September 10, 2009
Hi guys,
We drove around town and found ourselves over in the 9th Ward. It’s on the East side of the French Quarter, and around a bend in the Mississippi. In New Orleans, there are 17 “wards” — basically districts. Some pretty cool cats came out of the 9th — like rapper Brian “Baby” Williams, hip hop artist Awood Johnson, better known as “Magic,” and my personal favorite – Fats Domino. His house was flooded during Katrina, and he had to be rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. At some point I’ll get a picture of his house and post it for you.
While down there, we passed a fenced lot. It was filled with broken bits of the city. Flotsam and jetsam, really. Whoever keeps the lot has stacked whatever can be reused on pallets — things like old bricks, slate, and the like. Then they’d built a shed, about the size of a kid’s playhouse you’d put in the back yard. The amazing part is that it was completely covered in mirrors. It looks like they’d cut broken mirrors into rectangles and then mosaicked the pieces onto the house. It’s kind of ironic, don’t you think? This delicate thing of beauty sits in the center of what is still devastation.
Across the street was some fabulous graffiti on the side of a vacant building. Like the glass house, it’s really a testament to the human spirit — that such beauty can exist in the darkness. Yes, it’s graffiti. We’re conditioned to think it’s ugly and destructive. But in this case, it’s rather uplifting. I’m including pictures so you can see these things for yourself.
Mad
Glass House in the 9th Ward
