New Orleans Sunset

Just got back home from Parent's Night at school. For me it was a low turn out. With our poplulation of kids, we don't often get many parents. Some don't have cars, some can't drive, some are better off not getting in the car to drive. Yet it is always a pleasure meeting those parents who do care enough to come and vistit their child's school, and they are usually the parents of the kids who are doing well.

My 7th graders finished their hats which will be auctioned off this weekend. The benefits will go to children who live in shelters still in New Orleans. Those same students go to school in the very shelters they live in. Many have no clothes, supplies etc. We hope that the benefit is a success.

I am wrapping up the lesson with a Powerpoint presentation of pictures I took when I was down there last year, between Mardis Gras and Jazz Fest. I had a wonderful trip and fabulous memories of the margaritas in Pirates Alley, the visits to the Vodoo shops, the French Quarter, Riverwalk, the trip on the ferry to Algiers, the sketching trip to the Garden District. This photograph was taken one night while out tooling around heading up to the Jazz section. It was warm and quite lovely.

I started searching on the internet for pictures of the devastation to show the kids, and came across a site that showed many dead bodies in the very same areas that I visited. I thought about showing these photos to the kids in order to give them a vision of what the reality was. I am not sure if this is appropriate, but I don't know any other way to get the point across to them. The death, destruction and desolation that still exists. I guess my better judgement tells me not to, but I will tell them that the very areas of wealth and grandeur also housed the bodies of the dead, poor, and black.

My friend Jane said the area is still a mess, only to be believed if you actually go down there. The French quarter is cleaned up and fine, the levys in Algiers saved her house. She is a construction worker and can name her price now for her work. But she said so much is still leveled, ruined. Still many homeless and so many who will never be able to come back.

I know I have talked about this before. But here are so many injustices in the world. We hear about the Congo .... but here we have it in our own back yard, in our great US of A.

And, we lost another local young man to the war. When will it all stop?

Namaste, Patti