Nick Cage, Voodoo, and Memorials of New Orleans

For part 1 of this story about New Orleans and hurricane Katrina go here:  http://travelerseducation.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-post-hurricane-katrina-new-orleans.html

Last April the 1st, my nephew decided to replace himself in all family pictures with Nicholas Cage.


Now sure, we can all admire the consistent hard work that Nicolas Cage has brought to his many many roles but his fame has approached a level that is tough to contrast with other famous people.  He has become a meme. His image is now routinely used to express a wide range of emotions, as long as they are in the extreme. (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/nicolas-cage)

Nick Cage, Saint Louis Cemetery Number 1, and Voodoo

Historically, if you were one of the powerful people in New Orleans there was one place that you would end up after death.  Heaven?  Well I can't exactly say who may or may not be there as it's above my pay grade, but what I can tell you is that they wanted their bodies to find a final resting place at Saint Louis Cemetery Number 1.

Although he will hopefully be with us for many years to come, Nick Cage has already sealed his fate and place for his body to rest and yes he chose here.  In fact, he has already constructed a monument to himself and his "National Treasure" persona with the same pyramid structure used in his movies.  Is he suggesting to us that he is himself a "National Treasure"?  I think my nephew would wholeheartedly agree.  Cage purchased the very last two plots available for an estimated 10 million dollars.  He also donated over a million dollars to local hurricane relief charities.  Will he have some puzzles added to his grave for us to ponder after his death as the graves in his movies do?  I should hope so.

As you can see, the region has very distinctive above ground vaults for their graves.  This is for a couple of different reasons.  One is that it is the tradition of the nations who originally colonized this area and still have a very strong cultural influence, the French and Spanish.  The other is that the water table is quite high here, one of the reasons hurricane Katrina caused so much damage is because large parts of the city are below sea level and nobody wants the bodies buried here to come floating back up every time it rains.

A cemetery view from across the street.

As you can imagine, the demand for plots in this very elite place has slowly created a cemetery that is almost too full for the living to visit.

One of the most famous and popular gravesites to visit is that of Voodoo queen Marie Laveau.  For those who don't already know, Voodoo or Vodun in west Africa or Voudou in Haiti, it is a Polytheistic religion with many supernatural spirits.  The spread of these beliefs follow the movement of it's original west African adherents.

 

Marie Laveau mixed these African beliefs with Catholicism and many people still visit and leave offerings to the neighboring Catholic church she belonged to.  Many people will still inscribe a triple "X" on her tomb as a sign of respect, remembrance, and for favors.  Originally the "X" mark was a way for people who were not literate to sign and although our literacy rate is much higher today the tradition of leaving the "X" remains.  

Voodoo is also a syncretic religion in that it mixes elements of multiple religions.  For example, believers may both think of a snake as Satan's temptation of Eve but also Danbala Wedo the peaceful snake god of rain and renewal.  Some practitioners of Voodoo might combine or mix Danbala Wedo and Saint Patrick who is also associated with snakes in the Roman Catholic tradition.


Deathly landscapes
Sacred places such as a cemetery are also covered in a myriad of complex symbols and deeper meaning.  For example, if a grave is marked by a tree that has been cut, it symbolizes someone who has had their young life cut short in their prime.

If we expand our definition of memorials and sacred places we can gain even more insight into how people remember those who have left us.  Take an example of the former public housing right outside of this famous cemetery.  Would it be a cliche to say it stands as mute testimony to a time before hurricane Katrina, to a time before most of the low income residents were forced to leave to find a new home.






















One of many signs and symbols of past colonization are literally memorialized in the street signs that show the original street names with labels that are on the buildings rather than on street signs just as they are today in modern France and Spain.  It is this mixture of people and cultures that is still the very lifeblood of New Orleans.

There are a huge amount of buildings in New Orleans that are vacant and boarded up, and one further down the street caught my eye as an old school.  I asked some locals why it wasn't either in use or torn down if it was not useable and they pointed out that it is the very same school that was immortalized in the desegregation movement of the 1960s and in a very famous painting by Normon Rockwell of the first 6 year old African American girl to try to attend an all white school.  I had to agree that a place like this should be preserved just as our memory of that little girls courage must also be cherished and remembered.

Congo Square

About two hundred years ago New Orleans was still very much under colonial rule.  One of the norms of this time was to allow slaves to have Sundays off of work, a policy that was ignored later when it became a part of the United States.  On those days off, many were allowed to congregate here and play music.  It seems like the only reason this was allowed is because a number of whites would also come here for entertainment and sometimes to simply take songs they liked and release them as their own.

One of the most amazing stories I heard was about the gentleman in the Indian headdress above.  Mardi Gras was already a popular celebration of music and dance for the local Native Americans and often escaped slaves would join the Indian tribes.  Because the costumes were so elaborate, an escaped slave could dress up in one and even parade themselves directly in front of their former slave masters without getting caught.  Now this brave act of defiance has been memorialized here with this statue.

There are many memorials here to the dancers and musicians of those times and more modern times.  Back when this tradition started, the local slaves would split up into those similar to their original tribes back in Africa.  They could tell who was from where by their music and the songs and instruments they were able to build from scratch.  Today such tribal differences have mostly gone, and instead it is a place of unity, celebration and a memorial to the brave ancestors whose struggles but never be forgotten.

This entire area has now been made into a larger Louis Armstrong Park in the Treme neighborhood north of the French Quarter and it of course includes a memorial to the famous musician holding his trumpet.  You can't tell today, but much of this part used to be low income neighborhoods of mostly African Americans.  These neighborhoods were destroyed during the "Urban Renewal" period in the 1960's when many cities simply destroyed low income and minority communities in the hopes that the land would be redeveloped for high income or big businesses to step in.  This never happened and instead the city finally decided to make it into a park so in a way the park itself is a memorial to those communities.  Well, that is how I choose to look at it.

As my story comes to an end, I do want to remind you to check out my previous blog post on the Post Katrina New Orleans.  I will include some more photos below of other memorials I saw while in New Orleans.  The first photos here are form a funeral I came across when I was walking around the city.  I remembered that the tradition here is to have a party for a funeral, for people to sing and dance the coffin to the cemetery and thus in a way perhaps every party in this town famous for it's parties are all memorials to the many painful times and courageous lives lived here.  With that, I think I will join in and see all of you again next time.

  

For part 1 of this story about New Orleans and hurricane Katrina go here:  http://travelerseducation.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-post-hurricane-katrina-new-orleans.html

When I visited New Orleans, I was fully expecting to find memorials for those who lost so much when Hurricane Katrina smashed onto shore like the above one still under construction that shows the various stages of the flood with blue boards.  But, what I came to discover is that New Orleans has so much history and much of that history is painful and racially charged and their memorials also litter the landscape if we only look.

The Post Hurricane Katrina New Orleans Renaissance

KATRINA

A huge tropical cyclone like 2005's hurricane Katrina can cause wide scale damage and loss of life with it's winds and rain alone.  New Orleans contains lots of areas reclaimed from the sea, much of it is below sea level.  This is the case in many coastal cities of the world.  Hurricanes create a storm surge where the sea level is temporarily sucked up by the storm itself sending a huge wall of water to wash over the land, taking structures and people with it.  Then whereas a city higher than sea level might more rapidly have the water naturally drain back out to the ocean, New Orleans found itself in the middle of a new inland sea that would need to be mechanically pumped out over a long and expensive process.

http://www.broadwaycares.org/Page.aspx?pid=800

I recently visited New Orleans to see how the clean-up is going.  There is still lots of damage with people still busily cleaning up the city and rebuilding when possible.  Below you can see an example of local and classic African American "Shotgun" House.  It is a simple and common structure here that's built in a way that you could technically shoot a bullet through the open front door and it could go all the way through and out the backdoor as you can clearly see on the left side of the home.  These were one of the most common forms of architecture for African Americans from about 1860 to the 1920's due to their inexpensive yet efficient design.  As you can imagine, many similar historical structures were not made with modern building codes or materials and thus were destroyed by the storm surge.  I was told that some of these kinds of homes were able to be saved because although the home was thrown off of it's foundations the structure itself might be relatively intact and could be moved back to it's original location

Another common form of folk architecture indigenous to this area is the vernacular Acadian "Creole" cottage which had it's peak from about 1790 to 1840.  Creole is a regional language that started as a simple pidgin composite language using French, Spanish, and English but grew in complexity as it became the standard local language.  You might at first think that the people in a structure that held to it's foundations may be safer, but many people drowned to death when the storms flood waters came crashing in.  Rescue workers would mark the home if they found bodies in it and many of these homes became something of a memorial to the deceased and missing.  Without the body of a loved one to bury, the homes became the last resting place in locals minds.

Many homes were simply destroyed and all that is left might be the concrete foundations seen in the below photo, or often there wasn't even that.  You see empty lots like this allover with just a little concrete as an indication that there was ever anything there.  These can sometimes be the foundations of a new home but the majority of the population who survived lost their life savings and have already migrated and made a new home elsewhere.  The movement of people is not unlike the Dust Bowl of the 1930's when that decades climate refugees were forced to move to avoid starvation from failed crops.

Although most of the population has yet to return, there is great hope in those who have been able to rebuild their homes and lives back in the place they love and call home.  In fact, there is new construction going on all over the city.

Locals say that although they still love their home town, New Orleans has a very different feel today because it's primarily low income populations displaced by the disaster still can't afford to construct a new home or buy property.  Many who left suffered so much trauma, they simply don't want to move back because now the environmental perception of New Orleans is of an endless chaotic natural hazard rather than a stable and safe home.  Some have horrific memories of the flood and they may wish to avoid anything that might remind them of it.

There have been some efforts to reshape the real and symbolic landscapes of New Orleans.  One of which is the "Make it Right" foundation founded by famous actor Brad Pitt.  Their mission includes creating new green buildings available to some of those displaced who wished to return but could not afford it on their own.  You can see in the image below another empty lot with nothing but the concrete foundations left, but next to it you can see a reconstructed home with solar panels.

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Notice how some buildings have prioritized having a mostly empty ground floor to lessen damage from future possible flooding.  The foundation not only builds these new "green" homes, but has very specific rules about only selling the properties to those who were originally displaced and at a subsidized price.

The angle of the roofs are a mixture of maximizing the solar power potential as well as allowing for more environmentally friendly and less expensive seasonal heating and cooling.  This entire project very much as the future in mind.

As inspiring as this new construction may be, I do have to wonder if many people wont move back simply because their new environmental perception of this area as a natural hazard may be more accurate than inaccurate if there continues to be sea level rise and stronger tropical storms in a warming world.  As much as people have attempted to reinforce the levees or otherwise alleviate the local populations fears of the same thing happening again, many of these homes are still below sea level.  Look at the below image and you can get a picture of what it is like to have a massive body of water not only right next to you, but also very clearly at a higher elevation than your home. 

Right next to this home was a group of volunteers still cleaning up debris from the flood all of these years later.  They often would all wear these red shirts to identify themselves.  Many of these volunteers come from across the country.

Many areas have nothing but this concrete wall between them and the water.

 

You could be forgiven for thinking the below image is simply more storm damage, but it's actually an artists tribute to the strength and resilience of those who survived Katrina and it is artists who have in many ways breathed life back into this wonderful city.

This is another memorial to those who survived the storm.  The blue boards are to show how high the flood waters were at different parts of the storm.  Picture the water at the highest blue board and you can get an idea of what this entire neighborhood was like.

Slowly as the tourists and visitors come back, the economy will continue to improve and be able to support yet more local residents such as these musicians and artists.  This is the real life blood of this town, and to see so many return and reinvigorate their local community is truly inspiring.  Although it has a long way to go, I do think they are gonna make a huge comeback and possibly a regional Renaissance.

I do hope you have all enjoyed my little story about the changes and challenges to the people of New Orleans.  I have a second essay I am writing looking for thoroughly at how the people of New Orleans express themselves through specific regional religious practices such as Voo Doo, memorials, and cemeteries.

For part 2 on Voodoo, Nick Cage, and new and old memorials of New Orleans go here: 

http://travelerseducation.blogspot.com/2014/08/nick-cage-voodoo-and-memorials-of-new.html