one by one, Vicksburg came to be the final Confederate stronghold, surrendering July 4, 1863.

Winning Vicksburg was the key to Union victory and resulted in a siege lasting 47 days. The first metal-plated steam-powered navy boats commissioned by the Union controlled the Mississippi River. Recently one was recovered from the river and restored to view.

During the siege, citizens resorted to eating rats and printing the newspaper on the back of wallpaper. The deprivation and defeat is still painfully recalled in the local collective memory; the fourth of July wasn't celebrated in Vicksburg until the 1940s.

From the visitor center I drove 8 miles of a 16 mile driving tour through the rolling wooded hills with historic markers explaining and recounting key events in the campaign.

This is what remains of the Union's iron-clad gunboat, the USS Cairo, sunk in the Yazoo River by an electrically detonated mine -- the first boat in history to be sunk in this way.