TulaneLSU's walk through America's best neighborhood

Dear Friends,

Sunday mornings were once a kinetic and frantic blur of excitement and joy. Mother dressed me in one of my favorite four Sunday suits, always supplied by Myron Goldberg’s, who had the best boys clothing in New Orleans. We rarely ate Sunday breakfast, instead, saving our appetites for either Mother’s famous Sunday rice and grillades, but occasionally, Grandmother won out and we drove to Piccadilly on Jefferson Highway, where we would arrive at noon sharp.

Mother always wanted us out the door by 10:00, 30 minutes before services began. We had the walk to church timed down to the second: 12 minutes and 35 seconds. Of course, that was the Autumnal time. In the oppressive heat of summer, even under the live oak canopy, our walk slowed to a 13 minute pace. Mother wanted us in our pews by 10:15 so that we could prepare for worship by quietly and attentively listening to the chorale prelude.

Occasionally, a congregant would try to start small talk during the organist’s musical sermon. Mother would turn to them, smile, and put her finger to her lips. She has always been a social person, and come 11:30 she glints with greetings, but during services, sincere, focused worship is, as it should be, her only focus.

The energy in our church from the 80s to around 2010 was greater than anything anyone has ever experienced in Tiger Stadium or at any sporting event. It was pure and bright and wonderful. Love permeates the walls; light pierces the stained glass; sound fills the spirit; community exists in its most real form.

For the last 13 or so years, the pointer on the church’s wattmeter has shifted left. Do not misinterpret such a statement to be political, as some might blame the nationwide decline in religious participation on churches becoming “too political.” Churches that fractured from mainline denominations, often bolstered by loud voices who blamed the decline on moving leftward, have likewise seen their membership per congregation decline. The energy has gone out from our churches, indeed, nearly all our public spaces. Something insidious and secularizing has ravaged the church. It has sucked from us our energy as a communal people.

Last week I sat in the AMC movie theater entirely alone. In years past, there was hardly a movie you could watch in the theater in the summer that was not at least 10% filled. But here I found myself, watching Disney’s Haunted Mansion, five days after it premiered, in an entirely empty theater. That the movie was poorly marketed and not particularly good misses the point , for I also watched Mission Impossible last week in a completely empty theater. The disturbing trend in our society is that our communal spaces – theaters and churches and restaurants and shopping centers – are rapidly dying.

More and more people today want to be left alone. They want to enter their own world, whether in their home theater or video game system or social media. They want their groceries and meals and clothes delivered and dropped at their doorstep. They live either in apathy or fear of their neighbors. They seek outrageous headlines from slanted media outlets to justify their escalating seclusion. Their islands shrink and shrink while their depression and anger increase.

There is no city in all of America that swims against this tide more than does New Orleans. And there is no neighborhood in all of New Orleans that fights against this isolationism as much as the French Quarter. It stands on that great high ground as a beacon to all, a great lighthouse on a levee calling the world to community and communion. If there is to be a last stand against the forces of Satan’s self-sufficient delusions, it will be waged on the alluvial soils bound by Canal, Esplanade and Rampart.

Even when heat indices approach 110 degrees before noon, when you would expect a city to languish, the French Quarter is alive with an energy you will not find in Houston or Chicago or Seattle or Atlanta or Miami or even New York. The August doldrums have hit, and the flowers are wilting, but the Quarters stand tall like Custer. I have indeed traveled a good deal in this rectangle and my travels there recently give me hope.

One of the lesser known breakfasts in the Quarter is found at Johnny’s Poorboys. After a long walk in, I found a seat at my familiar table there and started the day with energy: an egg and bacon poorboy and a two egg and fried pork chop platter. My vegan diet now broken, I could explore the culinary delights of the Quarter unencumbered by borders, so I then made a beeline to Stanley’s for the city’s best seafood gumbo. There were three huge P&J oysters in this delicious dark soup. Is it America’s best soup? Arguably.







Jackson Square is America’s greatest public space and is always good for talking with people. For the next hour, I exchanged pleasantries with complete strangers. Most were quite friendly, and two accepted small Bibles I had with me.

There also was a most pitiable man I encountered who scavenged through the black metal garbage bins, the ones with the unsightly fleur de lis. His prey was unemptied cups and bottles of alcohol. After seeing him find cups filled with fruit punch and lemon colored liquids, and watching him sample them, I approached him.



“Sir, why do you stupefy yourself on this quest for poison?”

He mumbled incoherently and walked away. I had hoped to discuss with him Tolstoy’s great treatise Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves? (with alcohol, tobacco, hashish and other intoxicating drugs), whose answer to that question is found “in man's need to hide from himself the demands of conscience…to drown the voice of conscience in themselves.” If you have never read the pamphlet, I cannot more highly recommend it to you.

I prayed for the man and continued my journey. The Square was alive with artisans, all of whom were quite convivial.