Outside all day

We had a group of 30 volunteers from an all-girls' Catholic school in Sacramento come in today. We bonded over the whole all-girls'-school thing. They were great to work with; they went at their jobs with such determination and vigor. I worked with them all day clearing three lawns (one was NENA's, two were homeowners). Lawn-clearing is actually more important than it sounds because the city imposes a tax if grass and weeds grow above eighteen inches. Needless to say, this is very stressful for a homeowner who is already barely making ends meet for the rebuilding process on a home they can't even live in yet. It's nice to know that we helped alleviate that anxiety, at least for a while.

Back at Xavier I went to my class about performing race and gender through architecture. We spoke about the manifestation of race and gender in public spaces, particularly through railway cars, theaters, and drinking fountains. I appreciated having a class that was half white and half students of color and a professor of color; unlike virtually all of my high school and college classes, I was able to get a non-white perspective on the issues.

We also presented our photo projects. Mine is too large to post on here, but it told the story of my frustration with the tension between bureaucracy and accomplishing humanitarian goals. I began the essay with a series of photographs around the office. I concentrated on blank and vacant spaces, taking pictures of empty desks, blank whiteboards, and unused meeting tables. I moved on to houses of increasing decay, from those which had been halted in the rebuilding process to those blocked my FEMA trailers to those which had been untouched since the storm. I ended the essay with a picture of a controversial memorial which stands in front of the Ninth Ward and a picture of graffiti in the French Quarter, which simply reads "LIES." To me, the memorial is an image of shallowness: from what I've heard, it was built by rich people from outside of New Orleans and is largely unwanted by Lower Ninth Ward folk. Rather, it seems to stand as a gruesome, unwelcome reminder of the storm. The "LIES" component is fairly obvious; it's to represent the accusations of those who haven't benefitted from relief organizations. Both photographs are pictured above.