This is another update we received from Hal Bahr on our Postcards from UAC Facebook Group. You can find him on Facebook HERE and also on his Wordpress Site: Soul Journey Design
This particular volunteer was fortunate enough to live in New Orleans (in the Marigny, just outside the Quarter) for a number of years. I visited the Quarter in 2008, 3 years after the devastation of Katrina. Hal's description and observations are gratefully received. It's only the very beginning and already he has made me feel just the tiniest bit part of it all and he has made my heart sing just a little bit. This is what I had always hoped Postcards from UAC could be. So, please, don't be shy. Send us your videos, your photos, your words, your poetry...
With much gratitude,
Robin Dalton
Postcards from UAC Volunteer
Back
at the hotel after a great evening spent with Caroline Casey, Michael
Erlewine, and Martha Ward, who wrote an amazing biography of Marie Laveau,
the voodoo priestess of New Orleans, among other books. It was a treat
to meet Michael and watch as two brilliant master astrologers (among
other things in lives lived broad and deep) and abstract thinkers met
each other for the first time and began to exchange ideas and vastly
broad life experiences with one another. Being in the presence of People
of Presence I got to be the listener, happier than any fly on the wall,
with better drinks and food.
Martha lives here in New Orleans
and picked us up at the hotel to take us on a tour of the Bywater
neighborhood and the Lower 9th Ward. She told stories of the devastation
of Katrina and the renewal of spirit that followed. We stopped at one
spot in Bywater that had been blighted, but was taken over by the Vodoun
community and rebuilt as a center of community growth and activity. Now
filled with restaurants, healing arts, health foods (literally the only
one on this side of the Mississippi) community credit union, yoga
studio, dance studio, community outreach, low-cost housing, and an
interfaith center. Rebuilt and painted in vibrant hues that proclaim new
life and unity of purpose. She then took us on a tour of the hardest
hit parts of the 9th ward. New buildings interspersed with
still-blighted homes, vacant lots and the heart-tugging sight of only
the front steps and walk up to what were once houses that families lived
and thrived in. Six years later the wounds are still present but so is
the creative and concrete rebirth.
Remembered will be the
musician's neighborhood where artists were given low-cost homes in
exchange for sweat equity and work on neighbor's houses, the area where
Brad Pitt financed new green technology homes built high enough to
survive another great flood and fitted with solar panels, The community
garden area, the sun setting over a new levee and storm walls. The blood
and tears of the past have watered and fertilized this new garden of the
future and breeding ground of creative vision. The triumph of the
weediness in the human race that lets us set down roots and re-grow even
after devastation.
Seeing a slice of history as we passed the
Mother-in-law lounge. Finally we ended up at a quintessential New
Orleans restaurant The Praline Connection. How many things can you have
deep fried? Apparently pretty much everything including okra, pickles,
oysters, catfish, chicken livers, crab cakes, crayfish, and shrimp
accompanied with tasty sides of mustard and collard greens. Definitely
got my fix of Corexit [see euphemism for oil~rd] and a taste of the faith of the people who live in
an area that intertwines the economies of oil and fishing in slightly
uncomfortable and delicious ways. Talk about Neptune in Pisces during a
time of Pluto/Uranus...The food, wonderful as it was, got overshadowed by
the interplay of these brilliant thinkers, dreamers, observers and
speakers with the backdrop of a high-school kids band on the corner tuning
up to improvise the night away. Only available at UAC in New Orleans
2012.
Back
at the hotel after a great evening spent with Caroline Casey, Michael
Erlewine, and Martha Ward who wrote an amazing biography of Marie Laveau
the voodoo priestess of New Orleans among other books. It was a treat
to meet Michael and watch as two brilliant master astrologers(among
other things in lives lived broad
...See more
What a wonderful report Hal, thanks so much for sharing your account with the astrology community!
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