10 hour day

Sheesh. Work 9-5 and class 6-8:30. I'm fairly sleepy right now, so please excuse me if this is incoherent.

Work was interesting today, if fairly emotionally taxing. I did some form-making: questionnaires for residents who might want free landscaping from a NENA-Salvation Army partnership, surveys to see what goods or services homeowners are in need of in order to help NENA prepare, etc.

I used the latter survey to call one hundred (count 'em!) Ninth Ward residents to ask a) if they were living in their homes, b) how complete their rebuilding process was and c) what things were necessary to their immediate rebuilding needs. As usual, almost every person I talked to was incredibly kind and helpful. You know you're not in New England anymore when someone you've only talked to for a few minutes is referring to you as "sugar" and "baby."

Even so, some of the stories were hard to hear. Along with many residents who simply didn't have the time, money, resources, or energy to rebuild, many have suffered horribly from contractor scams. These scams have been rampant in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and are pretty much what they sound like: phony contractors requiring a down payment of several thousand dollars to supposedly fix a house before bolting with the cash. Quite obviously, losing this much money often makes it impossible for the homeowner to rebuild.

After work, we attended our first Creating Space: Race and Gender in Urban Spaces class. Today was very introductory, but we learned that our first assignment will be to create a photo essay of a space in New Orleans. I think I'll be using my photos to contrast the more run-down, neglected areas of the Ninth Ward with the few extravagant houses there. For example, the famous Steamboat Houses:
We'll also need to keep a weekly journal about the many readings for the class. Additionally, we have a photo montage of a space we've been working in (example pictured below) due once a week. Our final project will be a short movie about the place we've been working in. It should be a lot of work, but also lots of fun.