What Goes Around...

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

It's time to take stock of where we've been, what we've done, who we've done it for, and who we've done it with and been inspired by.

In September of 2006, Ann and I made our first trip here to this richly-textured and wounded foreign land. At the time, we naively assumed we'd make that trip, and that trip only.

Over the past nearly 3 years, 10 trips and 10 months here on the ground, I've seen a lot. A lot has changed, albeit glacially when you look at the pace of the actual rebuilding. Nevertheless, over that period of time, even a snail makes progress. It's a lot like watching your kid grow. Each day, nothing is apparently changing. Add a few years, though, and wow--what happened?

On our very first day at work here, Saturday September 9th, 2006, Ann and I awoke for the first time in our bunkhouse at the First Street United Methodist Church on the corner of First and Dryades Streets. We had no idea where we were. "Central City", I heard someone call it. We wandered around the bunkhouse, meeting people and trying to figure out how this all worked. I walked out to our toolshed to see what it looked like. The first person I met there, whom I assumed to be a boss based upon his apparent knowledge of where everything was located and how everything should be organized (We later found out he'd been there two weeks ahead of us) was a foreign fellow (South African, we later learned) named Reggie Derman. In what I came to understand as Reggie's general high-energy and focused style, Reggie immediately got me involved in the gathering of tools for our job that day. When instructed, I got in the van with a bunch of other strangers, and off we rolled into the city. Our work that day was to gut a large home (I couldn't call it a double-shotgun because I didn't know what that was) on Robertson Street, just off Esplanade. I didn't know that "Esplanade" rhymes with "lemonade" here in New Orleans. All I knew was turn here, see a park full of FEMA trailers, turn there, see an entire block of homes with doors open and windows missing, jump on an expressway, see the Superdome and its huge sign "Superdome Reopening September 25th", jump off the expressway, see a huge homeless camp underneath I-10, turn again, pass empty storefronts, a shuttered car rental agency and an empty car dealership, then turn again, once more, and then once more. The van stopped, and we got out. My head was spinning. Red "X"s painted on every home, communicating messages I had no idea how to interpret.

That day I watched and participated in some of the dirtiest work I'd ever done. All the while, I soaked up, and then, like everyone else, radiated the energy that group generated. I heard laughing, loud music, hammers banging, debris crashing from the ceiling to the floor, and wheelbarrows bouncing down the front steps. I wore a Tyvek suit, a hardhat, and a respirator, just like the big kids, and I was doing my best to emulate their work.

That's all it took. At the end of the day, I was hooked.

I'll speed this up. Caliopie. Jamie and Alex before starting their freshman year in college. Jim and Lindsey. After that, Mr. Gibson's siding project. Sushi. Ann went home. Miranda takes her place at the saw. AmeriCorps NCCC. Amanda. Miss Rose's foundation. Troy came. Brian came. Team Nasty is born. .38 Special kicks ass. Sod busting in the Hoffman Triangle. Nic. Steve Gleason blocks the first Atlanta punt in the Saints' first post-Katrina game home in the rebuilt Superdome. Saints score. New Orleans erupts in joy. Chandra. Prez. Steve. Pam. Beers at Igor's. Emma. Melissa. Jim assures Richard we actually landed on the moon. Gunshots at dinner time on Dryades. Troy and I see the Lower Ninth for the first time. Brian goes home to Alabama. Troy moves to Biloxi to work. I head home. Ann meets Lana Corll at the Houston Quilt Show. Ann returns to New Orleans for trip number 2 and roofs a house. I return in March for my trip number 2. Kelsey comes with me. Mr. Carter's gut project and fried chicken. Kelsey and I learn how to eat crawfish. Kelsey trades kisses on the cheek for roses at the St. Joseph's parade in the Quarter. Juilliard arrives, along with VCU, Appalachian State and Florida kids. Jamie Tam's Dance Party. Davida Finger of the Loyola Law Katrina Clinic helps Miss Rose after Lana introduces us. Miss Peggy's rebuild gets going. Liz leads. So does Miss Jessie's. Sean leads. Bunkhouse Goodbye Nights get tearier. Renee' moves from New York. Reggie leads the New Orleans East Super Gut, and inspires us all by telling us that "Good work, hard work--that's important. But what I really want today is for all of you to do your work with love for this family you will never meet. Leave your love inside this home, and this family will use it to wash away their tears." He was 21 years old. We do 4 days of work in 1 and 1/2 days. No shit. Noah. Crystal. Ashley. Hands On New Orleans hosts the Hands On Network National Convention. Geneva tells us all to turn our Hands On shirts inside-out while we are drinking Hands On-provided beers at a Hands On-hosted private reception, to ensure that no one will know we are from Hands On. Alan. Ryan. Aaron. Todd. Red. Buck. Cat. Mary Ellen and her sister Lauren arrive to volunteer for a week. We all work at Miss Rose's, along with JJ and others. Eric stops Miss Rose's 5-month old water leak. I try to stop her $2,000 water bill. Mary Ellen (later "Teacher") and Reggie hit it off. Eddie. Chet. Public Enemy Number 2. I come back on July 31. Wyndham Resorts puts us up for the entire month without charge because the bunkhouse is shut down. Sad days leaving the old bunkhouse. The AB in the ME. Siding Miss Rose's home. Kudi. Jordan. Working to finish Miss Jessie's home. Teacher moves to New Orleans. Ann arrives and shows us all how to tile Miss Jessie's floors. Caliopie and Adam become the first Katrina Couple at Hands On when they return to marry. 2nd Katrina anniversary. We miss (by 5 minutes, when the police wave us through) a wonderful chance to tell President Bush how much we "appreciate" all he's done for New Orleans. Anderson Cooper joins us in Violet, LA with the summer bugs. Back for Halloween. Ann sends full-sized candy bars for the kids on Dryades Street, and Reggie, Teacher, Miranda I distribute them on Halloween night. Miss Jessie's FEMA trailer is bid goodbye, and Miss Jessie moves back into her home. The Hume Family and their seed company send 1,542 pounds of vegetable and flower seeds to the people of New Orleans. UPS ships 'em gratis. Ann, Kelsey, and Stephanie arrive, and we all help Miss Jessie hang curtains and assemble furniture. Miss Peggy feeds us Thanksgiving Dinner made in her FEMA trailer. The Tool Fund is born, and Kathie and Big Al anchor it. Ann and I, with Reggie and Teacher helping, lead a project in January to build the Douglass High School deck with our new friends from Kaiser Permanente. Doc. Nic. Teri. Shawn. Our first real Mardi Gras. Small world as we meet Professor Philip Frohnmayer at our regular coffee place. Bill Goslin arrives again, and the NBA sponsors a number of service projects during All Star Week and we insulate a home in Gentilly under the leadership of Steve ("McStevey", if you get my drift, ladies). Davida asks us to see if we can help a family in Metairie finish up their rebuilding. In 3 days, Reggie, Emily and I complete it for Mr. Pat and Miss Laura, and the concept of The $500 Project is born. Sean and Eric install the cabinets and sink, and the Patterson's have their home back. Duke. Lucy. RIP Lucy. Sarah T. Reed High School in New Orleans East gets an external makeover. One year later, it's as beautiful as ever. Cousins' Creole Restaurant gets a paint job. Ruthie. Hanging with Teacher, Lana, and Reggie with Teacher's class at the Zephyrs' baseball game. Darryl and LiAnne banging it out day after day for United Saints, the Rev's rebuilding organization. People come and go, and come again, leaving their imprint on the lives of the people they serve. Amy. Sean. Erik. Liz. Chandra. Allison. Kristin. Bri. Teacher signs on for another year teaching at Audubon Charter School, and the school celebrates with us. Our son Kevan funds our work, and Baby Ray and Mr. Harold Bellanger's home gets a little help. Their home is the magnetic center of Gentilly. Others returned only after they heard Baby Ray and Mr. Harold had come home. Painting out their orange "X" with Baby Ray and Mr. Harold's help makes my Top 10 List of emotional highs. Gustav. John Jowers drives all night to get us to Baton Rouge from Atlanta. A Lady With a Chain Saw?!?! Road tripping in the Bayou with Ann and Reggie to clear trees off cars and homes. Bringing Jake home after another hurricane. Lana's lower level is completed, and Ann tiles her floor as only Ann can. Ann meets Christo Raines and his fellow Jesuit Volunteers who live across the street from Lana. Reggie and James Gandolfini. Miss Della's home gets tiled as Ann and I get introduced to Rebuilding Together. Kaiser puts $30,000 in to triple-match the $10,000 raised for the Tool Fund. Miss Fern. Ann. Miss Monique. Teacher. Reggie. The Humes send another 1,100 pounds of seeds to Parkway Partners for Macon Fry to distribute. FedEx ships 'em gratis. Back again in February. Our Jesuit Volunteers join Ann and me and do the Franklin Street Mini Gut for Miss Debra. Bill Goslin returns. Miss Pearson's home gets a lot of loving attention from the three of us and Reggie. Juilliard returns for a third year. Miss Antoinette K-Doe passes away on Mardi Gras morning. Todd and I button up the places at Miss Debra's where squatters have broken in. Ann, Reggie, Todd, Niko, and Niko's parents do some work and get Miss Cloud's home removed from a court-ordered demolition list. Mr. Ronald. Miss Wanda. Miss Anne. The faces and the names of people who still need help despite doing what they can to rebuild their homes and their lives. Mr. Hammond thanking God for help from Pennsylvania who saw his story in the New York Times and came to help him rebuild ahead of some FEMA functionary showing up to take his trailer. God Bless Davida Finger. Returning to join Rebuilding Together. Miss Janet's home in the Holy Cross. Miss Alice's home in Hollygrove. Reggie quits his job and joins the team for one last old-school workfest before he and Teacher move to Chicago. Tile a floor. Raise a wheelchair deck and ramp. Reframe a wall and fix the siding. The Finest Microwave Hotdog in the 1600 Block of Hollygrove Street. Rod Rian in the Morning on 104.1 FM, The Rock of New Orleans, live from Houston. Lots of water. Batdorf and Bronson Coffee all along the way.

I know paragraphs aren't supposed to go on that long. Thanks for staying with me.

On Friday, May 29th, Reggie and I finished up our work together in New Orleans. I was really happy that day. Reggie was with me on my first day in New Orleans, and I was with him on his last. There was something right about us being there, together, as it began for us and as it ended for us. Hopefully, we'll get a chance to work down there together again, but that Friday was the official end. What he's left and what he's taking away from his experience in New Orleans will live on, both for him and for his City. He is a true Son of the City. Someday, it will be my honor to attend the ceremony when he takes his oath of United States Citizenship. Reg, the Federal Courthouse is on the corner of Camp and Lafayette. We'll be there with you.

Travel safely, Reggie and Teacher. Good luck in everything that comes after this. You are loved, you are remembered, and trust me, you will be missed.

Go Cubs.

My love to all.

David/Dad

Rebuilding. Together. Again.

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

As many of you know, our last trip here was difficult and problematic in a number of ways. After returning home from that trip, Ann and I vowed to put it behind us and find a way to get back to the work we originally came here to do. I'm happy to report that it seems we've done just that. We joined Rebuilding Together, an organization that is focused on rebuilding Katrina-damaged homes primarily for elderly and disabled people. We've worked a bit with Rebuilding Together in the past, and found them to be focused, organized, and very capable. It's been a very refreshing change to simply show up at the assigned address at 8:30 am and go to work. The tools are already there. The materials we need are already there. The AmeriCorps team is already there. There's a porta-potty outside. There's cold water in a cooler. All we do is walk inside, get our work assignment and go to work. At 4pm, we close it up and head home. In the morning, we get up and do it again. Our kind of gig.

This week's work had us on Royal Street in the Holy Cross section of the Lower Ninth, working to finish one side of a double-shotgun home that belongs to Miss Janet and Miss Glenda, two sisters who have lived in that home for over 40 years. The Holy Cross neighborhood is at the southern tip of the Lower Ninth, up against the river and as far away as you could get from the Industrial Canal breeches that catastrophically destroyed homes closer to the breaks. Although the Holy Cross sits on some of the highest ground in New Orleans, homes there took water to the roofs of their porches.

These two ladies grew up in this home, and lived there with their mother before the storm. Miss Janet told me that the three of them were evacuated to the Superdome, where they witnessed, "Everything you heard about. It was hell. Rapes, murders, deaths from exhaustion, stress, dehydration. It shortened my mama's life, seeing all of that."

Miss Janet never wanted to come back home, afraid of what she'd find inside her childhood home. But her mama couldn't stay away, and one year after the floodwalls failed, they came home. With resources they had at hand, they had one side rebuilt, and the three of them shared it while they tried to figure out how to rebuild the other side, which the sisters would then occupy. Sadly, last fall, their mama died, having been the one who insisted they come home, but never seeing the rebuilding completed.

On Mothers' Day, the sisters decided to go see their mama and leave her flowers. At the last minute, Miss Glenda couldn't do it. It was just too hard, this close to completion, to kneel at her mama's grave and tell her they were almost done, knowing she wouldn't be there when we finally packed up our tools for the last time. Miss Janet made the visit for both of them.

Their home is very well kept, on a very well-kept street. This is a neighborhood in the truest sense. People know each other, look out for each other, and, dare I say, care for each other. This corner of the Lower Ninth got organized immediately after the storm, and there was never a doubt about what they'd do together--they were coming home. End of story.

Royal Street is beginning to look recovered. There is still work going on at a few homes, and there is one derelict home across the street from Miss Janet and Miss Glenda's home, but the paint on all of the others is fresh, and life is beginning to return to normal. Normal, I guess, if you can factor in the loss of your mama after huddling with her in a dark Superdome concourse, protecting her from the dangers and the sights and the smells of death, and then lose her so close to finally finishing the rebuilding of your childhood home.

That's what normal looks like now.

My love to all,

David/Dad

Postscripts:

1) Ann and I arrived on Saturday. On Monday, our dog Boo went into the emergency room, where the vets recovered a piece of gravel she had sucked all the way into her lung. On Tuesday, Ann flew home to care for her, to administer her antibiotics to fight back the risk of pneumonia from the procedure, and to keep her quiet and warm. We sure do miss you, Ann.

2) Last Fall, we worked at the home of Miss Fern Kern. You can read her story in my November 9th entry, Falling Through the Cracks. Miss Fern has been away from her home for a couple of months, living in a convalescent center recovering from a fall. In advance of her return, Ann called Bill Goslin, our pal and fellow volunteer, and asked him to check the house out to see if everything was OK. Bill happened to be in New Orleans on his latest trip. Ann prepared him for the shock of seeing the condition of the structure, which is beyond basic repair. As we've come to expect from Bill, he didn't just fire up the water heater and make sure the fridge was cold. He saw the bathroom, and then brought another long-term volunteer over with him, and they spent days rebuilding the bathroom walls, ceiling and floor. Further, they decided that, with more help and some funds, they could do some wall rebuilding and roof repair throughout the house. Bill asked Amy Allen to see what could be done, and Amy got our friends at Kaiser Permanente involved. The Kaiser folks are arriving this weekend for their latest week of work here in New Orleans. They are going to provide time and money to help Miss Fern live in a bit more dignity.

Thanks Ann. Thanks Bill and friends. Thanks Amy. Thanks Kaiser. I love you all.

Something's Happening Here

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

Ann and I arrived on February 19th. Once again we're staying in our friend Lana Corll's guest room and driving her pickup, and our volunteers are drinking the great coffee always provided by our pals at Batdorf & Bronson- thanks Lana and thanks Batdorf & Bronson. We are very grateful.

The Work

A couple of weeks before we arrived, we heard from our fellow volunteer Bill Goslin. He extended a business trip to Texas with a week in New Orleans before heading back to his family in upstate New York. We love working with Bill because he's a) very talented, b) very motivated, and c) is a great guy with a great heart. Our kind of fellow would-be New Orleanian. We spent a week with Bill (and Reggie on his day off) working at a couple of different sites. Bill just doesn't quit. Between the four of us, we repaired Miss Emma Pearson's home, which was full of drywall fractures that occurred because she had virtually completed the rebuilding of her Upper Ninth Ward home when she received a grant to raise the home several feet. The home got raised, and basically all drywall around the windows and doors fractured. With Ann's and Bill's skill mudding and taping, and all of our brawn sanding and painting, we knocked that job out. I went back last week with Reggie to re-hang all of the interior doors and to prepare the rest of the baseboard and trim for installation. Miss Emma and her daughter Miss Donna spent Sunday cooking an entire Sunday-Mom Meal for us, which we enjoyed with our friend and host Lana Corll.

Bill spent his week in the bunkhouse with this year's group of volunteers from the Juilliard School. You'll remember Juilliard from my entries of March 2007, when I had the honor of sharing the bunkhouse with that year's group of very talented and very inspiring students. They have come back each year with a new group, but with an incredible institutional memory of the work and what their involvement means to it. There is something very special about the Juilliard students who choose to join this annual effort in New Orleans. This year's group was no different.

Bill, Ann and I also spent the first half of our first day together in Hands On's new tool warehouse. They moved in on February 1st, but most of the tools save for rakes shovels and brooms were still not organized or available. We needed tools, so we decided to jump in and organize. By noon, we'd found and organized most of the power tools and most of the hand tools. Made our work a lot easier after that because we now knew where everything was.

That Saturday, Ann and I took a group of Jesuit Volunteer Corps members to Franklin Street to do a mini-gut and clean up for Miss Debra. In 5 hours, they had completely cleaned out all debris left behind by the storm, and had gutted damaged ceilings throughout. These volunteers are in New Orleans for a year, assigned to a variety of full-time projects, but they joined us because they wanted to help with the work we were doing. It was old-school Tyvek and respirators, and they did their work very well. Last week, Todd and I went back to secure a few doors that allow access by squatters and thieves.

In between, Ann and I headed to the Lower Ninth Ward to begin a 3-day project requested by Davida Finger of the Loyola Law Katrina Clinic. To get Miss Jeanetta Cloud's home in the Lower Ninth removed from a City-ordered Demolition List, there was a list of improvements that needed to be made to the exterior of the home. Ann and I removed rotten soffit and fascia boards one one side of the house. The next day, Reggie and I cut and primed the new material, and we then installed the new soffit. That Friday, I had a team of 5 people (Todd, Niko, and Emily from Hands On, and Niko's parents, Barb and Jerry, who were in town for a long weekend with their son). Todd and Niko installed the new fascia boards and trim, everyone painted, we repaired two damaged siding areas, and Jerry and I installed roof flashing on two sides of the house. Our work didn't rebuild the home, but we were pleased to hear last week that the court agreed that our repairs were sufficient to move Miss Jeanetta's home off the demolition list for two more months while she tries to move her Road Home application towards closing, after which she will do what she has long desired to do, which is rebuild and move home.

After Ann went home on March 12th, I spent time at the home of Miss Doretha McCray, who owns a double-shotgun on the corner of Gallier and Roman in the Upper Ninth. We weren't able to get much work done for her, but Todd, Reggie and I installed a few light fixtures and made functional a half-assed handrail Miss Doretha's contractors partially installed prior to walking off her job and leaving her high-and-dry. When Ann and I arrived to scout this home a few weeks ago, Miss McCray and her daughter Wanda showed us through the home. They paid the contractor to complete her home, and it is nearly complete except the bathrooms don't operate yet (and the tile work is so bad I can't believe anyone would have so little pride that they could call what they did "work" at all), the kitchen has cabinets but no countertops or sink, the once-beautiful hardwood floors lie un-refinished, with the gouges, scratches, paint and other damage that comes from first being flooded and then being left unprotected from construction workers and the ancillary damage they cause in the normal course of their work. Miss Wanda just stood there, in my arms, and cried. She explained that they have no more money and no idea what to do next.

Endgames

The first house Hands On asked us to scout on this trip was a large camelback double shotgun that belongs to Miss Anne Pinckney, who is living in her FEMA trailer in the driveway of the home her grandfather built on A.P. Tureaud Street. As has become a very common story these days, she used her life savings to hire a contractor to repair her home, which took a couple of feet of water. The contractor did not gut the house, but used the money she gave him to install a couple of doors and windows, and then paint the first few rooms. That's basically it, and then he was gone. The wiring had not been done, the roof had not been repaired properly, the camelback portion (the rear of the house) was open to the elements, with rotten siding and framing, missing windows and doors, etc. FEMA has given her and her cousin until May 1st to vacate the trailer for good. The materials needed to actually repair the home will probably cost in the $50,000 range, and that assumes the labor is free. She has no more money of her own. Hands On no longer does these types of projects, save for their involvement in trying to match up providers with those in need. The bottom line? She is screwed. The truth is, I can see no circumstance that would result in her getting her home rebuilt. When the FEMA trailer goes away, I have no idea where she will go or what she will do.

3-1/2 years after Katrina, many flooded homes remain in post-storm condition, and time and the weather are getting to them. What might have been rebuildable/repairable structures during our first few trips down here have in many cases simply deteriorated and rotted beyond repair. Homeowners who are still waiting to resolve issues that are keeping them from getting their Road Home money continue to ask for our help. As Ann and I scouted potential projects Hands On had been asked about, in one case all we could do was to tell Miss Mary Wilson and her son (who had gutted her home himself and was attempting to shore up the foundation) the truth: her home is now almost certainly beyond repair. The roof had been tarped, but the tarp has long ago rotted in the sun and the rain, and the roof and roof frame were ruined. Inside, the water and sun had destroyed large chunks of framing. Below the floor, most foundation beams were rotted away by termites and the elements. We concluded that the only route to providing a home for her on that lot was to knock the house down and start over.

Hope has always been a constant here. Residents, despite their financial circumstances, disabilities or other challenges, have always exuded a resilience and faith that things were getting better.

When do you quit calling it Hope and start calling it Denial? Many people in this city are, in my opinion, nearing the end of the line when it comes to the possibility they might actually move back into their homes. We volunteers have ridden that tide of hope and done our work with the confidence that somehow, someway, it was all going to be OK someday. On this trip, we have seen a number of instances where it would be a lie to say that things are going to be OK. That's a hard fact to swallow. If it isn't the elements slowly hammering a structure to death, it's inept and dishonest contractors slapping some paint on it and demanding more money to continue.

If it isn't that, it's a case like that of Mr. Ronald Tonth, whose home sits on the corner of Forstall and Robertson Streets in the Lower Ninth. Mr. Tonth asked two Hands On Americorps members to come look at his place to see if we could help. They asked me to come along. Mr. Tonth has a full-time job, a wife, children, and mother-in-law that he lives with. In his spare time, he's been rebuilding his home himself. When we arrived to look at the home, I was immediately impressed with the quality and quantity of work he had already accomplished. The exterior was basically complete, and well done. When he arrived, we went inside with him to see what needed to be done. A few rooms still need sheetrock, the sheetrock that has been completed needs to have the seams sanded, there is plumbing work to be done, floors to be installed, cabinets, etc. It wasn't a tiny amount of work left, but it was all doable by volunteers with a bit of money and the proper leadership.

Mr. Tonth told us his story: He rebuilt his home on the slab of his flood-damaged home, which like many in the Lower Ninth took water all the way into the attic. His family had left before the storm arrived, but people directly across the street drowned when the floodwall broke. He had nearly completed the rebuilding, including having added a second floor to the home to accommodate his mother-in-law, when squatters caused a fire in the abandoned home immediately behind his home. Much of the work he'd already completed was destroyed by the heat and smoke of the fire that burned a few feet from his home. He hired a lawyer, and after paying the contingent fee, netted about $20,000. The State is paying rental assistance to help his family live nearby. That assistance stops for good in 4 months. This man has spent what he's got and is nearing completion, but is feeling the time pressure and the burden of worrying about whether he'll be finished before he and his family "End up on the street or whatever happens to people when the rent assistance runs out". He's paying the mortgage on his property, and can't afford to do that and pay rent.

Here's what he asked us for (his words): "Anything. Any help at all. If you could come and paint a room. That would help. If you could help install flooring. That would help. If you could sweep a floor at the end of the day. That would help. Anything at all. I'm doing this by myself because that's the only way we are going to get this done. I'm running out of time and I'm worried I'm losing my mind. It's hard to balance all this, but it's all on me and I've got to find a way."

That man has been at this non-stop since the storm, providing for his family, and spending every minute and every cent he has. As for kitchen cabinets, he has just the sink cabinet because, as he so correctly stated, "If I can get a sink hooked up, we have a kitchen for now". When I remarked that his work on the drywall was really good, and that the walls were going to look great after texture and paint, he laughed and said, "I can afford paint, but I can't afford texture". He has cut every corner he can just to find a way to move his family home in time. My heart hurts for this guy, who has done nothing but work hard to provide for his family, to bring them home after a largely man-made calamity took away every material thing they had, and another man-made calamity burned most of his work as he approached completion the first time.

Our Call to Action

There is nothing I can do, and nothing I can ask you to do, to help people like Miss Pinckney, who needs thousands of dollars and has no time. Nor is there anything we can do to help Miss Wilson, who also needs thousands of dollars to first knock down her home of 35 years and build a new one.

But, there is something we can do together for Mr. Tonth and Miss McCray, and for others like them all over this City who only need a few bucks and some donated expertise to finally get them home.

We've asked you for financial help before, and we know the last year hasn't been kind to those of us with investments and savings. But I want to reach out to you again, to ask you to help Ann and me directly help Miss McCray and Mr. Tonth and his family. These two jobs can each be easily completed with a few thousand dollars and some skilled volunteer help. These two families are very close to completion, but might not be able to get the rest of the way without help. These stories are like thousands of stories in this City so long after Katrina. If we all pitch in, we can help some of these folks get over the top and get finished.

You can contribute one of two ways: If you wish your contribution to be tax deductible, you can make your check out to Hands On New Orleans and send it to me so I can direct it to these projects. If you don't care about the tax deductibility of your contribution, you can make the check out to me personally. In the former, I will restrict the donation for materials for those specific projects. It adds a bit of bureaucracy to do it this way, but it works. If you make the check payable to me, you don't get the deduction, but I get incredible flexibility to spend when we need to, with no delays or process. Either way, I promise that your money will be used for materials, and for materials only, for Mr. Tonth, Miss McCray, or for other small projects I don't yet know about but will inevitably discover when Ann and I return for our 10th trip in April. You can choose the project you want to contribute to, if you wish, or you can leave it to me to disburse the money where I think it is best used and most needed. No matter what, I beg you to consider making a contribution, no matter the amount, and send it to me today. Hands On has a number of skilled volunteers scheduled to arrive there over the next few weeks, and the work that needs to be done is urgent. I will personally see that our money is spent for its best and highest purpose, and that we use it to move these jobs to completion as quickly and nimbly as possible.

Thank you for giving this some thought. On behalf of those your contributions will help, I am grateful for anything we can do together to help.

My love to all,

David/Dad



Postscript: On Mardi Gras, Miss Antoinette K-Doe died. Miss Antoinette was the owner and operator of the Mother In Law Lounge, the first actual rebuilding project Hands On took on. Bill was involved in that project, along with Reggie and several other true believers and early Hands On volunteers. Miss Antoinette had one of the biggest hearts in New Orleans, and the lounge was a magnet for musicians and volunteers alike. After rebuilding the lounge, Hands On enjoyed a special status, and anyone with a purple shirt was golden. We have enjoyed many a Thursday night at the lounge when it was closed but available for band rehearsals. Imagine watching a popular band practice in front of you and a dozen of your friends while you enjoyed Miss Antoinette's red beans and rice. We've had many special times with Miss Antoinette. You can read a blurb about her life and influence on us and the City in last week's Time Magazine at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1883364,00.html.

On Saturday morning after Bill arrived, we all donned our purple shirts and headed to Miss Antoinette's funeral. For those of you unfamiliar with New Orleans' funeral traditions, let me just say that Ann and I decided that, wherever we are when we pass on, we wish to be shipped immediately to New Orleans. There's a saying that New Orleans put the "fun" in "funeral". The service itself was joyful and uplifting in a way that, as you sit in attendance, it occurs to you that this is after all how Christian religions teach you to approach death. They've got it right.

Following the service (and you are going to have to forgive me now for being such a novice in the tradition), we all lined up behind the mule-drawn wagon/hearse that carried her body and walked in the Second Line. Second Lines, if I've got this right, are the loosely-assembled folks that fall in behind the formal funeral procession. It's the hangers-on, the neighbors, the folks along the way who, well, just join in and follow what looks like a parade. There's an entire brass band ahead of us just behind Miss Antoinette and we join in, picking up everyone along the way that feels the urge, some with umbrellas, some dancing, some with beers in paper bags, everyone with a sense of belonging. In Miss Antoinette's case, the procession ended at the Mother In Law Lounge, where her pallbearers lifted her casket from the carriage, and hoisted it three times into the air as we wished her home to heaven. And then the dancing continued. Miss Antoinette's father and relatives were Mardi Gras Indians, and Mardi Gras Indians from many tribes joined us in celebratory respect and love for her.

Planting a Seed

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from Olympia,

I arrived home on November 20th, having spent the past three+ weeks on a variety of projects. While Ann and I were here this time, we got to witness the arrival of more than 1000 pounds of vegetable and flower seeds donated to the people of New Orleans by our generous friends at the Ed Hume Seed Company. This is the second year the Hume Family and their employees made a huge donation of seeds to help New Orleanians. This year, the good folks at Federal Express (thank you Lisa Daniel) donated shipping services and hauled two complete pallets of seeds from the Hume warehouse in Puyallup to the warehouse of Parkway Partners in New Orleans. Parkway Partners then used its volunteers and staff to sort the seeds by type and distribute them to community and school gardens and to other grassroots organizations like the Food and Farm Network that distribute the remainder. Flowers and vegetables grown all over this city in the past year came from Hume seeds and Hume generosity. Parkway Partners has dubbed the coming harvest the "Hume Harvest" in honor of the Hume's generosity.



People down there have noticed. Parkway Partners publishes a periodic newsletter and featured the seed donation in its latest issue. After it was published, one reader sent this along to Jeff Hume:

Dear Hume Seeds,

I was just reading my newsletter from Parkway Partners in New Orleans, Louisiana and I saw that your company has, for two years, donated seeds to the gardeners of New Orleans.

Thank you for keeping us in mind in such a thoughtful and important way. Of the many miserable thoughts I had during our evacuation from the flooded city during August and September of 2005, one was of all the beautiful gardens here in Orleans Parish. Your generosity really will make a difference here.

Thank you.

Cordelia Cale

(If you are ever down this way drop me a line before you come. I'll buy you lunch!)

Trust me, Jeff, when she offers you lunch, she means it. That's the way folks are down there.

Our eighth trip to New Orleans is now in the books, and each one of them has been buoyed by the generosity of others. In addition to the Humes and all of you who have made financial donations to help our fellow American citizens in New Orleans, we've made each trip down here a bit more productive and happy with coffee donations that have been sent by our pals at Batdorf & Bronson Coffee Company here in Olympia. Thanks to Larry, Cherie, Skot and everyone else there who have made sure we've been fortified for each visit.

Happy Holidays to you and to your families. We hope 2009 brings you health, success and happiness, and that New Orleans and its people are showered with the help they so badly need 3+ years after they refused to let Katrina blow them away.

Our Love to All,

David and Ann
Dad and Mom

Falling Through the Cracks

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

Ann and I made a last-minute decision to make our latest trip to New Orleans. Honestly, the motivation to come now was two-fold: We wanted to be on Dryades Street in our old Central City neighborhood for Halloween to cement our tradition begun last year to give candy to the kids who live there, and Ann wanted to spend some time helping Lana Corll, our great friend and benefactor, finish setting up her finally-restored-from-Katrina-flooding first floor sewing and quilt room. We knew there would be other work for us to do while we were here, but we just didn't know for sure what it was going to be.

Awhile back, our teacher friend and New Orleans-transplant Miss Mary Ellen Bartkowski wrote us to engage us in trying to help the friend of a friend who needed some help restoring her home. Miss Mildred asked if she knew of anyone, anywhere, who might be able to help one of her fellow parishoners at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church. Miss Fern is a single woman in her 80's, living alone in her single-shotgun home which she has called home for 35 years. Her home sustained a bunch of wind damage during Katrina 38 months ago, and was hammered again by Gustav in September. Miss Fern isn't a woman of means, and she is proud but in the humblest manner you can imagine. She is also without any family to call on for help. The closest kin she might have is a rumored distant cousin somewhere in Kansas.

We met her on Sunday when Miss Mary Ellen and I went to scout her home to see if there was some way we could help.



The pictures tell a little bit of the story of the current condition of her home, but, like all pictures I have sent to you from New Orleans, they are two-dimensional and don't show the true extent of the damage in any useful manner. Even if you were here in New Orleans, if you drove by her home, you would think everything is alright. Inside, you would find the truth.

In the pictures, the window you see that is blue-tarped blew out during Katrina on August 29th, 2005. The tarp is clearly not the original tarp. They don't survive in this climate for that long. Someone has replaced it for her, at least once. The black mold you see in two pictures is in her bathroom, which was open to the sky due to roof damage, which lets the rain in and feeds the mold. Unrelated to the storms, the frame of her home is so termite-damaged that it's very difficult to find places for nails to hold. As a result, there are holes in the walls, and the windows are falling out.

Miss Fern is occupying this home, and has been since she returned from her evacuation to Shreveport after Katrina. Her fellow congregants at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church have looked after her, led by Miss Mildred, the mother of Miss Mary Ellen's fellow teacher. The Archdiocese of New Orleans has suffered hard times since the storm, and the Archbishop has decided to close parishes to save money. Blessed Sacrament was closed in August. If you want to open a window on the condition of the Catholic Church down here in a seriously-Catholic stronghold, start here:

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/08/blessed_sacrament_parishioners.html

After Blessed Sacrament was closed, her parishoners were "assigned" to St. Henry's, which was itself subsequently closed two Sundays ago. So, Miss Fern's congregation is scattered to the wind now, and Miss Mildred is worried that they won't be there to help continue to keep the lights on for her, not to mention come together to help her make her home livable again. But there Miss Fern was, living in an open-to-the-elements home. And she isn't going anywhere. There is no place for her but her home as far as she is concerned. After Katrina, her home was tagged "uninhabitable" by the City inspectors. When she returned, she just took the sign down and moved back in.

In surveying her home to see what we might be able to do to help, I noticed her kitchen didn't have a stove or a microwave. She told me she had a hotplate, but it didn't work anymore. Later, I found out that her hotplate quit working a year ago. She has been eating raw vegetables and living on cold food from cans since then.

I am not making this up.

Miss Mary Ellen and I went right out and purchased a hotplate and returned to set it up for her. She said thank you, and we went outside right away so as not to make a big deal of it. We stood outside talking with Miss Mildred about the next steps, and we heard Miss Fern from inside the house say through the screen door, "Mildred: Do you want to come inside and see my new hot plate?" Later in the week, Renee' sent along an electric teapot, after seeing Miss Fern's neatly-organized tea bags next to the single pot she used for cooking and heating water.

On Monday and Tuesday, Ann, Mary Ellen, Reggie, Cobus (Renee's father, who is visiting from South Africa. By the way, his name is pronounced "Kwibbus") and I got started trying to plug up the openings in the exterior of her home, and to try to beat back some of the mold that is growing in her bathroom and her kitchen. During those two days, we were able to patch several holes, and secure one of her windows, which was getting ready to fall out of its frame due to extensive rot around it. Ann attacked the bathroom mold, and Reggie and I cleaned off her roof and one side of her home, which had been overgrown with vines. Shortly after we arrived, we discovered that she did not have any hot water, since her gas water heater had burned out some time ago. We also discovered that her only toilet was not attached to running water due to a tank leak. She flushed it with a bucket of water. Her refrigerator, which was virtually entirely covered on the outside with visible black mold, also had significant mold inside, and was only cool at best, which caused her milk to routinely spoil shortly after she purchased it. We all stopped at that point and began making phone calls to anyone we knew in the City who might be able to provide a fridge and/or a water heater.

The network of people who know each other solely because they came to New Orleans to help is pretty impressive and inspiring. Each of us knew at least one possible resource, and there we were, all on our cell phones, looking for help. On Thursday, Reggie's contact, Woody, who works for the Volunteers of America, called to say he found a nearly-new fridge at the New Orleans Recovery Project warehouse, and they were willing to part with it. On Friday, we picked it up and delivered it to Miss Fern's. It's white, it's cold, and it's hers. They also gave her a new dining table (she didn't have anything) that a church congregation in Pennsylvania had designed and constructed 100 copies of for donation to people in New Orleans who need them. Miss Fern was duly impressed with the fridge, as she commented to me "Glass shelves--I've never seen them before. And "Spillproof"? That's very nice."

Back to the house work. Miss Fern had hired a contractor years ago to do some repairs, but we can't find any. She took out a mortgage to pay for them, and we can find that. Among other things, they installed some cheap cabinets in her kitchen, and all of the upper cabinets have since fallen off the walls. Ann invested some time and love into rebuilding one of them and then properly hanging it from an interior wall, which had some unrotted studs. When she showed it to Miss Fern, and told her she could put her canned goods in it instead of stacking them on the floor, Miss Fern asked her "Will this cabinet stay on the wall?" Later, Ann found she had stacked her cans on a counter top instead. She was used to the workmanship of her contractor. She didn't yet know that Ann knew better.

During the week, we called upon other help. Bri O'Brien came with Todd and Niko, two other Hands On folks, to continue trying to clean up and repair. The frame of the house is so far gone that there are not many places you can actually attach nails or screws. The window problem was more extensive than we had earlier thought. Cobus and I devised a method for holding them in place with a two-by-four at the top and another one at the bottom. With some luck, we were able to find enough non-rotted studs to attach them to, and voila, they were saved from falling out of their openings. Ann designed a method to button-up the two openings that didn't have windows in them any longer. The tarped opening was sheeted and sealed, and the other opening was sealed up so animals and the wind could no longer get in. On Thursday, LiAnne and Bri came to lend their roof-tarping expertise to the bathroom roof, which had been open to the sky for who knows how long. Todd and Niko returned to attack the mold inside. At the end of Thursday, the work that was needed to close any openings in exterior surfaces was completed, and what mold remediation was possible had been completed. Early in the week, Miss Fern told us that many of the electric plugs in the house no longer worked. Eric Caldwell, a volunteer whenever you ask him and a builder when he needs to pay the bills, answered that call on Wednesday. As he trouble-shot the problem by tracing the wiring under the house, he nearly literally put his hand on the problem when he found burned wiring leading into the last plug in the line that worked, followed by burned wire coming out of that plug and heading to the next plug in the line. The floor beam that the wiring contacted was scorched, and the wiring itself had clearly burned down to the copper. Eric and Reggie pulled new wiring, and the problem was solved.

As of now, we are still looking for a gas water heater so we can give her hot water. I was able to fix the toilet, and that now works again. Our team killed what mold we were able to kill, although without gutting the house, getting rid of it isn't possible. We just labored to beat it back for the time being.

When we realized the house is beyond structural repair without totally rebuilding it, we shifted gears to triage repairs, and also to see if we could find an organization that might be able to provide her different housing. Lana Corll grabbed this one by the horns, and spent a good chunk of her week on the phone with various groups to seek help. At the end of the week, Davida Finger of the Loyola Law Katrina Clinic had been able to get a Catholic Charities case worker assigned to the case. We're not sure just where this is going right now, since Miss Fern told Miss Mildred this week that she had decided she was just going to stay put, even after being told her home really couldn't be repaired any more than we had been able to repair it this week. "That's alright", she said. "I've been here 35 years, and I'm alright."

Miss Fern is a clear-eyed, reasonably healthy woman in her 80's. She doesn't seem depressed, nor does she seem crazy. Further, she probably wouldn't be very happy to know I am writing to you about her. But, when you see the condition of her home, when you grasp just how close it actually is to collapsing, when you realize that there's nothing you can do to repair it short of totally rebuilding it, and in the face of all this she is placid and OK with it all, your heart can't help but hurt.

I was really proud to work with the group that threw themselves into this project. And not just showing up to work at the home. Hitting the phones, calling each other at night to keep trying to see what we had found out and what we were still trying to find out, and staying with our work until we found whatever resolution we could was the way the week went. Each person did what they could, and between us all, we accomplished a lot, although every one of us will tell you we didn't even scratch the surface of what this woman really needs to live in dignity. I've been humbled many times down here to see how little so many people in this City have and the conditions their means force them to take for granted, but Miss Fern's home topped it all.

Juxtapose this with post-election Talk Radio, which I often tune into out of a combination of wanting to hear what that side is saying to its listeners and simple morbid curiosity. On Wednesday, I heard one of these people talk in absolute certainty (as they always do) that the "Income Redistribution" our new President will ruin the country with is nothing more than taking from those of us who care enough to work and giving it to those of us who are lazy and unwilling to work. This guy had the ignorance and cruelty to suggest that poor people (every single one of them) are poor because they just don't want to work as hard as those of us with means.

I'll pass that along to Miss Fern.

My love to all,

David/Dad

Wrapping Up Our 7th Trip

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from Houston,

Ann and I are on our way home from our latest trip to New Orleans. Our last week, as has become our tradition for some reason, was a great one. After working with Reggie out in the Bayou helping with trees, we were recruited to help on a home-rebuilding project by a pal at Rebuilding Together. This organization is working in New Orleans to specifically assist elderly and disabled homeowners who do not have the resources to complete the recovery of their homes. Ann, Reggie and I went off to Miss Della's home on Louisiana Parkway Drive, in the heart of the Broadmoor neighborhood of New Orleans. Broadmoor is a very large neighborhood that organized its citizens early and fought the City back when Mayor Nagin suggested that Broadmoor be razed in its entirety and turned over to greenspace. They said thanks, but no thanks, and the area has been a web of activity ever since. Miss Della is a 70-something wheelchair-bound woman living alone in her FEMA trailer next door, and Rebuilding Together has nearly completed its work restoring her home. The three of us were asked to tile her kitchen floor, so we cleaned the subfloor, installed the Hardibacker underlayment, and then laid about half the tile that day. On Friday, Ann and I went back and were joined by two volunteers, Maggie and Mary. Neither had laid tile floors before, so we showed them what we knew and then helped them finish it. By 1pm, we were completely finished, and the result is a kitchen floor ready for grout. This was a really good gig for Ann, Reggie, and me, and it reminded us of so many projects we've worked on with Hands On. Hands On too is gearing up to do more of these types of projects now that they are an independent affiliate of the Hands On Network. Having both of these great organizations scaring up these projects means we'll be busier than ever on our next trip down there in February. The chance to help someone get back into their home 3 years after the storm isn't nearly as rare as we hoped it would be, but there it is, and we're going to keep coming back as long as we can find this work in this wonderful city we call our Home Away From Home.

My Love to All,

David/Dad

P.S. Update on the Tool Fund: For those of you who gave so generously to the Tool Fund, I promised to keep you up to date on our progress towards finding a matching sponsor. I'm very happy to report that Kaiser Permanente not only agreed to match the $10,000 you gave, they matched it 3-for-1 with a $30,000 gift to Hands On New Orleans. Thanks to all of you, from Kathie and Al Faccinto, who got this whole effort started with a very generous seed donation, to all of you who followed and got us to our $10,000 starting goal, and finally to our pals at Kaiser Permanente, who saw what we do with those tools, did it with us, and backed up their efforts and commitment with such a generous matching donation. Tools and volunteers are the lifeblood of our effort to rebuild this very American city of ours, and I'm very grateful to all of you who have joined this effort. Thanks again.

Road Tripping in the Bayou

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans and Places Beyond,

We've been on an odyssey around the state to cut trees wherever we were sent. Ike hit the Houston/Galveston area directly, but it was such a huge storm that all of the lower parishes of Louisiana were inundated by the tidal surge and the winds that brought it inland. As information seeped in, there were organizations and individuals far-and-wide that collected names of neighbors who needed help. Thousands of trees down on homes, across driveways, in the way of powerline repairs, and so forth. Ann and I took Valerie, a young volunteer who found us via the State's volunteer hotline, and we headed off to Lafayette with our gloves, water, gasoline, and chainsaws. We were dispatched by United Way Acadiana, and worked usually as a team of three at individual homes in the area. Boy, oh boy, is that area Mosquito Country these days. They were plentiful, big, and aggressive. All of that wet ground made for one big mosquito bog across the entire region.



At the end of the week, we were sent to the Houma/Raceland area to do the same tree removal work. Reggie joined us for these days, and we cleared a pretty big list of mostly older folks who didn't have the ability to do this work themselves.

I'll tell you, there's no American poverty like Deep South American poverty. We met some really nice folks out in the rural areas we have visited over the past couple of weeks, and we've been humbled by how little so many of those people have. Every stop along the way, though, people were welcoming, tripping over themselves to make sure we were fed and watered. On our first evening in Lafayette, we worked until dusk cutting trees out of Miss Edna's yard. Miss Edna is an 82-year old widow who had been gathering branches by herself, and I asked her to please let us do it. As the sun went down, we hadn't finished, and I knew she was waiting for us to leave so she could come back out and continue working. I told her that we needed to quit because it isn't very safe to operate a chain saw in the dusk hours, but that we weren't going to leave if she was going to come back out and drag branches herself. She laughed because she knew she'd been busted. We went home, and came back the next morning with a few AmeriCorps members to finish. She smiled at me when we arrived, and told me "I waited. I told you I would. I almost couldn't stand it, you kids working so hard while I didn't. But I waited, Baby."

I love it when women call me Baby.

On a job in Breaux Bridge, we jumped out of the truck and began unloading our saws. The woman we were helping saw Ann and I each grab our saws, and she was taken aback. Her words, exactly: "A lady with a chain saw?" I just smiled. Yep, that's a lady alright, but that lady is Ann. What a laugh we had later. People just don't know until they've worked with Ann.

Back to New Orleans for the rest of our third week here. More later.

My love to all,

David/Dad

Gustav Hits Hard, But Largely Spares New Orleans

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,



Gustav hit Baton Rouge pretty hard. We watched it from inside our makeshift bunkhouse. 95 mph winds trimmed the trees there with fury. The power was off in most of the city and outlying areas for a couple of days, after which it came back on in small areas, and slowly at that. Baton Rouge was largely spared by Katrina, so its 100-year old trees hadn't had a recent trimming. As a result, they came down by the thousands in Baton Rouge and all across the lower part of the State, and made a real mess. Add to that the fact that not only did residents of Baton Rouge not evacuate (no one expected the storm to hit them very hard at all), many people from lower parishes, including Orleans, evacuated themselves TO Baton Rouge. This made for a traffic nightmare as one or two gas stations came back to life, and everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) hit the streets to fill up (or try to).

After helping to set up a Search and Rescue database of qualified volunteers for the government folks we were working for, Ann and I went out with Nic and Todd and a chainsaw to remove a tree from a home outside town. On Thursday, Ann and I were sent on a road trip to scout the Houma area, which is located about 50 miles southwest of New Orleans. That area was really hammered, and since New Orleans was largely spared significant damage, Hands On may be setting up some volunteer effort down there. Then, we returned to New Orleans. There's a lot of debris to clear, but the floodwalls all held, and the city was coming back to life pretty quickly. Some power was already back on, and the utility crews worked furiously through the weekend to keep it coming back on. While it's an understatement to say that the people of New Orleans are significantly relieved, it's equally true that they are weary and broke. The evacuation was pretty impressive--1.9 million people participated (said by many in the media to be the largest evacuation in American history), and it went pretty smoothly until the very end, as people tried to return home. Ray Nagin kept New Orleans closed while neighboring parishes reopened, and Nagin had the NOPD stop cars on I-10 as they tried to enter Orleans parish on their way through to Jefferson Parish next door). That caused a shitstorm that blemished what was otherwise a very well planned and extremely well executed evacuation. People from Orleans Parish were told to turn around and wait another day. Kids crying, parents dead tired, out of money, out of gas, out of food, out of water, out of patience. Nagin gave up a couple of hours later, and the repopulation went on without a hitch after that.

Now, with Hurricane Ike on its way into the Gulf, with New Orleans again inside the probability arc, people are worried. Ann and I can't help but wonder if many of them simply aren't going to leave if another evacuation is called for this week. After all, they already spent a bunch of money they didn't have to get out for Gustav, then Gustav fortunately turned out to hit New Orleans with a much smaller punch than expected (hammering nearly everyone else in the lower part of the State). It just seems like human nature might tell them to go ahead and stay. Whether they do or whether they don't, here's hoping Ike turns around and heads off aimlessly to the sea.

We're off to Lafayette with a chain saw crew today, and planning to be there all this week. Assuming Ike doesn't chase us out, we ought to be plenty busy helping those folks dig out.

My love to all,

David/Dad

Gustav Day 2

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from Baton Rouge,

Just a quick update on what's going on down here. Ann and I flew to Atlanta on Sunday (as close as we could get) to help with the initial response to Gustav. John Jowers, our pal who formerly worked for Hands On Network in Atlanta, and his pal Sherrie met us at the airport, and we all hit the road at 11:30 pm for the drive to Baton Rouge. Road Trip!

We arrived in Baton Rouge at sun-up Monday morning, and met Kellie Bentz, Hands On New Orleans' Executive Director, at GOHSEP, the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Planning Center here in Baton Rouge. As the storm moved into the Baton Rouge area Monday afternoon, we hunkered down at our makeshift bunkhouse at a local rehab center. On Monday evening, we magically caught up with Lana Corll's pickup truck, which she has so generously loaned us time and time again. This time, it was already in Baton Rouge, having been borrowed by a friend of hers for last weekend's LSU football game. We then went back to GOHSEP to begin the process of vetting potential search and rescue teams who have called to volunteer their services. We'll be on that until they are all deployed.

We're fine up here. A big blow came through here for sure, with lots of trees and signs blown down, and a bunch of related property damage, but other than no electricity anywhere here (except for GOHSEP, which has giant generators running all over campus), Baton Rouge is OK. We're just starting to get detailed reports from parishes in Southern Louisiana, but things look far worse down there. Cajun Country got hit pretty hard. The levees in New Orleans all held up.

More later.

My love to all,

David/Dad

I Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from Olympia,

Our last week of this trip to New Orleans was our best one.

Davida Finger of the Loyola Law School Katrina Clinic hooked Ann and me up with a family in Gentilly who used their insurance money to rebuild the 5-foot-flooded first floor of their home, but ran out of money before they could finish the upstairs. Miss Ray and Mr Harold Bellanger are in their 80's, and live with their daughter and her son and 18 year old nephew, who just had a kidney removed. The Road Home money hasn't trickled down to Miss Ray and Mr Harold yet, so they all have been scraping wallpaper off the upstairs walls by hand, all of which were damaged when the winds tore off part of their roof. Our son Kevan kicked in a very generous chunk of money for materials, and Ann and I got to lead a team of volunteers to finish the wallpaper removal, texture the walls in preparation for paint, and level and repair the sagging subfloor in the upstairs hall. Ann and I spent Monday pulling up and disposing of the carpet and pad in the hallway, and got a look at the subfloor underneath. It had a high peak that ran down the entire center of the hall, and had several very squishy spots at the sides. On Tuesday, Reggie and several other volunteers joined us to get to work. While Ann and I shimmed and strengthened the floor, they all set about to remove the wallpaper in the other rooms. Miss Ray and Mr Harold's daughter Tania and her son Reggie had spent a lot of the previous week removing all of the wallpaper in the hall so it would be done when we got there to repair the floor. We purchased a wallpaper-removing chemical and special scrapers, and took it along with safety gear to them the week before, and they've been at it ever since. We spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday with this work, and went home Wednesday with the floor completely leveled and set with underlayment in preparation for new flooring, and the walls clear of wallpaper and ready to texture. On Wednesday, we were joined by Eric and Steve, two old Hands On volunteers who now live and work full-time in New Orleans. They provided the expertise to skim-coat the walls to make them smooth in preparation for texture. On Thursday, Nic Bonsell came along with us to show us how to use a texture gun and how to "knock down" the texture once it was applied. I asked a new regular volunteer, Bill, to learn the texture gun, since he was planning on spending the entire summer here to work. By 2pm, we were all finished, and the walls are now ready for paint.

On Friday, Ann and I went back to complete little stuff. We reinstalled the door trim we had to remove in the hall, installed transition strips between the hall and the rooms, and generally cleaned up. We also got to give Miss Ray and Mr Harold a $200 Home Depot gift card as a jump-start on their paint and flooring, compliments of our son Kevan. I had the honor of bringing along a gallon of white paint to finally cover up the orange "X" that was painted on the front of their house. I asked Miss Ray and Mr Harold if they would like to help, and they each took their turn covering up the X that was painted by searchers days after the storm. There we were, 1020 days after the X was painted, finally putting it to rest. It took 3 coats of paint, but I wasn't packing up until none of it could be seen on that home.

For the record, here's what the X read, clockwise from the top:

9-5 (Searched on 9/5/05)
- (No hazards located)
0 (No bodies found inside)
AE (Team that searched)

Now the front of their home just says "4532" (their house number). A great way to end our 6th trip down here. Mr Harold told me that they had been contacted by lots of neighbors before they returned, asking if they were coming back. All of those neighbors said that if Miss Ray and Mr Harold weren't returning, neither were they. The Bellanger home is that home on Feliciana Street that serves as the magnet for others who weren't sure they would return. Today, about half of the homes in their vicinity are either occupied or in the process of being repaired. Lots of Xs are still painted on the outsides of homes here in the shadow of the London Avenue Canal. Hopefully, that white spot on the outside of Miss Ray and Mr Harold's home will serve as another reminder to their neighbors that they too can come home again.

Mary Ellen Bartkowski and Reggie Derman have continued, for some reason unexplainable to us, to open their home to us when we visit, and to treat us like family. We are so grateful to them for their generosity and love. It seems so long ago that the three of us worked together on Miss Rose's siding way back in March of 2007, which led to Mary Ellen leaving her Chicago home to teach at a New Orleans public school.

I've found myself nostalgic in many ways during this past trip. Ann and I invited our pals for a last-evening beer at Igor's, our old hangout on St. Charles Avenue, near our beloved old bunkhouse at the First Street United Methodist Church. I looked around the tables that evening and realized that many of the truest friends I've had in my life were there with me. We saved a seat for Chandra, but Boston was too far to come. Even so, I thought of her that evening, in the humidity of another hot day in that wonderful city in the Deep South, enjoying stories and laughs with Ann and our pals, and I felt that familiar sense that I was home.

Catfish is still $39.99 for a 15-pound box at the Chicken Mart (which still doesn't sell chicken), Gold Teeth are still 2 for $150, Six Flags is still closed, the streets are still ruined, but the city looks better now than it did when we visited in February, when it looked better than it did when we visited in November. Each time we visit, we notice some new signs of life. One time it's the St. Charles streetcar, now fully operational along its entire course, another time it's Charles Brown's home in the Lower Ninth, now occupied and FEMA-trailer free.

Last week, it was a visit by Reggie and me to see whatever happened to the New Orleans East Super Gut that he led in March of 2007 (you can read about it in my 3/18/07 entry "Back Home in New Orleans"). We drove out to New Orleans East to see if we could find it and see what, if anything, had been done to it since we gutted it 15 months ago. The first photo shows our gut pile outside the home, and the second shows what we found last week. Both Reggie and I were pretty taken by the transformation.

And still another time it's a homeowner banging away on a once-decrepit, burned shell of a home on Jackson Street, its new framing now nearly complete, and its wrought-iron circular staircase, once hanging by itself in the air and connected to nothing but the ground, now being used by him and his crew as they rebuild his home. The sign on that stairwell has said, for as long as I've been coming here "I AM Coming Home. I WILL Rebuild".

I now believe it.

My love to all.

David/Dad

Hot Town. Summer in the City.

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

After completing the Sarah T. Reed High School project, I got to work trying to help Hands On get legs under its rebuilding program. They are currently busy becoming an independent Hands On affiliate, after these past 2+ years as a project of Hands On Network. Becoming an independent 501(c)3, finding your own money for operations, building a local board of directors, and so forth is a full-time job in itself, all the while trying to keep hordes of volunteers busy and productive. Hands On has found itself concentrating on corporate projects lately, i.e., working with companies who want to bring money and people to New Orleans to help, usually sandwiched between a convention or meeting that brings them to New Orleans. Ann and I are doing what we can to help them also hang on to the on-going daily construction jobs that we have seen make a difference in the lives of the people we have worked for. We are beginning to partner with a volunteer group in Central City that has a backlog of projects but not enough help. We're doing what we can to cement a good partnership with them (www.UnitedSaints.org) in order to ensure a regular supply of manageable Katrina-restoration projects for our daily jobs' board. Spending a week or two at many of these homes results in a huge step forward for the families that live in them.


On Memorial Day, I got to go to the New Orleans Zephyr's baseball game with Mary Ellen and her class. About half of our kids got baseballs that day, and we had a really good time.

The next day, Ann arrived. We spent our first day together over at Sarah T. Reed High School performing a minor modification to the picnic tables we built. After that, we spent a couple of days with our pal Miss Peggy Severe, hanging the final curtain rods, pulling a phone line, and, using money provided by Jan Matzelle and Sherry O'Connor, my loving 1st Grade teachers at L.P. Brown Elementary School in Olympia, mixing and pouring lots of concrete to fill a large hole which sat squarely in the center of her now-FEMA-trailerless driveway.

On Saturday, May 31st, we went with Nic and Bri and a group of Credit Suisse folks from New York to paint the exterior of a new family-owned restaurant in Gentilly. It's appropriately named Cousins, and 10 seconds of observation would tell you why. Family members, young and old, filled the place as they prepared a lunch of good old fashioned Creole cooking for us grateful volunteers. Kyle and his family leased this space and have been doing the renovations themselves in preparation for their opening on June 16th. We painted the entire exterior and built several benches and planter boxes to spruce up the outside. As we wrapped up, Kyle pulled us all together, made daiquiris and served beers, and broke down crying as he thanked us for coming together with his family to help them start this business that he hopes will sustain them all. Once in awhile when I tell someone we are helping a business, people ask if that seems OK to do, i.e., helping a for-profit business instead of a needy homeowner. I tell them that when we help a small business get back on its feet, we are helping a needy homeowner. Small businesses are a big part of the lifeblood of this city, and are often the best opportunity for people to restore their economic lives (not to mention the economy of the City). Rebuilding homes is my first love here, but jobs are the most important thing for these people. Doesn't really matter, after all, if we've fixed their home if they can't afford to turn the lights back on. Seeing Kyle up there in front of us, this big gregarious man, unable to hold back his tears for the help we provided underscored all of that for me. As this City continues its long slog back to whatever they will someday call Normalcy, it's becoming easier and easier to take the pace of recovery for granted, to see things getting slowly better. Then a Kyle comes along and reminds us all that every sign of recovery comes with a human face, and every day between now and recovery is one more day since the storm took away everything except their optimism and their resilience. You can find dignity all over among these ruins down here, and today his name was Kyle.


We got to experience a bit of New Orleans nostalgia when Boston Cares sent people down for their fourth trip to help. Ann ran into them for the first time when she was here in November 2006, and they've just kept coming back. It was my first opportunity to meet them, and they were as Ann promised: hard-working and lots of fun. We got to buy them a round at Henry's while we watched the Celtics send the Pistons home. Go Celtics, and thanks to Boston Cares for their determination, commitment, and good humor. Hurry back, and let us know when you are coming.

We finally got to see Davida Finger, our lawyer pal from the Loyola Law Katrina Clinic. She's been very busy lately, having become the sole lawyer in charge of all cases heading for court, after her partner moved back to Lafayette and left her alone. Every parish down here now has a deadline for getting rid of their FEMA trailers, and those deadlines are making life busy for Davida and scary for some residents for whom the FEMA trailer is the only alternative to homelessness. Yes, there are some trailer residents who just need a push to get going, but there are many hardcore poor, disabled, and elderly who just aren't able to rebuild without more time and help. Davida is out there fighting every day for them. Thanks, Counselor.


In between projects, we've been working on the first floor of Lana Corll's home, which took two feet of water when the levees gave way. Lana also works at Loyola Law, and has been a constant source of local color, Southern hospitality, and friendship. Oh, yeah--she also tosses us the keys to her Ford F-150 as soon as we arrive, so we have wheels to get where we need to go. Once we got started on her place, Ann did her usual creative work tiling the new bathroom floor, and Reggie and I insulated and installed drywall in the large living area. Lana hired a local guy and his crew to do a bunch of other work, and it's coming together pretty quickly now. It's never a surprise for me to see Ann take what could have been a pedestrian, vanilla tile job and turn it into her canvas. It was surprising though, and a little scary when I realized I'm actually getting pretty good at drywall. I always thought I'd be able to say I just wasn't very good enough at it, and should find other projects to contribute to. Can't use that excuse anymore.

Since we're on a Loyola University theme here, let me also add that we've become pals with Philip Frohnmayer, a Professor of Music at Loyola. Phil found us one day when I was wearing my Oregon Ducks Basketball T-shirt. Phil is Dave Frohnmayer's brother, who is the President of the University of Oregon. Phil and his wife have been down here many years now, and he's become another one of our New Orleans friends.

As has become their custom, our pals at Batdorf and Bronson Coffee Roasters again made sure that we had their great coffee in our coffee pots down here for our entire stay. I can tell you how much our volunteers appreciate really good coffee in the morning, and I can also tell you how much I appreciate that familiar smell in the morning. Having a bit of home here with us in New Orleans makes me feel like we're all in this together. Which we are.

My love to all,

David/Dad

An Oasis Rises in New Orleans East

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

I arrived here on Tuesday, May 6th, having come three weeks earlier than Ann because I had been asked to share leadership of a greenspace beautification project at Sarah T. Reed Senior High School in New Orleans East. We got involved in this project thanks to funding provided by Cable Cares, the charitable foundation associated with the cable TV trade group, who was in town for their convention. As you will see from the pictures, the school is probably 10-15 years old, but there was pretty much no vegetation on the site save for grass and overgrown or dead trees. When you add the post-apocalyptic bleakness that is found throughout New Orleans East, it's pretty difficult to look anywhere and not be constantly reminded of Katrina. While the school itself took no water during the storm, it sustained wind-related damage and a good deal of vandalism after the storm. You can't see any evidence of either as you look at the school today.

New Orleans East was created 40 or 50 years ago from reclaimed swamp land, and was settled quickly by middle-class families escaping the inner city. The majority of the homes out there are brick-frame, and the place, if you can imagine it before the storm, was tidy and well-cared for. The storm trashed the entire region, which is about half as big as New Orleans proper. Today, nearly three years after the storm, much of it is an overgrown wasteland. Six Flags has a large theme park out there, and it sits empty and alone among the dead trees, its sign still saying "Closed for Storm". The area has thousands of trees that died, and that view is the predominant image you see as you drive to Sarah T. Reed. Pockets of homes have been rebuilt and are occupied, and entire neighborhoods, shopping centers, and strip malls sit empty and ruined. None of the infrastructure or buildings out there are very old, and to see so much of it abandoned or hiding amidst dead or overgrown trees and bushes is unsettling and eerie.


But Sarah T. Reed is alive and kicking.

When I arrived, Tim had completed the budget for the project, had specified and ordered all of the plants, trees, and flowers, soil, gravel, and paving stones. He quite nicely diagrammed the areas we were to attack, right down to which plant went where in what quantities. All I had to do was direct the work itself. The plan was for 100 volunteers to do the bulk of the work on Saturday, with another 75 or so to come in for two-three hours on Sunday to wrap it up and present it to the school. Prior to the weekend project, Reggie, several Americorps NCCC members and I invested 5 days of hard labor to prepare the site and set the table for the weekend work. To do these large service projects successfully, a lot of prep work has to be completed in time to work the kinks out of the process and to leave a manageable quantity of work for the one-day-only volunteers. We set the first three rows of paving stones around the perimeters of the raised-beds after working very hard to dig trenches and level footings. 1500 of these 40 lb blocks were moved into place, 1 by 1, and my small team installed 1000 of them, leaving the last two rows for the weekend warriors.

My team leaders for the Saturday full workday were the 10 members of one of our current Americorps NCCC teams. During the week, Mike, Laura, Aurelia, Olivia, and Kerry killed themselves on site to complete the prep work. On Thursday, Laura then led a team that pre-cut about one thousand board-feet of lumber in one day to create the components for 6 picnic tables and 4 garbage can surrounds for the courtyard. I really dropped the ball on cutting day by forgetting to take photos, because it was really something to see. The day started with intense thunderstorms that began around 2 am. The rains came, too, and by sunrise, it was abundantly clear that our day's worth of lumber cutting wasn't going to happen in the yard next to the tool shed. But, that work had to be done that day, and the rains were not predicted to let up until after midnight. Somewhere around 9 am, it occurred to us that the dining hall in the bunkhouse was plenty big enough to accommodate the saw, the workers, and the lumber. A few quick calls to seek permission from the right people, and we were on our way. Laura and Aurelia went right to it, Douglas and Mike jumped in to ferry lumber, and they went to the races. That was the day I realized this NCCC team was special. There was no question about quitting on time. When Kerry's work on a different project was done for the day, she jumped in as well, and they worked until 7:15 that evening, with every piece of lumber cut, sorted, re-checked for quality, and taken back to the yard. The saw was removed, the tarps that caught any loose sawdust (virtually none after another NCCC member who was watching us set up suggested we duct-tape a shop vac hose to the saw's exhaust and run the vac when we were cutting) were pulled down from the walls and picked up off the floor, folded and put away, the entire dining hall was swept, the tables were put back in place, and they left only when the dining hall looked like we had never been in there. We were lucky because dinner was being held in another location that day, so we were able to work until we were finished. It was a sight to behold, and I watched that team come together that day as teammates and leaders.

On Friday, Mike and Olivia spent the day ferrying tools to the school, organizing and counting the plants, and making sure all was ready for Saturday. Once Saturday came, we were ready, and all there at 7:30 to take two hours to get organized, assign the individual project areas to the team leads, and be ready for the arrival of the volunteers. Cable Cares sent about 40 that day, Sarah T. Reed sent about 40 staff and students, and 20 volunteers from Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania who had spent the week working other projects joined us for the day. During opening remarks, I asked all of the volunteers to mix themselves up, to find someone in the crowd they had never met, and to stand there with them. I then filled the work groups with these new friends, and sent 'em off to work. Those 100 volunteers, along with our 11 team leaders, including Mary Ellen Bartkowski, the transplanted teacher I've spoken about in past posts, and the entire NCCC team, including Adam, Risa, Lindsey and Erin, basically finished the entire project in one day. 1500 bedding plants, over 100 bushes and trees, 30 yards of drainage gravel and soil, 500 paving blocks, 6 picnic tables, 4 garbage can surrounds--all finished. As teams completed their areas, they moved to other projects that needed help, and we invented a couple of other projects we didn't think we'd have time to include in the original plan. They knocked them all out. We had a couple of large tree stumps next to one side of the gym that were supposed to have been removed on Friday by a stump grinder, but the rain kept him from that work, so I told Dave, our guy in that area, to just skip it because the grinder was coming Monday, and we'd landscape that area later. Nope, said Dave. He took 'em both out by hand, and we finished that area on Saturday as well. Everything swept clean, all tools recovered and hauled back to the bunkhouse. It was a very good day, to say the least. The volunteers and our leaders really had a lot of fun while they attacked this work with fury.

A team from DIY Network, led by Wynn Pastor, the star of Trading Spaces, flew in on Friday and came to do a tile mosaic (which includes a hand-cut tile Sarah T. Reed logo) on the wall of the courtyard. They were a really fun group that did a very cool job that added a lot of color and character to the courtyard, and their enthusiasm, good humor, and lack of star pretense added to the good vibes of the day. They came back the next day, and took it on themselves to repair a very cool, but very damaged New Orleans-themed tile mosaic that laid neglected in one of the parking islands. They not only repaired it, they moved it to a prominent place on a slope against the school, built and planted another raised bed with surplus blocks and flowers, and finished the whole thing in time for closing remarks.

All that was left for the rest of us on Sunday were tasks that couldn't be accomplished on Saturday. We repainted 300' of red fire lane curb in front of the school (which was done barn-raising style, when I lined up every one of our 75 Sunday Cable Cares volunteers, had them stand at arms-length to each other along the entire length of the curb, and then paint the space in front of them. We did it in about 10 minutes, and people loved the process). Mary Ellen's team stained the picnic tables and garbage can surrounds that spent the afternoon and evening drying out after construction on Saturday, another team swept and washed down the courtyard, and another one still moved the unused soil out of the parking lot. Our team leaders for Sunday (in addition to Mary Ellen, who burned her entire weekend for us) were Hands On staff working on their day off. We knocked all of this work out in two hours. When we left, the transformation was something to see. I went back first thing Monday morning to see the reaction, and it alone made the work worthwhile.


One of the coolest things I've ever seen here in New Orleans happened during this project. As Tim walked me around the grounds to familiarize me with the project right after I arrived, we stopped in the courtyard to look at the three very large planter boxes that were overgrown with weeds. Our plan included weeding all three of them, trimming the trees up, and planting them with flowers and shrubs. Unbeknownst to us, the Special Ed kids and their teachers, whose classrooms are right next to the courtyard, decided on their own to do one of the planters themselves. The teachers spent their own money to buy flowers, and the entire group transformed one of those planters themselves that same day. The next day, when I was looking around campus trying to get my mind around the project, one of the teachers asked me to help her carry a 5 gallon bucket that was full of water out to the courtyard. When I took it out there, I saw their work for the first time. It was done, and they were now out there to water their new area. I went right out and bought a hose and a hose faucet key for them so they wouldn't have to lug water from the cafeteria anymore. On Saturday, we left them more plants and shrubs that they wanted to plant themselves in "their area". I then asked them if they would take the responsibility for watering and caring for all three areas, and that's exactly what they are doing now.


That kind of stuff will keep you coming back for more work down here, let me tell you. It's no secret to y'all how much I love this city and this work, but nothing tops seeing the people you are working to help take your idea and extend it with their own sweat and pride. When that happens, anything is possible.

My love to you all.

David/Dad

A Little Effort Goes a Long Way

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from Olympia,

After the NBA Service Project week, I had one last gig to see through. When Ann and I first arrived for this trip back on January 14th, Davida Finger of the Loyola Law Katrina Clinic asked if we could scout a project for a couple out in Metairie who needed some work done. Don't tell Davida, but anytime she asks for help, the answer is going to be yes. Ann and I went to the home of Pat and Laura to check it out. The area in Metairie where they live didn't flood, but their home had serious roof damage from the wind, and the water damage from that was enough. Pat and Laura are in their 60's, and very self-reliant people. Pat had done a lot of repairs himself, but he had a couple of jobs he just wasn't up to. Laura is sick, and Pat spends a lot of his time getting her to the doctor appointments she needs to keep. Their home is small, modest, and well-kept. They needed our help to repair a sagging kitchen floor and to replace rotted fascia boards behind the gutters. They had insurance that covered a lot of the damage, but they ran into a Catch-22 with these last two projects. They have a mortgage on the property, so the bank is the actual loss payee for insurance. It's reasonable for a bank to meter-out insurance payments along the way to make sure that the money is actually used to repair the property. What happened to Pat and Laura at this stage of the game was a little extreme, though. There is $2500 of insurance money left to pay out. The bank told Pat and Laura that, in order to get the last of that money released to them, they'd have to first repair the floor and replace the bad fascia boards. Pat told them, well, I would, but I need the money to buy the materials to do the work. The bank said sorry, we need the work done first. The mental picture I have is of some punk kid working in the Collateral Review group at this bank. He doesn't care that Pat and Laura have faithfully made their mortgage payments on time for years, that they have clearly cared for their home with pride, that Pat has done good work repairing the home as he was able, or that Laura is sick. For 2500 lousy dollars, this kid was going to hold these folks over a barrel.

Ann and I went to visit. Their home is small, but OK for two people. However, when we visited, we were also introduced to their daughter and her two sons, who were also living in the home with them at the moment. In the aftermath of the storm, her husband left his family. Pat and Laura took them in, and put them up in the FEMA trailer they had in their front yard. Pat hustled to repair their home as quickly as he could, and when it was habitable, he and Laura moved back in and left their daughter and her sons in the trailer. All they had to share was the FEMA trailer bathroom because their bathroom hadn't yet been repaired. Last Fall, Jefferson Parish said enough is enough, and had their trailer removed, forcing mom and the kids into the home with Pat and Laura. Pat got the bathroom fixed, and that's the state we found them in. Ann and I knew that we could fairly easily do the kitchen floor replacement (the total kitchen space measured about 9 x 9), even assuming there was some structural damage we couldn't yet see under the floor. We pitched Hands On, hoping they could find the $500 or so we needed to do this work. They weren't able to fund it, given their current budget, so Ann and I told Davida that we'd fund it. For that amount of money, we'd be able to repair the entire floor and replace the damaged fascia boards outside. We wouldn't be able to replace their kitchen cabinet, which was falling apart, but we told Pat and Laura that we'd do the rest, and would re-install the original cabinet, which would work OK until they could get their money and replace it themselves.

When it came time to do the work during my last week in New Orleans, I was talking to Lana Corll one evening about the project, and, as I talked, she pulled out her checkbook and bought the kitchen cabinet and countertop. Now we've got a complete project. On Thursday, I went over there and did the demolition by myself. Pat worked alongside me all day, removing all of the debris and taking it to the dump. I completed the demo work in the afternoon, and was then able to see the extent of the damage below the floor. I made a materials list and went home. On Friday, Reggie, Emily (a long-term Hands On Volunteer Leader) and I went over there to put it all back together. After replacing some rotten floor joists and repairing a rotted foundation beam, we laid the subfloor plywood and finished the day by installing the underlayment on top of it. We were ready for linoleum. On Saturday, Reggie and I laid the linoleum. On Monday, Erik and Sean, two long-term Hands On volunteers and now construction partners, came in as volunteers to install Lana's cabinet, cut the countertop for their new sink, install the sink, and complete the job inside. In three days, we did the entire inside job. Another Hands On crew went back after I came home and installed the fascias and painted them.

After we finished, I heard from Davida. Laura had emailed her this:

"Hi Davida,

Just a quick note and some photos to show you how great everything is..and so fast! We have had the kitchen sink/faucet and all the plumbing pieces and the vinyl flooring in our living room for a year and a half with nowhere to put them...just not having to climb over it all is such a joy! We have met so many wonderful people because of this. I am not really good at expressing how I really feel and I'm not used to it but please believe me when I say that this has changed our lives forever and given us hope for the future. As soon as we finish up(walls,painting,etc) and call the mortgage people and get them to come out I will let you know what they say. Thank you so much, Laura"

A year-and-a-half.



I came away from this project seeing New Orleans' recovery in a whole new way. I knew we fixed their kitchen. I knew we had removed the last obstacle to getting the rest of the money from the bank. I just didn't know our little-bitty project gave Pat and Laura some closure and peace of mind, and the opportunity to get up in the morning and resume their Katrina-interrupted lives.

I'm pitching Hands On to create a new focus on these smaller projects, which we do particularly well and have such great impact for such a small financial outlay. I would like to see us do a lot more of this work, serving perhaps as a subcontractor of sorts, moving quickly and nimbly from house to house, doing projects that exist all over this city. It would have been easy to overlook this project. There are thousands of homes in New Orleans that need far-greater help than this. But when you think about how many of these projects we could accomplish, how much we could teach volunteers to do, and what a difference they make for folks trying to move beyond Katrina, it seems really clear to me now that we could make a huge difference for a lot of people. Stay tuned.

Ann and I head back for trip number 6 in May.

My love to you all,

David/Dad

The NBA Comes To Town

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,



Following a small hiatus for Mardi Gras, when the City basically shuts down for a week of parades and merriment, it was back to work preparing for another Hands On-coordinated Day of Service project, this time brought to you by NBA Cares and the various sponsors of the All Star Game, which is being held here in New Orleans this year. Ann and I were asked to help Steve get Ms. Gibson's home on Mandeville Street in Gentilly ready for a day of painting and insulating. We spent the first four days of last week with a great team of AmeriCorps/NCCC folks replacing damaged siding, then scraping and caulking the exterior of her home. Inside, we banged up the nail stops around all the wiring and plumbing in advance of insulation. After over a month down here helping, leading, and making friends, Ann returned home on Wednesday, and I stayed on for Friday's service day. We've worked on a number of Service Day-type projects, and the one thing we know about them is that you never know just what will happen. There's always a rock-solid headcount given to us in advance, but it's always a crapshoot as to how many people will actually show up on Work Day. Further, people who volunteer for a half or whole day for these types of projects come with all sorts of skill levels. Many are suits by day, some are VIP's, some are celebrities. You never know just how much actual work you are going to get done until you see the whites of their eyes.

I am very happy to report that we had a very good day at work. After a few opening comments and a fun visit with Bob Lanier (Old Size 21 Shoe himself), we let our team divide itself up into an exterior painting crew and an interior insulating crew. I worked inside, and after showing our folks how to cut and hang insulation, we went to work.

I'm a Pop Culture illiterate, so it was pretty funny meeting the folks we were working with. I was in the back half of the house with my team, which consisted of Temeka and Nikki. Both went quietly and carefully to work, and I started chatting them up with the usual questions--Where are you from? I asked Temeka. Kenner, she told me. Oh, I said, there are a lot of local folks here with us today, and I was surprised because I had assumed there would be lots of folks from other cities, given the NBA had marshalled their players, staff, and sports media to help with this project. So, Temeka, what do you do? She quietly told me "I play for the Los Angeles Sparks". OK, this is going well so far. Sorry, I told her, I don't pay a lot of attention to basketball. Nikki, who works for the WNBA office in New York told me Temeka Johnson was the 2005 WNBA Rookie of the Year. There was lots I apparently didn't know about Temeka, but I did know this: she came to work. She and Nikki banged out an entire room of insulation in the short time they worked on our site. Nice young women, both of them, and hard workers too.

After Temeka and Nikki left, in came our next team, Seth and Bill. Since I'd done so well when it came to knowing everything about Temeka, I kept the same line of questioning. Hey, Seth, what do you do for a living? I'm an actor on an HBO show. Really? Which one? The Wire. Hey, Seth, I've heard of The Wire, but I've never seen it. Sorry about that. Are you a good guy or a bad guy on the show? He just smiled. Turns out even the good guys on The Wire have issues.

I'm batting 1.000, so I turn to Bill. OK, Bill, I give. What do you do?, I ask. I used to play Doogie Howser MD on TV, he says. Get outta town, I say--really? No, he responds. Everyone who had gathered to listen had a good laugh at You Know Whose expense, and then Seth, "Doogie" and I went to work. Like Temeka and Nikki, those two hit it hard for a couple of hours. Bill is actually Taylor Hicks' road manager, and we had a fun chat about life on the road. He doesn't have a home. He's been on the road with Hicks for a year and a half, with very little down time. Riding the wave while they can. Hicks came by at the end of the morning shift, said hi, took a few pictures, then moved on. Even I recognized him, and I've never watched American Idol.

Right around noon, the rains came, and our exterior work came to a halt. We got about half of the house painted before it rained, and we'll finish it ourselves this week. Our interior work didn't suffer, though. They started sending us more and more people to insulate in the afternoon, and by the time we finished, we had teams in every room. We did all of the walls, and 95% of the ceiling. We ran out of ceiling insulation before we were able to finish, but the place looks great.

Like I said earlier, you never can tell how those Service Days are going to turn out. This one was a real winner. A lot of fun, a lot of work accomplished, and another good chance to send the real story of New Orleans home with our volunteers. The NBA and its sponsors picked up all of the cost for this and 9 other projects around the city. We're talking big-ticket stuff, too. Basketball courts and play equipment at schools, paint, insulation, and sheetrock for Ms. Gibson's home and several other homes, etc. And New Orleans gets all of that media exposure, too. Hands On's coordination made it all work.


You can see more pictures of our crews at www.nba.com. Click on the NBA Cares picture at the bottom of the home page. If you watched the All Star Game last night, you could also see us if you caught the NBA Cares commercial.

Bill Goslin, an old Hands On pal of ours, spent the week with us for his fourth visit to help. He's a very capable guy who gets started early and finishes late. It was a lot of fun to see and work with him. I snuck into the bunkhouse and spent Thursday and Friday nights there with him, and then saw him off at 4:30 am on Saturday morning. Pick your next dates down here, Bill. We'll be here with you.

On Sunday, I went back to our old home on First and Dryades to attend church with Rev. Eden. It's always a memorable experience to be in that church with those great people and with the Rev in the pulpit. I caught myself choking up during the service as I watched and thought about his congregants. As the Rev talked about thanking God for the people in our lives who didn't believe in us or held us back in some way, I couldn't help but remember that many of these folks are descendants of slaves. Here we were in that 175-year old church, and these people were thanking God for the tough times in their lives as well as the good times because they fervently believe that they are blessed by both. As I watched them all nod their heads in agreement with the Rev, I also saw their ancestors 100 years ago doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same room. Katrina was just another bump in their long road, the road they know leads to their salvation. If you ever need a dose of humility or if you ever think your troubles are unfairly laid upon you, I have a church I'd like you to visit and a Reverend I'd like you to meet.

My love to all.

David/Dad

A Perfect Project With the Perfect Team

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

Ann and I arrived for our fifth trip to our adopted city on Monday, January 14th. To celebrate the memory and the work of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Hands On and other groups in the city organized a number of work projects. Hands On asked Ann and me to lead a project at Frederick Douglass High School in the Bywater neighborhood of the Upper Ninth Ward. The project was to transform an empty, ugly portion of the schoolyard into a 1000 square foot deck that was to be dedicated to those seniors who had successfully completed their test requirements for graduation. The space would become theirs, and serve as a point of pride for them and a tangible symbol for younger students. While we were en route to New Orleans on the 14th, a team of volunteers dug and poured the footings, so when we showed up for work on Tuesday, they were complete and ready for us to begin framing. After completing the design and getting a feel for the layout and the sequence of work, we were unceremoniously rained out on Wednesday when a couple inches of rain turned the yard into a lake, and gave us a better look at the challenge ahead. We used Thursday and Friday as our days to frame the entire substructure in preparation for a mass of one-day volunteers to show up on Saturday and again on Monday to lay down the decking and complete the job. A team of students from Wellesley College picked up hammers for the first time in their young lives and set about, with the help of Reggie and Ally (a new and very capable long-term volunteer) to install 204 joist hangers (Simpson LUS26's for you fastener junkies) on the beams we then hung to the posts we attached to the footings. Very early Saturday morning, after another night of heavy rains, we got the word that our project was canceled for the day, so we moved inside to support a large mural painting project for the school. Again, the yard was completely under water.

It turned out that the Saturday rain-out was meant to be. At the pace we were moving, we most likely would have completed the deck on Saturday, leaving us without much to do on Monday, the other scheduled service day. On Sunday, a large group of Kaiser Permanente employees arrived for a week's work with Hands On. Ann and I were lucky enough to have a team of their folks volunteer to do the deck with us. We went right to work installing the joists, and watched with great interest as this team of folks, many of whom did not know each other before an earlier visit to help in New Orleans, quickly began to work together. Before our morning break, it was very apparent that this was going to be a very productive and fun group to work with. Some of them had no building experience whatsoever, and some had very good skills. Soon, we weren't able to tell the experienced from the unexperienced. Their willingness to work (indeed, their insistence at being super-productive), their individual and collective sense of humor, and their uncanny ability to perform individual tasks that wove together seamlessly into this big job gave this project legs very early on. Nic, Brad, Doc, Teri, Jackie, Joe, Shawn, Big Ed, Sue, Marina, Rod and Russ, together with Ann, me, and Mary Ellen Bartkowski (our newest New Orleanian who moved from Chicago to take a teaching position here after volunteering with her sister over Spring Break 2007) formed one very cool team. Over the course of the day, they set the goal to finish the entire main deck surface, leaving only steps to be completed later in the week. They insisted on working until the sun went down, and we walked away at dusk with just a few rows left to deck. The plan was for Ann and me to spend part of Tuesday screwing around figuring out how and where to put the steps, and then to have our team come back on Wednesday to finish up.

First thing Tuesday morning, Ann and I were back on-site looking at the deck. A few of our team members had been asked to pitch in with mural work still going on inside the school, and, around 9 am, a couple of them filtered out to see what was up with us. Mural painting wasn't getting it done for them, and they asked if they could just finish up the few rows of decking that were left over from yesterday. Since the mural project was going on without them, we said OK. As the morning wore on, a few more folks filtered out, and were tickled to re-join the effort. They finished the decking by themselves while Ann figured out the step plan. Brad asked what else he could do, and Ann and I ruefully informed him that we had two massive concrete piers that used to hold large steel poles that held up an old natural gas line that crossed our deck space that needed to be removed. Brad set about to breaking one of them up with a sledgehammer, Jackie and Teri and others jumped in to haul off the broken concrete, and Jackie and Teri then broke the other pier up themselves. Problem solved. Mission Creep then set in. After seeing the deck area under water, we developed the idea of a couple of smaller decks that we could build next to the large structure, to create a useful space and a good transition from the deck to the sidewalk, covering an area that would otherwise flood during heavy rains. OK, said our teammates--we're on it. So, they dug footings and set about to frame these two smaller decks. Then someone said, hey--what if one of the seniors was confined to a wheelchair? Shouldn't we find some way for them to use the deck? No argument there, so we designed a wheelchair ramp to be built at one end of the deck, with stairs at the other end.

Over the course of the rest of the week, we built the two smaller decks, a set of 16' long stairs which also serve as bleacher-type seating, and the best damn wheelchair ramp you've ever seen. The team simply decided we'd get it all done before they left on Saturday, so work they did. As the final structures came together, part of the team found some surplus gravel left over from another project at the front of the school, and they thought it would look nice if we used it to adorn the foot of the stairs. Before they finished, they had done that, but also created paths from the deck stairs to the stairs leading into the school, and to the sidewalks that abutted the deck space. Straight lines, raked completely smooth, right angles, etc.

Are you getting what I'm saying? This team just would not quit. As the week progressed, it gelled into this absolutely-rock-solid unit, gaining momentum and ownership of a very cool project. On Thursday afternoon, Joe and Doc suggested that we find a way to get the seniors outside on Friday to dedicate the deck. The principal thought that was a good idea, so at 1pm on Friday, the seniors came out and went up there onto that deck (which feels solid enough to land a helicopter on). We exchanged some high-fives, took a few pictures, and Doc spoke for our group when he told them that we didn't just come here to build a deck, we came here to build a deck for them. It was a pretty cool moment for those seniors, and a very proud moment for what had become the best team I've ever worked with.

OK--we had some fun along the way, too. For Healthcare professionals, these folks sure knew how to let their hair down. I admit I was expecting white wine ("just a half-glass for me, please") and alfalfa sprouts on whole wheat. Instead, it was pitchers of beer and fried catfish. I'd better not say anything more. I would happily tag along with them to any party they decided to crash, though.

It was sure hard to say goodbye to our team over the weekend, along with their leader, John Edmiston, and all of the other Kaiser people who came and threw themselves into their work with purpose and joy. We miss you.

A postscript about Kaiser Permanente: Kaiser has no presence in the State of Louisiana, yet sent these folks, professionals all, here at corporate expense simply to help. It's not uncommon at all to have corporations pitch in on volunteer projects that allow them to show the world how great they are, to burnish their image, to create a media campaign. There's nothing wrong with that, but Kaiser just sent these people because they felt that helping was part of their mission. There aren't any Kaiser billboards up in New Orleans showing their people swinging hammers, with a tie-in to selling health insurance. They just came because they could. God Bless 'em for that. And God Bless 'em too for sending along the very best team I've ever worked with on a volunteer project anywhere. I've worked with some really fantastic people--Troy, Itokawa, Brian, the students from the Juilliard School, VCU, the University of Florida, and Appalachian State, but this group from Kaiser was like having every one of those All Stars on the same team at the same time. The week we spent at Douglass together will never be duplicated. And that deck will probably stand long after the school falls down around it. And those seniors will always remember the day in their young lives when they realized that people who don't even know them care about them and did something for them just because they could.

Did I mention how much I love those Kaiser folks?

That's it for now. The weather is very unsettled here. Makes me miss the predictably-fatal heat of August.

My love to all, and Happy Mardi Gras,

David/Dad

Thanksgiving, Indeed.

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from Olympia,

Ann and I ended our 4th trip to New Orleans yesterday morning and headed home for the holidays. Our last week there was both satisfying and fun. After seeing Kelsey, Stephanie, and Jessie DuVall off over the weekend, we went back to work on Monday at Miss Peggy Severe's home on Leonidas Street. Ann and I did the telephone installation work we'd mistakenly left out of the original plan, and performed other miscellaneous tasks in the effort to finish her place by the holidays. It's at the stage now where the last of the hand-coped baseboards are going up, the cabinets are being installed, and sinks and toilets are coming to life. Soon, we'll watch her FEMA trailer head off into the sunset, just like Miss Jessie's. I can't help but wonder just what that next phase is like for folks like Miss Peggy and Miss Jessie. After months of seeing our people, feeding our people, and watching them work, one day they will look around and we'll be gone, moved on to the next home. Ann and I have seen Miss Jessie several times since we've finished our work (most recently on Saturday, when we hung a few mirrors and assembled some new furniture for her), and it just seems like it might be a lonely time once we've all left. Kind of like having a baby. All the excitement and anticipation, then the actual event and all the oohs and aahs, and then home to care for the newborn, all alone. That solitude after all the happy commotion can be deafening.

On Tuesday, Ann and I went with Rose Romero, a really wonderful long-term volunteer who has shed sunlight wherever she has worked, to the Lazarus Project, which is a group home for HIV/AIDS patients run by the Archdiocese of New Orleans. We spent the day chatting, playing games, walking together to the local market for goodies, and so forth. These folks are all alone, each of them, with very little or no outside contact with friends or relatives. It reminded me that their need for some companionship has nothing to do with Katrina, and there are places like the Lazarus Project everywhere in this country. I'm going to find a place here in Olympia and get hooked up. Having and taking the time to spend with them is the only qualification.

On Wednesday, a group of volunteers from Chicago Cares, the Chicago-based Hands On affiliate, arrived to work with us for the day. Ann and I got to take 8 of them to Second Harvest, the mother of the food banks in southern Louisiana. They are the wholesaler, if you will, for all food donations for the region. They receive, sort, process, repack, and ship tons of food to the multiple food banks in the region. They've been in business for 25 years. In the 23 years before Katrina, they processed and shipped 14 million pounds of food. In the two years since Katrina, they've handled 80 million pounds. Do that math. There's lots of need down here, and they've increased their activity level nearly 40-fold. Our team did their part that day, as we processed 16,000 pounds of food. It was one of those really good days with volunteers, where the enthusiasm is infectious, and everyone pulls together to do as much as they can, getting more energy as they work harder and harder. A really fun day with a good group I hope to see down here again.

On Thursday, we helped lead a group of 40 volunteers who were attending the National League of Cities convention that had come to town. Our volunteers were city councilpeople and mayors from cities large and small. I was really excited to work with these people because they are influential people, and the chance to talk about the condition of the city, the snail-pace of its recovery, and the quantity of work yet to begin was a rare opportunity to broadcast a clear message to folks who can make a difference when they return home. We helped to refurbish a stadium owned by the New Orleans Recreation District, one of the few that have been reopened since the storm. Hopefully, we sent them all home with a better understanding of the state of our city. I was pretty surprised that a number of them I spoke with just had no idea how things were down here.

On Friday, Ann and I returned to Miss Peggy's home to work. Since Miss Peggy was heading off to Texas for Thanksgiving with family, she spent most of the night, and all of the morning making a complete Thanksgiving dinner for everyone at Hands On that she could invite. Erika and Petra set up a makeshift dinner table with plywood and sawhorses, Miss Peggy deep-fried a Louisiana-rubbed turkey on the stove of her FEMA trailer, served it with her special oyster dressing, gumbo, greens, and lots of other stuff I can't remember to list, then finished it off with sweet-potato pie tarts she made for each of us. I've had many really wonderful Thanksgiving dinners, but that one occupies a special place in my heart.

I want to welcome a new member to my routing list, Captain Andreas Hatch of the US Army. Captain Hatch is currently serving in Iraq, and contacted Hands On after he found us on the Web. He is coming home in the Spring, and is coming to New Orleans to work with us. His email address is thejudochop@hotmail.com. Feel free to drop him a note and send your own good wishes. Captain Hatch, I wish you a quick and safe return home, and can't wait to swing a hammer with you in our adopted City soon.

I want to send special thanks to some folks who made this trip particularly special. Thanks to Mary Ellen and Reggie, who invited us to share their home and treated us like family. Thanks to Lana Corll, one of our pals from the Loyola College of Law, who tossed us the keys to her truck so we'd have transportation whenever we needed it. Lana also showered us with her friendship, attention, and New Orleans personality. Can't wait to be there for Mardi Gras with you, Lana. Thanks to Brent at Batdorf and Bronson Coffee Roasters, who loaded us up with Omar's Organic for us and for the troops. Finally, thanks to Liz, Sean, Kudi, Stephanie, Tim, Tim, Nic, Brianna, Dallas and everyone else at Hands On, who go at it day after day, mostly without a break to keep this train rolling. You all have special spots in our hearts for the work you do and the care you do it with. We love you all.

Ann and I are headed back in early January for another month on the ground. We are still looking for a matching corporate sponsor for the Tool Fund, and if you know of any organization that wants to help, please let me know. We've collected $9,900 as of today, and we are looking for a corporation that wants to participate in this Reverse-Matching grant. Usually it's the corporation that gets the ball rolling, challenging individual donors to match. We've done the matching part already. Now all we need is a business to match the money and we'll put $20,000 worth of tools in the Tool Shed. It's a chance to facilitate a whole bunch of good in one of our own American cities. Every time one of our folks picks up one of those tools, that gift gives all over again. Miss Peggy, Miss Jessie, Miss Rose, Mr. Gibson, and people like them are the beneficiaries. And so are all of us who have pulled together to demonstrate that we haven't forgotten.

My love to all. Happy Thanksgiving.

David/Dad

Life in the Crescent City...

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

It has been an interesting couple of weeks here in New Orleans. I arrived on October 30th, having said goodbye to Ann in Houston when she got off the plane to work at the Houston Quilt Festival. I checked into our new bunkhouse on the corner of Napoleon and Camp that Tuesday afternoon, and on Wednesday went to work with Reggie at Miss Evelyn's home on Baronne Street, just a block from our old bunkhouse on First and Dryades. Reggie and I attempted to set a brick foundation pillar to replace one that had crumbled at the corner of this large two-story home. Brick-layers we aren't, but we gave it our best, and spent the day jacking the home up, setting temporary pillars to keep the house above the new pillar, and then went to laying bricks. At the end of the day, we had set all of the bricks that would fit. Over the next two days, however, the house settled on the temporary pillars, and then set about to compress the new pillar we had laid, basically destroying it. First time I've laid bricks, and last time I'll probably be asked to do it here.

Wednesday evening was a lot more successful. Ann sent along a bunch of candy bars for us to give to kids in our old Central City neighborhood, and Reggie, Mary Ellen, Miranda and I bought more that afternoon, then headed into the Hood after dark with 100 full-sized candy bars (as Ann and I like to say "There's nothing FUN about Fun-Sized"). Down Dryades Street we went, and found dozens of happy, decked-out kids with their moms and dads, enjoying Halloween evening in what most people consider one of the roughest neighborhoods in New Orleans. I've always hated that description about my old neighborhood here in New Orleans because it paints a one-dimensional picture of life here in Central City. As if there are no families, no kids, no elderly, no disabled people here, just criminals. The truth is, this place is full of decent human beings scrapping to make a go of it in the poorest section of a decimated city. Take a look at the pictures and you tell me who are the real victims of crime here in New Orleans. The four of us had the best Halloween night we'd ever had, and none of us even got any candy. Second and Dryades was one of the happiest places in the city that day.

The week ended with a bang. On Thursday, the 1,543 pounds of vegetable and flower seeds that were donated to the People of New Orleans by the great folks at the Ed Hume Seed Company arrived at Parkway Partners, a non-profit here that manages over 40 community gardens among their other good deeds. They agreed to be the agent for the 56 boxes of seeds that the UPS Foundation generously shipped at no charge. Off they went to a number of organizations that gratefully lined up to receive and use these seeds. An edible schoolyard at a middle school will be full of the Hume's generosity, as will community gardens and other spaces throughout the city. Jeff and Ann Hume: thanks a lot to you, your company, and to your people.


The fun just keeps on coming. On Friday, I was working for our team-leader, Liz Russell, at Miss Peggy Severe's home when we got a phone call from Miss Jessie Washington, the woman whose home Liz, Sean, and Erik had rebuilt over the past 8 months. I had worked in Miss Jessie's home in March when we had begun the process of un-doing what a bunch of half-assed contractors had done before running off with Miss Jessie's money. In August, Ann and I had helped to install ceramic floor tiles and provide other finishing touches. Miss Jessie had moved back into her home after we left in August. On Friday, Miss Jessie's excited call was to let us know that the folks were there to take her FEMA trailer away. I hopped into the car and raced to Gentilly to be there with her. This was no small honor for me, and a very big day for Miss Jessie. There were two guys there disconnecting the trailer from water and sewer, preparing to haul it away. I spoke with one of them as they worked, and he told me that they were jobbers paid by FEMA to haul these away. It's a big business these days, and more and more trailers are being removed. FEMA has been squeezing all of these jobbers along the way, reducing the per-trailer fee they pay to guys who have given up their other jobs to take this work on. The trailers must be delivered to a 500-acre site in Livonia, LA, which is past Baton Rouge, over 100 miles away. These guys now get $300 per trailer to disconnect, clean up, haul, and deliver these trailers. The lead guy told me the fuel alone now costs him over $100 per trailer. FEMA's got the needle in their arms now, though, so on they go, averaging two trailers a day. The trailers are stored at this giant site, and there are no plans to sell them yet, because of the formaldehyde problem inside them. No problem letting human beings in New Orleans live in them, but no way they can sell them once they have been removed. Go figure. Our tax dollars at work.

Ann, Kelsey, Stephanie (one of Kelsey's college roommates), Spencer, and Jessie DuVall (a pal of ours from Olympia) arrived on Sunday, and I was sure happy to see them. The new bunkhouse is what it is, but what it didn't feel like to me was home until they all arrived. Our new home is gender-segregated, and feels very different from the old, one-big-room bunkhouse we had on First and Dryades. On Monday, we split up to work different jobs. Spencer and I got to help lead a team of volunteers to paint the exterior of Miss Bird's house on the corner of Apple and Mistletoe Streets, Ann went to Miss Peggy's home to help finish bathroom tiles, Jessie went to the Singleton Charter School library, and Kelsey and Stephanie went to the Louisiana Children's Museum to help. On Monday evening, we were all guests for dinner at Miss Jessie's restored home, and enjoyed a great evening of New Orleans food and hospitality. The next day, we all went back to Miss Jessie's to provide the final tweaks to her new home--closet shelves, caulking in the bathroom, touch-up paint, curtains, etc. We banged out most of the punch-list that day, and Ann, Kelsey and I went back on Wednesday to finish up. It's all done now, our first Hands On-completed home, and it is a real joy to behold. Miss Jessie is now unpacking in her new-old home, having seen it completely ruined by 6 feet of water from the London Avenue Canal that broke a few blocks from her home, having been kept away from her home for 7 weeks by the authorities, having come back from her daughter's home in Atlanta to find her home destroyed, having used her own savings and what little insurance settlement she received to hire contractors who hosed her with really crappy work that she paid full-rate for, and then having found Hands On, with Liz, Sean, Erik, and a slew of volunteers who came day after day to provide free labor along with materials to make her house a home again. I can't properly describe what happened here, but Miss Jessie calls it "Angels who showed up to help me just because they could". That about covers it. There is something really significant going on down here. This place has been the center of so much goodwill for so many people from so many angles. Volunteers have come from all over the world to help people who have been abandoned by our government. Yet, it wasn't just the people who received the help that benefitted. Those who were helped and those who provided the help (both physical and financial) are all feeling the benefits. Ask Kelsey. Once you have done this work, you understand what I am talking about. I want all of you who have financially contributed to feel this too. Together, we are doing something important down here for our fellow Americans. By doing this just because we can, we have become part of New Orleans. Believe me, that's a really good thing.

Spencer went home on Wednesday, and we saw Kelsey, Stephanie, and Jessie off this weekend. We miss you guys. Kelsey and Stephanie especially added a lot of life and laughter to our bunkhouse.

That's more than enough for now. I'll leave you with this: most estimates now say that over two-thirds of New Orleanians have returned. That is certainly good news, but it comes with the reminder that over 150,000 citizens of this great city still haven't returned home. During the recent wildfire tragedy in Southern California, over 1500 homes were destroyed, and 7 people were killed. In New Orleans alone, over 200,000 homes were destroyed, and over 1500 killed. Yet, the White House staff was callous enough to internally-brand their image-scrubbing response to the California disaster as their "Anti-Katrina". Really.

I've got an idea for them if they want a project to help them scrub their post-Katrina image with. How about showing up here in New Orleans?

Love to all,

David/Dad

August Week 5

Hello Everyone, and Greetings From Olympia,

Ann and I arrived home on Saturday evening, September 1st. Our last week in New Orleans was a good one. We started out with the wedding of Caliopie Georgiadis and Adam Walsh, two great folks who met while volunteering down here last fall. I could take up the rest of this email with great stories about these two, but let me abbreviate by telling you that they came down here to be married because New Orleans meant that much to them. The wedding and reception--well, Ann and I have been to a few weddings, but we've never been to one this fun. It was a great evening to celebrate their love and our love for each other and for our adopted city. We ate a heart-stopping meal of New Orleans' delights, danced the night away first to Washboard Chazz and his trio, then to our headliners the Soul Rebels. As a gift for Caliopie and Adam, Ann spent part of the summer making a quilt commemorating their commitment to New Orleans and their Hands On experience, and she gave it to them at the reception. Everyone who had worked in New Orleans with Caliopie and Adam had a space on the quilt to sign and express sentiments, and it made for a very special gift. Ann and I went to bed before our younger, more late-night-capable compatriots closed the place down. Needless to say, Ann and I were up earlier the next morning.

We went back to work at Miss Jessie's in Gentilly on Monday, and finished the floor
and bathroom tiling on Tuesday. Eric installed her toilet, bathroom sink, and shower, which all work now for the first time since six feet of water inundated her home after the storm. Ann, Sean, Jordan and I finished tiling her family room, and Sean then began and nearly finished installing her Pergo flooring in the other spaces of her home. On Tuesday afternoon, she came into her family room when we were busy installing tile and told me, "This home is shouting. I AM SHOUTING." It was the most poignant moment I've had here in New Orleans. There she was, admiring her nearly-new home, two years after being routed from it and then kept from returning to it for two months after the storm, left only to guess the condition of her home and her life in New Orleans. She told us that her first look at her flooded home in October of 2005 was devastating to her. She found her couch in her kitchen and her refrigerator in her living room. Nothing was spared. Everything was ruined. She persevered, and here I was with her to see her home nearly completed at the hands of a bunch of volunteers who might work slowly, but goddamnit, they do good work.

On Monday night, Ann and I took Miss Jessie and three of our fellow Hands On volunteers to dinner at Commander's Palace. For those of you who haven't been to New Orleans, Commander's Palace is a world-class restaurant located in the Garden District and known for its impeccable cuisine and wonderful service. Reggie and Amanda, two Hands On volunteers who've been there since before Ann and I showed up last September now work at Commander's Palace, and joined us for dinner with Mary Ellen Bartkowski, the teacher I told you about last week. The complimentary appetizers flowed, the entrees were superb, the desserts were way over the top, and the evening was wonderful. Miss Jessie's first words to us the next morning were "I haven't enjoyed myself so much in I can't tell you how long." She then went to the doctor because her back had been bothering her immensely. The doctor diagnosed her with shingles, due to stress. Her home is nearly complete, the 2nd anniversary of the storm comes, and boom--the stress finds a way to do its damage.

Wednesday was the 2nd anniversary of the hurricane, and the city was full of remembrances. We weren't very productive that day. First, we attended the dedication of the Katrina memorial to the unidentified victims of the storm. Following that, we headed over to another gathering at Jackson Square which Arnie Fielkow, the President of the City Council, invited us to attend so he could thank Hands On publicly. On our way to that gathering, we were stopped by a police roadblock at an intersection near Interstate 10. We waited for several red-light cycles before we asked the police why we were waiting. He told us the President was coming through, and we'd have to wait a few minutes. The four of us looked at each other, and then all jumped out of our van like clowns jumping out of their wagon at a circus. We were right there to give our President our very best salute and take some pictures. Emma looked at us and said "Hey--we all have our Hands On shirts on--". We looked down at our shirts, and, without any discussion or hesitation, immediately pulled our shirts off and turned them inside-out. After a good laugh, we knew we were ready to "salute" the President without bringing any disrepute to our organization. The police officer, who had refused to let us through for the previous 10 minutes, saw what was up and immediately waved us through the intersection and told us to be on our way. We arrived on time for the Jackson Square event, but damn, we missed seeing the President. For those of you who saw him on TV when he was in New Orleans, you saw more of him than the rest of us in New Orleans did. Amazing how he can make himself look so among the people when he is so hidden. Mission Accomplished.

We closed Wednesday by attending Anderson Cooper's CNN show, which was shown live that day. He's been down here 25 times since the storm, and has continued to keep his viewers informed on the post-Katrina conditions in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. If you missed the show, you can catch it on CNN.com.

On Thursday, Ann, Reggie, Jordan, Kudi and I went back to finish the siding on Miss Rose's home. Except for an error estimating the materials we'd need to complete the job (thanks to your author), the day went perfectly. Kelsey, Ann and I will be back to bang up the 15 final pieces of siding in November. After work, Reggie and I went to Miss Irma's home on Stroelitz Street in Mid City. Her home is directly across the street from the 17th Street Canal and took about 6 feet of water. Miss Irma is on the custodial staff at the Audubon Charter School, and we met her when we helped Miss Mary Ellen get her classroom set up a couple of weeks ago. Her home is finished and looks wonderful. Reg and I provided good-neighbor services--unpacked her refrigerator, hung a TV, stuff like that. It was pretty amazing to look out her front door and see that canal, right there.

Louisiana is one of the states that participates in Powerball. The jackpot exceeded $300 million while we were there, and Reggie, Ann and I started buying tickets as the jackpot built. The talk among us was what we'd do to help people in need when we won. That alone was well worth the buck we each spent for each drawing. Reggie has a complete plan for what we'd do. He talked about it like it was a certainty, asking key members of his to-be strike force if they were "in or out". Who could be "out" when Reggie asked? We were, of course, all "in" and ready to go. We didn't win this time, but just you wait and see what happens when we do.

I always have a tough time writing to y'all after I've left New Orleans, because I'm no longer among the really great people who live there. I feel really at home in New Orleans, especially when I'm there with Ann. It's a very special place to me now that I've spent 3 of the previous 12 months there. It's not that I really know New Orleans, or that I understand everything about it. It's that New Orleans has gotten into my blood in a way a city never has before in my life. I love Portland, but when I say that, what I really mean is I love the people I know in Portland. There's a big difference between those two positions, I have learned. Portland to me is the people we know who live or who have lived there--Bryan, Kelsey and Spencer, Kevan, Mike and Catherine, Bobby, all of the Spiekers, the Follen family, the great people who educated me at Jesuit (some of them were teachers), the Morford family, Ed Israel, all of the great folks I worked with at CTR and Stoel Rives, and so forth. But, as I spent my three months in New Orleans this year, I learned that there's a difference between loving the people who live somewhere, and loving somewhere itself. There's something about the rhythm of New Orleans which adds to the deep feelings I've developed for many of the people down there.

A happy postscript to last week's email: Davida Finger, the attorney who runs the Katrina Clinic at Loyola Law School, went back to appeal the case of the blind woman who was told she couldn't have an additional three weeks in her FEMA trailer. This time she won. Three more weeks to stay in her FEMA trailer so she can look for permanent housing she can afford before she is evicted. I sure do regret not having had a chance to visit the President when he was down here last week. Here we were, doing what we do well, and I missed the chance to ask him to do what he could do with ease. He could wave a hand and make sure that needy, disabled, elderly, poor people weren't kicked out of their shitty-assed FEMA trailers just because people were tired of looking at them. I really regret missing the opportunity to speak with him. I was having lunch with Miss Jessie in her FEMA trailer. He was having lunch on Air Force One. I couldn't ignore the irony that we helped pay for both her trailer and his aircraft. His lunch probably cost more than Miss Jessie's FEMA trailer, but Miss Jessie's gumbo beat the hell out of whatever they served him up there. Pisses me off that we paid for his lunch, but Miss Jessie would not hear of us helping to buy the ingredients she turned into many great meals for us. January 20, 2009....January 20, 2009....I keep repeating it in the hope the day will come sooner that way.

OK. Enough ranting. Ann, Kelsey and I head on back down to New Orleans at the end of next month. Miss Jessie's place ought to be about finished by then, if not before. It's going to be a very good day when she watches her FEMA trailer roll away, and she turns to enter her home and close the door.

One nail, one screw, one board at a time. It's better for me to concentrate on what's getting done than it is to spend time steaming about what isn't getting done.

To those of you who contributed to the Tool Fund, and to any of you still considering making a contribution, thanks again. The folks at Hands On really can't believe how generous you have been. Let me tell you, they are in serious need of some new tools. Can't wait to have new batteries for those screwguns, and enough ladders to allow every crew that needs them to have them available for work.

My love to all of you.

David/Dad

Chillin' in New Orleans

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

Just kidding about chillin'. It's still plenty hot down here.

Ann arrived here in New Orleans after a red-eye from Seattle on Wednesday the 15th. She promptly went to work with me at the Audubon Charter School, putting the finishing touches on Miss Mary Ellen's 4th-5th grade classroom just in time for her
students to show up for their first day at school on Thursday. Mary Ellen is a very resourceful person, and found a family that had saved 70 cases of books from the dumpster after the storm. Lots of textbooks, lots of workbooks, and lots of literature. Reggie and I loaded all of this stuff into our truck on Monday, and Mary Ellen and I sorted it by grade level and relevance on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Ann and I dropped off several cases of 1st-grade-relevant stuff to Maria Kramer for her class at the James Singleton Charter School right around the corner from our old bunkhouse in Central City, then took the remaining surplus the Audubon School couldn't use over to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore on Royal Street. They set up an end-base with all of it on display, inviting kids and their parents to take whatever they wanted. Nothing went into the landfill save for the case or so of miscellaneous stuff that sustained water damage during the flood.

Once school got started, Ann and I returned to Miss Jessie Washington's home in Gentilly to lay floor tile. Miss Jessie's home is just 5 or 6 blocks from the London Avenue Canal, which broke very close to Lombard Street where she lives. Her home took water to the top of her windows. She got out on the Saturday before the storm hit, staying first with her sister in Natchez, MS, then with her grown kids in Atlanta for the next 8 months. No one was allowed back into Gentilly for two months after the storm, so Miss Jessie had no idea what was in store for her. Once she returned, she rolled up her sleeves and went to work. Using her insurance proceeds and her own savings, she hired contractors to help rebuild. Hands On got involved in March when we heard about her from her good friend Miss Peggy Severe, for whom we were doing work. Miss Peggy told us that the
"contractors" had only done part of the work they were supposed to do, and the part they did was so bad as to be unusable. Of course, they'd been paid for far more than they actually completed. We went in and saw a real mess. Much of the drywall had to be removed and replaced because different sheet thicknesses had been installed on the same wall or ceiling, sheets were sagging from the ceilings because the workers apparently had no idea how to actually hit a roof joist with a screw, and the cuts around outlets, switch boxes and vents looked like they'd been cut with a chainsaw by a guy with Coke-bottle-thick eyeglasses. Sean and Liz led the crew to fix and/or replace the drywall. Following that, they taped, mudded, and textured the walls, and we then painted her home inside and out a couple of weeks ago. I have attached before-and-after pictures showing the interior of her home. It's with no small amount of pride and happiness that we all are working in there whenever we can now, as we can begin to see the end in sight. Miss Jessie insists on fixing us a hot lunch every day we are there, and I can happily report that its awfully easy to get used to gumbo, crawfish etouffee, candied sweet potatoes and sweet tea for lunch.

Anyway, Ann, Sean, and I laid the floor tiles she purchased for her bathroom, utility closet, and kitchen, and we will do the same in her family room this coming week.
Ann provided the precision and care to make perfect tile cuts, Sean, Ann and I laid 'em down with care, and Reggie came on his days off and did the grouting, and the floors look pretty darn spectacular. Every day, Miss Jessie spends more time in the house with us, and you can tell how deep her pride in her home and in us runs. We are angels, she told us. I understand what she is saying, knowing that before we came, all she had was a mess caused by unscrupulous-at-worst/dumbshit-at-best workers who neither knew nor cared how to do a job correctly. We showed up, and all we've
done is really first-class work just to help someone out. This is the essence of the value of the experience for us HONO people. One day pretty soon, Miss Jessie is going to get to watch her wretched FEMA trailer drive off down Lombard Street and disappear. Ann and I will be there with her when that day comes.

Two quick stories about how cold people can be, then one quick story about resourcefulness under extreme conditions:

1) Ann and I sat down with Davida Finger, a young, energetic, committed attorney who runs the Katrina Clinic at Loyola Law School. She told us she is used to losing when she goes to court to try to help people with all manner of problems related to the storm, but this one tops 'em all.

Jefferson Parish sits on the Westbank of the Mississippi, and is a hodgepodge of small communities and unincorporated spaces. The powers-that-be are trying to get rid of the FEMA trailers once and for all, and their leaders have decided the best way to do that is to set a hard-and-fast deadline. Davida represented a woman who has pretty much gone blind from macular degeneration in the two years since the storm, and whose daughter died in the aftermath of Katrina. This lady had been ordered to vacate her trailer by a certain date, but she had been unable to find another place to live. So, into court she and Davida went on Tuesday to ask for a three-week extension. Not an indefinite extension, not a one-year extension---a three-week extension. The woman brought her late daughter's ashes into court with her. She brought them in the cardboard box the Coroner gave her because she can't afford an urn. She explained to the judge that she had gone blind, that she had lost her daughter to the storm, and that she wasn't trying to take advantage of the system. She just needed some extra time, because finding affordable housing here in the New Orleans area is damn near impossible. Did the judge grant her request for a three-week extension? Nope. A rule is a rule. Get out. Next case.

2) Davida had also asked Ann and I to visit the home of Mr. Miller, an 80-year old man who lives in a FEMA trailer outside his flood-damaged home in Marrero, also in Jefferson Parish. Immediately after the storm, lenders were asked to voluntarily suspend collection activities against mortgage clients whose ability to make their payments on-time had been impacted by their evacuation, loss of employment, use of any surplus funds for survival, etc. Most lenders complied. And we are just talking suspension. We aren't talking about forgiveness of any debt, just ignoring the fact that payments were late. In most cases, the lenders who cooperated required all late payments to be made up in a year. Imagine that. However, Mr. Miller's mortgage lender chose not to participate in the forebearance program, and Mr. Miller was given no allowance for late payments. The lender then foreclosed on his mortgage, but they charitably agreed to rent him his own home, I'm sure out of Christian selflessness and charity. They brought in some half-assed contractor to repair his flooded home. The house isn't habitable, and Mr. Miller is still living in his trailer. Inside we found a disconnected furnace and central a/c unit, "replaced" with two in-window air conditioners, one of which operated, but wasn't cold, and the other connected to an outlet that shorted out and threw sparks when I plugged in the a/c unit to test it. The bathtub walls had cracks in them through which you could see inside, there was mold growing up several walls, and the hose bib in the back was leaking, resulting in a $100 water bill for Mr. Miller last month. I fixed the hose bib the other day, but the lender scoffed at the remainder of our report, telling Davida that "I am losing faith in our ability to satisfy Mr. Miller. Our understanding that the window unit installs were the end of the complaints, was apparently not the case. I think that at this point, you should advise Mr. Miller to look for other housing since he is so dissatisfied with this house. We cannot continue to focus so much of our time, money, and energy on a house that is a losing proposition for our company anyway. I am sympathetic with his situation, but not the way he has handled the relationship with our company. At this point it appears we will never have this house in the condition he expects." That is a direct, verbatim quote.

Who are these people?

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OK, the resourcefulness story:

St. Bernard Parish lies immediately east of the Lower Ninth Ward. If you check the map, you will see the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet ("Mr. GO" to the locals), a man-made navigational channel built by the Corps in the 60's as a shortcut from the river to the Gulf. At the river end of Mr. GO is the Industrial Canal, whose floodwalls failed when the storm surge funneled to it by Mr. GO hit the end of the line. Lower Ninth, poof. Along the way up Mr. GO, though, that massive storm surge exceeded 20 feet, and along the way up the line kicked aside the levees that were to protect St. Bernard Parish. People in places like Chalmette saw the surge coming. It took less than 10 minutes to make it all the way across St. Bernard Parish, and absolutely inundated everything in its path. The family whose story I'm telling had taken in a number of pets for people who evacuated or were otherwise gone. They saw the surge coming, went to the top of their home, and waited for the 9 minutes they had for the surge to hit. Because they weren't going to abandon the animals, they were all unable to evacuate together. The first rescuers took the women, leaving Mark (the dad) and Justin (the 19-year old son) with the animals. After they separated, there was no communication between them. Father, son and pets survived 11 days in the muck of water and oil burped up by the refinery near their home. Forget food. It was water they needed to survive (oh, yeah, it was nearly 100 degrees during the days immediately after the storm). The guys figured out that if they swam to their neighbors' homes, they could find fresh water in the tanks of upstairs toilets ("2.5 gallons per", Mark will tell you with some authority). By siphoning that water, then swimming back to their home, they lived and were rescued and reunited with their loved ones 11 days after the wall of water hit.

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It's our last week here in New Orleans. We're going to try to finish the tiling at Miss Jessie's, and wrap up some unfinished siding work on the other two sides of Miss Rose's house. We've been spoiled by the generosity of the good people at Wyndham Resorts, who set us up in a one-bedroom unit gratis for the entire 33 days of my stay, and by our friends at Batdorf and Bronson Coffee Roasters, who made sure we had Omar's Organic Blend every morning of our stay. We've also been inspired and humbled by the generosity of so many of you great folks who have contributed financially to the work that is going on down here. The Tool Fund money you contributed (about $7500) will be spent soon, and that will not only make a tremendous contribution to our ability to do more work, it also serves as inspiration to the people we have been helping. I've heard from several of them that it means so much to them personally to know that you know there is still so much work to be done. Hope sustains many people in this American city of ours, and every single person I have spoken to down here about all of you who have helped has told me to tell you how grateful and blessed they are to know you care.

My love to you all.

David/Dad

Ah--Now I know what "Heat Index" means....

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

It's warm here in New Orleans. During the week, it got steadily hotter every day, with the temp hitting 98, and the Heat Index hitting 113. I really don't have any idea how the Heat Index is calculated, but let me tell you, it's accurate. I have never, and I mean never, been in a hotter place on this Earth as I was Thursday afternoon outside Miss Rose's house. While you are busy, you don't notice it, but heaven help you if you stop for one second to think about something or simply stand there. You've got to keep moving, and pouring the water into your body. I can't imagine how humans inhabited this place prior to air conditioning.

Anyway, the work: As I told you last week, Hands On is not taking volunteers at this time while they move from our old bunkhouse to our new one. Nevertheless, we had a family of four here to help, and Reggie, Mary Ellen and I got to work with them on Miss Rose's home. Larry Schall and his three oldest kids, Jamie, Lindsey, and Tyler, were down for the week from Atlanta. Larry is the President of Oglethorpe College in Atlanta. Jamie is just settling into his new digs in Philly, getting ready for his first year of teaching. Lindsey is a student at Brown, and Tyler is entering his Junior year in high school. Larry is also a member of the Hands On Network national board. They all came down together to help, and I can't tell you how happy we were to have them on the Miss Rose siding project. On Monday, Reggie, Mary Ellen and I spent the day casing the windows on the one side of her house that had no siding on it at all. After we sheeted and wrapped the house in March, other teams were able to side almost one full large side (a bit left at the top for us to finish) and half of the rear side. On Tuesday morning, we met Team Schall at the work site, and went right to work. Over the course of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, in the wilting sun, we completed the unfinished side, all the way to that last crazy row along the roofline, which has to be measured every 12 inches to make sure the top board fits the uneven roofline. The house is 64 feet long. Mary Ellen has become quite proficient with the saw, and we quickly agreed on the terminology we'd use to communicate measurements from the top of the ladder. Every piece she cut, every measurement she marked, was perfect. As the heat of Thursday built, I stopped the team about 2:30, when we still had the top row to complete before we could call that side really finished. I told them it would be absolutely OK if we quit then and packed up. After all, we'd done more work in three days than most teams could get done properly in 5. Nope, they said--let's really finish it. So, finish it we did. As is our tradition, we all signed the back of the last piece of siding, and Jamie did the honors of nailing it up. Jamie, Lindsey, and Tyler were a very effective unit. Very cool for me to see three siblings so tight and so motivated. Tyler was a real expert on the air nailer. I just quit trying to get that nailer to fire just once when I pulled the trigger. Tyler, then Jamie and Lindsey, could all do it properly without fail. Not me. I was the comic relief whenever they had to hand me the nailer. With those three on the nailer, we got it done in style. It really looks great, especially when you consider that's the home we literally had to jack up and rebuild a number of foundation beams, floor joists, and wall framing before we could even try to seal it up. Team Schall headed back to Atlanta on Friday morning, leaving Miss Rose quite a bit closer to moving back in.

On Friday, Reggie and I went with Mary Ellen to her new job at the Audubon Charter School in Carrollton. Mary Ellen was a teacher in the Chicago Public School system when she and her sister Lauren came down over spring break to volunteer. They were on the team that sub-sheeted and Tyvek-wrapped Miss Rose's home during my last week here in March. The experience, and the city, kept calling Mary Ellen after she returned home. She and Reggie together raised $1000 to help beautify the Singleton Charter School grounds right around the corner from our old bunkhouse. Mary Ellen then decided she belonged in New Orleans, so she put in her application and was immediately scooped up by the district. Now, this 24-year old Chicago native calls New Orleans home. Mom and Dad miss her back in Chicago, but I want them to know they have not lost their daughter, they have gained a city and its love. And my love, admiration and respect. Her coming down here to live and work says way more to you about this city and its people than I ever could try to convey to you in writing.

Reggie and I helped out at the school for the day, moving textbooks, furniture, and what-not from one room to another. This is Audubon's first year in this school building (which was a different school last year, and was originally a grand old courthouse), and they have lots of work to do to get ready for the school year to begin next week. I think Reggie and I earned some points for Mary Ellen.

Oh, yeah--I told you last week I was going to scout a home project for a fellow who recently had a leg amputated after stepping on a nail while working on his home. On Tuesday evening after work, Reggie and I drove out to 3434 Roger Williams Drive to meet Davida Finger, who runs the Katrina Volunteer Law Project at Loyola Law. Davida was the attorney who made sure Miss Rose got her Road Home application in on time, and she has been looking for help for Mr. Smith after he was taken for $60,000 he borrowed from the SBA to rehab his home. After losing that money to an unscrupulous contractor, Mr. Smith had no choice but to get after the work on his own. He was injured, didn't get proper care in time, and lost his leg as a result.

So, we find Roger Williams Drive, but we can't find 3434. We stop when we see a woman on her front porch to ask for help, and she points to the vacant lot next door. Vacant except for a foundation and several piles of lumber. The house had been dismantled to the ground. Davida drove up a few minutes later and she explained to us that the pictures she had seen of Mr. Smith's home showed an actual house in need of restoration. She couldn't believe we were at the correct site, but we were. Stay tuned for more details. We are all mystified at this point.

I don't want to leave you on a low note. I have been driving around this city and the surrounding area in my spare time, and I have to tell you it's quite encouraging to see lots more rebuilding going on. It's getting harder and harder to see high-water marks on houses, and there are not nearly as many of the spray-painted "X"s that were painted on every home by the rescue workers right after the storm. More and more, you see new or repaired siding, lots of new porches, and more homes without FEMA trailers outside. There's years of work to do still, mind you, but every day more and more people are banging away on their homes, and getting closer to coming home.

Love to all of you.

David/Dad

The Cool Summer Breezes of New Orleans...

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

I arrived for my third month on the ground here in New Orleans at midnight last Monday. Bright and early Tuesday morning, I went out on a crew led by Sean and Liz, two hard-core, long-term volunteer leaders who are the most even-tempered, positive-thinking, unflappable leaders I've ever worked for. We were back at Miss Jessie's home in Gentilly, which I also helped with back in March. We came to help Miss Jessie after we found out she'd been taken by several very shoddy contractors, who had, among other things, installed drywall so poorly that much of it had to be removed and replaced by us. Sean oversaw that project, and we were making very good progress back at the end of my visit in March, especially if you don't consider the "quality" of my drywall taping work. That's difficult to do well, I have found. Anyway, since then, Sean and Liz and their teams had finished all of the drywall, seaming, taping, and mudding, and had textured the walls as well. When I joined the team on Tuesday, we were patching cracks in the outside stucco, and priming the exterior and interior walls prior to painting. I can tell you, when you are working next to a bright-white wall in this heat and humidity, you sweat a little. We finished that work on Tuesday, then went back with a visiting Vista team on Wednesday to paint everything, inside and out. For those of you who have watched your new home being built, you remember just how good it feels the day paint goes on and the appearance of the finished project takes shape. Imagine, in addition to that, that you were a widow whose home had been flooded, and the contractors you trusted to fix your home screwed you and took your money, and then angels like Sean and Liz showed up and did the work right, and for free. Imagine the day after all that when the paint goes on your home. Miss Jessie is happy and proud of Sean and Liz, and their team. I am, too.

On Thursday, I was asked to help lead the project to complete our departure from the First Street United Methodist Church, which has been HONO's home from the very beginning. We knew from the start that the day would come when we'd have to find a more permanent home, but it isn't easy finally facing up to that. The bunkhouse is empty, and the beds are disassembled and gone to storage. No volunteers live on that site now, and it's a very lonely place. It's easy to get nostalgic about our time there, and funny that one great big bedroom with 100 bunks could become so important to us, but there you go. Anyway, I was asked to help coordinate the removal and replacement of the floor in the dining hall, and to help manage the move of our tools and miscellaneous crap to our new digs on the corner of Napoleon and Camp Streets. This move included the move of our 10X30 tool shed, which was to be transported by a team with a very large truck.
I've attached a picture of the shed once the two guys got it as far as they could onto their truck, which turns out wasn't really designed to haul 10X30 tool sheds. They arrived at 9:30 on Friday morning, and spent the next 4+ hours trying to figure out how to drag that shed onto that truck. It was pretty obvious they weren't in the business of hauling tool sheds, and they were making it up as they went along. They finally decided the shed was "on" the truck when they had loaded about the first 25 feet of it onto the trailer. They just couldn't figure out how to get the last 5 feet to cooperate. No worries for them, though. Off they went about 2 pm, and I just kept myself busy with other stuff while they took an hour to travel the 2 or 3 miles to the new place. I didn't want to think about what the shed would look like after it fell off that truck somewhere on St. Charles Avenue. They made it though, and gravity helped them get it unloaded a lot faster that it took to load it.

Yesterday, I drove into the Lower Ninth just to visit and see how things are going. I dropped in on Common Ground, a volunteer organization helping residents of the Lower Ninth in a lot of ways. I learned a lot about the Lower Ninth yesterday, and was quite surprised to learn that it is actually above sea level, one of the four large areas in town that are. In fact, the Holy Cross Neighborhood at the southern end of the Lower Ninth is one of the highest points in New Orleans. People are pissed in the Lower Ninth because the only reason it flooded was the failure of the floodwalls along the Industrial Canal. The floodwalls failed because they weren't even built to the Corps of Engineers' specifications, and the intense storm surge that raced up the Corps-built Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MR-GO) had nowhere to go once it hit the Industrial Canal except into the Lower Ninth and Gentilly. The Lower Ninth was founded by runaway slaves in the 1700's before Louisiana was even part of U.S. territory. There's lots of history there, and lots of people angry at suggestions that perhaps casinos and cruise terminals would be a better use of their properties.

Time Magazine's issue this week features several pieces about New Orleans two years after the storm. Yep, it's been two years, not that you can tell from driving around the city. I hope you can take the time to read these articles. I did this morning, and they provide a lot of context to the cause of the extreme damage, and the prospects for New Orleans and all of lower Louisiana. National Geographic also has a very interesting article about New Orleans and the flood in their July issue, as well. Both articles can be read in their entirety on-line. I urge you to check them out.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1646611_1646683_1648904,00.html

http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0708/feature1/

Today, I went visiting. I went back to the Lower Ninth to say hello to Charles Brown, whom you might remember from my letters home last September. Troy and I happened upon him working on his home at the very end of Robertson Street, immediately next to the Industrial Canal floodwall. I've been back to see him on my subsequent trips, just to say hello, see how he is doing, and see if there's any help I can lend on my days off. His home is coming along, powered by his own sweat and the sweat of any family members he can rope into helping him. His place is almost completely drywalled now, with the only remaining exposed studs in walls where the plumbing has yet to be inspected by the City. A good man who continues to persevere, and to believe he has been blessed.

I then went out to Habitat for Humanity's volunteer living quarters, which they have named Camp Hope. Camp Hope is housed in an abandoned elementary school in Violet, LA, about 18 miles from New Orleans. It can house up to 900 volunteers at a time, although there is a strong preference for about half that many people at a time. It's a real production out there. They house not only Habitat volunteers, but also volunteers who come to work for other organizations. $20 a night per person, including a bunk, a shower, and three meals a day. It's a little city in that big building. Every day, they shuttle their volunteers to their job sites, some in St. Bernard Parish near Camp Hope, and many all the way to New Orleans, where they have an 8-acre site in the Upper Ninth where they are building 70 homes. I've attached two pictures of one of the streets their project faces. The homes are colorful and tidy. It's a project known as Musician's Village, begun with inspiration and funding from the Marsalis brothers and Harry Connick, Jr, and some of the homeowners are displaced musicians. A very sizable project having a very positive impact on the neighborhood. On the periphery of the site, you can see that other homeowners have restored their homes in a way that resembles the new Habitat homes, including the bright colors.

That's it for now. Reggie and I get to help finish the siding on Miss Rose's place this week, and we're both really looking forward to that. I also get to scout another potential job for us Tuesday evening, when I visit the home of a man who had one of his legs amputated last week after he stepped on a nail working on his home but didn't get medical treatment for it in time. He had recently borrowed $60,000 from the SBA, which was stolen by a contractor. I'll fill you in on this one next week.

You may be wondering just where I am staying down here right now, what with the bunkhouse being shut down. I found out that Wyndham Resorts has a timeshare property not 5 blocks from the church. Ann and I own a timeshare week with them, so I contacted them to see how they felt about me and Ann using one of their units for the month so we could come down to help. Occupancy rates this time of year in New Orleans are pretty low, and they graciously donated a unit for the entire month. Pretty cool people, those folks at Wyndham.

The Tool Fund has $7,350 in it right now, and General Tool Company of Portland has expressed interest in partnering with us to match it. Thank you so much to all of you who were able to contribute. If you can think of anyone you know that might be interested in helping, I'd sure appreciate you forwarding my email on to them. We can really use the help, and, who knows, maybe we can reach our $10,000 goal.

My love and best wishes to all of you. Talk to you next week.

David/Dad

Madeline and Ed Curtis/Miss Rose/The Road Home

Hello, Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

As I told you last week, some of Hands On New Orleans' work now involves construction projects that nearly finish homes. I have been involved in several of those projects, and it's pretty cool to see the typical Hands On determination overlaid with our growing in-house expertise. I've done some work for Madeline and Ed Curtis, who live on the corner of Fairmont and W. St. Roch in the Gentilly section of New Orleans. Gentilly sits between the London Avenue Canal to the west and the Industrial Canal to the east, and much of it was hit hard by the overtopping and subsequent failures of sections of both levees. Mr. and Mrs. Curtis got out before the trouble began, first traveling to nearby Slidell to stay with their daughter and police officer son-in-law, then on to Houston to stay for several months with their other daughter. Every home in their neighborhood was hammered by the flooding, and not everyone left before the floodwaters arrived. Directly across the street from the Curtis home is a home where the occupant stayed inside as the water arrived, hoping for safety. The waters forced her to her attic, and continued to rise until she saved her own life by breaking through the roof, where she was rescued by helicopter. There is still a blue tarp covering the small hole in her roof, a wincing reminder of how it went during the time the waters rose.


Mr. and Mrs. Curtis live in a FEMA trailer directly in front of their house. Their entire block is full of FEMA trailers. At the end of their street is an abandoned school and neighborhood park, derelict and overgrown. Mr. Curtis told me that he considered he and his wife lucky. "After 46 years of marriage, we are lucky. We've been literally forced to be closer, and it's been OK for us." His concern was for the families down the block, staying in FEMA trailers with their children. No place to play, and way too little space inside. I hear this all the time, this theme of "we are lucky, but look at our neighbors. They've got it tough, but we're OK."

During the time I spoke with Mr. Curtis, I told him I was really happy to work on his home, especially to see it so close to completion (we finished the sheetrock today). I said I wished I could be there with him and his wife the day the truck backed up to his FEMA trailer, hooked it up, and drove it away forever. He looked at me and said, "Do you really believe that's going to happen?" He's 77, spent 35 years as a Jefferson Parish school counselor, and has a masters degree in education. Yet, after these past 18 months, he has lost his ability to envision the completion of his nearly-complete home. I told him of course he was moving back into his home. I assured him it would be soon, given the status of the work. He was stunned. He just didn't perceive that an end was near.

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On Tuesday, Erik and I went back to Miss Rose's home on St. Andrew Street. When Kelsey was here, I took her over to meet Miss Rose, and discovered that the City had cracked the water line leading from her meter to her home when they removed that giant pecan tree stump I showed you last fall. Bless 'em for taking the stump out for her, but shame on them for leaving her to fend for herself with her broken water line. She got a $700 water bill last month, which the Water Bureau expects her to pay. Erik has done some plumbing work professionally, and is a long-term Hands On volunteer, so he and I went over there and dug up her water line from her house to the meter. Erik fixed it and we re-buried it. We had to break the sidewalk from her property to her water meter, and a crew that was pouring a large slab two blocks away gave us concrete in a wheelbarrow that we borrowed from volunteers who were working at a church across the street. (A perfect storm of resources, don't you think? A couple of Hands On volunteers up to their knees in muck from Miss Rose's super-saturated yard using a wheelbarrow we borrowed to get concrete a professional crew around the corner gave us. I don't know why that makes me laugh, but it does.) Miss Rose scratched her name in the concrete later that day. Erik and I went back on Sunday after the ground had had a bit of time to dry out, and we raked the yard smooth, removing the remaining debris, which included one last syringe, a broken crack pipe, and a lighter from the squatters who took over her home after the flood.
When she wasn't watching, we then snuck a bunch of Jeff and Ann Hume's donated sunflower seeds into the ground to give Miss Rose something to look at over the summer. The best day off I've spent while I've been here.

Miss Rose pulled me aside on Sunday morning to speak with me privately. She asked me if I knew of anyone who could help her fix the title to her home. Although she is, and has been, the only resident there for years, the deed is still in her dead parents' names. Like many homes in New Orleans, the people who live in the home aren't the people whose names are on the title. I told her I'd try to find someone who could help. Before Ann came back to New Orleans for her second trip last November, she worked at the Houston Quilt Show, where she ran into Lana Corll, who, in addition to apparently loving quilts, is the Director of Continuing Legal Education for the Loyola University College of Law here in New Orleans. She and Ann had a nice chat about the work down here, and they traded contact info so they could get together when Ann made it to New Orleans after the show. They never did get together, but Ann had her info, and I contacted Lana yesterday to ask if she could provide any assistance for Miss Rose. She said yep, she could, and I heard from her today after she had contacted a number of colleagues. She then sent a bunch of forms to me so I could help Miss Rose gather the appropriate info for her title work. In addition, she sent along all the contact info I needed for Miss Rose's Road Home application. The Road Home is the name of Louisiana's program to provide HUD money to homeowners to help them rebuild, and Miss Rose confided to me that she hadn't done anything about that yet, either. I got the package, and, let me tell you, it ain't simple. So, some evening after work this week, Miss Rose and I will sit down and try to go through this. After we do what we can with the paperwork, Lana is going to find us an advocate who can provide the actual legal services necessary to perfect her title. Then The Road Home process can move forward.

The Road Home program provides up to $150,000 in benefits to homeowners whose homes were severely damaged by the storm and the flood. Over 113,000 applications have been received, but only a couple of thousand have been closed so far, although the program is picking up steam and the State says several hundred a day are now closing. That's progress.

The weather is warming up considerably, and the humidity is rising along with it. Every mosquito egg in the area hatched on Saturday and Sunday, and all of a sudden us pasty-white folks are being eaten alive.

I love it here.

Love to all,

David/Dad

P.S. The pictures this week include a few from last Monday night, when a krewe of Indians (a long story, but a cool one about the old tradition of African Americans down here identifying with Indian tribes dating back to slavery days when runaways took refuge on Indian lands, where slaveowners were generally reluctant to tread in pursuit) paraded down Dryades Street past our home to meet with the Wild Magnolias, another Indian krewe whose clubhouse is one block south of our church. They met ceremonially in the street, and everyone came out to enjoy it.

Back Home in New Orleans

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

Kelsey and I arrived in New Orleans on Tuesday, March 6th. Kelsey took a week of her vacation to come down and work with us, and she hit the ground running. Not only was she a hard worker, she was a super-smart worker. Our first day was spent at Henry Carter's house on Louisiana street. He's restoring it so his adult daughter can return to New Orleans. Kelsey dove right in, and never once looked like a rookie. As you might expect of her, she was always the one still working to finish gutting a room properly long after more-experienced volunteers had moved on to another room. I couldn't be more proud of her. She gutted with gusto, and also got to spend one day at the Dryades YMCA Charter School, where she was one of the team leaders for art projects for the kids. The week went by so quickly, and our last work gig together was a neighborhood celebration we staffed in the Hoffman Triangle area. She and I were in charge of the inflated castle. It's that big thing kids climb in and bounce themselves silly. The park is the ONLY city park open in the city. ALL of the others are FEMA Trailer Farms. I was stunned when I heard that one. Anyway, the day was organized to give families a chance to play, and to give kids a chance to just be kids for a day. With the trailer farms and the shortage of schools comes a severe shortage of playgrounds, and the kids are bearing an awfully big burden, given what they saw during and after the storm, compounded by the lack of opportunity to simply have fun. So, for a day anyway, we helped them laugh. Before the event, we walked the neighborhoods and handed out fliers to everyone we saw. People came in droves, and most were unbelieving when we told them there was no charge for anything. Face-painting, games, Sunflower seed planting, hot dogs, popcorn, sodas, Kelsey and Dave's Bouncing Castle--everything was provided. Kelsey and I knew it was a great success when we counted the number of kids crying when their parents told them it was time to go home. Amazing how simple it is to make someone happy. A very good day.

One of the coolest gigs we're doing repeatedly with kids is the Sunflower Project. We're planting sunflowers in plots around the city, to add some color and to give kids a chance to show themselves and others what they can accomplish together. Jeff and Ann Hume of the Ed Hume Seed Company sent about $2000 worth of seeds with me on this trip, and they are being gratefully put to use throughout the city already. They sent a ton of sunflower seeds of different varieties, along with a rich assortment of vegetable seeds for community gardens. Jeff and Ann, thanks a lot for your generosity. It ain't just about the seeds--you can't buy the happiness you are providing these kids.

Kelsey and I also had a lot of non-work fun together. We went to the French Quarter on Saturday night, where she got to see the nightlife of New Orleans. For balance, she went to see the Lower Ninth the next day. This city is such a study in contrasts.

Kelsey went home on Monday, and I really miss her. She's already planning her next trip back, and Hands On is holding a space for her. She's one of us now.

Off to work I went on Monday after seeing Kelsey off. I got to help prep Miss Peggy Severe's home on Leonidas Street for insulation and sheetrock. Miss Peggy's place took about four feet of water. Her neighborhood is one of those far enough away from the levees that they thought they had been spared once the storm missed New Orleans. That evening, before the sun went down, they were celebrating their good fortune and thanking God when they noticed some water in the streets. It didn't quite register what was happening, but it was only a weird little nuisance. Over the next two days, the water slowly but surely continued to bleed into the area. For people who stayed, the danger was not readily apparent. What began as an oddity slowly became a calamity as water finally entered homes on the 31st, and continued to rise until the city's water level finally matched Lake Ponchartrain's on September 1st. Just imagine that sequence of events: The storm misses New Orleans. The day passes, and, while certain areas nearest to the levees have already taken a devastating hit, Miss Peggy and her neighbors thank God for their good fortune and safety. Water silently shows up in the streets, and people think "How strange." The water slowly rises over the next 2 days, and fear sets in, because, by now, who knows when it will stop?

Miss Peggy's project is one that illustrates the evolution of Hands On New Orleans' work. We are now involved in a number of projects that very nearly complete the rebuilding of homes. Insulation, sheetrock, and paint are all part of the repertoire now, and it feels really good to be involved in this work.

I really wish Kelsey had been here for my second week. It's Spring Break season, and the bunkhouse is full of college students investing their vacation in service to these great people down here. During Kelsey's week, we had groups from Viterbo University in Wisconsin, and Clark University in Massachusetts. All great kids, mind you, but the next week groups from Virginia Commonweatlth University (Go Rams!), the University of Florida (Come on Gators----Get Up and Go!), Appalachian State University (Go Mountaineers!), and the Juilliard School in New York all showed up at the same time. I can't tell you what a special week it was. I got to work with most of them during the week, and I was so happy to get to know many of them. Over the course of the week, I watched them bond with each other, and I bonded with many of them myself. One quick week, and poof!, they all headed back to school yesterday. Every single one of them came to work, and I could fill pages telling you about them. I am always impressed and inspired by the efforts and the commitment of young people down here, but these kids were very, very special.
The Juilliard students put in double-duty, working on-site, then heading off to the school to teach their other talents to the kids. And, what attention to detail! I have never seen a neater debris pile than the one they built outside Miss Peggy's house.
Need caulking work on your home? Dial 1-800-Juilliard. As Reggie told everyone at community meeting that night: "Those Juilliard kids really know how to handle caulk." Only Reggie can get away with a comment like that.

And so it went that week. Not only were the VCU and Florida kids similarly committed to doing a great job, their teams are both in the NCAA Tournament. I got to tag along with VCU on Thursday night to watch their opening-round game against Duke at a local sports bar. VCU took it to Duke, and won it at the wire. I was sad to see they couldn't quite put Pitt away in the second round yesterday because I've got a bit of Ram in me now, and knew our kids were on their way home to Richmond during the game yesterday. And the Florida kids--well, they have a right to crow about their team. Let's just say we all learned their various cheers during the week.

I kept forgetting that the four young women who came from Appalachian State were actually college students. Crystal and I got to work together a couple of times, and wow, can she get it done. I figured them all to be long-term, experienced volunteers simply because they approached their work with such confidence and expertise. One of the projects we worked on together was the gutting of a large home that was a group home for mentally-disabled adults. It was, for a normal team, a 4-day job, give or take. With Reggie's organization, and Crystal and Ashley among the team members, we finished this job in a day-and-a-half. Not almost finished. Done.
Reminded me of that scene in Cool Hand Luke where they were oiling that road, and, basically just for the hell of it, decided to knock it out in one morning of kick-ass hustling.

I saw Kelsey in her Tyvek suit as I worked with many of these kids this week. The hard work, the sense of humor, the commitment to help---these kids were the whole package.

I've got lots more for you, but I'll end now. For a comprehensive look at just how and when the flooding took place, check out this animated map done by the Times-Picayune:

http://www.nola.com/katrina/graphics/flashflood.swf

I can't close without thanking my friends Alysia and Brent at Batdorf & Bronson for sending Dancing Goats and Capitol Blend coffee with me. You've made many people in the bunkhouse happy and more productive with your generosity.

Special props and love to Ann for taking care of Mom, and for the Care Packages which always blow the volunteers away. I always get a great laugh watching our volunteers take so much pleasure from a Fun-Size piece of candy. You've made a whole lot of new friends, baby. Thanks a lot for taking care of us.

OK, now I really will close by telling you that I'm continually amazed at the goodness of the people of New Orleans. Just ignore the crap the media is feeding you about crime down here. Yep, there is crime here, but to report that as if this city has gone mad is a giant insult to the 99.99% of the other citizens who are scrapping every day to get by, all the while maintaining an optimism that comes from generations of good people facing adversity. I'm humbled by the dignity with which these people carry themselves. It's in their blood, and it's just one of the many attributes that makes this city unlike any other. Tell your friends--nail by nail, stud by stud, this city is fighting.

Love to all,

David/Dad

Home is Where Your Heart Is

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from Olympia,

My month in New Orleans ended with wheels-up at 7:25 am Friday morning. It's wonderful to be home with Ann and Mom again, and, at the same time, Ann and I both miss New Orleans, our brothers and sisters at Hands On New Orleans, and our new friends throughout the city--Mr. Gibson, Miss Rose, Charles and Mr. Roosevelt, Jo at Igor's, and many others we have met down there. It was a great month, and both Ann and I are chomping at the bit to get back there. We get to return for a 10-day stay in early November, and neither of us can wait.

It's funny how attached you can get to a new place, having lived and worked there for a month. Although New Orleans is missing 60% of its population right now, you can feel the energy and drive to rebuild. Everywhere I visited, including the Lower 9th, I saw people rebuilding. There is still so much to do, and thousands of homes still in post-flood condition, but you can see the beginnings of New Orleans' rebirth wherever you travel in the city.

We finished the siding on Mr. Gibson's house on Tuesday. Mr. Gibson watched us all day, and, as we cut the last piece of siding, he asked if he could sign the back of it. I grabbed a Sharpie I stole from Ann, and he took it and proudly signed the last piece. I had the rest of our team do the same, and we slapped it up. Mr. Gibson now has a freshly-sided home, ready for paint, and, boy, is he proud. He sent his personal thanks to all of you who pitched in to help. I guarantee you, if you ever knocked on his door and told him you needed a place to stay for the night, he'd knock you down with the screen door trying to let you in.

The leadership of Hands On New Orleans decided that our current home at the First United Methodist Church simply wasn't safe enough anymore, and they've decided to move our home. Only problem is, they haven't decided where that is just yet. They moved our Americorps staff and our volunteers to Hands On's Biloxi, MS site last Wednesday for 10 days, after which they are planning on moving back to New Orleans and a new home base. That announcement caused a bit of a stir among the ranks, given how bonded everyone is to Central City, and how little anyone feared for their personal safety at our current site. Nevertheless, we had experienced some property crime recently, with a car window smashed and a tool trailer stolen, and the accumlulation of little stuff made their decision easier for them. So, our folks are now in Biloxi until the 15th, learning from them and working with them. Biloxi is ahead of New Orleans when it comes to rebuilding, so our folks are hopefully going to learn a lot from their folks about framing, drywalling, and the like. Hopefully, we'll return to New Orleans with skill-sets that will help us get on with the actual rebuilding that New Orleans needs so badly.

I'll close now, if for no other reason than to stun y'all at how brief I can be when I really try. Let me finish by saying that my work in New Orleans is the best, most satisfying work I've ever done. The people I've met, both those we have helped and those I've worked alongside, made Ann and I feel so welcome and so at home so far from home. You just have to do this yourselves to see what I'm talking about.

The first day we were there, Ann and I grabbed a bumper sticker to take home. It says: "New Orleans--Proud to Call it Home." I thought at the time, "This is nice, but it doesn't really fit because we live in Olympia." I laughed to myself as I headed to the airport on Friday morning how nicely the sticker said what I was feeling after one month there. It was my home, and, in a way, it will always feel like home to me. I know every time I visit there in the future, I will be welcomed as if I was a New Orleanian myself. And I'm very proud of that.

My love to all,

Dave/Dad

Blown Away in the Lower Ninth

Hello Everyone, and Greetings from New Orleans,

Last week began with a Saturday gig in what's called the Hoffman Triangle, and area not far west from where we are staying. It was a big event, with several corporate sponsors, Hands On New Orleans, and the New Orleans Saints participating. I was assigned the house of Mr. Whitaker, who lives on the corner of Fourth and Prieur. If you watched ESPN last weekend, you may have seen him on any number of shows highlighting the return of the Saints to the Superdome. Jason Fife and Al Lynch were the two Saints assigned to Mr. Whitaker's home, and I had an especially fun visit with Fife, who was the Oregon Ducks quarterback right after Joey Harrington moved on to the NFL.


Reggie and Amanda made pals with Steve Gleason, who became quite the hero on Monday night when he blocked a Falcons punt early in the game and his teammate scooped up the ball and scored. Gleason liked Reggie and Amanda so much that they were his guests at the game and the after-game get together. Those of us breathing less-rare air watched the game at the Bulldog, a pub on Magazine Street. We were all adopted and thanked by the Saints fans who packed the place, and we had quite a great time rooting the Saints on. There was just no other acceptable result than to have the Saints blow the Falcons out, and they came through. The city really rocked that day.

Several of us spent Monday back at the Triangle, finishing up landscaping and painting. I worked with Troy and Brian, two new volunteers, and promptly sucked them into Team Nasty when I saw how incredibly hard they worked. Brian broke old sod so we could lay new sod. Try that with a shovel sometime. No rototiller, just a shovel. Great guys, both of them. I met Troy at breakfast that morning, introduced myself, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: I'm Dave. Nice to meet you.

Troy: I'm Troy.

Me: Where are you from Troy?

Troy: Portland

Me: Hey! Me too. Where did you live?

Troy: Northwest.

Me: Hey! Me too. Did you go to Lincoln?

Troy: No. I went to Jesuit.

Me: Hey! Me too.

And so forth. He was Class of '94, and I was a few classes ahead of him, but talk about small world. Anyway, both he and Alabama Brian joined us back at Miss Rose's place the next day, where our job was to "repair" the roof over her kitchen, which is the room all the way at the back of the house. At first, we thought we'd get away with stripping the shingles, installing a new sub-sheet over the old planks, then re-roofing. Whatever we did, it had to be completed in one day, because the risk of rain was too high overnight. So, once we started, we were committed. After stripping the shingles, we found so much rot in the planks that held up the shingles that we decided to remove them before sub-sheeting. After removing them, we discovered so much rot in the rafters themselves that they had to be removed. So, before noon, the kitchen was entirely open to the sky. We spent the afternoon framing the new rafters, sub-sheeting, tar-papering, and reinstalling the flashing. The next morning, we roofed it, then headed back over to Mr. Gibson's to begin the next push of siding. By Saturday afternoon, we'd gotten to the top of the windows on the far side of his house and completed the back wall. Monday should be completion day. Each day, you can see Mr. Gibson's pride grow as he watches his house begin to look new again. He is really happy. He is pretty smitten with Ann, and asks about her every day. "Miss Ann" is his girl.


Today, my last Sunday here, Troy and I took a car into the Lower Ninth Ward to take a look. I've attached pictures that show you what we saw, but they don't in any way give you an adequate appreciation of the vastness of that devastation. The Lower Ninth Ward, by my half-assed estimate using Google Earth, is about 400 blocks in size. It's western edge sits hard against the levee separating it from the Industrial Canal. The levee breached in several places along this route, and the water absolutely obliterated homes near the breaks, and pretty much destroyed everything else in the vicinity. In the two rows of blocks nearest the breaks, there are only foundations, foundation blocks, and concrete front steps left. The homes are completely gone. I can't properly describe what we saw this afternoon. Where houses still stand, entire blocks are abandoned. Water was running in one gutted house, spraying from a broken toilet. One house was lifted off its foundation and deposited on its owner's car in the driveway. Another was torn in two, the two pieces completely reversed in position. There is no high-water mark on the houses here. The water was over the top of them.

We waved to the few folks we saw along the way, and stopped to talk with two fellows who were sitting outside a house immediately next to the levee. Charles and Mr. Roosevelt, his neighbor, were chatting away in the very hot afternoon sun. We introduced ourselves to them, and I commented on how I was happy to see him and to see the condition of his house, which was clearly being rebuilt. He said he just got his electric meter reinstalled so he had power again. Then he said, "God is good." He was happy in general, and happy to see and visit with us, just like neighbors who run into each other and haven't chatted in awhile. I was so taken by this guy's general outlook on life, given what he's been through. Things are looking up for him. Troy and I were so moved by that man's spirit and resilience. His house was three blocks south of three levee breaches. I can't believe it's standing today.

There are pockets of activity in the Lower Ninth. FEMA trailers dot certain blocks, and people were working on a Sunday afternoon. Other places, nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's like a movie set--it seems very post-Armageddon. It reminded me of that film taken at Alamagordo, NM when we detonated the first atomic bomb. Remember the one I'm talking about? It's the one that shows houses exploding in a fierce wind. Near the levee breaches, nothing remains. Beyond that initial area, houses were lifted off their foundations and deposited nearby, completely unrecoverable. Beyond that, houses are bent over, still on their foundations. Further beyond that, houses abandoned, everything inside ruined. Nothing was left untouched.

Nic told me later that the reason there was no debris on the foundations that were right next to the levee breaches was that the houses themselves were washed away, and ended up in the middle of roads and intersections. They were the first ones removed simply because they had to be. He also told me that what Troy and I saw today was "much, much better" than what he saw just several months ago. Unbelievable.

The people of the Lower Ninth apparently are a determined bunch. People are slowly returning from distant cities to begin again, to rebuild below sea level next to levees they no longer take for granted. I can't quite figure out how to feel about that. On the one hand, the human spirit in the face of incredible adversity is something to behold and honor. It's pretty humbling to meet a Charles and see how grateful he is for what he's got. On the other hand, here they are, below sea level, and nothing is going to change that. Most of their homes are total losses.

One thing we all have in common with them is that home is home. These folks just want to go home.

I love and miss you all.

David/Dad

P.S. Thanks to your incredible generosity, we've raised $4000 so far, and more is coming. After Hands On saw what you've done, they shifted gears. The Outback Steakhouse grant did not allow for the hiring of any professionals. Only materials and supplies could be purchased with that money. That severely limited the scope of the projects Hands On felt it could undertake. For example, Entergy will not turn on the power to any house that suffered damage until a licensed electrician has signed off on it. With the funding limitations, Hands On simply couldn't consider getting that far with Miss Rose's house. Now, though, with part of our funds, we are going to hire an electrician to get Miss Rose's house powered-up again. Your money not only made that possible, it led to some out-of-the-box thinking by Hands On staff as to how much we can accomplish when we take on a project. You are personally responsible for that.