 | Cheryllyn M. Branche on Field Report: Benjamin Banneke… |
 | me on Field Report: Puentes New… |
 | Emdogg on Field Report: Puentes New… |
 | Lucy (VISTA at SoFAB… on Field Report: Green Light New… |
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As I near the close of my VISTA term I hope to leave you with a few wish words that I have learned over the course of this year.
This year is all about trial and error.
So if at first you don’t succeed:
Take a step back.
Examine what went wrong.
Engage in dialogue with those affected.
Re-Strategize.
Get to work.
You will get nowhere or nothing done if you do not build relationships!
In order to build capacity you must be willing to smooze and chat it up with the best of them.
If this is out of your comfort zone, GET OVER IT! Find alternatives ways to network.
This year will stress the poo out of YOU!
Take time to relax.
Whether that is sitting in a closet, reading a book or going to the spa, you’re on a VISTA budget but you can make it work.
While there may be days and months that you may not enjoy your site, try to find the glimmer of happiness and hope.
If you do not feel challenged enough, don’t sit around and have a pit party…. Take Initiative.
Think of new task and projects and present them to your supervisor.
It’s about making the most of the year. You’re there for a year, you’ll be fine!
~~~
Well folks, it’s been real! I truly enjoyed sharing my year with each and every one of you.
Time to go into the real world! YIPPEEEE!
-Malliron Hodge, Tulane CPS Education VISTA, ARISE Academy
We’ve been cooking up a storm at Kids Culinary Camp. Check out the blog for updates on the daily activities, Sofabkidsculinarycamp2012.wordpress.com, or read on for some highlights!
Most recipes start with chopping!
Making corn fritters
Look how onions change when you sauté them, and notice the smell!
everyone talking about a recipe that’s important to them and their family
We all take turns adding a different ingredient, then we stir like crazy!
Making butter by shaking a bottle of heavy whipping cream. It’s more fun if you dance while you do it!
Squeezing oranges to make orange juice with the New Orleans Fruit Tree Project
Learning about the origins of traditional New Orleans dishes
A scavenger hunt through the museum, “What makes up the Trinity?” “Where did the name Po-Boy come from?”
Everyone drew their favorite meal from the week and described how it tasted using deccriptive words such as spicy, savory, tangy!
Writing the recipes in our cookbooks so we can make it again at home
We end each day by setting the table and sharing a meal together. It always tastes better because we worked so hard to prepare it and we leave camp full of good food and good conversation!
-Lucy Rosenbloom, Tulane CPS AmeriCorps VISTA, Southern Food and Beverage Museum
My NOLA Neighborhood(s)
People have vastly different constructs of neighborhoods as a place of residence, identity, culture, belonging, status, etc. etc. For me, I have always taken pride in the NOLA neighborhoods where I have lived, although my relationship with the surrounding people and environment has evolved over time.
I have lived in New Orleans for almost 8 years now, and in that (relatively) short amount of time, I have lived in only 4 of New Orleans’ 72 distinct neighborhoods.
2005-2009: Uptown-Carrolton-River Bend (Tulane… but of course)
2010-2011: Mid-City/ Lakeview… well, technically “Navarre”, or “City Park”.
2011-2012: Lower Garden District/ Coliseum Square
2012-Present: Uptown… Historically speaking, Faubourg Bouligny
Which was my favorite? It’s so hard to choose. But here is the run down on each of them based on my experiences living there.
Uptown/University area is exactly what it sounds like: college-town meets wealthy-uptown-old-money meets the real U-P-T “where you’re whip costs 2 G’s but your rims cost 3!!!” (to quote Dee-1). Lots of comfort and convenience- lots of annoying college traffic (both human and automobile). Still, there is something to be said for a community that thrives off the economic and intellectual stimulation of a university campus. There are lots of opportunities to network, plenty of places to go out and see familiar faces, and still plenty of room to stop for a nice conversation with the old lady across the street to hear some stories about the old days.
Uptown did bring me 7 feet of water in my very first apartment (basement level) during Hurricane Katrina. My place was about 2 blocks off Claiborne and I lost just about everything I had, because I had decided to move it ALL down the week before. Still- that loss, while I wouldn’t wish that on anyone- felt like a gain in the long run. I gained a different perspective on what it means to lose your treasured photographs, old t-shirts and mementos- both how hard that can be, and how lucky I was not to have lost anyone close to me. I gained friends in the shelters in Shreveport. I gained a stake in a city, whose loss was now my loss… OUR loss. I gained a drive to do more for my city.
Ironically, Uptown also exposed me to my first tornado (y’all remember tornado Tuesday???). It nearly ripped house right off the cinderblocks it was resting on. At about 4am one morning, it just tore through the Carrolton neighborhood and ripped the roofs off of all the houses on the next block over. That was 2007… I was starting to feel like maybe I was cursed with some natural disaster magnate.
Despite the “safe” reputation and image, I found Uptown to be one of the more dangerous neighborhoods that I lived in. I qualify that claim based on these anecdotal facts: most places I had broken into and robbed, most gunshots heard in my neighborhood per month, most friends robbed, etc. Perhaps the colleg
e crowd draws in people who see a transient, disconnected and largely wealthy population as an easy target. They might be right, after all.
Mid-City/ Lakeview was by far my favorite neighborhood to live in to escape the hustle and bustle of “the Scene”. While there were plenty of places to go out and have fun in Mid-City, it was less about the “scene” than the “scenery”. City Park, Bayou St. John and Lake Pontchartrain stole my heart and gave me a breath of fresh air whenever I needed it. For a city-slicker trapped in a country-boy’s body (or vice-versa? Or both? Or neither?) I sure did miss the regular interaction with the natural landscape. The diversity of neighborhoods within the area is astounding. Not to mention, when Voodoo Fest and Jazz Fest rolled around, it made everyone living outside the vicinity seem like suckers for having to put up with the parking and traffic, versus our short walk/ride from our house. The only downside is that it can feel somewhat disconnected from the rest of the “busy” parts of the city. I liked the people though. Very sweet, low-key, but not too pompous or self-important either. Good people. But the same goes for much of New Orleans anyway.
Lower Garden District had me feeling spoiled! Granted, my rent was about the same as any other neighborhood I had lived in cause I found a great deal. Still, we had easy access to Magazine street, St. Charles restaurants and bars, the street car, Uptown AND Downtown felt within walking distance. The old New Orleans style architecture set a beautiful scene for sitting on the porch or strolling through the neighborhood. Even though I knew a good amount of people from the neighborhood, I never felt fully “home” there. I never felt like I really belonged, as much as I appreciated the lifestyle and the people. I will miss being so close to downtown, to I-10, to the West Bank… did I really just say that? Yeah. That’s right. We used to ride our bikes down to the Canal Street ferry and float on over to Old Algiers to fish and drink cold beers at the old point bar. Now that was a treat.
Back to Uptown/ Faubourg Bouligny, and I can honestly say my little neighborhood is a hidden gem! The people here are unbelievably sweet and have genuine connections to each other. For example, when the power suddenly went out for a few hot hours the other night, all the neighbors gathered outside on our porches and sidewalks to share information, tell stories and commiserate in the humidity. It is my first time living in a shotgun house since I first moved to New Orleans in 2005, but this time around, living with my fiancé, it is MUCH better. I live just half a mile from a bunch of my favorite spots- Ms. Mae’s, the Columns, the Latter Branch of the Public Library, Tipitina’s… the list goes on. The location feels so central. Will I stay here for the long haul? It’s hard to tell. I am not yet at the point in my life where I can afford to buy a house. That type of purchase would seem to ensure more permanence. I do miss being close to the water. Almost every day I wish I could go fishing in City Park or ride my bike along the lake. But I can smell the sweet Uptown air, I can hear the street car and I can feel the positive energy flowing through my neighborhood. That is enough for me… that is the New Orleans I fell in love with and still love to this day.
-Ben Brubaker, Tulane CPS AmeriCorps VISTA, VISTA Leader
Not much has happened this month. I am continuing my research and now focusing on computer literacy, financial literacy and language support programs. I am having trouble with research. It seems that scholarly journals are the most informative but I don’t have access to those. I am feeling limited on the research resources that I have. Please throw me any suggestions J I had the opportunity to attend a “Listening Session” with our youth in order to help steer my research and the future development our youth program. Aside from research and keeping up with the bi-weekly newsletter – I don’t have much free time which has been a welcomed change.
On a personal note, members of the Tulane VISTA group will be completing their term at the end of this month and leaving us (tear, sniffle, tear). But we will be gaining a new bunch of members as well. I am excited to meet the new VISTAs and to see how the group dynamic changes over all. I have 4 more months left so I have to start looking into what my next step will be after my year of service…what to do? Hopefully I will be able to elaborate on that in the next update.
Thanks for reading!
-Sadira Glendenning, Tulane CPS AmeriCorps VISTA, Puentes New Orleans
June Just Flew By
July is already here and I’m still trying to figure out what happened to June. The heat that everyone warned me about when I first arrived in New Orleans is here, and I experienced it first hand during an event the Alliance for Affordable Energy was involved in on June 3Oth. It was an outreach event at the Palmer Park Art Market. The Alliance had a great location for our table, which was just down from the park’s center fountain where they had live jazzy music, and it was just a stone’s throw away from the food stands. Woody’s Fish Tacos were awesome and the snow cones were perfectly icy and sticky sweet.
Over all it was a good outreach event, but the Palmer Park Art Market wasn’t as big an event as I thought it would be. The coordinator’s event map showed hundreds of artist spots, but participation shrivels up quite a bit because of the summer heat, but I hear their Fall and Spring events are huge. We did have family’s and couples walk by our tent, and many stopped to talk , but the majority of them just rushed on by, and I didn’t understand why until I got to walk around the park a bit myself. I checked out all the Artist’s wares and the other stands, but I too saw myself pick up the pace and look for a cooler, shadier spot under the park’s trees. It really was a scorcher that day!
Gulf Restoration Network also had a table at the Art Market, and I met their outreach coordinator. Her name is Ayn Pivonka. Unfortunately, I only talked with her a short time, but I liked her fiery look and animated personality, which I’m sure GRN is benefiting from and thankful for. 
Both of us were training new volunteers to get signatures for each other’s cause, and yes, I did add my name to her cause list, and she signed ours. Thank you Ayn!
What is the Alliance getting signatures for? Well, the Alliance and the Sierra Club are working together to expand Energy Efficiency rules throughout Louisiana. Right now, New Orleans has a program called Energy Smart, which offers energy audits and cash rebates to Entergy New Orleans electric customers, who invest in energy efficiency improvements of their home. Just so you know, Louisiana residents pay one of the highest in utility bills in the country, and we want to help lower those cost. The Alliance believes that a state wide program similar to Energy Smart will help Louisiana residents become more energy efficient, which will in turn shrink their energy bills considerably, and also help the environment.
We had a few other events during June, but it being the last event of the month, on the last day of the month pretty much summed up my month of June. The ever increasing heat, the tasty hot and cold foodies I ate, the cool art and the hot music I enjoyed has prepared me, I believe, for a New Orleans’ July.
- Jon Scott, Tulane AmeriCorps VISTA, Alliance for Affordable Energy
Last Friday was a tough day for me and everyone else at Banneker. We said goodbye to our beloved principal Ms. Cheryllyn Branche. A native New Orleanian, Ms. Branche has been involved in public education for over 30 years in southeast Louisiana and Michigan. She has been the principal at Banneker for nearly a decade, leading the school through many difficult changes since 2003. She is moving on to private education, taking over the reigns as principal at her high school alma mater, Xavier University Preparatory School.
Ms. Branche has a way of talking to you that makes you lose track of time. On my first day at Banneker, she spent two hours telling me about the history of the school and its unique challenges. It felt like a ten minute conversation. She told me how Banneker was one of the first two schools to open after Hurricane Katrina. Even then, she said, the school still seemed like a community. Most students lived within a mile or two of the school, and their parents were actively involved in their children’s education. All that has changed over the past five years; as school choice became the norm, more of Banneker’s students came from across the city, from the west bank and New Orleans East. At the same time, parents stopped coming into the school. Ms. Branche felt her school community slipping through her fingers.
If anything, Ms. Branche is straight-forward on her feelings about education reform in New Orleans. She has never feared criticizing aspects of the system that seem to neglect the city’s children. Similarly, she worked hard to keep teachers that she knew were talented when their jobs were threatened by low test scores. Her fearless honesty is one of the many things that make her such a great leader.
Throughout my year of service, Ms. Branche has gone above and beyond what I would expect from a supervisor. She not only worked with me to achieve common goals, but she made it her personal mission to educate me about the unique education experience in New Orleans. I know that Banneker’s new principal will do a terrific job, but I also know I have lost a mentor and friend. More importantly, New Orleans public education has lost one of its most dedicated leaders.
-George Doonan Martin, Tulane CPS Education VISTA, Benjamin Banneker Elementary School
