Do you Vieux?

I sit typing while in my courtyard under the neighbor's balcony, while the first real rain since before Mardi Gras falls on the plants. I know that because I still have chalk remnants of the Mardi Gras sign I put on the ground..
I am about to get back to work on this blog and so, for me, start the next part of our life here in New Orleans.

What I mean by that is we here feel we are just coming out of our sorrow and shock and now are on the next wave of our city's rebirth.
Much is left to be done, but we know how what we have lost will stay with us, has stayed with us. Our friends lost to water and relocation are still our friends and we make new ones with those who come to help resettle; all of this is now much clearer, 3 years later, so we can sometimes even raise our eyes to other issues.
We also know now that we did not lose our center, our treasures, so can put our minds on play, and on new enterprises. Those new enterprises will be discussed here and my unease with some will also be displayed. Do send me an email if you have your own issues you want to discuss here...

As I mentioned in my last post, I decided to look for an interim apartment while struggling with finding proper financing for building my house (more on that LATER- much more).
I found the best answer for me in my old haunt of the French Quarter. Something in my price range, something in my type of walking, human-scaled village. Great landlady and space.

I am attaching a few pics of some of my favorite moments so far here on Saint Ann. I will say that being here in the old city, I am again taken by two things:

1. The many separate, but sometimes overlapping social circles found on these 120 blocks. Service people bars, wealthy lower Quarter parties, dog owner groups on the Riverwalk, underground and criminal elements, schoolchildren and their parents, business owners watching, thinking and talking obsessively to their customers and neighbors, late night groups, including the fascinating ghost tours and many more.

2. How other New Orleanians view with distaste, with pride and or with ignorance- this old city and how they use it, or refuse to use it. I have friends who cannot bring themselves to come in the Quarter, how others have made it to so much more since I have been here, and what people say to me when they find out I am in the Quarter. Is this village the perfect microcosm for studying urban life, gentrification, crime and small business?

stay tuned...

another day in the Quarter with the Disney cleaning service
barkus from home
fog on river while walking Maddie, the cartoon dog