Greetings y’all!
Welcome to Around the World with Dr. Jones. It’s been quite a while since I kept a blog, but time and energy have a way of moving in cycles, so I am returning to the practice. I’m grateful to everyone who invited and encouraged me to write informally, and share reflections on my journeys with the collective as they unfold. Thank y’all for joining me!
So much has happened in the first month of 2025 that the only sensible place to begin is New Year’s Day. January 1, 2025 marked my entry into my third year of living with my father, Morris Jones, Jr., as an ancestor. After flying back from The Bahamas with the New Moon in Capricorn, I started 2025 walking into my childhood home in New Orleans, a few minutes after midnight to the sound of pyrotechnics. Little did I know that the day would become more frenetic following a terrorist attack in the French Quarter. To the sound of startling, rhythmic explosions (a paltry echo of the bombs perpetuating a genocide funded by my tax dollars), I thought about what all it had taken for me to live into this new Gregorian year while staring at the wall. My sister, Giani, had hung my framed University of Pennsylvania diploma above my desk (which G also built!) where I had written the majority of my doctoral dissertation in 2024.
My diplomas from The University of Pennsylvania (left) and Brown University (right) flanking a signed and framed copy of “Great Day in New Orleans: A Historic Gathering of New Orleans African-American Artists, Congo Square, October 11, 1998.” | January 1, 2025
I stood in a threshold, a portal to the next book of my life, full of crisp blank pages ready to be filled with dreams scribbled from my imagination amidst what feels, once again, like the end of the world as I knew it. Change is a train urging us onward toward new possibilities.
New Orleans and the Mississippi River from the Huey P. Long Bridge as seen from the Sunset Limited | January 8, 2025
And speaking of locomotives, my first major journey of 2025 was traveling from New Orleans to Los Angeles on Amtrak’s Sunset Limited train. The motivation behind the trip was twofold: 1) I wanted to actualize a previously unfulfilled dissertation research dream and ride the same train route as the Puerto Rican survivors of the 1899 Hurricane San Ciriaco in the hopes of building a new life on the sugar plantations in Hawai’i and 2) to sit in ceremony with my artist friend Danielle Nicole of Tweed and Soot Tattoo. While sitting at the train station in New Orleans waiting to board on January 8, 2025, I saw news about wildfires spreading across LA County. After checking in with my friends and hosts in the area about their fire risk, I decided to trust Spirit and board the train. Over the next two days, I watched the cypress swamps of Louisiana give way to the dry plains of Texas and the snowy mountains of New Mexico, and finally the early morning darkness of Arizona and California.
Snow dusted mountains between Texas and New Mexico as seen from the Sunset Limited | January 9, 2025
On January 10, 2025, I watched the sun rise over the city of Los Angeles, hazy with smoke and fickle governmental responses as people lost rapidly their homes to fiery winds and scorched earth, their lives suddenly changed forever—just as mine had been in the 2005 floods following Hurricane Katrina twenty years prior.
Sunrise over the city of angels | January 10, 2025
As I sat in ceremony with Danielle later that day to honor the four elements through the tattoo talismans she had designed for me, I could feel the powerful alignment of walking in my path and purpose percolating within me in Pasadena (the birthplace of Octavia E. Butler, author of Parable of the Sower). My trip to Los Angeles forced me to bear witness to the realities of the convergence of climate collapse and the crumbling of the U.S. Empire in ways I had not expected. From coast to coast, the impacts of climate change continue to reverberate across the U.S. Empire and our most vulnerable remain under-supported on the frontlines.
Sidewalk messaging in Los Angeles | January 11, 2025
In a state of transformation forged by fire, I flew home to New Orleans beneath the Full Moon in Cancer. I spent the next few weeks preparing the syllabi for my first post-grad teaching position as visiting faculty of climate change for the School for International Training’s International Honors Program. This semester, I will be traveling with a group of university students and teaching two classes: an economics course entitled “Political Economy and Environmental Change since 1492,” and an anthropology course entitled “Fieldwork Ethics and Comparative Research Methods.” During my semester with IHP Climate Change: The Politics of Land, Water, and Energy Justice, we will spend time in Morocco, Nepal, and Ecuador. I invite you, dear reader, to return to this blog page over the next few months for updates about that journey.
During my penultimate week at home, climate change struck again, shocking Louisiana residents with a blizzard on the bayou on January 21, 2025. Truly, I hadn’t seen that much snow since spring 2020 during lockdown in Philadelphia. The experience of seeing my New Orleans neighborhood blanketed in 4-9 inches of snow was surreal.
Snowmaggedon in the South outside my window | January 21, 2025
In my final days in New Orleans, I packed my belongings, said goodbye to my loved ones, and the city gifted me an unexpected farewell second line in front of Lil’ Dizzy’s, one my daddy’s favorite breakfast spots. My sister-friend, Zariane, and I danced in the street celebrating life and the love of where we’re from. As PJ Morton sang: “Oh, I been all over, all over the world, it still ain't nothing like a New Orleans girl!” The New Moon in Aquarius and the Lunar New Year honoring the snake, marked my last night at home, and my transition into the journey ahead.
Second line on Esplanade Avenue | January 27, 2025
As the month draws to a close, I find myself back in California, in San Francisco this time, preparing for the program’s launch, the arrival of my students, and whatever adventures await me on the horizon…
A view of the San Francisco Bay | January 30, 2025
Pa’lante,
Dr. Jones
Portrait of Dr. G. Maris Jones taken by my mother, Gillian Knowles, at the New Orleans Airport | January 30, 2025