road trip blog 2015: Southern Politics and a Zoo

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – Travelling in the South one cannot help but be amazed at how such nice, helpful people can sustain such awful politics. That’s true—both things: nice people, bad politicians—in all the states we’ve been through, in our opinion anyway. Louisiana is a case in point. Southerners in New Orleans seem a little sassier than, say, in Alabama, and that may be just a big city thing, but the people we have met here seem as pleasant and delightful as others.

However, the good people of Louisiana, who once elected Huey Long and his son Russell, Edwin Edwards and other colorful characters of vaguely populist leanings and a sometimes tendency to corruption, have now given us Bobby Jindal, David Vitter, and Bill Cassidy, all reliably right-wing Republicans. Jindal and Vitter, Tea Party favorites, are both former Rhodes Scholars and, one would hope, should know better. Maybe we learn something about Rhodes Scholars here.

This blog is no place to try to address the paradox posed at the outset, but Gus did take a crack at it in his memoir. See Chapter 4, “South and Nation.”

Our days as typical tourists continued yesterday with a ride on the St. Charles Avenue trolley, a visit to the city's spectacular new museum focusing on Southern artisits, a long walk through the Garden District and along Magazine Street (where we bought Cece her anniversary present), a visit to the zoo and Audubon Park, finishing off with a grand meal at Herbsaint. We sat outside on that pleasant evening, eating truly wonderful food, watching folk come and go and the trolley rumbling by.

How many times have you looked out a hotel window to check the weather? It’s useful when the rains are frequent, as now. When we glance out our only window, we see just the inside of the hotel!