The 2012 Oak Street Po-Boy Festival took place on Sunday 18 November 2012, and many visitors consumed plenty of food from various vendors, as can be seen here, including interviews from one vendor as well as the festival’s 2012 non-profit recipient of proceeds, the Tipitina’s Foundation.

Garbage cans filled, as did stomachs, under the clear, cool skies, on the same weekend that Apollo 16 astronaut and moonwalker Charlie Duke visited the New Orleans area.

Philip Moseley, seen below, is a co-owner of the new Blue Oak NOLA po-boy restaurant.

“We do all kinds of smoked meats and smoked sandwiches,” Moseley said.  Seen below with Moseley is Robbie Evans, another co-owner.  Both, Moseley said, had worked in kitchens with smoked meat and decided to open Blue Oak NOLA in mid-2012.

“This is our first big show,” Moseley said.

Elsewhere, several musicians played along Oak Street.

Not all po-boys are enjoyed and consumed, at least not by human beings.

Thick crowds lined Oak Street.

Each year, the organizers of the Po-Boy Festival select a charity to receive some of the profits from the festival.  The recipient for the 2012 festival was the Tipitina’s Foundation.

Seen in the above image at the Tipitina’s Foundation’s information booth is Angela Thompson.

“We donate new instruments to all the schools, and it’s just a wonderful thing to support the music programs in these schools and to keep the music alive,” Thompson said.

Thompson is seen at right, below, posing with, from left-to-right, Marissa Allweiss and Marcy Blanchard, both, also, of the Tipitina’s Foundation.

Blanchard spoke more about the foundation’s role at the festival and in the New Orleans metropolitan area.

“Our mission is to support the New Orleans music and culture and its irreplaceable music community,” she said. “We have four main programs. We support child music education and adult musicians.”

“We put $2.5 million worth of instruments into greater New Orleans schools. We have a statewide co-op system for professional musicians to use for $15 a month,” Blanchard continued.

“The festival chose us as the official non-profit for this year’s festival, to highlight our work and what we do. We are associated with the Tipitina’s Music Club. We are the official 501(c)(3) federally recognized charitable arm of the Tipitina’s club at Napoleon and Tchoupitoulas,” she said.

The Louisiana Bucket Brigade also had an information book at the Po-Boy Festival.

There are several po-boy restaurants on Oak Street itself.

As usual, the New Orleans Police Department was on the scene, patrolling the areas of large crowds.

And, just like so often happens in New Orleans, a marching brass band plays.

The sun then soon set, both on the day, and on the 2012 Po-Boy Festival.

James A. Robichaux

The 2007 Irish Channel parade on St. Patrick’s Day can be seen in two parts on the NOLA Post.

Part 1

Part 2

Here is an image from Part 2.

More recent images of Irish Channel St. Patrick’s Day parades can be seen at these NOLA Post links.

2010 Irish Channel St. Patrick’s Day Parade

2012 Irish Channel St. Patrick’s Day Parade

James A. Robichaux

Living History

Four Decades After He Walked On The Moon . . .

One of the few people who have walked on the surface of the Moon visited the New Orleans area over the weekend before Thanksgiving.  Astronaut Charles Duke, who went to the moon on the Apollo 16 mission in April 1972, visited for his now annual fishing trip with curator Kenneth Stage of the St. George Observatory in Schriever.  Duke was the guest of honor at a supper held by Stage at Copeland’s restaurant in Harvey, and he would later speak and take questions toward the end, as seen and described here, and even took part in an air pressure experiment.

Duke is seen below at right greeting some of Stage’s guests, and Stage is seen at left.  The images in this post are presented in chronological order.

Stage described how he and Duke got to know each other.

“Charlie Duke was our first guest speaker here at the observatory when we officially opened, January 2003.  We became friends and he first fished with me in 2006 for the Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo.  Ever since then he has come every year.  This year our schedules conflicted so we postponed our trip for the latter part of this year.  He is an avid outdoorsman and enjoys fishing, hunting and golf.  His wife Dotty came this year and this is the second time that she has fished with us,” Stage said.

Duke is seen at center in the above picture.  In the below picture is seen Kevin Shipp’s family.  Shipp, seen at the top, is the program events coordinator for Girl Scouts Louisiana East, and he met Stage through the coordination of a recent science-related event near Stage’s observatory.

Shipp daughters Juliana and Jessica are seen at left, and wife Lacey and daughter Lana are seen at right.

Below, seen at the head table from left, are Stage, his wife Faye, Duke’s wife Doty, Duke, former Terrebonne Parish Schools superintendent Elizabeth Scurto, and her husband Michael Scurto, a Houma attorney.

Stage took the picture of the moon, seen in the background on the display table in the below image, with one of his telescopes at the observatory.  The St. George Observatory also hosted a viewing of the Transit of Venus in June.

Apparently, Duke likes ketchup.

Below, as Shipp is seen in the background, Duke shakes the hand of science educator Tien Huynh-Dinh of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory facility in Livingtston.

Huynh-Dinh would later perform an air pressure experiment on Duke and other participants, as seen and described toward the end of this article.

Below, Duke autographs Stage’s photograph.

After dinner, Duke began addressing the guests about his spaceflight.

One of the first questions asked to Duke was what colors can be seen on the moon.

“Primarily grey, shades of grey,” Duke said. “There were some rocks in our landing area that were white due to a meteorite impact that shatters them but doesn’t melt them; so, they turn white. Then there are some black ones, fragments of black, which were some basalt, some volcanic rock, and others were metamorphic, but generally just shades of grey.”

“It’s a real contrast between the lunar surface and the blackness of space,” Duke said. “The sun is so bright. You don’t see any stars.  There is no atmosphere. You just see this clear horizon, and space is just inky black to me. You feel like you can reach out and touch it.  It’s really beautiful.”

Shipp and Huynh-Dinh are seen below.

Journalist James Robichaux asked Duke about his thoughts on the future of the United States’s space program and whether he thought the USA should once again send people to other celestial bodies.

“The unmanned program is in pretty good shape right now. Curiosity just landed on Mars, and there are a couple of other satellites and spacecraft that are going to be launched. The manned program is in the tank right now. We don’t have anything that’s close to being man-rated. SpaceX is a private company that NASA is funding, and they’ve got a space craft and have rendezvoused with the space station twice unmanned, but it’s a long way to go to get manned.”

Does Duke Think That The USA Should Continue Space Exploration?

“Oh, yeah, the President’s own commission said if we don’t continue our development of space, we’re going to lose our technological lead in the next 10 years.”

“We need a space craft. Orion is under way, but the first launch of it is 2014, but the first manned flight of it is in 2017. That’s a spacecraft that could go to the moon, but there’s no mission to the moon right now. I don’t know whether we’re going to do that or not, but we’re lobbying for a return to the moon. Buzz Aldrin wants to go direct to Mars.”

Faith

Many of the questions were of a religious nature, as Duke is known for his religious faith, and Stage picked Duke as a guest speaker for his observatory’s 2003 opening partly for that reason.

“I have always followed the space program from the beginning to present day.  I chose Charlie Duke because he is a man of faith, as I am too.  He was not originally but changed at a later date after his flight to the Moon,” Stage said after the supper.

One of the guests asked Duke if his Apollo 16 mission caused any kind of spiritual change.

“My flight was not spiritual,” Duke said. “I didn’t have a spiritual experience or philosophical experience. We were so busy that I would call it just an adventure.  It was emotionally high.  You’re so excited.  You’re there, but you’re so busy, I didn’t have time to think about God.”

“Though we went to church, we were just churchgoers,” Duke said of his family. “We weren’t saved, but six years later, I gave my heart to Jesus, and that really changed our relationship with my wife and family, and we’ve been following the Lord ever since, but it wasn’t a result of space flight.  It had various effects on people,” he said.

“I think in a way, for good or bad, we sort of birthed the modern ecological movement, environmental movement,” Duke said.  “That has some good, and that has some bad.  Now, Jim Irwin was a committed Christian on Apollo 15 when he went, quoted scripture, felt God’s presence. [Eugene] Cernan said, on Apollo 17, after that flight, the beauty of the universe, if you don’t believe that there is a god, there’s something wrong.  The Earth was beautiful,” he said.

“You know, there’s a scripture in Isaiah, I think it’s the 40^th chapter, that says that God sits enthroned above the circle of the Earth,” Duke said.  “Well, we didn’t see God, but we saw the circle of the Earth, and there have only been 24 human beings who have seen the circle of the Earth, and that’s the guys who went to moon in Apollo.”

“All Earth orbit astronauts, they see a big curvature, but they can’t see the whole globe because they’re too close,” Duke said.  “So, we got out, and we could see that, I call it the jewel of Earth, just suspended in the blackness of space, and in Job, there is a verse that says that when God made the Earth, he suspended it upon nothing, and that’s exactly what it looked like, just out there in the blackness of space.”

“It’s really beautiful,” Duke said.  “Everybody’s seen pictures of that, but the emotion when you look back at the Earth is almost overwhelming.”

Duke then described the light flash experiment and that from the experiment it was learned that for “long duration missions to Mars, you’re going to have a real problem, you’re going to have to have some radiation protection.”

Velocity, Anyone?

Huynh-Dinh is seen below asking Duke, “what’s the sensation of going fast? Can you actually feel that you’re going that fast?”

Duke replied, “the only time that you feel that you’re going fast is reentry.  On reentry from Apollo, the last time I looked at the computer, we were accelerating through 38,800 feet per second. So, before you hit the atmosphere, though, you don’t realize you’re moving.”

Average speed from the Earth to the Moon or the Moon to the Earth was 3,000-plus miles per hour, and we floated outside, but there’s no reference to see what your speed is,” he said.

Wait, Wait, Do Tell Me

The members of the three-person wait staff, two of whom are seen in the below picture, in the upstairs banquet room at Copeland’s were interested in the guest of honor and listened intently to Duke’s talk.

The hostess at left asked if the American flags that Duke’s crew placed on the moon are still there.

“Flags are still there,” Duke said. “On Apollo 11, one of them blew over when the space craft lifted off, but if you go to the NASA website and search for LRO, that’s a satellite that’s orbiting the moon, and they’ve taken pictures of all of the lunar landing sites, and you can see the flag, the car we left, the experiments package. Ours is probably still there.  I know it didn’t blow over when we lifted off.”

Shuttle Shunning

Duke spoke of his work on the space shuttle program and how he eventually quit working on it.

“I worked on the shuttle for three years, and then got frustrated because the pace was so slow that I decided to leave,” he said.  “Looking back now, maybe I’d have liked to have stayed another five years and flown one of the early shuttles, but it was a really exciting program once it got going.  The shuttle was a very risky program.  You know, we had two fatal missions out of 135.  The shuttle had to work, because if it didn’t work, the crew had no escape,” he said.

“Most of the guys I flew with, they stayed.  John Young, he flew two shuttles, and Mattingly flew one and then left,” he said.

“Apollo was so dynamic.  You’re like, ‘let’s make this decision,’ and you make a decision and tomorrow the decision was being implemented.  With the shuttle, you’d go to a meeting, ‘well, what’s the coefficient of drag with this?’ you know, and this, and I can’t stand this, because nothing was getting done, just meetings and meetings.  So, I left, probably wrongly, but I left,” Duke said.

Moon Walker

Duke had some copies of his book Moon Walker, which he autographed for some buyers.

“I want to thank Ken.  This is our annual fishing trip,” he said.

Posing With The Moon Walker

Many took time to pose for pictures with Duke, including Scurto, as seen below.

Some of the wait staff posed with Duke too.

Astronaut In A Plastic Bag?

Huynh-Dinh then began conducting an exercise with some of the guests, an exercise that he does at LIGO Livingston with some of his students on air pressure, and he eventually convinced the visiting astronaut to partake in the experiment, much to the delight of guests.

Below is seen Michelle Cortez, an elementary school teacher in Lafourche Parish.

Huynh-Dinh described the experiment afterward.

“The vacuum, plastic bag activity is generally called ‘vacuum-packing’ and it allows the participant (victim?) to experience a little what atmospheric pressure (roughly 14 pounds per square inch) feels like,” he said.

“We are subjected to this pressure every day, but are used to it.  When air is evacuated from the plastic bag, the air pressure around (on the outside of) the bag is larger than the pressure inside (as the vacuum continues to evacuate the air) of the bag and the participant gets squeezed inside the bag.  Most people express how surprised they are to feel the intensity of the bag squeezing all around them,” Huynh-Dinh said.

Above, another participant gets in the bag as a member of the wait staff gets some pictures.

Mission Control Briefing

Now, it’s Duke’s turn to get in the plastic bag, and Huynh-Dinh briefs the moon walker before the bag mission.

After Duke removes his boots, onlookers get pictures of the astronaut in a plastic bag.  Scurto is seen at left.

Final preparations are made before the mission, as the astronaut’s bag is secured, and Huynh-Dinh prepares to blast off, as onlookers crowd around the launch pad.

More than 40 years after he walked on the moon, Charles Duke sits on a restaurant floor in Harvey so tightly wrapped in a plastic bag that his toes can be discerned.

Stage, seen at left above, laughs at his astronaut friend, as Duke and Huynh-Dinh laugh too.

“To have Charlie Duke,  the 10th person to stand on the moon, interested in being vacuum packed at all was quite a thrill, then to see him smiling, laughing and comment that he was also surprised at how strong the pressure felt was the icing on the cake,” Huynh-Dinh said. “What a pleasant ending to anawesome evening!”

Duke, Stage, and others fished in Barataria Bay the next day.

James A. Robichaux

Men At Work On Sunday Morning

Less than two weeks after Hurricane Isaac made Lake Ponchartrain and unsafe place for human presence, fishermen, crabbers, and railroaders were back doing their normal activities on the morning of Sunday 9 September 2012.

Seafood on Lake Ponchartrain

With US Hwy. 11 at left, here are seen a father-and-son pair of Slidell crabbers at work at North Shore as Amtrak’s northbound Crescent passenger train (to Birmingham, Atlanta, Washington, and New York, among other smaller places) is running about a half-hour late due to problems caused by Hurricane Isaac.

Hurricane Isaac caused ballast to be washed off of the Norfolk Southern Railway’s bridge at right, though that problem has since been repaired.  Isaac also, however, caused a short-circuiting of the track signals, causing every train to have to proceed over the lake at 10mph.

After the train passed, the crabbers, who noted the train’s lateness, began setting their traps.

Meanwhile, On The Southshore

A couple of Laos-born fishermen were casting their lines and catching drum on the southern shore of the lake, inside the city limits of New Orleans.

At left is Paou Khou, and at right is Paul Liemsithisak, both of Covington via Laos.  Liemsithisak, seen below, said that he had been living in the Chicago area since the mid-1980s (when his family moved to the United States) and moved to Louisiana this February with his wife, who is from southern Louisiana.

In the above image of Liemsithisak and in the below image of Khou, off in the distance can be seen Norfolk Southern Railway train 355 from Birmingham moving at 10mph on the NS trestle off in the distance.

While many others in the metropolitan area concerned themselves with tailgating outside of the Louisiana Superdome for the National Football League match between the New Orleans Saints and the Washington Redskins, Liemsithisak is seen below having his own fun baiting his hook with a shrimp.

He said that his normal fishing spot is along La. Hwy. 23 in Plaquemines Parish but that he has been unable to go there since Hurricane Isaac; he said he was told about the fishing location where he is seen from a friend, and that it was only the second time that he had been there.

Below, Liemsithisak is seen again, this time with NS train 22Q off in the distance.  Both trains had been waiting in Slidell for the Crescent before they could proceed south on the single-track bridge.  The 22Q is the autorack-intermodal train that NS operates into New Orleans, carrying mostly Ford automobiles for local dealerships.

Liemsithisak said that he was warned by coworkers in Chicago about moving to The South, about dealing with “rednecks” and “racists,” but he said that since being in southern Louisiana since February, not only does he report having no such problems, but he said that people in southern Louisiana are nice.

James A. Robichaux

The NOLA Post photographically covered the 2009 running of the NOLA Bulls.  The coverage can be seen in two parts below.

Part 1

Part 2

Do you participate in the event?  If so, why?  Do you chose to not participate in the event?  If so, why?  Is it all just a herd mentality?  Is it meaningful fun?

James A. Robichaux

More than three decades old, the non-profit Boys Hope Girls Hope foundation has homes for adolescents in need throughout the country, the New Orleans area included, and on Saturday 12 May, the second annual “Hope On Deck” fundraiser event was held at the St. Joseph Center on Gravier Street in New Orleans.

Emma McCreight was the event co-chair, and she explained both the organization and the event.

“The organization provides children in need with a stable home, positive parenting, academic opportunities, and the support needed to reach their full potential.  In addition to the governing board, in 2011 a Junior Board consisting of 30 young professionals was formed to offer mentoring to scholars, raising awareness of the organization and fund raise. Hope on Deck is the Junior Board’s 2nd annual event that allows the Junior Board to fulfill it’s mission,” she said.

Below, some members of the junior board pose.  From left-to-right are Mary Dale, Jessica Sita, James Ryan, Danielle Sybrant, Emma McCreight, and Bri Altier.

“I became introduced to Boys Hope Girls Hope when I moved to New Orleans a few years ago,” McCreight continued, “and after learning about the mission of this organization, I wanted to do more. I have volunteered since I was in grade school, but usually with adults, so when I was saw that BHGH needed some young professionals more involved with the organization, I jumped on the opportunity to serve on the new Junior Board.”

Below, McCreight poses again, this time with, from left-to-right, Kelly Allenspack, director of development Jessica Sita, events chair, and Rachel Nuna, junior board president.

“Serving on the Board has opened my eyes even more to the scholars that participate with BHGH,” McCreight continued.  “It is a humbling and beautiful experience to witness children from 8-18 years of age come together at their dinner table, do homework, or participate in an event as a true family.  Not only do the scholars have staff and volunteers who look out for them, but they look out for each other.  Knowing and seeing first hand how our time and donations truly support the scholars, motivates me to continue to help plan events such as Hope on Deck!”

Below, Sita, who works during the day at Dominican High School, pays a visit to her fellow volunteers, these working at the raffle table.

The St. Joseph Center is behind the large St. Joseph Catholic Church on Tulane Avenue.

Below is seen, again, the raffle table.

Three friends pose below, as someone signs up at the raffle table at the left.

McKeown makes jewelry as a hobby, and donated some of her jewelry as part of the raffle, which she said is the first time she shows off her jewelry.

“They said, ‘we’ll get donors,’ and I said, ‘I’ll be happy to donate my jewelry,’” McKeown said of the process that led her to donate her jewelry for the event.

More information can be learned about the New Orleans chapter of Boys Hope Girls Hope at its website.

James A. Robichaux

The Huey P. Long Bridge over the Mississippi River just upriver from New Orleans was the first bridge built across the Mississippi River in the New Orleans area.  It was completed in 1935, but, recently, major steps were taken in a major upgrade project that has not only expanded the superstructure but has replaced the old narrow lanes with new, wider, modern lanes, and three lanes instead of the original two.  However, not all three new lanes are in service, as the old lanes are now being demolished now that the new outer lanes are operational, having opened in late April.

The two views immediately below are looking up the eastbound lanes in Jefferson, Louisiana.  US Highway 90 uses the bridge to get across the Mississippi River here.

Entirely new superstructures were built over the new lanes, and both new superstructures connect to the original superstructure over the railroad portion of the bridge in the center between the highway lanes.

Completion of the work on the upgrades of the bridge isn’t expected until 2013.  The NOLA Post featured a few pictures of the construction progress in January 2011 and also showcased a cloudy picture from ground-level in March.

The newly-expanded superstructure with the original superstructure over the railroad tracks (two of them, owned by the New Orleans Public Belt Railway) is seen in the below picture of the westbound lanes.

A public drawing was held for who would be the last person to ride over the old lanes and who would be the first member of the general public to ride over the new lanes.

Below, the old lane is to the left of the divider, and new lanes will be poured there over the coming months.

The “Big Switch” occurred over the last weekend in April 2012.  The four pictures shown in this article were taken less than a week later.

When the bridge was built and completed in the 1930s, it replaced some ferries, both for automobiles and for railroads.

James A. Robichaux

In 2010, the NOLA Post covered the annual French Quarter Festival in four parts.  Parts 2 and 3 feature action pictures of breakdancers performing for audiences.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

This is a sample picture from one of the four parts:

The above scene is looking down St. Ann Street just downriver from Jackson Square.

James A. Robichaux

The annual MS Walk for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society took place in Audubon Park on Sunday.

“We have over a thousand people here today, and, thankfully, it’s a beautiful weather,” Crystal Smith, Director of Programs & Services for NMSS Louisiana, said.

Below, Jessica Gober, a volunteer with the Order Of The Eastern Star organization, gives a medal to a race participant.

Gober is from the Bay Area of California but came to New Orleans to study at Xavier, and upon graduating with a degree in chemistry, she became employed locally with the US Department of Agricultre and remains active in the city, like volunteering, as she puts a medal on a toddler in the below picture.

Several volunteers were working at the event.

Smith said, “This is a great opportunity for people with MS to come out as well as their family members, friends, caregivers, coworkers, and anyone that cares about anyone with MS, this is the place to be today.”

Below, five friends from New Orleans, motivated to participate in the event by the illness of the mother of one of them, pose after finishing the Walk.

From left-to-right are Glenis Scott, Kendrick James, Corey Audrict, Jimmie Slack, Michael Batiste, all from New Orleans, and all but James who attend St. Augustine High School.  Slack’s mother is afflicted with multiple sclerosis, and the five were there to support his mother.

Smith said that the New Orleans chapter of the NMSS is more than 40 years old.

Additional photos from the event are in the MS Walk 2012 Audubon Park album on the Facebook fan page of the NOLA Post.

James A. Robichaux

On Sunday 7 February 2010, the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl.  The NOLA Post recorded these scenes of celebration in downtown New Orleans as the streets filled with celebration.  Here is a look back to that time in two parts:

Part 1

Part 2

Below is a sample picture from the above two posts, but clicking on both links will show several pictures taken that night.

The NOLA Post also recorded the pregame scene in the French Quarter earlier that same day.

James A. Robichaux