My family's starting a foundation. Though still a nascent idea in need of a lot of nurturing, planning, and formalization, my uncle has brought together the larger family to found a family non-profit in the name of my grandmother, Frieda Fox, a thoroughly incredible woman. I don't want to talk about it too much now since, again, it's still just an egg of an idea.

It was to learn more about the nature of family foundations that six of us, four family, two friends of family, joined up in New Orleans on Wednesday for the 16th annual Family Foundation Conference, organized by the Council of Foundations. We were actually planning on attending last year's conference in Chicago, but extenuating family circumstances forestalled the trip until now.

I learned about a world of philanthropy that I only had a vague notion of before. I met dozens of incredible people whose foundations make a real difference to thousands, if not millions, of others. Very uplifting, very educational, and above all very supportive and positive. I've been to lots of conferences, but this was the first conference where every participant can gain more by sharing with every other participant, with no sense of corporate rivalry or other competitiveness to apply what the conference had to offer.

I'm sure I'll write more about this as things progress and evolve over the coming years, but it was a great experience.

...

And then of course, there's Mardi Gras.

I didn't even realize that Mardi Gras overlapped our time at the conference. Sure, the Superbowl was last Sunday, and I arrived (very) early Wednesday morning, due to fly out Friday evening, but I thought that Fat Tuesday (literally 'Mardi Gras') was the initiation of the festivities, not the culmination.

We didn't really have much time outside the conference to explore New Orleans N'awlins, but we did spend a few hours Thursday night walking the few blocks to the French Quarter, eating dinner, and wandering along Bourbon Street which, even then, was starting to build into something warranting an MTV broadcast pod.

It was weird, with my only real concept of Bourbon Street coming from Volkswagon Jetta commercials and random flashes of cultural knowledge. The next afternoon, between the close of the conference at 1 and our need to leave for the airport at 3, Kristina, Natalie, and I had a chance to walk along Riverwalk and the less crowded streets of the French Quarter.

What can I say? Walking into the French Quarter, I was reminded more and more of New Orleans Square at Disneyland, the ironwork balconies, sculpted faux columns, intricate and colorful paintwork and plants melding into a combination my brain only had one pattern for. I kept feeling like there should be an entrance to Pirates of the Caribbean, or a nondescript door with a buzzer that would provide an ingress to Club 33.

As we approached Bourbon Street, the illusion of Disneyland faded step-by-step into an illusion of Grad Night at Disneyland... with porn. Turning the corner on to Bourbon itself, the disillusion was complete, a bastardization of the uniqueness of the French Quarter, with neon and drunk fratboys replacing dignity and culture. I don't mean to disparage the uniqueness of Mardi Gras itself, or the doubly unique incarnation of Mardi Gras that exists on these few blocks, I'm only pointing out the extreme dichotomy of experiencing the cultural, historical, and architectural beauty of the French Quarter with the extreme cultural manifestation of that uniqueness, spawned by it, but year by year less relating to it.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to like about Mardi Gras, even (and yes, many would say specifically) on Bourbon Street. As most of you probably know, the celebration of Mardi Gras is intended to be the debauchery, the glut of gratification before the 40 days of Lent, the feast before the famine, as it were.

It's easy to look at Mardi Gras and see drunken sex-crazed teens, and of course you wouldn't be wrong, but unlike Daytona, Ft. Lauderdale, or any other Spring Break staging area, the story doesn't end there. Above all, Mardi Gras is the epitome of New Orleans, of their pleasure-seeking nature and openness and respect for others. The parades of the diverse krewes, the music, and the people bind together into an overall celebration of life.

Writing this, I realize it probably sounds stupid to some, but maybe not to everyone. Even on Bourbon street, with guys and girls hanging from the balconies, I saw people cherishing each other, and cherishing themselves. Instead of a riotous Palm Springs gropefest, this was a place with all the sexual overtone, but grounded in the energy of feeling comfortable with sexuality, your own, and that of people around you. Maybe its the beads...

So, while I came to N'awlins for one education, I got another as well, of a city melding its cultural heritage and values and reveling in them more than anyplace else I've seen.

Epilogue: This post reads pretty stupid, with book-reportish idealism and trite realizations that would make Mark Twain roll over in his grave. Twice. I realize that. A lot of it has to do with my own sexual repression. I kept re-reading and tweaking it, but I can't get past the fact that it sounds like I feel like I'm a southern prude trying to justify not being prudish. Heck, I don't know, maybe I am. More likely though, I think I feel like I'm supposed to be aloof in some sort of counter-culture Daria-esque kind of way, and that I'd sound stupid if I just wrote a gung-ho rah-rah Mardi Gras tit piece. Then again, maybe the real problem is that I wish I felt like I belonged there on Bourbon Street, while at the same time laughing at the lemming horde they blur into.

I think the truth is that I'm both at once, but just have trouble admitting it.

I held off posting this until I finished the gallery, but with my sudden flu I didn't get to it. I'd have done it on the train today, but I left the pictures in my other iPhoto. I'll put it together and put it up this weekend.