Death, War, Food, and Music

On Sunday morning we rode through New Orleans on a "hop on/hop off" bus, which included a drive through the garden district and French Quarter.  An entertaining native New Orleanian filled us in on the architecture and history of the city.  The most interesting factoid involved the cemeteries of New Orleans, which are well known for being above ground.  The classic explanation for that style is that the city is built on a swamp, slightly below sea level.  But there's a practical aspect, too.  In the tropical weather of New Orleans, the graves become ovens in the summer, essentially cremating the corpses.  After a year of festering, the remains - bones and dust - are swept into containers, and the graves can be reused.  Families thus don't need to buy more than one gravesite.  It's cost-effective.

Monday was the day we toured the National World War II Museum, supposedly the #1 tourist attraction in New Orleans and one of the top museums in the world.  It is indeed an almost overwhelming experience.  Anyone my age or younger (which is to say nearly everyone) sees World War II as ancient history.  Hard to connect with it.  For young people the Vietnam War is in the distant past, the Korean conflict even further back - and the second World War seems almost as remote as the American Civil War or the War of 1812.  But the museum reminds us that this catastrophe actually happened to people who weren't that different from us.  The exhibits cover several blocks and are fascinating.  This is history that makes you proud to be an American.  It is not to be missed the next time you visit the city.

The highlight for us was Beyond All Boundaries, a widescreen film and multimedia experience narrated by Tom Hanks.  During certain scenes - artillery barrages, the Normandy invasion, an atomic blast - your seat vibrates like crazy, the sounds are amazing, and you feel that you are in the middle of the action.

As Hitler invaded one country after another with minimal resistance and began bombing Britain, American public opinion was strongly against involvement.  It occurs to me that if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor, and Hitler had been satisfied with his conquest of mainland Europe, it's far from clear that America would have ever entered the war.  Hitler might have lived out his days as emperor of Europe, and history would have taken a very different course.  But his ultimate goal was world conquest and he felt compelled to attack England and Russia and partner with Japan against the US, and those actions led to his downfall.

On Tuesday we had lunch in the Quarter at Antoine's, the oldest family-owned restaurant in the country,  This elegant old warhorse of a place offers a $20 prix fixe lunch, and it was delicious.

As I wrote earlier, music in the French Quarter isn't what it used to be.  When I lived there, many of the bars along Bourbon Street featured big-name acts - Al Hirt, Pete Fountain, and other lesser-known but excellent musicians playing in the popular styles of that time.  Nowadays that kind of music doesn't exactly pull the customers in,  so the clubs go with what's current and what appeals to people with a buzz on.  To be honest, I enjoy listening to the street bands more than the club bands there.

Currently, if you want to hear good jazz in New Orleans - traditional and modern - take a mile-long drive from the Quarter to Frenchmen Street, the new musical center of the city.  A bunch of bars and restaurants line that street, many of them offering music of varying sorts.  Tuesday night we drove there and checked out the scene.  It's a much more pleasant area to walk through than Bourbon Street, and the music is more to our taste.  From the sidewalk you can hear the music coming from each bandstand and listen for a while by the door or sit down inside.  While we were there one of those brass bands that spring up in New Orleans was playing on a street corner for tips - and they were really good.