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