Last week was a hard one for New Orleans, with a shooting at a Mothers Day second-line parade injuring 20 people. I was at the parade with many of my closest friends and we know several of the club members who were parading — all of us were just mere steps away from the gunfire. I worked on a followup story for the New York Times which helped to keep me grounded and busy while still processing the experience. Along with images from a community rally against violence that occurred the day after the shooting, my editor included two older pictures I made at the Mothers Day parade in 2011 to provide some visual context for the story. It made for a great layout in the National Section of the paper, and you can read the excellent story online: “Celebrating, in Spite of the Risk“.

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This week has been much quieter — I went camping on the beach in Florida. I’m wandering shaded streets around town shooting a (sweaty) travel assignment, and sorting through old stories and revisiting some of the things I absolutely love about this city… like MARDI GRAS MARCHING BANDS.

This past Mardi Gras season, Katy Reckdahl wrote a fantastic piece for the NYT on the trials and triumphs of The McDonogh 25 High School marching band (the “Roneagles“). I had an awesome time tagging along with the band one evening as they played in the annual Krewe of Hermes parade down St. Charles Street. The experience reinforced my love for New Orleans as one of the many ways this city really comes together.

On November 21st the Nine Times Social Aid & Pleasure Club rolled through New Orleans’ Upper Ninth Ward in their 12th Annual second line parade.

Born from the benevolent societies of the mid-1800s, traditional social aid and pleasure clubs supported their dues-paying members by defraying health care and funeral costs and financial hardship, and by organizing larger community projects and events. Nowadays, the clubs exist as a unifying presence and source of pride for some of New Orleans’ oldest neighborhoods, and their members still take to the streets in amazing threads and parade with some of the city’s best brass bands.

NPR featured the Nine Times Club back in 2006.

This year, they were joined by The Stooges and the To Be Continued Brass Band — five hours, nearly six miles, 90º heat, one hell of a time.