A Family Just Outside NOLA

I just uploaded some pictures from my point and shoot camera that these kids took of each other while I was in New Orleans, visiting outside the parish, beyond the Lower 9th ward. I ended up out this way one day looking for a cup of coffee. Sounds silly, but in the lower 9th there's not much place to buy things and I was looking for coffee to bring to Mac at the Lower 9th ward and ended up driving miles outside the parish in search of a McDonalds. I didn't have high hopes of anything fancy, but the oragne store coffee was just a little too thin and I just wanted real half and half.

This family taught me to shoot a gun, just an air gun that shoots bibi's, actually the wind blew the cans over for me, and spared me the pressure of making the shot.

They were a local family including some old timers who knew the area going way back, and some people from other parts of the country, like a Cherokee from Alabama. the kids were really fascinated with the camera and I love the shots they took of each other and their family. I hope to see them again my next trip. Joey, one of the men close to me in age, shared some of what he wrote in the time of Katrina. He remembered it so vividly, being without a place to stay, drifting. His voice carried so much emotion, I was surprised. I don't know why I am still surprised by listening to men tell their stories. Why am I surprised that they know sadness too. I've grown up hearing how men don't have feelings like women, but when I listen to people like Joey talk, I can hear it, it's in them too, the longing to be rooted to place, to have a family, and a home.

Falling Down Barn Outside Town

 The way this barn bowed out at the sides, like a animal heavy with child, made we wonder if it was getting ready to lie down or fall under the next winter's snow. It seemed, like old people do sometimes, to stand just from stubborn habit. 

In Memory of John Abel

When we went back to post pictures of John and share them with the people who would most miss him, we could not find Gretchen. We put the pictures where she wanted, next to the cross that was scratched into the concrete.

Teenagers on Fern St.

I delivered a couple of pictures today to people in the post call haze that I've claimed as my time for photography and staying connected to the world outside the hospital.

There were no new pictures of people today.  The teenagers that I came accross today on Fage street, out playing ball while the leaves finish coming down off the trees, didn't want pictures taken. They were curious, but incredulous and completely disinterested in having pictures taken.

 

So, I turned again to the sky and the light falling on buildings as my subjects.