It all started with a story.

I told her that when I was 14, my father, Joseph Lucas Jr., originally from New Orleans, and my grandfather Joseph Lucas Sr., who still lives here, took me east through the town of Vacherie in St. James Parish to an even tinier, underdeveloped “town” (for lack of a better and smaller-sounding word). The place was called Moonshine – yes, it is that country. For my grandparents and step-grandmother, once upon a time this was home and life was hilariously simple.

I grinned at my recollection of the sleepy community in the middle of all the farmland I could ever stand to see, then was shocked when Jinx burst out laughing, saying she was from the same area.

Jinx knew exactly which St. Luke’s Baptist Church I was talking about when I told her about my visit to the tiny town’s white clapboard cultural landmark. She knew the church was situated near a levee, blocking the Mississippi River from wiping the unincorporated area off the map.

I had to investigate: “Call Dad, call Grandma up in Seattle, try to catch Grandpa while he’s home,” I told myself as we arrived at the interview site, and I closed the car door.  

After another adventure that weekend – this time through the partly abandoned streets off Paris Avenue in New Orleans looking for yet another interview – we stopped by my grandparents’ home on Poland Avenue in the city’s Ninth Ward.

I’ll never forget it.  

After introductions and catching up with my grandparents, I explained the link both Jinx and I felt she had to my grandparents. Once they started naming older family members – nodding at their recollections of them from the past, I couldn’t help but grin.

Our families had known each other at some point in the past – her last living aunt and cousin knew my grandparents, and they both knew Jinx’s father, among other family members.

Looking at the living room photos, Jinx smiled wide saying, “I feel like I’ve gone home. This is just too much!” It turns out some of our relatives actually lived in the same area – converted from a former plantation in the area.

As they pieced together portions of each other’s family trees, I sat with Grandpa thinking of how random the whole thing was. Here I am from Seattle, studying in Washington, D.C., in New Orleans for two weeks and by complete chance, I meet a mentor at the Institute who knows most of my father’s side of the family I’ve never even met because of the distance between us all.

Realizing how small the world can be, I couldn’t help but appreciate the simple gift of oral history and the value of old African-American communities – regardless of the anonymity and fractured spirit some of ours see today.

“You see, the world is round,” Grandma May said, with her typical all-knowing facial expression. “It’s all a cycle.”

Grandma May blew us a kiss as we drove away and I realized there’s so much more for me to learn about my family, and soon. Thinking about Grandma May’s theory of the round universe, I still wonder how long I have left to come full circle.

I also was curious about how should I help develop a creative eye and he recommend that I just look at as many photos as I can and use them as a reference and think about how I can make every shot different. Even when in tight places with low light don’t be scared to move; you can even ask to see if they will turn the house lights up a little. Overall, Batka was big help and I definitely got some great advice from a great photographer.

The day went along, and Jill finally got to me. It was about 11 a.m. I began to tell her about my story idea to compare the older brass bands in New Orleans to the younger brass bands. The bands I planned to feature were the Treme Brass Band and the Soul Rebels Brass Bands.

Jill mentioned that she heard the Rebirth Brass Band play before and that she loved them. I replied saying that I was able to hear the Treme Brass Band already and I loved it and planned on going back out today shoot some more pictures.

She said it was OK, and sounded like a good project. Minutes later, she returned, saying she and her husband, Henry Griggs, wanted to accompany me on my assignment. We left at around 2:30 p.m. We first headed to the Sonesta Hotel in the 300 hundred block of Bourbon Street to catch the Treme Brass Band in a parade. Later, after finding out that they had started early, we figured we would catch them at the Treme neighborhood where they usually disband. Not knowing the parade was only about 10 minutes ahead of us, we decided to leave for the Candlelight Bar in the Treme neighborhood.

Once we arrived, we searched for people who knew when the band was going to arrive. After we found out they were coming in about 20 minutes, we decided to wait. The locals in the Treme neighborhood convinced Jill and her husband to buy gumbo for them and myself. The gumbo was so good. It had lobster and the great New Orleans rice with a little spice at the bottom. Then, as we sat and waited for about 45 minutes, we noticed that random people in the community started gathering. We had to stay to see what was going on and about 10 minutes later the brass band came down the street in their orange truck. A second line came right behind them. The crowd grew to about 300 to 400 people within 10 minutes. I was then able to get the location of where they were playing that night.

Later that day, Jill and Henry took everyone out to eat at the Louisiana Pizza Kitchen. The food was awesome. After dinner, we left to finally see the Treme Brass Band play. Once we arrived at Rosy’s Jazz Hall, the police officer was determined not to let me in the event, a wedding. I could not believe he would not let me in: I had Jill Abramson of The New York Times with me! Later, the manager, outside for a smoke, decided to let us in after I explained our situation.

The wedding reception was nice. The band played and I took pictures from the stage because initially I was limited to a small space. Then the wedding coordinator said that if I could get any good pictures of the bride, I should e-mail them to her. I took that as a ticket to move around and got some great shots.

On the ride back to Dillard, Jill, Henry and I just talked about our love for brass bands and the police officer who was such a stick in the mud.

Overall I enjoyed my day with Jill and Henry because they really got to know me. I appreciated meeting a managing editor of a national paper and also meeting Jill after hours.

The restaurant's title may be memorable, but it isn't completely true. (Phillip Lucas/NYT Institute)

Sigh …

If there’s one thing I’m going to remember about this Institute, it’s going to be the late-night car adventures. Every student in this program has been lost in the Big Easy at least once since arriving here.

New Orleans is confusing. The roads make little, if any, sense. But that’s the fun of being here.

So, when you get a bunch of college students together in an unfamiliar city begging to be explored, it has to be expected that three, four or five will eventually hop in a car one night and wind up getting lost. On most midnight rides, the searches are for fast food because, at some point during the day, we missed one of the free Dillard cafeteria meals because we were working on a news story.

Take Monday night for example. Larry Young, Traver Riggins, Kenneth Hawkins, Phillip Lucas and I piled into Larry’s blue Taurus and went looking for food. We were in search of this mythical 24-hour po’ boy place recommended by a friend.

I wasn’t on the phone when my riding partners got the information, but I was sure the friend was lying to us.

A 24-hour po’ boy place? In New Orleans? Fake.

During the first stop in our food run, we actually found a spot that was open 24 hours, on the corner in a sketchy-looking neighborhood near campus. Of course, we were all still dressed in our “New York Times attire”: button-up shirts, slacks or, in Traver’s case, a dress. So we already looked out of place.

Since there wasn’t a legitimate parking lot, we were forced to park behind the building … under a flickering streetlight … next to a Dumpster. And when we got out, we were accosted for change. All good signs for the night’s adventure.

When we entered the little hole-in-the-wall, the menu was randomly written on the wall behind the counter. Everything was in capital letters, but there was no real theme. The word “pancake” was next to the word “pepper.” The word “ham” was above “cheese steak.” “Turkey” was above “goat milk.”

“Yuck,” I thought to myself. I love my stomach too much to confuse it like that. We decided to leave, jumping on the highway to continue our mystical search.

After taking the wrong exit and making one complete circle through a neighborhood, we finally found our 24-hour po’ boy place.

As we crept closer, we saw the name of the joint, “We Never Close Po-Boys.”

“Ah, reassuring and fitting,” I thought to myself.
As we turned into the suspiciously dark parking lot, “We Never Close” was, well, closed.

Nevertheless, when an outreach worker asked me if I wanted to go into the dilapidated home , I didn’t hesitate to say “of course”. My curiosity was too overwhelming for any other reply.

Trying my best not to hit my head, I followed the guys under the house to the “secret” entrance, using my Canon: Speedlite 430EX II to give my footsteps reference. I came up through the floor and immediately smelled something reminiscent of defecation and disheartenment.

Sad would be a gross understatement to describe the living conditions of the person who had been living there. Disgusting would be a compliment. There were piles and piles of used toilet tissue scattered in various areas of the house. Feces was thrown, or perhaps wiped, on the walls.  There were huge holes in the ceiling. And there was a sense of the truest despair I have ever encountered.

We visited several more houses that night, and each one had its own unique level of despondency but nothing seemed quite as deplorable as the first. All the same, I am grateful to have had another once in a lifetime experience.

Bearing that in mind, I guess my latest piece of humble pie shouldn’t have been so unexpected, but it was especially unappetizing.

I submitted a proposal for my “project story,” which all the students at the Institute are expected to complete. After shooting interviews, tracking down subjects and talking to every family member, friend, journalist, janitor and delivery man who had ever even heard of my subject, I sat in the studio staring at a pair of monitors and digging for a story. The Institute’s video directors, my immediate supervisors, pulled me aside and explained in excruciating detail how my story got off track. It took a moment, but when terms like “stonewalled” and “glad-handed” entered the room, my ego greeted them on the way out.

Maybe the scope of the story was too big. Probably so. Maybe I didn’t ask the right questions. I’m not sure. Either way the ax was dropping on my story.

It’s an ironic thing. As an editor, my job is to carve information into a story. That means a lot of cuts, so I should be used to having my work pulled apart. It wasn’t my editor’s fault. I had sensed it too. My observations were a bit more self-serving than theirs but the point was the same. I had no story.  I told myself to take it like a journalist, but it was easily the bitterest bite I had taken in some time. 

It didn’t kill me so I can only assume I’m a little stronger.   

Life in the Institute has served up some interesting things. I expected no less in New Orleans. Sometimes you just have to choke it down.

I’m sure most of us don’t need an intro to who Jill Abramson is; after all she is a managing editor for the top newspaper in the world. But for those who don’t, I’d like to introduce her through my point of view. She’s the woman who came into the office wearing the white Dillard sweatshirt and, let me tell you, she was proud to have been wearing that sweatshirt. When she first walked into the office she was briefly introduced, and then she quietly sat down. I thought to myself “This is my opportunity to speak to her. After all a few days before she came I had e-mailed her.  She hadn’t responded so it was the perfect conversation starter.”

I walked up to her and said “Ms. Abramson, I e-mailed you about my story and you didn’t e-mail me back.” She said she didn’t get my e-mail because she has this crazy e-mail system that tosses out messages sometimes. It was all right, because she was ready for me anyway.

For the next hour I had what I would call an “intense” one-on-one session with Jill, something that most journalists (excluding those at Yale ,where she sometimes teaches, and those she works with) don’t get to have. We talked about the research that I had done and it took her no more than two minutes to write an outline for a story that I had been working a week on. I know you’re probably thinking, “Are you serious? Two minutes?” It was probably more than two minutes but my point is that she’s amazing. She not only saved me hours and hours of time but she also gave me firsthand experience on what a reporter at The Times might go through. Sometimes, Don told me, editors will write the outline for stories for journalist as long as the writer is able to back the outline up with understanding and sources.

To add to my experience with Jill, she invited me and another journalist, Phillip Lucas, to tag along with her on a meeting with Councilwoman Stacey Head. She came to get Phil and me   at 8:30 a.m. The least I can say about the journey to the Community Coffee House on Magazine Street is that it was an adventure. It was raining, we were lost, and a few minutes late to our meeting with the councilwoman. Of course everything worked out: We arrived at the coffee shop and there was Stacey Head, a woman who I had learned a little about during my short stint in New Orleans. I’m working on a story that involves race relations and Councilwoman Head is the perfect source for my story. Little to my and Phil’s knowledge, Jill wasn’t going to be staying for long. She soon left us to go to another meeting. It was fine, though, because we did what we do best. I probably won’t see her again for a long time but I hope next time I send her an e-mail she gets it.

This may not sound like the most interesting story, especially if you’re not a journalist. I can say that having one-on-one time with Jill Abramson is like an aspiring basketball player playing one-on-one with Michael Jordan. So just imagine how big of a deal this was for me. Meeting Jill was the icing on the cake that was already iced.

It’s true; I have a romantic vision of New Orleans.

One day, while driving from a meeting on health care, I took several wrong turns and found myself very, very lost. Too full of pride to call for directions back to the university, I drove around aimlessly for what seemed like hours.

This was not a safe or responsible decision, but it reiterated my feelings about the city. Despite being ravaged by Katrina, New Orleans has a strange ambience of romance, celebration, mystery and danger.

If my description of the city sounds like a trailer for a 1930’s film noir, remember that it’s coming from a young visitor who was seeing the city from inside the locked doors of her compact car.

I just can’t explain it (which is probably something a journalist shouldn’t say), but New Orleans has a raw charm that isn’t just a fabricated gimmick sold on Bourbon Street. Profound and bizarre histories still permeate the city’s alleyways and neighborhoods, regardless of their post-Katrina condition.

It is impossible to ignore the devastation New Orleans has faced, and no one should. Nearly four years after the hurricane, it is shocking to see abandoned and desolate homes, schools and hospitals where sheets of plywood have replaced blinds and curtains.

One cannot see these sights while strolling the French Quarter. It is much more pleasant and mind-easing to sip a hurricane at a bistro on Decatur Street.

The other day someone called New Orleans a “Potemkin village.” Feeling embarrassed and uncultured for having never heard the phrase, I embraced the almighty Google: It’s something created to deceive.

I disagree with the statement, but as a short-term visitor my assessment of the city is probably unfair.

Before the institute, I had visited New Orleans only once. Now, a week into the program, I’ve spoken to state representatives, a former boxer in the Ninth Ward, a British music historian with a passion for Cajun/rock music, and a woman who blames a city hospital for her husband’s death. Yesterday, as he said goodbye, a museum security guard took my hand and called me “young princess.”

This city is full of fascinating and strange people who create its alluring atmosphere. I look forward to exploring more into New Orleans’ resilient and indescribable heart.

Now if I can just get someone to do a Stanley Kowalski impression outside my window.

The most pleasant for a temporary reporter in the Crescent City: People just really want to talk. On top of that, when they can’t get back to you by deadline, they let you know they’re sorry about it.

It seems simple, but take a minute to consider it from my point of view.

Working in Washington D.C., it can feel like even the unkempt man next to you on the metro has a media relations agent-and probably wants you to talk to his “people.” Prepared statements are the proverbial soup du jour for journalists in the nation’s capital, and it starts to taste instant-preheated-and it spoils fast.  

It’s refreshing to strike up conversations with area residents and just talk, like two associates, about something. Yes, a recorder might happen to catch the conversation or someone might get distracted by the gigantic badge that says “PRESS” dangling from our necks. But the beauty of interviews here is that they feel like genuine conversations instead of interrogations of the dismissive and press-savvy.

Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve always said I couldn’t “do” journalism in the South. My stance on that weakened when two representatives from the same state agency called me back within hours of each other, apologizing profusely for not getting me quotes by my deadline.

Imagine that. It took a walk across campus and dinner to get over the shock of it.

“I just didn’t want you to think we were trying to shaft you,” one of the representatives said to me.

When’s the last time I heard that in D.C.? When is the last time I got the impression anyone cared in the slightest if they shafted…anyone?

Later in the week, photographer Mylan Cannon and I were exploring a neighborhood nearly recovered from Katrina.

While I was on the phone with my back turned, coordinating a ride back to Dillard, Mylan and an elderly woman had struck up a conversation on her doorstep about her neighborhood. Barefoot and in a nightgown, she welcomed me to the doorstep and the three of us talked about the neighborhood like Mylan and I lived there, too. 

Friday, I was fielding calls for another article and spoke to a man who stopped the interview to congratulate me for being selected to participate in the institute. He was a print-journalism major turned government worker and said he needed to let me know how important the profession was, despite the state of the industry.

The fast paced and indifferent culture of Washington did a lot to sour my image of public figures, government agencies and media relations departments I now consider to be the “black hole” of almost any agency.

It’s only fitting that the concept of Southern hospitality extends to the way people relate to media professionals here. I’m just surprised that when I’ve been trying to talk to people, they’re so enthusiastic about talking back and being listened to.

We’ve been told a few times that everyone in the city has a story to tell. I’m just happy people don’t mind taking a few minutes to tell me one.

I could really get used to this.

When I didn’t arrive at my apartment by midnight – I was scheduled to be in by 10 p.m. – my roommate Facebook messaged me, “Are you OK?” I was, just delayed two hours in Atlanta where I sat on a dirty carpet reminiscing about old friends and a new phase in my life.

But then it happened – I started coughing. It came suddenly, perhaps a consequence of new surroundings. Regardless of what triggered it, the cough, it hasn’t stopped since.

When I boarded the plane I thought for sure I’d be over my newfound sickness. I went to sleep, leaning on the plane window hoping the terrible itch in my throat would go away. It didn’t. I woke myself up coughing and watched our plane land in New Orleans through watery eyes. I’ve never had allergies.

I tried to hide it the first day, silently holding in my coughs as muffled sounds. It’ll go away, I thought.  Instead, the coughs – which come about every 10 minutes – have spread to other participants. My hidden muffles of the first day have turned into a chorus of coughs as other participants have developed “my allergies.” Hopefully my fellow participants won’t hold it against me. Hopefully, I won’t be remembered as the girl who spread her cough but rather as the one who eagerly worked through it, making special stops at Rite Aid to purchase a bottle big enough for everyone to share.