Day 2

September 30, 2007
I got to sleep until 7 a.m. today. What a treat. After a breakfast at my hotel, I went out to catch the St. Charles Street bus into the French Quarter. It was recommended (by my class) that I take some tours so I decided on the cemetery tour. The bus took forever to come, so I sat on the curb outside of a lovely house. It was a pleasant morning, 80ish and muggy. The man who lives in the house let his dogs out ( in the fenced in yard) and then he turned on his sprinkler. The sprinkler reached out onto the sidewalk just feet from where I was sitting. I think he was trying to get rid of me!

Alas, the bus arrived and took me to the French Quarter. On the way down St. Charles I saw lots of trees that were covered in plastic Mardi Gras beads! I walked down Bourbon Street ( not a very nice street in my opinion, rather smelly at that hour). I met up with my tour guide and had a two hour walking tour. There’s a video link about some of the tombs below. She told about the early history of New Orleans, but I already knew all of that from the historian briefings! She told us that until the 20th century people died from many diseases associated with the location of New Orleans ( swampy). Yellow fever, malaria, and many many more. The cemetery was interesting.

After lunch, a lady (that I met on the tour) and I decided to drive into the 9th ward to investigate the damage. Wow. We saw where the Industrial Levee had breached in two places. The street closest to the levee had no houses. Just slabs of concrete remained where houses once stood. There were a few houses being rebuilt, but it was largely houses that were temporarily abandoned. I say temporarily abandoned because often there were spray painted messages on the houses “ Do not bulldoze, I’m coming home”. The houses had some symbols spray painted on them also. You can see them in my pictures. They checked all of the houses looking for bodies and ?? I’m not sure what else the symbols meant. I think they were checking to see if the gas and electricity were off. We drove by a senior high school that had been destroyed. I have a video and some pictures of that too. I went in through a hole in the fence and looked in a window. A table had a gas nozzle (like the one on my black lab table) and I knew it had been a science lab. Further down the road there was a ruined baseball field. If you look closely in one of my pictures you can see a mitt left in the wake of Katrina. Except for minimal rebuilding, it was almost total devastation in the 9th ward. The lady I toured with had a friend who ran an animal rescue operation in the 9th ward right after Katrina. While we worry about the people in a disaster, there are also pets who suffer.

In the evening, the five teachers on this Earthwatch Expedition met up with Rebecca, our liaison here at Tulane University. We went out to a Mediterranean restaurant for supper (yum) and then back to the hotel

September 29, 2007
Arrived at MSY airport on time. As we were flying in you could see houses in various states of repair (or disrepair). You could also see vacant lots. The airport, I learned, has those letters because it was built on an old slaughter yard, hence the SY. I decided to take a cab to the guesthouse even thought it was the most expensive option. It was also the easiest and boy did my suitcase weight a lot!

On walls and fences everywhere you can see a line where the water was in 2005(after the levees broke). The 9th ward, is still decimated. I’ll go see this later. We rode by the superdome and went on the overpasses that we saw in the video in class. (The overpasses where people were for days waiting to be rescued.)

St. Charles Street, where my guesthouse is, is beautiful. The streetcar that should run up St. Charles is not supposed to be fixed until next year. We are right next to Loyola College and Tulane University. My taxi driver said he’d take me out to hear some jazz tonight, but I opted to go have dinner with one of the other teachers who was here. We ended up eating at Cooter Browns .( As period 7 suggested.) I had my first po’ boy sandwich. Well, to me, it was just a sandwich, but it was named during the depression according to “Rob” from Baton Rouge who had come to town today for the big LSU - Tulane football game. (Yes, it was played at the Superdome). LSU won, but that really didn’t surprise anyone.
LSU is Louisiana State University. ( Remember I’m in Louisiana guys! :) So trivia- where is LSU? (Yes, I know Louisiana, but what city?)
It is HOT here. Well it is for a Mainer! It is just like it was last week in Maine. MUGGY! All of the trees are droopy and covered with moss/ferns. I’ll be posting a picture of some of the exciting night life I encountered tonight out on St. Charles street. Check it out.

Gabcast

I am having trouble imbedding Gabcast into my blog.
So if you go to gabcast.com and search sfarnham... listen to my recordings.

YOU HAVE YOUR ASSIGNMENTS!

Ok grade 8... you now have your assignments to help me with my Earthwatch Expedition.
Now here's a math problem for you to solve ... can you do it without Mrs. Stafford? I'll bet you can!

So what if global warming sends caterpillar populations soaring... will those horrible Tomato/Tobacco Hornworms leave us without one tomato here in Winslow, Maine?

(to look at pictures of the caterpillar and the moth look here...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manduca_sexta)

Problem:
The life cycle of Manduca quinquemaculata, the Tomato Hornworm, is about 30 to 50 days. The sneaky moths lay their eggs at night. Each moth deposits one to five eggs per plant per visit and may lay up to 2000 eggs. (http://www.indiana.edu/~l113/ManducaSextaLab.htm) So if the Hornworm was active for 200 days of the year, how many caterpillars might result?
How many tomato plants would this involve? (maximum)? Whoa!

Something to think about...

Scroll down to the picture with this heading... check out the website.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1116_051116_caterpillar.html

Japanese Beetles

What are those little white dots on the thorax of this Japanese beetle?
What does it have to do with my Earthwatch Expedition to New Orleans, looking at caterpillars and their parasitoids?