History of New Orleans!

Some New Orleans History 

Jambalaya - Creole vs. Cajun

Today, jambalaya is considered a Louisiana classic. Like many popular recipes,

Jambalaya was created long ago out of necessity. From 1762 to 1767, Spain began the slow

process of replacing authorities in what used to be the French territory of “La Louisiane,” and

a lot more than politics was jumbled in the process. Early Spanish settlers had to learn how to

cook with the ingredients and spices found in this new world. It’s likely that this popular

Louisiana classic was born from the Spanish dish paella, a concoction of fish, meat, tomatoes

and rice. Because saffron, a typical ingredient in Spanish Paella, was not readily available in the

new world, it was replaced with tomatoes. Over time, spices from the Carribean turned paella

into the completely unique yet ever evolving dish, jambalaya. 

There are multiple ways to prepare jambalaya, and they correspond to various cultures’ historical

in New Orleans and surrounding areas. “Cajun” jambalaya is often made with a tomato

base, and likewise, more ingredients found in the country. The word “Cajun” has its etymology in

the word “Acadian,” referring typically to Louisiana settlers from Canada and Nova Scotia. Cajun

dishes including crawfish, and etouffee are often heavily spiced and use the “trinity” of cajun

cooking - celery, onions and peppers. The other large cultural complex of Louisiana, “Creole,”

creates jambalaya with more ingredients found in the city such as butter and cream. It is typically

more refined and European; the rest of Creole cuisine follows with a base of French influence, but

the Creole population is composed of both French and Spanish settlers. 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_(New_Spain)

https://www.tripsavvy.com/the-difference-between-cajun-and-creole-3961097

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Jambalaya

The Lower Ninth Ward - the unspoken history washed away by Hurricane Katrina

(photo by Julia Holden-Hunkins)

If you take a walk through the ninth ward, it would appear similar to the rest of New Orleans at
first glance. Perhaps there is a little more poverty, and if you looked over your shoulder as you’re
driving in from the French Quarter, you might notice a large cluster of interesting buildings with
solar panels atop their roofs. But unless you happened to stumble upon the
“Lower Ninth Ward Living Museum,” a building altogether too small to contain such a rich history,
you might not know a quarter of what’s happened in this place. 

The ninth ward is the largest of the seventeen wards of New Orleans. The wards were drawn in 1852
when New Orleans sought to reorganize from three separate municipalities into one
centralized government. It is the easternmost downriver ward and is divided in half; the northern
part is bounded by Lake Pontchartrain, and the southern part is bounded by the Mississippi River
and has been the home for mostly lower to middle-class African American people. While all of
New Orleans suffered the blows of multiple hurricanes, the lower ninth ward was always the most
vulnerable due to its proximity to the levy. Despite government funds being allocated to rebuild
the levy to protect the lower ninth ward in case of a disaster like hurricane Katrina, the levy was
never secured. When it breached, the environmental destruction devastated the lower ninth ward
financially and culturally. Some people who were relocated were never able to return to their
homes. Efforts to rebuild the lower ninth ward for those families are still in effect today. One such
effort was sought out by Brad Pitt in his “Make it Right Campaign,” where he initiated the
construction of 109 energy-efficient homes. 

Since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 The Lower Ninth ward has been a destination visited by U.S.
presidents such as George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The rich history is rooted in new
beginnings for escaped slaves after embarking on the underground railroad, and it lives on today
in many forms - one of which being the tradition of the Mardi Gras Indians who celebrate their
history in bold colors and elaborately beaded costumes in the Mardi Gras parades. 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9th_Ward_of_New_Orleans#Hurricane_Katrina

https://neworleanshistorical.org/items/show/288

http://houseofdanceandfeathers.org/mardigrasindians/

3. Beads, baby! The history of New Orleans Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras (which translates to “Fat Tuesday”) is most popular  in New Orleans which annually hosts the largest celebration of the holiday. However, the very first Mardi Gras celebration took place in Mobile, Alabama, and it’s roots bury deep into the European traditions of carnival dating before the medieval times. The celebration of a carnival is unknown by historians, however, the celebration is born from Christianity. Lent (a sacrificial Christian holiday) is one of the primary forces behind the necessity for carnivals, which are often baudy celebrations including parading, feasting and elements of circus. The idea was to live largely and indulge before giving up on some of the earthly pleasures for the season of Lent. Sometimes masks were introduced to allow people to discard their everyday persona in order to fully partake in the party spirit. During shrovetide, the days toward the end of carnival, people confessed their sins.

The first recorded celebration of Mardi Gras in Louisiana was in 1699 in what is now the
Plaquemines Parish. Gradually, the festivities migrated and centered around New Orleans and
celebrated in the form of parades, masking, costuming and cross-dressing. In 1856, 21
gentlemen secretly arranged the first Krewe of Mardi Gras (a pinnacle of the celebrations today)
to be observed in an official parade. That first Krewe was named “The Mystick Krewe of Comus”
which continues to be seen today. Now alongside Comus, popular krewes include The Krewe of
Thoth, The Krewe of Bacchus (which historically names celebrities as their “kings”), Rex,
Proteus, Orpheus and Zulu. All of these krewes partake in parades from the beginning of January
until the end of February and ride upon floats, some of which have taken all year to design and
build. Typically, float-riders wear masks and throw gifts to viewers such as doubloons (coins with
some significance to their krewe), cups, shirts and other miscellaneous items.  

In 1875, the state of Louisiana declared Mardi Gras a legal state holiday, and the parades were
held in rain or shine save for a few instances during the Civil War, World War I, and World War II.
In 1979, the New Orleans police department went on strike leaving The National Guard to prevent
crimes during the holiday. Although it was more sparsely attended than previous years, there were
less regulations on alcohol and drug use deeming 1979’s mardi gras one of the best in the eyes of
bohemian party-goers. National Guard Troops returned to Mardi Gras in 2005 to assist in crowd
control in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This year hosted floats which satirized the U.S.
Army Corps and The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in their failure to secure
the levees in New Orleans. 

Rex’s inaugural parade in 1892 established the city’s celebratory colors: purple, green and gold. There is
no distinct reason why these colors were chosen, although Errol Laborde theorized their significance was
due to heraldry. However, the Rex organization declared that the colors corresponded to justice, power
and faith. These colors continue to decorate floats, beads, and the notorious king cake which is delicately
folded with colored bread, colored sugar and holds a traditional plastic baby inside. 

Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mardi_Gras_in_New_Orleans

The Green Revolution 

Beginning in the 1950s, The Green Revolution was considered the third wave of agriculture in The United States. The Green Revolution was endorsed largely by The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and introduced the widespread use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, controlled water supply (irrigation), and mechanized farming methods. The method of using “high-yielding varieties'' (HYVs) was also developed during this time. The HYVs were crops where semi-dwarfing genes with a higher potential to absorb nitrogen were bred into the genomes for the rest of that crop, creating a stronger genome and therefore a larger harvest. The goal of these innovations was to increase the yield of crops. Norman Borlaug is deemed the father of this movement and earned a nobel peace prize for his efforts in increasing the yield of crops resulting in saving over a billion people from starvation. Mexico is regarded as the birthplace of The Green Revolution. With U.S. support and the order of Mexican president Manuel Ávila Camacho, Mexico evolved with new knowledge and technology. Mexico's successes began the spread of The Green Revolution into the Philippines, India, Brazil and several less successful attempts to increase crop yields in Africa.



Sparks of Environmental Activism and Government Response
 
The Green Revolution proved successful in helping aid world hunger, but it did not exist without criticism. Environmental Activists took issue with many aspects of these new agricultural practices and how they may be affecting the environment in a long-term sense. These concerns boiled down to a matter of sustainability. Resources such as synthetic fertilizers and water were mined, and these places could not replenish those resources as fast as they were being taken. Environmentalists were also concerned about the pollution of the soil during this process. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was published in 1962 and reflected a conversation about pollution and agricultural chemicals' effects on ecology. Activists also advocated for proper conservation tilling methods including rotating crops in order to avoid topsoil erosion and depletion of nutrient-dense soil. Finally, there were economic concerns about an increasingly centralized agricultural system and its detrimental effects on small family farmers.



Several books and studies were published in favor of the sustainable agriculture movement. Wes Jackson published New Roots for Agriculture which argued that “monoculture farms with annual plants that require a lot of external inputs to grow – like huge fields of corn fertilized by ammonia – should be replaced by "polycultures" of perennial plants where one species would complement another” (Ganzel). U.S. Lawmakers did respond to this widespread concern from environmental activists by funding research initiatives. The goal was to inspire perhaps more eco-friendly practices while responding to hunger and population growth. In 1989, $4.45 million was allocated toward the Low-Impact Sustainable Agricultural (LISA) program with the USDA. This evolved into the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Program.
In 1907 Farmers of Forty Centuries was written by Franklin H. King. Here, he discussed the advantages of sustainable agriculture and its necessity to the continuity of farming in the future. However, the term “sustainable agriculture” wasn’t coined until about 1980 by Australian agronomist Gordon McClymont.



Peppers, Preppers and Pandemics - Agricultural Independence within a Globalized Market

There is a lot to dissect when it comes to the topic of sustainability, but one pinpoint discussion is on the topic of “preppers.” Who exactly are they, and what does their mindset reveal about modern-day agriculture? This word, prepper, refers to the type of person who invests much of their time and energy into preparing for natural disasters (or, more severely, some apocalyptic event). Not all preppers have a big garden on their off-grid cabin, but many of them have something in common, and that is a seed of suspicion in the reliability of the structures in place to sustain all of humanity. And considering the contemporary stance of a world living under the shadow of COVID-19 (coronavirus), they may have a point. When grocery stores close down, it is the farmers, gardeners, off-the-gridders, and yes, those forward thinking preppers who continue life soundly while the rest of us struggle to shift.



Before delving into the benefits of preparedness in anticipation of disaster, first there are some benefits of the prepping lifestyle that are alone worth mentioning in the discussion of sustainable agriculture. For many preppers, “organic” (produced or involving production without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial agents) farming is part of their belief system. Of course, this means relying less on big agricultural giants mass-producing monoculture crops and more on what can grow naturally in the environment readily accessible to them. This ideal is not unique to preppers, but it does carry an interesting preposition about sustainable farming - in the face of disaster, whether it be natural or political, how fragile are the systems that we depend on for a need as basic as food?



Prepping, otherwise regarded as survivalism, is a concept that has been around since the 1930s when suspicions toward government collapse and nuclear warfare appeared in both fiction and nonfiction writings dawning after the cold war. Preppers regard The Great Depression as a prime example of the need for survivalism. Other waves of survivalism occurred during the libertarian movement of the 1960s, the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1980s, after the September 11th, 2001 attacks, and the emergence of swine flu in 2009. The strategies discussed among these years compiled a vast array of survival skills, food preparedness being only one of them. However, our present day situation of the COVID-19 pandemic presents a struggle delicately woven into the food and grocery network. The disease was born in the wet markets in Wuhan, China, and in a chain reaction of precautionary events, people have been forced to rely less on the daily convenience of grocery stores. Along with this, the U.S. and countries around the globe must sacrifice a guaranteed sanitary shopping experience, and the promised longevity of shipping and importing common products and goods.

Although the sustainable agriculture movement has faced many critiques, one of which is its ability to actually feed 7.5 billion people across the globe without mass-producing food with the use of practices introduced by The Green Revolution (and later, the New Green Revolution). But there is now a more interesting debate in play brought about by this disease which threatens the infrastructure of mass-production and retrieval and abundance of goods. Could environmentalists have been right? Perhaps sustainable agriculture is not only necessary for the survival of ecosystems, but also the survival of humanity?



Sources:
https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/crops_20.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
https://unsplash.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_agriculture
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/29/coronavirus-why-kentucky-preppers-were-prepared-when-covid-19-struck/2933159001/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivalism#1930s_to_1950s

World Celebrates 50th Anniversary of Earth Day - The History Behind The Holiday

Before Rachel Carson's, Silent Spring, was released in 1962, humans were consuming tons of the
Earth's limited resources, and few were concerned with preserving the planet as a home we must care
for. Carson's book planted the seeds for change, and eight years later, on April 22nd, 1970, the first
Earth day was celebrated. It is still celebrated annually across the globe. This year, while some
celebrated in Oregon by digging up their old potatoes and planting new ones, many celebrate in
quarantine with the Spring beckoning them to love the earth from inside sanitized windows. Earth day
serves as a time for reflection, for us to take account of how our behavior has shaped the land we live,
breathe, eat and drink from. And although earth day doesn't necessarily signify the birth day of our
planet, the big bang or another creation myth, what have you, many use it as an excuse to turn off their
lights, consume less, pick up trash along dirty sidewalks, etc. And if it weren't for the
coronavirus pandemic, grocery stores would presumably operate as normal.

The first Earth day in 1970 was not quite as sedentary. 

The catalyst for this holiday's recognition in the United States was in the groups of activists all over the
country. They used that day, April 22nd, to send a wake up call to everyone partaking in systems of
earthly destruction. Hippies raided grocery stores, calling to question the consistent use of
single-user plastics, thousands of protests were organized on university campuses and rallies across the
nation in parks, auditoriums and streets were broadcasted. It served as one of the more uniting events in
U.S. history, as it brought republicans and democrats together on a stance toward change. This led to
progressive political action. The first Earth day led to the creation United States
Environmental Protection Agency and environmental laws, all the first of their kind, including the
National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Clean Air Act,
we're passed. Two years later Congress passed the Clean Water Act.  A year after that, Congress
passed the Endangered Species Act and soon after the
Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.

Since that first celebration and call to action, earth day has spread into a global holiday. Just a decade
ago, 193 countries were reported to have partaken on Earth day festivities, marches and volunteerism.
Today it remains a global (and of course earthly) affair. 

This Earth day in 2020 marked the 50th anniversary of the holiday. With the concern for global warming
rising, and less action being taken by our government today, people are motivated to educate and
organize. The network created by earth day serves consistently as a reminder of the good we can do
when we stand together toward a common goal which will affect the future for everyone. 

Sources

https://www.earthday.org/history/

Photos from Unsplash.com