Baton Rouge and Bourbon Street, New Orleans

I started the day with breakfast in the motel breakfast room and got into a conversation with a man who was working in the area as an auditor of some kind of program. He had been a marine and had served in Afganistan as a sniper shortly after nine-eleven. He seemed pretty low-key about his involvement and said being there wasn't really so bad. I couldn't help wondering (although I didn't ask) how he must have felt as a sniper the first time he killed one of his targets. I know from my own limited experience in the army that soldiers are trained mentally as well as physically to be able to kill in a combat situation, but still....

While we were talking, the manager of the motel was in the room and completed a phone call which obviously left her upset. When we wished her a good morning, she blurted out that it wasn't really a good morning because she had just heard from her daughter that they had placed their child in a residential setting because he was so difficult. When I spoke to her a little later just to say that I hoped things would work out all right, she explained that the boy was 13 and strong and even his medication didn't really enable him to maintain control. She also talked about loving the boy because he was her grandchild. I was reminded of all of the parents of autistic, retarded and emotionally disturbed children I had worked with over the years. I left feeling very sad for her and also grateful that I had been spared such an experience in my own family.

  Our first stop for the day was Baton Rouge - another lunch stop that turned out to be much more interesting and time-consuming than we had anticipated. We started off with a trip to the 27th floor of the state capitol building, the tallest state capitol in the country. From there we had a great view of all of Baton Rouge and the Mississippi River.

Louisiana State Capitol, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

We then went down to the basement for lunch in the cafeteria. There was an interesting mix of people. Both black men and white men wearing suits and ties, workers wearing prison uniforms, as well as well-dressed women, also both black and white, who may have been legislators or working for legislators. I was told that there is still a lot of separation between the races in Louisiana, but for a state in the heart of Dixie that was still very segregated when Elise and I did our crosscountry trip in 1967, they've obviously come a long way.

We then went across the street to see some murals at the capitol annex. There were captions explaining the murals. One of the captions explained that originally one of the former governors (I forget his name, but it wasn't Huey or Earl Long) had been painted into one of the murals, but after he was convicted on charges of corruption (or maybe murdering his wife, I can't remember which), the artist redid the mural and omitted the picture of the offending governor. On the opposite wall, however, there was a display which lauded the accomplishments of the very same exgovernor. Not very consistent, but I suppose it does very well represent the human condition. Good and evil are not necessarily easily separated.



Grounds of Louisiana State Museum, Baton Rouge, LA



 We then went across the street to the Louisiana State Museum. On  the grounds of the museum, there was an interesting piece of metalwork of a horsedrawn cart. The building itself was large and impressive  with one floor devoted to the history of Louisiana and one floor devoted to Louisiana's musical culture and heritage. The most interesting display on the history floor was a film of Huey Long when he was a senator, giving a speech in the Senate. The speech was impassioned and full of waving arms and dramatic turns of speech, while five senators sat on a platform in back of him, completely deadpan and without moving a muscle. It was quite a contrast.

On the third floor were displays as well as recorded music of all of the different styles of music that had originated or been popular in Louisiana.

We eventually reached our goal for the day - New Orleans. The first motel we tried offered us a small, windowless room that was exceedingly ugly. Although it was already 6:00, we decided to try at least one more place in hopes of something more cheerful at a reasonable price, and sure enough for an extra $15.00, we did find a motel that provided us with a small but pleasant room overlooking a courtyard with a swimming pool. Not too many people seem to go swimming in the middle of October, even in New Orleans, but it was pleasant to look at.

The motel was at the edge of the French Quarter and in the evening we made the obligatory trip to Bourbon Street. We had been there twice before, once for Mardi Gras and once when it wasn't. We were curious to see to what extent the French Quarter had recovered from Katrina, and as far as we could tell, it had recovered pretty completely. The stores were all open, the bars all had live bands, and the streets were full of tourists. Most of the music venues were simply too loud for us. My theory is that we are old enough not to have had our hearing damaged by listening to very loud music from an early age, so that music at a certain volume is actually painful. We did, however, find one restaurant that had a trio playing music that we could enjoy and later another outdoor patio where we ordered a beignet and a coke and listened to a trio with a great banjo player. The trumpet player was also a singer, and the group played jazz versions of songs we generally knew at a volume that was enjoyable. For the information of those of you who don't know what a beignet is, it is a piece of dough covered with powdered sugar. It may be a New Orleans specialty, but I would prefer a good donut any time! There was also a karaoke place which had some pretty good singers as well as a couple doing some of the sexiest dirty dancing I can remember. All in all it was an OK evening, but I think I have now had enough of Bourbon Street and don't need to go again.