Go to New Orleans

Hi Folks,

I wrote this awhile back on my myspace profile, and Kirstin suggested I post it here, so...

Returned this weekend from New Orleans - it was an amazing experience, and I hope to return soon. Maybe you should think about it also.

Can you imagine block after block of destruction? A journalist, in a memoir, wrote that New Orleans now has a bathtub ring around it. That's an apt description - the water marks remain on many homes.

The damage is different, obviously, from that Katrina wrecked on the people of Mississippi. The storm surge and its waves destroyed the homes of those living close to the coast, and wind whipped against structures inland for many miles. In New Orleans, the homes still stand like tombstones on a city-wide graveyard. But in this graveyard is life, and it's rebuilding - resurrecting.

On my third day of work, I fell and got a gash in my leg. Unable to do some of the gutting and construction work, I ended up delivering meals to the volunteers on the worksites, spread across the city. I drove miles and miles, and every where I went, except in the tourist areas, there was the omnipresent water ring on houses.

The politics amaze me. It seems like human instict is get the job the done. When people need help, you help them. Why are politicians passing by on the other side of the street? Is it because they want a plan that makes them look good? They want to prejudice in favor of the wealthy, reclaiming land that can mean bigger bucks? The iillusion of power laps at the poor like hounds, but the people who are sticking to their land and holding their place are stronger than politicians could imagine. The only challenge is there are so many homes that need gutting.

It seems to me that the government should have organized a mass gutting of all homes, block by block, sweeping the city. A mass, organized gutting could have meant most if not all of the homes could have been gutted. Yet, here we are, still gutting houses in a piece mill fashion - not for want of gutting, but for a lack of will to restore people to their homes.

In spite of the politics and the frustrations of unintentional rebuilding, there is hope. I can't imagine the graciousness of people among whom we worked. One day, people drove by and it cherred us as they said, "Bless y'all! - Thank y'all so much!".

adios- mpb