So my hubs and I recently took a trip down to New Orleans.  We stopped in Memphis first and experienced our first bed and breakfast which was the best choice EVER.  We also took in Graceland and saw the outside of the Civil Rights Museum on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther Kings murder.
I must tell you that although New Orleans itself is an amazing and colorful city, we were surprised at how little the devastation of hurricane Katrina is memorialized. The lack of respect for all those lives lost is unbelievable.   There is a kind of a make shift museum inside a beautiful building that's on the main floor and the 2nd floor is a HUGE museum dedicated to all the years of Mardi Gras parades.  There are dozens of flamboyant sequined dresses some dating back to the early 1900's. Also many crowns worn by past Mardi Gras queens as well as head gear, hair  appliances and other theatrical items. It's a very cool place to go and learn about the history of this legendary party time in New Orleans.  I was captivated by the "dance cards". 🌸
So imagine how sad and unimportant I felt after first seeing a whole floor of basically nothing but news footage and a pair of pants and some street signs in the Hurricane Katrina museum.  As I wondered through it and tried to stay focussed.  I  was saddened by a couple pieces of children's clothing and a broken menorah, some old Louise Armstrong posters and then some pieces of drywall.....with writing on them.  This was the only real dramatic part for me.  A desperate man wrote out his timeline for being stuck for days in the stifling heat with little or no water.  Obviously he wanted his last days of life to be the read by someone.  Someone would surely want to know how badly he suffered.......wouldn't they?  That in the year of 2005 after decades of hurricanes and storms, this is how he and others would die, because of weak broken insufficient levees.  How can this be?  And how can it be that when soooo many poor people living in homes that would be destroyed, came to stay at the convention center because they literally had no vehicles to take them out of the water's strike zone? For days thousands would ensure thirst and hunger, rape and death in that convention center with no food or water.  Unconscionable.  Then it took months for fema campers to be delivered to these people, some still living in those campers today....12 years later.
If you go to New Orleans, the easiest and most affordable way to get around is Uber.  We asked our college age Uber driver what she remembers about hurricane Katrina since she was a lifelong citizen?  "Not much" she answered.  And sadly, she wasn't being flippant.  We asked a few people that question and got basically the same answer.  So I guess it's no surprise that the museum was a quick effort to appease some city council person and a few vacationing northerners.
I'm ashamed of how America has treated their own at times.  We have a current president that was voted into office by these same uncaring kinds.  This isn't the America I proudly wrote reports about in school.  What will the coming generations be proud enough to write about?

I am now and will always remain a kind talking northerner.

Still living simply

So I recently came across a fb conversation about home made laundry soap vs. Store bought.  There was a gal posting that seemed very knowledgeable about the differences and even made scientific references in favor of store bought.
Of course me being me, I had to chime in and share my wealth I formation on the differences and the many benefits of home made soap.  The first being that some had stated that they noticed a bad odor when using the home made soap.  It been my experience that because we have hard water, when the iron content is high, I too have an odor, it's not the soap.  It's a result of the two mixing.  It's not consistently smelly, so I've concluded its the iron or additives put in that did not mix well with the soap.
Second, there have been, over the past several springs water pipes bursting in our area.  Because we were concerned about it we stopped by and talked to the men hired to fix these issues.  It's like a human anatomy we were told.  Fats and bad diet contribute to the build up and sludge I. The pipes.  As they age, they fill up and the results are corroded pipes.
He went on to say that the year Tide came on the market, Roto Rooter made it big.  He eased my mind on this because home made laundry soap, unlike store bought, does NOT contain animal fats to clog up pipes.
I also informed the group that in 2005 when we bought our home, it came with a used washer that ran until last year 2016! In addition to normal weekly laundry that a family of four uses,  3 grands were born and cloth diapered so that added 2 or more loads of washing and extra rinsing per week.  That home made detergent didn't hinder our machine's life in the least!
   On another note, I accidentally ran out of our natural dish soap a few weeks back.  I ran down to the basement and rummaged through our camping things and found a small regular dish soap and used it sparingly.  A day or two later while drinking water from a glass washed with that detergent, I immediately noticed a perfume taste. I smelled the glass and water and sure enough it smelled like lotion or perfume.  It wasn't until a few days later we realized that it was the laundry soap we used! Granted, because we use natural dish soap, it's not really necessary to rinse all that much so it could have been that I didn't rinse effectively but non the less, it was an eye opening happening.
Have any of you experienced anything crazy like this???