Looking back at the storm

This is a video from UTube that breaks your heart all over again.


There is so much info and video out there. I would love to be able to put it all here on my blog but its easy to find for your self.

video

Video on the housing crisis in New Orleans

3rd Anniversary of Katrina

"I feel so bad for how wrong everything went with Katrina aftermath. It shows that when faced with disaster - no one knows what the hell to do or how to do it. Look at all that money that was wasted while there were (& still are) folks living underneath bridge overpasses. I read the food mags (gourmet, bon apetit) & they rave about how New Orleans is “back” & they’re eating all fancy & partying, I can’t help but think of those folks under that damn bridge!" edited blogger comment

"New Orleans has always been a city of extremes, but now the extreme low end has gotten even lower while the other end looks like nothing ever happened. This is something Dubya could make right before he leaves office." edited blogger comment

____________________________________________________________

I have been working on the new pieces, doing a bit of info collecting and writing for the show to be hung Aug 28th at Bangor Public Library in Maine. Its been a long time in coming but the timing couldn't be better with the 3rd anniversary of Katrina coinciding with the show. I am excited about the work and happy to be doing this. I hope many will see, remember, think and possibly do something to be involved in some way.

We hope to be working on an e-book to be available to anyone at any time online.
There will also be an online gallery set up for viewing the work for which I will post the link soon.

There is much to be done and the complex problem points out the many difficulties that continue to face this country, not just in the rebuilding and healing of racial inhumanities in New Orleans but the ecological devastation, deteriorating infrastructure and racial and economical injustices found across the entire country.

I hope you will visit the show either in person or online (link to be posted).

I look forward to your thoughts and comments.

Thank you,
Suzanne

Exciting news coverage in Lower 9th ward = increased awareness and renewed interest!!

There are many opportunities to keep New Orleans alive in your heart at Christmas time. Make it Right has just unveiled Project Pink. Covered by the Today Show (see video) this morning, Project Pink is an installation in the Lower 9th created to bring attention to Make it Right and the adopt a house fund raiser. Headed by Bran Pitt (star power never hurts), you can adopt a whole house for $150,000 or just a gallon of paint or a compact flourescent light bulb. Donations in any denomination are also accepted.

Project Pink consists of little pink monopoly type houses created to represent the future 150 homes. There will be viewing platforms for pedestrians while the project continues.

Be sure to check out the really neat web site!


Christmas Giving - New Orleans link for many of the active organizations in Lower 9th that could really use donations and hope you will support them at this time.


In case you missed it before here is the Wetlands video embedded into this blog

Last Day-Musicians Village and FEMA Trailors and more FEMA Trailors

Musicians Village -upper 9th ward.

Today is my last day here. Its been a good but difficult trip. I feel so lucky I have a nice home to return to. Brandon has been a wonderful guide and I have seen so many things that I would not have if not for her. I thank her for all her time, insight and information. Her old truck barely crossed the bridges over the Mississippi but we made it to all our destinations.

We made a trip over to Musicians Village today in the upper 9th.

The Musicians' Village, conceived by Harry Connick and Winton Marsalis, will consist of 70 single-family, Habitat for Humanity-constructed homes for displaced New Orleans musicians and other qualifying families. On January 9, 2006 NOAHH acquired eight acres of land in the Upper 9th Ward where the core area of the Musicians' Village will be located.

In addition to the homes in this tract, plans call for building at least 150 other homes in the surrounding Upper 9th Ward neighborhood. Construction began in March 2006 and the first ten homeowners moved into their new homes in August 2006. As of this date there have been 36 new Habitat homes constructed in the area. As you probably know, Habitat for Humanity helps families break out of the cycle of low-quality properties with high rent payments and into the world of reasonable payments toward home ownership.

Along the Gulf Coast, Habitat is currently undergoing construction on more than 57 homes per month in a region where Habitat affiliates had built 57 per year. Additionally, Habitat’s three goals for the effort are being met. The goals, set immediately after the hurricanes struck, included helping Habitat affiliates restore service in affected areas, partnering with other organizations to address the complex housing need and building simple, decent homes in partnership with low-income, hurricane-affected families.


More Habitat for Humanity homes in upper 9th

This is a fantastic organization from what I have seen here and if you want to be involved or donate this looks like a really great group. They are still looking for volunteers and you can work just one day if that is all you the time you have.










FEMA trailors

FEMA trailors are everywhere. Its hard to imagine whole families living in these tiny tin boxes. Those who were lucky enough to have a yard to place the trailor in seem to be a bit better off than those who live in the FEMA trailor parks. Row after row of trailers on asphalt. About 3,000 people live in more than 20 large communities of trailers.



FEMA trailers behind fence.



video

Well, that's it for now. Thanks to everyone who has been reading along. I hope the writing wasn't too awful! Volunteer, donate, march, tell people, do whatever you can and hopefully someone's life will be better.

Love, Suzanne

no blog today

boys in the neighborhood



Mer-boy and spartina



We used to play here.

Sorry today was a bit of a bust as I had to help Brandon take care of some parking tickets in Algeirs. It involved finding the old court house in a sort of out of the way area (court had to be moved after the hurricane). We took a car ferry back over the Mississippi which was a lot eaiser and faster.

The tickets were a bit expensive and could have probably been contested and dismissed. At the time she received them she was given confusing and conflicting information and it was too late at this point to contest. Like everything here it is not easy to get the correct information.

Worked on some photos earlier today

Wetland Restoration-Foundation of Everything

Bayou Bienvenue Cypress Triangle-a completely destroyed wetland.



Lock on the Industrial Canal



Industrial Canal-Lower 9th side.



The Levee at Bayou Bienvenue Cypress Triangle.

So much of what needs to happen here depends on healthy wetlands. Without that foundation none of it will work in the long term. All politics aside, this is probably the most important problem to fix.



Spartina awaiting wetland planting
in the nursery at Common Ground.

Today I visited The Bayou Bienvenue Cypress Triangle. This is located on the line between Orleans and St. Bernard parish -north of L9. This was a thriving Cypress forest less than 20 years ago.

See video

The situation is this. in the late 60’s a canal called The Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal (also known as MRGO, MR-GO or “Mr. Go”) was built for a shorter shipping route into New Orleans rather than take the Mississippi River which twists and turns. The problem is that the Gulf flows into it and brings salt water into inland fresh water. The wetlands make the transition between salt and non salt water. Inland plants don’t tolerate salt. Cypress trees are salt tolerant but not enough to withstand the salt that is coming in now. The lower 9th was once a cypress swamp.

Long-time Lower Nine residents remember a time before the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet flooded the bayou with saltwater and killed the native cypress trees and swamp just north of the Lower Nine. They remember when there was more dry land than wet.

There was a lot of fishing and social activity on the bayou. When the steel levee went up around the bayou after Hurricane Betsy it separated the bayou from the community.

Work done by Hassam Mahriqui in a computer simulation at Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Center of MR-GO during Katrina found that it had raised the storm surge. Three months before Katrina, Mashriqui, a storm surge expert, called MR-GO a “critical and fundamental flaw” in the Corps’ hurricane defenses, a “Trojan Horse” that could amplify storm surges 20 to 40 percent. Following the storm, an engineering investigation and computer modelling showed that the outlet intensified the initial surge by 20 percent, raised the height of the wall of water about three feet, and increased the velocity of the surge from 3 feet per second (0.9 m/s) to 8 feet per second (2.4 m/s) in the funnel. Mashriqui believes this contributed to the scouring that undermined the levees and flood walls along the outlet and Industrial Canal. “Without MRGO, the flooding would have been much less,” he said. “The levees might have overtopped, but they wouldn’t have been washed away.”

St. Bernard Parish insists that only total closure can restore the wetlands destroyed by the MRGO. The plan proposed by the State of Louisiana also calls for the complete closure of the MRGO.





Barges in the Industrial Canal



Alligator in some really dirty garbage filled water in
some sort of catchment system from the Industrial Canal.

MISCELLANEOUS NEW ORLEANS SCENES



New modular shotgun for sale in L9





There is so so so much of this...and worse



Something was on fire here. It is not unusual to see a lot of burnt out buildings.



Here is a shot of the memorial built on the meridian of Claiborne which is the main road through the Lower 9th. It was built hastily before a Bush visit. Who would ever go here? Its really awful and it is the only place the city mows in L9-everything else is mowed by volunteers or residents.



yep

See ya tomorrow...S