On our first day in New Orleans we walked up to Jackson Square. Here’s the statue honoring the general and president:
I posted a few more photos from the square last week. We’ll just assume you’ve heard of him. The sculpture, by Clark Mills was installed in 1856. Mills did a life-cast of Abraham Lincoln’s head. He is famous for several Jackson sculptures. He also cast the Statue of Freedom, which sits atop the U.S. Capitol.
Here are some things that Wikipedia tells you that the local signage doesn’t:
(It) was the prime site for the public execution of disobedient slaves during the 18th and early 19th centuries. After the 1811 German Coast Uprising, three slaves were hanged here. The heads from their dismembered bodies were put on the city’s gates.
In the Reconstruction era, the Place d’Armes served as an arsenal. During the insurrection following the disputed 1872 gubernatorial election, in March 1873, it was the site of the Battle of Jackson Square. A several-thousand man militia under John McEnery, the Democratic claimant to the office of the Governor, defeated the New Orleans militia, seizing control of the state’s buildings and armory for a few days. They retreated before the arrival of Federal forces, which re-established control temporarily in the state.
He lost to William Pitt Kellogg, a Republican from Vermont, a friend of Lincoln’s, who was viewed as one of the first carpetbaggers.
On the square are the Pontalba Buildings, which were built by Micaela Almonester, Baroness de Pontalba. This is a great story. I’m condensing from Wikipedia:
Micaela Almonester, a wealthy New Orleans-born aristocrat, was one of the most dynamic personalities of that city’s history.
Micaela was the only surviving child, and after her parents died she stood for a big inheritance. Her arranged marriage (though Micaela was in love with an impoverished man) moved her to France. Her father-in-law tried to steal away that large inheritance, shooting her four times, point-blank, with dueling pistols. She survived. He killed himself that same night. Eventually she was able to leave her husband. Ultimately she fled France as the revolution there got underway. She returned to New Orleans, saw the property had basically become a slum and she continued her father’s work there when the place was still known as the Place d’Armes.
When she had arrived back in the U.S. Jackson sent his own carriage, and Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, to pick her up. Maybe that’s why she helped finance the statue of Jackson, and helped rename the square after the New Orleans hero.
She turned the square into the modern gardens. While landscaping, she apparently threatened the mayor with a shotgun after he tried to prevent her from tearing down two rows of trees. She returned to France to be near her oldest son. When her estranged husband fell ill she took care of him until she died in 1874, at 78.
We ate in a restaurant inside one of her buildings. The back of the menu had a bit of her story. It was written in such a way that made you think there was more to it. Maybe that’s why there was a play, an opera and several novels written about her life.
This is a part of the Louisiana Supreme Court, which sits in Judge Fred Cassibry Square.
The square is more interesting, as it is named after Fred James Cassibry, who served as a judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana from 1966 until 1987. The Mississippi native attended Tulane during World War II and was a star athlete there before law school. He cruised on a destroyer in the Pacific during the war. When he came home he got a job with the NLRB and then created a private law practice. He served as a city councilman in the 1950s. His obit says:
With little support from his colleagues, Mr. Cassibry fought Morrison for an investigation of the scandal-ridden Police Department, which was later found to have an organized system of payoffs from illegal lottery operators, horse-racing bookies and houses of prostitution.
In a recent interview, Mr. Cassibry recalled how he was criticized at the time for discussing what he called the police chief’s “intimate relationship” with whorehouse madams. “He sued me,” Mr. Cassibry said. “But when I called him for a deposition, he dropped the suit.”
He was a district judge, too:
After he was elected to a Civil District Court judgeship in 1960, Mr. Cassibry continued to make waves, warning lawyers who tried to talk with him about cases they had in his court. “When they called me, I told them if they mentioned the name of the suit, I was going to go over and beat hell out of them,” he said. “They stopped calling.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Cassibry to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. He sat there from 1966 until 1987. He returned to private practice and was appointed to the Louisiana gaming commission “where his outspoken style saw him clash repeatedly with the rising gaming interests.
Given what you’ve already learned about him from those three paragraphs of his obituary, what do you think has to happen for people to make note of your outspoken style in Louisiana?
The historic marker on the square reads:
Fred J. Cassibry (1918-1996), U.S. Navy WWII veteran, served on the New Orleans City Council, Orleans Civil District Court, U.S. District Court, E.D. La., and the Louisiana Economic Development and Gaming Corporation. Throughout his 40 years of public life, Judge Cassibry personified the definition of a dedicated public official. He never forgot he was a servant of the people. Square dedicated by 1999 La. Acts 708.
In New Orleans, this is the Cathedral of St. Louis King of France (a minor basilica).
The first church on this site was built in 1727. In the 60 years that church stood, parishioners saw colonial children and the children of slaves baptized inside. At least a dozen people were buried inside. Change came after a fire ravaged the neighborhood in 1788. The “new” church was finally finished in 1794, and a quarter of a century later the central spire and the clock face went in. The bell still rings today. Restored in 1844 at the order of the Baroness Pontalba, the church had already seen two presidents, Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor. It was restored and rededicated in April of 1976 for the bicentennial. The church still considers “the greatest moment in the history of the St. Louis Cathedral was the visit of Pope John Paul II in September, 1987.” He celebrated an outdoor Mass for over 200,000 on the New Orleans lakefront.
I think the night shot was better:
The building next to the Cathedral is the Cabildo. It was the seat of colonial government and is now a museum. The original building was destroyed in the same fire, of course, and this one was built just before the down of the 19th century. Among other things, the Cabildo was the site of the Louisiana Purchase transfer ceremonies in 1803. It was also the home of the state’s Supreme Court during much of Reconstruction.
Across the square, in our foreground, is a statue of Andrew Jackson, who looks wild and crazed on his horse. It fits.
Here’s a shot from the Tremé Brass Band.
But you really need a video of the Tremé Brass Band:
We walked five miles. We had gumbo and red beans and rice and a po’boy. We met some people from Atlanta. We saw amazing musicians on almost every street corner. It was a fine evening.
We had lunch on the beach. We ate sandwiches while we watched the waves. Not a bad way to spend the noontime hour:
I saw a turtle:
This was our path to the beach:
We took a run this afternoon, an easy 3.57 mile jog along the beach and the road beside it. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon.
Oh, you wanted to know about the wedding? This was the site, on Fort George Island:
The Timucuan Indians called it Alicamani. They were met by the French explorer Jean Ribault, who found his way near this spot in 1562. The home itself is named in Ribault’s honor. The Spanish pushed the French out, of course, and then the British overran what was then San Juan in 1702.
In 1736 James Oglethorpe, the governor of Georgia and our friend from Savannah, named the island and his fort St. George here. The Spanish took over the region once again in 1783 and then three Americans became the owners of the island. Two of their plantations still exist.
After the Civil War the island fell into the hands of a carpetbagger from New Hampshire. Then came the trains, and the yellow fever and a fire that wiped out much of the little island. In the 1920s came the first car. The Ribault Club was built in 1928 and was, from the start, a playground for the affluent. Recently it underwent a four-year renovation and hosts parties and weddings and, oh look, here comes the bride:
Her father walked her down the aisle. Later, he offered a toast to his daughter and new son-in-law. He was shaking so hard I’m not sure how he saw his notes. But it was a beautiful speech. Very nice man.
Here are Kristi and Chadd, just after they exchanged their vows:
And their first dance. Chadd is a smoothy. Who knew?
The big finish:
It was a lovely ceremony. For dinner we sat at the Auburn table. Everyone there was just a little older than me. They said I was the one that picked up Chadd’s pieces when they all graduated and moved off to the real world ahead of him.
“Really” I said, “he was the guy that helped give me my start. It was a small thing, maybe, but … ”
So you were the one with the puppy dog eyes.
Probably, yes. If I look at the path of my career it is easy to see how integral he was to a lot of my progress. I was thinking about that when Chadd’s brother offered his best man toast. It was a great speech, about how consistent and dedicated and unflinchingly moral Chadd is. As a speech it felt right in every sense, and it was wonderful to be there to see the start of this new part of his life.
I had a four-and-a-half mile run this morning. I felt it through the first part of the afternoon. And by felt it I mean “Would you mind getting that for me so I don’t have to get up? Or even raise my arms?”
My office has been hot all week — spring almost shows up and they finally figure out the heat in our part of the building. That, combined with a base temperature that stayed around the “Oh yeah, we ran a lot this morning” range, I’ve tried not to move so as to not break into a sweat. This is considered a problem in my world. I’m pretty fortunate, I know. I’m starting to get into the running.
I do not know what is happening.
Had guest speakers in class this afternoon. Jeff Thompson is the executive editor and Madoline Markham is the managing editor of Starnes Publishing, a five community newspaper chain in the Birmingham metropolitan area. They talked about what Starnes does and what their careers held before their current stops. Somehow we got into a metaphor about how journalism is like heroin production. (It was a supply/demand example and turned out to be useful.)
We talked about all of the bad stuff. How hard it is to land the job. The hours you sometimes work. The frustrations that you sometimes encounter. I want the students to have a worts-and-all perspective. Give ’em everything, I always say.
I asked “Short answer, is it worth it?”
So you are listening to a guy who takes on the crusty, hard-bitten, cynical newsman role. You let him go on and on until you think he’s turned off the entire crowd, two classes worth of students, and then he gives a sheepish little grin.
“Yes. Winning is good. Every small victory is a big thing.”
The amount of data collected on the Internet is overwhelming. Facebook alone collects 500 terabytes a day. As of 2013, there are 667 exabytes of data flowing over the Internet annually. And these numbers, as hard as they are to wrap our heads around, are only going to continue to increase — rapidly.
In the journalism sphere, massive data collection has produced data journalist roles. These writers and editors use data collected by third-party agencies to create some of the most viral images on the Web. Anytime The Atlantic publishes a map of the states with the highest poverty levels, they use big data. Anytime The New York Times publishes a quiz about where your accent comes from, they use big data.
These stories and photos get shared hundreds of thousands of times and are driving much needed traffic to publishers. This is about much more than an interesting listsicle. Data journalism is about taking big data concepts, visualizing them for the audience and showing readers who they are — or at least, who the data says they are.
This, as they say, changes a great deal about the active role of journalism. Read on to see how.
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a software engineer, sat in his small office at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva and started work on a new system called the World Wide Web.
On Wednesday, that project, now simply called the web, will celebrate its 25th anniversary, and Mr. Berners-Lee is looking ahead at the next 25.
But this moment comes with a cloud. The creators of the web, including Mr. Berners-Lee, worry that companies and telecommunications outlets could destroy the open nature that made it flourish in their quest to make more money.
This is an important topic, so here’s another excerpt from the same story:
The idea behind net neutrality is simple: The web material we see on our laptops and smartphones, whether from Google or a nondescript blog, should flow freely through the Internet, regardless of its origin or creator. No one gets special treatment. But companies like Verizon hope some people will pay more to get preferential treatment and reach customers quicker.
“The web should be a neutral medium. The openness of the web is really, really important,” Mr. Berners-Lee said. “It’s important for the open markets, for the economy and for democracy.”
He worries that people online have no idea what could be at stake if large telecommunications companies took control of the web and the type of material we now have access to without any blockades or speed barriers.
(U)sers coming to these news sites through a desktop or laptop computer, direct visitors spend, on average, 4 minutes and 36 seconds per visit. That is roughly three times as long as those who wind up on a news media website through a search engine (1 minute 42 seconds) or from Facebook (1 minute 41 seconds). Direct visitors also view roughly five times as many pages per month (24.8 on average) as those coming via Facebook referrals (4.2 pages) or through search engines (4.9 pages). And they visit a site three times as often (10.9) as Facebook and search visitors.
[…]
The data also suggest that converting social media or search eyeballs to dedicated readers is difficult to do.
Two Alabama men will travel the country opening lost and abandoned safes as part of a new TruTV series called “The Safecrackers”.
The show, which will center around locksmith Phil Crawford and his safe-cracking partner Blaze, will allow viewers to get a look at lost valuables from various eras as the duo tracks down and cracks a range of safes, including giant bank vaults, intricate antique safes, armored vehicles and more.
I hope this is, shall we say, less fake, than the warehouse storage shows.
Medal of Honor recipient Ola Lee Mize dies at 82. The story doesn’t offer an appropriate summary, so I’ll do it the old fashioned way. The son of a sharecropper, Mize would become a member of special forces, serve in Korea and VIetnam. It was in Korea, when he was about 22, that he took part in a fierce battle which would ultimately make him a recipient of the Medal of Honor. His face was supposedly so badly burned that, after the battle, his officers couldn’t even recognize him. He retired a colonel.
M/Sgt. Mize, a member of Company K, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and outstanding courage above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. Company K was committed to the defense of “Outpost Harry”, a strategically valuable position, when the enemy launched a heavy attack. Learning that a comrade on a friendly listening post had been wounded he moved through the intense barrage, accompanied by a medical aid man, and rescued the wounded soldier. On returning to the main position he established an effective defense system and inflicted heavy casualties against attacks from determined enemy assault forces which had penetrated into trenches within the outpost area. During his fearless actions he was blown down by artillery and grenade blasts 3 times but each time he dauntlessly returned to his position, tenaciously fighting and successfully repelling hostile attacks. When enemy onslaughts ceased he took his few men and moved from bunker to bunker, firing through apertures and throwing grenades at the foe, neutralizing their positions. When an enemy soldier stepped out behind a comrade, prepared to fire, M/Sgt. Mize killed him, saving the life of his fellow soldier. After rejoining the platoon, moving from man to man, distributing ammunition, and shouting words of encouragement he observed a friendly machine gun position overrun. He immediately fought his way to the position, killing 10 of the enemy and dispersing the remainder. Fighting back to the command post, and finding several friendly wounded there, he took a position to protect them. Later, securing a radio, he directed friendly artillery fire upon the attacking enemy’s routes of approach. At dawn he helped regroup for a counterattack which successfully drove the enemy from the outpost. M/Sgt. Mize’s valorous conduct and unflinching courage reflect lasting glory upon himself and uphold the noble traditions of the military service.
He is believed to have killed as many as 65 members of the enemy in that one engagement. In his career, he earned five Purple Hearts:
“That terrible night in 1953 in Korea at Outpost Harry was one I would never want to repeat,” he wrote in a foreword to “Uncommon Valor,” a book about Medal of Honor recipients from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Too many good young men . . . gave their lives to take or hold that miserable piece of high ground.”
In conclusion, the embarrassing gentlewoman from Texas:
Serious question:
Who's more dumb, Sheila Jackson Lee or the people who keep voting her into office?
