New Orleans - not Mr. Rogers neighborhood

Deborah, Jan, Alex, and I all made our way on separate flights to New Orleans yesterday. Zac and his vibrant girlfriend, Erin made a lot of airport trips in heavy traffic. We got to see their new one bedroom apartment on a different end of the Uptown neighborhood than their big old rental house. The house has four units that were recently restored very nicely. The houses just next to them are still vacant, boarded up, and one is completely crushed in on itself. It looks like at least half the houses in their neighborhood are still boarded up.

House next door to Zac & Erin:


House across the street from Zac & Erin:


Jan's friend generously gave us her home in the Mid-City neighborhood. It's amazing - twelve foot high ceilings and large rooms on both floors, lots of wonderful built in shelving; big, inviting kitchens on both floors; lots of art. Her house is one of only two inhabited ones on her block. They had a couple feet of water flooding their home after Katrina but have renovated it.

Yellow house we are staying in:


Same Yellow House (photo) during Katrina flood:
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The good news is that some people are moving back home and reclaiming their neighborhoods. But meanwhile, there is something surreal about these neighborhoods. I wonder what the kids who live here think about coming home from school to a block with no other people.

New Orleans Lower 9th District April '07

If the Upper 9th is a sort of Wild West, the Lower 9th is a sort of post-bomb Hiroshima. It is quiet with very few people around save for the tourists driving around with cameras like myself- over 18 months after Katrina. There are many vacant lots where houses have been razed and tall grass has reclaimed the plot after a lengthy interruption. Zac says that each time he has come to see it, there are fewer structures; more open land. Hand written, makeshift streetsigns have been put up on poles, since the old ones have vanished. The levee wall is standing again and what once was a neighborhood is now like a field splattered with misshapen houses that crumbled in on themselves or floated to new resting spots and positions. The doors are usually gone and you can look in to see washers and dryers, toilets, bicycles, couches, desks, mattresses, light fixtures overturned or jumbled together. There was a water heater that had somehow floated up to an attic. In one house you could see some clothes hanging neatly, totally anomalous to the mashed potato crunch of most everything else. It is voyeuristic, peering in to the empty broken rooms searching out the everyday articles that belonged to other people’s lives before the last hours when they had to flee or drown. Like the broken watch that was laying on a mattress, every house was a picture of time standing still and broken.

Habitat for Humanity Dedication

We went to a “Dedication” this afternoon – a celebratory ritual when a Habitat house is finished and the keys are handed over to the new owner. In this case it was in the “Musicians Village” in New Orleans that Habitat is constructing for musicians displaced by Katrina; a neighborhood of rainbow colored homes that will eventually number 80 and include a building for performances and classes. After the short, touching speeches, the 100 or so of us who came were treated to a zydeco concert by Sun Pie in front of the house with the new owner on bass guitar.

This was in the upper 9th district where my son Zac says that about 50% of the houses are vacant and mostly unlivable. Many homes have painted messages on them detailing the dates they were searched and whether animals were found or not. The surreal environment has generated a somewhat lawless environment for some who live there. Many of the Habitat houses get robbed of things during the building process. Doors have been taken off their hinges, electrical wiring pulled from the walls before the sheetrock gets installed, plumbing fixtures dismantled etc.

President Bush's Blood Brother

One of my sons had lunch with President Bush a few weeks ago and understands him less than ever now. Zac, my 23 year old son, works for Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans. President Bush decided to come to New Orleans on the first anniversary of Katrina. They set up a tent for lunch near the Habitat project Zac works on - building 81 homes for displaced musicians. There are about 20 Habitat Staff and 40 volunteers who were joined by Bush and some other important people. Zac sat with Chief of Staff, Andrew Card and two female staffers. At some point, somebody noticed that President Bush had some blood on his finger and asked him if he would like to have the Habitat medic clean it up and put on a bandage. Bush smiled and said he'd be fine. Then he wiped his bloody finger off on the astonished volunteer medic's shirt. The medic turned to Zac who was standing next to him and said, "what the fuck did he just do?" Wherever he goes, whatever he does and says, President Bush just keeps leaving people with that same question on their lips.