Cooling it in the Big Easy. 1/7/201.
Left Wisconsin on January 5th during the national big
freeze. The biggest news of the week, besides the panty bomber, was the
weather, especially south of the Mason Dixon line. It was especially amusing
watching the evening news from our hotels and listening to horrifying news
casts about the freezing temperatures in the coming week. In one news cast a
reporter was interviewing a man in Atlanta, in sunny weather, with a new
snow shovel saying he was ready if snow came that night. The people here in
the south take their 1/4 inch of snow seriously. As we traveled south the
noon time temperature did not reach 32 degrees until we arrived in Jericho,
AR 644 miles south of our house. To contrast this temperature with the real
Jericho in Palestine, according to the Ma'an news agency the temperature
there was between 75 and 100. Their reporting was also a lot calmer stating
that, "Temperatures will drop slightly, rendering the weather fine and not
unbearably hot. Temperatures will be close to the seasonal average, and a
moderate to brisk westerly wind will blow." Maybe we should consider
spending the winter in Palestine but convincing Margaret will be difficult.
New Orleans is most famous as the birthplace of jazz. It was
the only city in the New World where slaves were allowed to own drums and
Voodoo rituals were openly tolerated.
It was in New Orleans that the combination of European horns and
African drums came together to create the stomping beat for the new dancing
music. The local cats took the music they heard in churches and the sound
they heard in barrooms, putting it together to form a wild, jubilant music
that was later called Jazz. The
word "jazz" was a
West Coast slang term of uncertain
derivation and was first used to refer to music in
Chicago in about 1915.
As credited by early Jazz musicians who played
for him and most Jazz historians, in 1895
Buddy Bolden (1877-1931) invented Jazz. He earned that distinction
as the 1st bandleader of the music in Storyville,
bounded by Basin Street, Iberville Street,
Robertson Street and St. Louis Street. Storyville eventually gained its name
after councilman Sidney Story who advanced city legislation to quarantine,
but not prohibit prostitution in 1897. Given 24-hour bordellos, lax drinking
laws and visiting plantation owners, you couldn't have wine and women
without a song.
New Orleans has street names in French and Spanish, and
Creole architecture with its many tropical colors. The City was founded In
1718, when Sieur de Bienville founded a port city five feet below sea level,
near the juncture of the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, it had to be
reclaimed from a swamp. The new city, or ville, was named La
nouvelle Orleans for Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, and centered around the
Place d'Arms, later to be known as Jackson Square. It was confined
to the area we now call the French Quarter or Vieux Carre (Old Square). In
1762, because royal coffers were exhausted, Louis XV gave Louisiana to his
Spanish cousin, King Charles III. Spanish rule was relatively short lasting
until 1800. From Spain, Louisiana was ceded back to France and was finally
sold by Napoleon, at a cost of fifteen
million dollars,
to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, effectively
doubling the size of the U.S.A.
