http://www.celebrity-gossip.net/celebrities/hollywood/angelina-jolie-and-brad-pitt-visit-lower-ninth-ward-208227/

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Visit Lower Ninth Ward

Leaving most of their brood back home, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were spotted out and about with sons Pax, 4, and Maddox, 7, on Tuesday (October 7). The “Mr and Mrs Smith” co-star couple were paying a visit to the Lower Ninth Ward Housing project in New Orleans – making sure that everything’s going according to plan.

http://www.usmagazine.com/news/brad-pitt-six-more-houses-being-built-in-new-orleans

Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation has now raised enough money to build 90 homes in Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans – nearing its goal of financing 150 homes – the actor announced at a charity reception Monday. As of late August, the foundation had funds to build 84 houses, but at Monday’s reception, Pitt and his board members announced six more new homes are now in the works. They also unveiled a donation from the American Idol Foundation.

After the reception, Pitt dined with board members at Delmonico’s — one of Emeril’s restaurants– which is about two blocks from the foundation’s new headquarters.

Mary Ann, thanks for your post. I hope we will be OK. I understand your feelings and I guess you are right. My parents said exactly the same thing; they believe the world seems to have become more chaotic and there seems to have been more wrong doing and evils than the world they lived in a few decades ago.

I think the rock solid source of the children’s stability is their intact family who are together all the time with both their parents, even if in different locations. (There are many professions where this kind of roaming lifestyle is the norm, including the military, diplomats, consultants, business people, performers. In fact, the children of the military who have an absent parent need extensive counseling – for which the JPs donated half a million dollars.) I just found out Clint Eastwood also takes his family with him on location shoots most of the time. Ewan McGregor, Dustin Hoffman and others do the same. Child actors are in and out of their regular schools all the time. To compensate, they have tutors on the set.

I think school is also an important source of stability. I think the reason Angelina and Brad are having the kids homeschooled is that the paps and starstruck onlookers made it impossible for the kids to go to school. They had a good plan choosing the Lycee Francais, which is the same throughout the world, for Maddox so that it would be familiar even if in different places. I think it worked in New Orleans, but remember the swarms of paps and people in New York and Prague? I also read that Maddox had enrolled in a local school near the Chateau Miraval and that he was whisked between home and school. But maybe after the pap invasion, the JPs decided to hunker down at the chateau.