Quarter Love: Jane Lowrance-Neal
Jane Lowrance-Neal in a lush French Quarter courtyard, photo by Ellis Anderson
January 2025The revelations of Vieux Carré residents in the Quarter Kaleidoscope story-telling project have the power to unlock new understanding - and appreciation of the neighborhood.
~ by Jane Lowrance-Neal
In the French Quarter, a push of a heavy door or turn of an iron gate can transport me into a surprise space, just out of view from the street. Hidden away are garden oases, lush courtyards, church sanctuaries.
Peering through an iron gate that leads to a brightly lit French Quarter courtyard, photo by Ellis Anderson
There, the air changes. The spaces are well-loved, tended for generations. Layers of footprints and fingerprints graffiti every surface. Though I already loved the Quarter, now, in these hidden places, it feels even richer, the experience elevated.
Once through the Chartres Street gate, this pathway leads to apartments and a lush courtyard. Photo by Ellis Anderson
A Burgundy Street courtyard, photo by Ellis Anderson
The stories of Quarterites do that, too. They take people into what’s often just out of view: a life-changing event, a strange encounter, a flickering memory. And then it happens: the door pushes open, the gate turns. The storyteller makes a passageway with their words, and suddenly, the Quarter – which we were already endeared to – becomes more sacred than ever.
The storytellers of Quarter Kaleidoscope share two criteria: a connection to the Quarter and the courage to speak about it out loud. Presented by two generational community advocate organizations, the Historic BK House and Vieux Carré Property Owners, Residents & Associates (VCPORA), the project amplifies the neighborhood’s voices through personal stories told in front of a live audience.
As the storytellers’ facilitator, I am present from each story’s inception until the final applause at the live performance. Here’s how it happens: I contact a resident or shopkeeper, and we sit down together. We pull up chairs at Café Envie or the storyteller’s kitchen table. They talk; I listen and take notes.
Jenelle Boucher and Betsey Hazard, guests at the first Quarter Kaleidoscope event at the Historic BK House chat with Jane Lowrance-Neal (far right). Photo by Melanie Cole
Without fail, a story unfolds. No matter how many times the process repeats, I come away marveling at the recipe. Details of a personal life + a particular location = a meaningful drama.
For nearly a decade, I have helped produce story projects similar to Quarter Kaleidoscope in high schools and with adults in East Texas. I have run the gamut, crafting stories for nine and 90-somethings, from doctors to incarcerated people, from athletes to priests. Storytelling from the French Quarter, however, has been an entirely new experience.
Here are some things I have noticed: More than any group I have worked with, Quarter Kaleidoscope participants talk about their home as a person. They use relational language, describing the Quarter as their mother, lover, friend, personal saint.
Some traveled across the country to be with “her” after years of longing. Others, like Tony Marino, knew “her” from birth, his ancestors having arrived from Sicily. One storyteller said she still weeps when she sees the New Orleans skyline from the air when returning home.
Another told me over-tourism is “death by a thousand knives.” And I will never forget the tears shed by 95-year-old C.J. Blanda as he shared the loss brought by decades of gentrification. The words “heartache” and “heartbreak” appear in stories frequently – emotions assigned to those who have loved and lost.
C.J. Blanda at the first Quarter Kaleidoscope storytelling event in the Historic BK House courtyard, photo by Melanie Cole
Another distinction specific to these stories is Quarter solidarity. Batou Chandler recounted dozens of neighbors walking her home after the Pontalba scaffolding crashed. Steven Lacy of Dauphine Street Books told of his years-long symbiotic relationship to Chris, an unhoused book scout. Time and again, storytellers recalled belonging, cooperating and commiserating with their neighbors.
As Farrow Stephenson, co-owner of Mona Lisa Restaurant, quipped, “This tiny little rise in the swamp would never have become the daiquiri to-go cup capital of the free world if all those before us had not taken a pinch of snuff and sallied forth.”
Quarter Kaleidoscope is only fulfilled when its stories reach an audience. And the listeners at BK House are the most generous I’ve been among.
From those gathered, laughter rang as Erik Flamm remembered his pride during second-grade show and tell at McDonough 15. He repeated what he heard from a NOPD officer the night before; then waited for his mom in the principal’s office after he taught his classmates the words “motherfucker” and “asshole.”
The crowd gave hearty applause when Caroline Rowe said she was a rare child of the Quarter and so was her newborn son.
Caroline Rowe shares her stories of growing up in the French Quarter, where’s she’s now raising her own child.
The audience hushed into pin drop-worthy silence when Katrina Kellum described her breast cancer diagnosis and her neighbor, who cast a spell for healing at the river.
After the show, I saw people embracing, talking animatedly.
“You were my schoolmate!”
“I remember that bar!”
“They lived across from me in the early 80s!”
Primed by mutual Quarter love, the crowd listened on tiptoe, craving connections. They came to see themselves reflected in fellow Quarterites. They came to hear others who love the Quarter like a mother. They came to see their neighbors who implicitly understand the Quarter. They came to find people who, like them, found home here.
Jane Lowrance-Neal (far left) with storytellers Farrow Stephenson, Pat Lambrinos, Remy Diamond, Tony Marino after the second Quarter Kaleidoscope event at the Historic BK House in November 2024. Photo by Ellis Anderson