The children, their little brown bodies and silky-black sun-streaked hair shining, are bathed in the shallows after running unconstrained all day. A woman with a stick, bent doubled over, digs tiny protein-rich clams out of the sand to feed her infant. The strong young men, with their small, weathered, fishing boat, are sliding into the turquoise lagoon, spreading their hand-made nets to collect the hefty fish from the slow, outgoing tide. […]
In the early 1700s, Jean Baptist Le Moyne de Bienville planted the French flag on a bank near the mouth of the Mississippi River. On a berm above the water line, outside an acute curve, he laid out the crescent-shaped city of La Nouvelle-Orleans, or New Orleans. About a year later the little city flooded […]
On Isle de Jean Charles, a barrier island of coastal Louisiana, there lives a tribe of Native American Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw. The island settlement was established when Jean Marie, the son of Frenchman Jean Charles Naquin, married Pauline, a Native American woman, and was promptly disowned by his high-brow family. The couple settled on a lush island […]
As surely as God molded Adam and Eve from the clay of The Garden of Eden, New Orleans people sprang from the mud of the mighty Mississippi River. The city’s reputation is dark, dirty, sticky and tough. In 1718, on an inhospitable mound of land, surrounded by swamps and bayous, mosquitoes, and alligators, the […]
Unfortunately, freight ships don’t turn around quickly, and we have pushed the climate change ship too far down the line to avoid consequences. The throes of climate change are upon us. Our hurricanes are more furious and more frequent. Our droughts are longer. Our temperatures are hotter. The air is drier. Wildfires start quickly and […]
Swerving wildly left and right I struggled to stand on the yard-long board suspended by 15-foot-long ropes. I needed to maneuver to the next such swing, then the next, then to three separate looped ropes, and finally to navigate three tire swings before I dropped to a 12” round slice of a log without […]