New Orleans, cont

It was good to get out of town today, on a small tour to the Whitney Plantation (this is the one plantation tour that concentrates on the experience of the enslaved, and also that really puts on display, and explains, the importance of slow, detailed, archival history).  It made a fascinating compare-and-contrast with similarly oriented former plantations that I've visited in North Carolina (tobacco), and northern Louisiana (cotton): so much that's similar, but I did learn a lot both about sugar (and molasses) production, and also about the history of resistance and rebellions in southern Louisiana.

They did a great job in not romanticizing, or even venerating, the Big House, except as a place where enslaved people could hear and pass on news and gossip, and, above all, as a place of sexual vulnerability and danger for women.

There was a rather fine stencil over the fireplace - but overall, it was a house that brought home how much power was wielded from a center that by the standards of many plantations was relatively modest - a good-sized farmhouse.

This is from the kitchen - removed from the house, of course, because of the danger of fire - and as in so many little corners of the place, there was a dried yellow rose.  There was a great deal of quiet, respectful memorializing.

A reminder of the plots that were cultivated by the enslaved - and then, post Reconstruction, by sharecroppers, since few ever had the money to move on - on Sundays.

And here are some of the many, many, many huge sugar boiling vats - boiling down the syrup from crushed canes until it started to crystalize and turn into granulated sugar.

I'm not sure who this guy is - maybe a young blue heron?  Not easy to locate his identity on line ...

As well as quiet memorializing, there were more pointed treatments of the past throughout - especially this monument to those who had been executed after the 1811 German Coast uprising.  We'd been shown the levee where their heads were left to rot on our drive up; told that the enslaved nearby were marched to see these heads every day, as a reminder of what would happen to them if they rebelled.  It's by Woodrow Nash (who's actually from Akron, Ohio);

and he also made the statues of the children that occasionally appear in the grounds, on a porch,

and then in the church, at the end of the tour: not exactly accusatory, but, in their realism, decidedly haunting.  I didn't see any children visiting today - odd, actually, now I think about it (and I checked: there are some sober cautions about the exhibit being most suitable for older children, and to talk with them beforehand).  If I'd visited as a ten year old, I think it would stay with me for ever.

Then back to New Orleans, and I walked as smartly away from the French Quarter and its Fest as I could - down Magazine, past many lovely houses; painted fences; plants; more plants, and had a weirdly Southern lunch of a collard greens and mustard grilled cheese sandwich and a (very weak) glass of Pimms made with ... dill pickle brine and ginger beer at Turkey and Wolf (not a drink, you'll be glad to hear, that I'll rush to recreate at home.  But of course I had to try a Pimm's Pickle Princess.  

I'm glad to see that New Orleans tells it as it is.

Back in my room, eventually (another nearly 15,000 step day, and the temperature was 86 and humid), I thought I'd have a quiet few minutes or so.  But no!  A full scale krewe wedding, complete with brass band, and costumes, and everyone wielding umbrellas and white handkerchiefs, processed slowly under my window ...