@MarketWatch’s FatTuesday picture reminds me of the place I’ve loved since my mother, an interior designer installed a restaurant there and we heard Melba Moore and Preservation Hall in the French Quarter. Years later, at JazzFest 2005, it was a saxophone added to a flamenco trio. You see and hear everything in New Orleans. I promised myself another trip the same year to help restore a 12-bedroom Victorian. That Fall brought Katrina. Instead of restoring a historic home, I was waiting on HUD to release it’s wrong-headed hold on inventory of high-demand, low income housing. The sad series of national and personal misfortunes followed. I didn’t get back to the Gulf until Feb 2009 with Architecture for Humanity’s Biloxi Build, never imagining there would be more to come with BP.
When wondering today, how indeed the American public is to endure more discriminatory political discourse, I drew strength from those photos and the exuberant diversity that is New Orleans remembering the Arabic proverb…“when danger approaches, sing to it.“
Oh and I also kicked-in to Magnum fotog Bruce Gilden Foreclosing America http://is.gd/Y8k9QT that has just 3 more days to be funded. He’s helping more voices in America to be heard.
