Scenes from a New Orleans’ Saturday
New Orleans is a city just waiting to be photographed.
All posts filed under: Heritage Travel
Posts about travels to places around the globe that reflect our shared heritage
A Different New Orleans
I am in New Orleans with supporters of the National Trust for Historic Preservation on a visit to see how the city is recovering in the three and one-half years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall. I’ve been in the city many times – and several since Katrina hit – but on this trip I found a couple of gems that tell me that I really haven’t seen all this great city has to offer. First, an update on our work. The National Trust had staff on the ground just weeks after Katrina hit, and we still maintain an office where we help homeowners – primarily in the historic Holy Cross neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward – rebuild their homes and their lives. Meeting the homeowners we’ve helped, seeing the way ravaged buildings have been turned back into beautiful homes, and listening to the volunteers and partners who’ve helped us in this recovery is always inspiring and gratifying. In Holy Cross you can’t walk down the streets without seeing our Home Again signs, or those …
Partners in Preservation
I was in Boston earlier this week for the launch of Partners in Preservation – a terrific $1 million grant program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express. For the next five weeks, you can join thousands of others who will go online at the PiP website and vote for your favorite Greater Boston landmark. The winning site in the popular vote is guaranteed to get a grant of up to $100,000, and the remaining funds will be allocated among some of the other 25 sites who are part of the competition. Tuesday was a beautiful day in Boston and we were in historic Faneuil Hall for the launch event. Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino were on hand to help us kick off the program (see photo below). Representatives of the 25 sites were also there – many dressed out in period clothes to depict the historical era of their site. One of the more innovative schemes came from the Lowell Boat Shop volunteers (see photo above) who brought oars with “Lowell’s” …
Vintage Roadside has New Route 66 Design
Last October I wrote a post about the Vintage Roadside folks and their great t-shirt designs from old and often defunct roadside businesses. This morning, the weather in Washington promised to be warm enough to get around in a t-shirt, so I pulled out my Route 66 t-shirt (see photo at left) from Vintage Roadside and didn’t think much more of it. But when I opened up the blog this morning and went to the Word Press home page, there was a blog posting from a Route 66 News blog that featured a great new design from – you guessed it – the Vintage Roadside folks. Just too cool and too much of a coincidence not to write a bit about it. I posted a comment on the blog and took the opportunity to give a shout out to the wonderful folks at Vintage Roadside. To top it off, they are members of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and contribute some of the proceeds to help save historic places. If the great designs aren’t enough to …
On the trail of Uncle Dave Macon
Andrew, Claire, and I spent much of today in Readyville, Tennessee, with my brother Joe, sister-in-law Kerry, and their family (more on our visit in a later post). Joe is an ornamental blacksmith and fellow lover of bluegrass and old-time music. So it seemed fitting – after a day of playing Old Joe Clark and other tunes with Joe and his son Joseph – that I take Andrew & Claire on an educational trip by hallowed ground: the burial place of Uncle Dave Macon. Affectionately known as the “Dixie Dew Drop,” Uncle Dave was a vaudeville performer and one of the first stars of the Grand Ole Opry. He came out of a 19th century performing sensibility, but also was one of the first country musicians to take advantage of the new technology of radio. After his death in 1952, Macon was buried between Murfreesboro and Readyville in the Coleman Cemetery. A new road to Cannon County now bypasses the cemetery, but I turned off the four lane and went over to the Old Woodbury …
Good Food, Good Friends
I’m in Louisiana for work and took the opportunity to meet one of our volunteer leaders and his wife for an early dinner in New Orleans. Jack and Mimi are incredible preservationists who enjoy life…and especially the part of life that involves good New Orleans food. What could be better? They took me to a neighborhood restaurant named Clancy’s. It has been a favorite of Mimi’s family for decades and Jack sent along the following review to let me know where we were headed: Classic New Orleans restaurants fall into three basic categories: Originators, Innovators and Upholders. Originators have been around as long as the trees and specialize in dishes of the same vintage. Stimulated by the originators’ example, innovators create food that in some instances barely resembles its inspiration. Upholders are the bridge between the two. They are created by restaurateurs and chefs who express their passion for traditional New Orleans cuisine by giving diners another outlet for enjoying it. In the process, these restaurants develop specialties. Some are personalized versions of established regional classics — …
Chicago: Great Main Streets, Great Architecture, and Great Food
I’ve been in Chicago since Sunday for the National Main Streets Conference, and it has been a great couple of days. I love Chicago and I love Main Street. The conference is sponsored by the National Trust Main Street Center and brings together 1,600 people from around the country who are rehabilitating their downtown commercial districts. Having lived in three great Main Street communities – Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Americus, Georgia; and Staunton, Virginia – I have a real affinity for these towns. Getting to Chicago was interesting. The first of two snowstorms blew into Washington on Sunday morning. I got a call from the airlines at 4:40 a.m. telling me my morning flight was delayed by an hour. When I arrived at the airport it turns out that every other passenger on the flight had been moved to a different flight in order to make connections and I had a regional jet all to myself! I joked that I flew up on the corporate jet…but it was a surreal experience. The opening session at Main Street is …
Restoring the Readyville Mill
The Readyville Mill sits on the Rutherford/Cannon County line near the town of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where I spent my childhood years. At that time it was one of two mills remaining in the vicinity and was still in operation as a working mill for area farmers. Some time in the early 1970s I played some bluegrass at the mill as part of a heritage days festival. It was always a community center in this still-rural area of Middle Tennessee. However, in the 1980s the mill was abandoned, a four lane highway opened up Cannon County to rapid development, and the mill seemed destined to either fall into the river from neglect or to be torn down for someone’s vision of a better community. Luckily Tom Brady (not the Patriots quarterback) stepped into the breech. A local website describes the mill’s background: The Readyville Mill is the sole vestige of what was once a flourishing industry on the Stones River in Middle Tennessee. Dating from the 1870s, the current Readyville Mill is a three-story building with an open …
Exploring LA
Having been in Los Angeles the last four days for work-related meetings, I haven’t had an opportunity to post More to Come…updates. But I have had time to explore parts of the city with colleagues involved in historic preservation. As is always true when I’m in Los Angeles, I learned more and more about this city’s many wonderful historic places. Our meetings were in Santa Monica, and I took some time to visit the historic pier and to sample a nice Spanish restaurant in their funky Main Street – which is more like a neighborhood commercial center these days. Don’t think I spent hours on a sunny beach – it was cool, rainy at times, and in the 50s. But on Saturday, when we spent 8 hours touring around town, the weather gods cooperated. While the temperature stayed in the 50s, the rain gave way to partly cloudy skies. We began our tour on bus and went through a number of neighborhoods off Wilshire Boulevard, before we ended up downtown. It was my first chance to see …
Live at McCabe’s
I am in Santa Monica, California, for a set of meetings. For most people, when they think of Santa Monica they think of the beautiful beach and the restored Santa Monica Pier, with its historic carousel and the great Ferris wheel that lights up the night sky. Those things are all pretty wonderful, but when flatpickers come to Santa Monica they think of Live at McCabe’s. Back in the 1970s, Norman Blake was making his first west coast appearance and he recorded an album at McCabe’s Guitar Shop, which is located on Pico Boulevard here in Santa Monica. It is a wonderful album for several reasons, but most of all because it showcases Blake’s incredible guitar flatpicking skills. For those who’ve only heard Blake on O Brother Where Art Thou or on his later albums, there’s always a wonder – as others have noted – at how Blake came to be mentioned among the first guitar greats in the same breath with Doc Watson, Dan Crary, and Clarence White. When you listen to Live at …
MORE TO COME... 