A Focus on My Region

I wanted to start off by saying thank you to all of you who attended or donated to my parents 2nd Annual New Orleans Relief Cocktail Party. Again this party was very successful and we were able to raise over $1700. Proper thank yous will follow, I just wanted to let people know that their donations did not go unnoticed. The money hasn't been spent yet (although we came VERY close to acquiring a new nail gun yesterday), but when we find some things that fit our budget we certainly will be buying things. As said in the video (Check it out here if you have not seen it yet) we will be looking for a stove, washer/dryer, and mattresses. All of these will come in handy big time as we get more and more volunteers this fall. It looks as if our house will be at or over full occupancy the entire month of October. So yes, I will be posting photos of what we end up getting once we have them.

I also wanted to let people know of a great new documentary. Last night a volunteer staying with me, Will (Norwich, VT), and I went to see "Trouble the Water" at the Canal Place Theatre in the French Quarter. This movie just won the 2008 Sundance Award for best Documentary. The film, made with mostly home video footage, follows a couple that lives only a few blocks from my house as they stayed in their home during Katrina because they didn't have the money to leave. It was a very interesting film, particularly because of where I viewed it. Throughout the movie there were people verbally agreeing and cheering the points made in the movie. Also the movie featured a scene filmed in the mall that the theater we were at was in. I highly recommend seeing this movie since it will be playing all over the country (In Hartford Dec. 5-7). When you do see it please pay particular attention to the high school and navy base since I drive by those both daily.

Also, just wanted to say that I went to Uncle Mike's church today for mass and while there he introduced me to Mayor C. Ray Nagin and his wife.

And as we head into the postseason I want to say GO SOXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm a Trailblazer

It's the truth. Yesterday I showed up at work and was told that instead of going back to the house that I had to finish taping at, I was going to go to another house that I had re-framed a few weeks prior. When I got there I found out that we were going to be listening to a guy explain to us how to do a new type of insulation. I guess that is not totally correct. We were going to be listening to a guy explain to us about some of the principles of this new type of insulation and the problems of how houses are insulated and what this new product should do. He then showed us the tools we could possibly use. The reason it was all so vague? Because it is the first house EVER to use this type of insulation. See I told you we were trailblazers. It is really cool because there are all these different construction and building companies and green energy commissions that are really interested and invested in how this comes out. Throughout the day the guy was asking us to tell him what we needed or what the best ways to do this were. Then at the end of the day the guy was telling me and the project manager from Lowernine.org, Ryan, that if we needed any tools, we could write out some info about our company and a wishlist and he would get it to some companies that would be willing to donate. Tools are awesome, free tools are WAY better.

Some Tales of the Crescent City

1) Have a guy coming to give us hot water. We have an interesting contraption in the house that allows us to pick up a stronger wireless internet signal. It is basically a tin can mounted on top of a tripod with a USB cord. The guy who was coming for the water walks in and says "Its a good thing you aren't Muslim because if you were I would have thought you were terrorists with this thing." We were all stunned. And to top it off both his work truck and his work shirts are emblazoned with something to the effect of "In case of a nuclear war or terrorist attack the ban on prayer in school will be lifted immediately." I guess people down here are just more blatant with their convictions.

2) Today I sat and talked with a woman whose home I have been working on for a week. She told of how she and her sister and 12 other people were rescued from the side window of her home during Katrina and brought to the St. Claude Bridge and left to walk across the city to the Superdome. These kinds of stories always get me. She then talked about how she can't wait to move back into her house that her mother had owned and paid off the mortgage so that she can stop paying for the apartment she's living in and have some extra cash on hand.

3) At this woman's (Kathryn Scott) house I have been doing a lot of sheetrocking and taping. While I have been taught some of this a lot of it kind of comes naturally to me. Must be in my blood. Shocking huh?

Post-Gustav New Orleans

Its a different world out here. I mean for the most part everything is the same as it was 2 weeks ago, but there certainly are some differences. Take last Saturday for example. I went out to lunch in the Business District and saw two soldiers walking down a street with M16s strapped to their backs. Then throughout the week I have seen military humvees regularly patrolling the streets. The other day they even came by to the lowernine.org house and dropped off some Military Rations and cases of water, yet the entire time they were there talking to us one of the soldiers didn't take this finger off the trigger. Not take his hand off the gun, but his finger off the trigger. I mean I understand that the Lower 9th doesn't have great reputation but its the middle of the day and your delivering food to a volunteer organization. Lighten up guys.

Also this week we spent a good amount of the time hoping that we wouldn't get hit by Hurricane Ike. I mean it was such a fear that a lot of people never came back from Gustav thinking they would just have to leave again. I mean even at our house we still left a lot of things boarded up just in case we would need to go. And although we don't need to evacuate I have decided to leave the board up through the weekend since we are experiencing tropical storm conditions from Ike. For those of you that don't know a TS is like a mini and less intense hurricane with one of the biggest differences being lower wind speeds. And even though we are getting a mild storm here I still only managed to get about 3 hours of sleep last night. This was due to the fact that we had a piece of sheet metal from our porch roof as well as our attic door hitting against the side of the house all night. In addition my bedroom is at the end of an alley which intensifies the sound of winds that are 50+ mph like we had. We even had rain that was coming down so hard that it woke me up a few times. Want to hear the true icing on the cake? We then lost power for an hour and a half so that we had no fans or AC in the house. Yeah it was just one of those nights.

And some other news:
*I have a volunteer here named John. He's 23 and here for a month from Kansas City. We are getting along really well so far.
*Mom and Dad's cocktail party to benefit On-Site is tomorrow night. Thank you to everyone who already donated or will be donating at the party.
*Mom, Dad, Pat, and Charlie booked tickets this weekend to come down and visit at Christmas time.
*After spending my whole evacucation in Shreveport with 7 dogs I decided that I need to get one of my own. As soon as I get some sort of regular income (hopefully soon) the I will be getting a (again hopefully) Dalmatian puppy.

Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans--The Long Road Home

So finally I am home. My house sustained no damage and we came back to power and running water. I have to say that I am VERY excited about that. While I had a great week with some good friends and better than amazing hosts in Shreveport it was nice to get back to reality and continue to pick up the pieces from the last storm. What I really want to focus on in this blog is my trip home today which was rather interesting. Up in Shreveport we had nothing more than a rainstorm and lost power for a few split seconds. It made it seem like nothing really bad happened anywhere. But all this changed as we drove further down I-49 towards Lafayette, LA. We had heard that they had gotten hit harder down there than we had (particularly in Baton Rouge), but never really thought much of it. As we drove we got hungry so pulled over at a Burger King/Gas station 2 hours south of Shreveport. When we got there we found that the gas station was open, but had just gotten power this morning and the Burger King was still closed. So we kept going and pulled over at a Subway/gas station which was the exact same scenario. We finally found a Wendy's about 3.5 hours from Shreveport that was a mob scene (it took almost 15 minutes to place an order). It also would take us several gas stations to find regular gas and a restroom as we headed even further along. As we kept driving we noticed signs and billboards that were destroyed. I also noticed a large swamp, but am not sure if it was there on our way up or if it was a result of the storm. Finally as we got into Baton Rouge and then all the way into New Orleans, the only thing on the radio were single songs followed by DJ's taking peoples calls about info they needed. Things people were asking for were when schools were opening, which grocery stores had meat, and where they could get military rations from the Red Cross. It was all very shocking.



To all my Northeast people good luck with Hanna this weekend.

Landfall

So as you may have already heard, Gustav made landfall today along the Louisiana coast. As you may have also heard, New Orleans and Louisiana in general dodged a serious bullet. The storm decreased fairly quickly so it only hit as a Category 1. That being said there was still a large amount of rain that accompanied it. This rainfall was so intense that it flooded the Industrial Canal and started lapping over the western levee which goes to the Upper Ninth Ward (my neighborhood). The best report I have heard is that there was 6 inches of rain in that area, although I live in one of the higher elevated areas so it is possible that my house had no water. The other main issue was that there was a barge and two other vessels that got loose from where they were docked and floated into the Industrial Canal. If you remember from Katrina it was barges crashing though levees that caused many of the flooding issues. Alright well now it is time to prep for Tropical Storm Gustav to make its way though Shreveport tomorrow.