Today we made our way to two museums; the Presbytere & Cabildo.  The Presbytere was first, and was certainly the most affecting.  The bottom floor is dedicated to Hurricane Katrina; its causes and effects, and the stories that came from it.  The top floor is dedicated to Mardi Gras and its history.  The Katrina portion was painful for a lot, if not all, the members of our group.  The midpoint of the museum in particular was very emotional.  There were relics from hospitals, the Superdome, among other parts of the city, including a journal written on the walls of an apartment building, but what got most people were the video and audio recordings at various stations, telling the story of the storm and its aftermath from the people who lived it.  The infuriating lack of coordination and communication, running people around, even ending with police firing on citizens, was wretched to hear about, even more than it was when I heard about it at the time, because this wasn't someone telling me the news, these were the people who WERE the news.  A rescue worker having a baby shoved in her arms from the second story of a building by a desperate mother, while dangling from a helicopter was heart wrenching, and made even more real by the tears you could hear building up and cracking her voice.  The squalor of the Superdome was unbelievable, sounding similar to a pig pen on some mega farm.  One girl from our group had to leave this room before the rest of us, because it all was just too much for her, and it's understandable.  It wasn't all bad, though.  There were stories of heroes, like doctors and nurses, boat operators, and an ordinary citizen delivering a baby on a tiny boat.  All the stories I heard sure made it seem like some in the media really played up the negative aspects of the citizen's response, overstating the looting and violence, focusing on the sensationalism and offering up fodder to feed the confirmation bias of bigoted and uncaring viewers, rather than pointing the lens and delving further into why this happened, and what conditions might cause what negative behavior that did occur.  Overall the Katrina portion left me and others a little emotionally drained.

I have to be honest, given what I had just witnessed in the Katrina portion of the Presbytere, I was not really into the Mardi Gras portion, and others, I believe, felt similarly.  Mostly I just wandered through and admired all the pretty things, without stopping and really reading about what I was looking at.  Our instructor made a good point when a few other people and I brought up that we were a bit spent coming into Mardi Gras, when she said that the museum's exhibits were what the city was really about.  New Orleans has tragedies, often massive, and yet they always bounce back.  The undeniable undercurrent of music, fun, and life that has always seemed to permeate the culture, still does, and those things are what lift, invigorate, and resurrect the soul of the city each time it is brought to its knees and left for dead.  It's a frustrating and inspiring binary which this city lives within.

Again, I have to be honest and say the Cabildo was unable to really grab and hold my attention after the emotional hurricane of the Katrina exhibit.  There was definitely some interesting stories and items in there, but I just couldn't focus.  Many agreed this tour would be more effective being guided, and maybe nearer the beginning of the trip.  This would allow our learning to begin broad and then focus.  Honestly, what I'll remember most from the Cabildo, unfortunately, is that Countess Pontalba's portrait looks like a guy we go to school with (or the love child of a Teletubby and Frida Kahlo).

I'll end with this; the Katrina exhibit made me think of a great song by one of my favorite artists, Mos Def.  In his song called "New World Water" he says "New world water make the tide rise high, come inland and make your house go bye!  Fools done upset the old man river.  Made him carry slave ships and fed him dead niggas.  Now his belly full and he about to flood something".  This is an area of death and spirits, and steeped in the history of the slave trade and the lingering effects it has on the citizenry, so, you just wonder.