Garden in a (Graveyard?)

My friend Alex's and my final project for our architecture class:

A mildly insane day.

In a flash of inspiration this morning, I realized that I wanted to do my final research paper for the Urban Geography of New Orleans on a memorial that stands at the entrance to the Lower Ninth Ward (pictured above). The memorial has always been a source of interest for me since I was informed that it was built by a "bunch of rich white people" and that the Lower Ninth Ward residents unanimously hated it. I've been looking into it more recently, and it turns out some of that information isn't correct. For example, several articles seem to imply that the designer, David Lee, is a person of color (they don't specify of what origin). One article also mentioned many residents crying in appreciation at the unveiling of the memorial. Still, I've spoken to a resident who related that she avoids the memorial at all costs because it reminds her of the friends she lost to the storm. This brought me to an interesting question: How do Lower Ninth Ward residents react to this memorial? Does this piece of artwork change the way they move about their neighborhood? And thus, a question for a research paper was born.

In other news, the person I work under was "let go" today completely unexpectedly. I have no idea why. This leaves me as the only person in my department. I also have very little information (for example, where my volunteers are supposed to be going tomorrow). This all happened in the last half-hour of my day, so I really have no idea how it's going to turn out. More on all of this later.

Work itself was great. My Colorado volunteers and I met our homeowner. She was incredibly sweet; she brought us cookies, chips, water, and juice to the work site and wouldn't cease telling us how grateful she was. We prayed with her and her sister at the end. I had the pleasure of sitting with her on her newly built porch as I waited for the project manager to pick me up. She told me about how she is at peace over losing her house (it was entirely uprooted and destroyed by the storm) because, after all, "it's just stuff." As I told my dad about this experience later on the phone, he remarked, "that's what you came for." Excuse my bragging, but the man is brilliant, and he was certainly spot-on in this case. (Dad. . .I miss you.)

I've had a great time bonding with the Colorado group. Their energy and curiosity often reminds me of my own youth group. I find myself getting a little motherly with them, urging them to drink water and shielding their eyes while I spray their faces with sunscreen. (Mom. . .I miss you.)

The newsletter is going much better. I've been consolidating what I've created while concentrating on keeping the essential parts of the newsletter there. It's difficult; I'm used to organizing words, thoughts, and meanings, but certainly not images. Though I enjoy color and images, I've never been asked to format them in a pleasing-yet-professional way, and it's certainly proved to be a new challenge.

This entry coming to you from a very sleepy girl

Long day. The ones with work and class always are. I was up quite late last night chatting with a certain older brother, so my energy is very limited at this point.

Today: Finished newsletter mock-up and submitted it for review. Oriented surprise volunteers from Georgia. Took Job1 kids out to pick up trash. Entered various data. Discussed the term "snow bunny" with Will. Made fun of Morgan's abysmal high-fiving skills. Taught Balint how tall a six foot person was (Hungarians suck at non-metric measurements, apparently).

Good night y'all.

Two days together

The last few days haven't been entirely eventful, so I thought I'd just lump them together. Yesterday I wrote an entire manual for Ninth Ward residents to learn how to write a business letter. I also started a Microsoft Excel manual, which I continued today.

My Urban Geography of New Orleans class was fascinating; we learned about how New Orleans was founded and why it was created where it was. Interestingly, it was almost a Spanish or British colony at different times, but the French won out in the end.

We also spoke about what our research papers might be on. I'm thinking about studying how a town or city (either in Lexington, MA or Athens, Greece) formed around a historical landmark.

Today an all boy's Catholic school (I sense a theme!) from Philly arrived. They and another group from Berkeley did yard clean-up. I spent the rest of the day working on the Excel manual.

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.

Out in the field

Above is a slogan that I fell in love with in the Ninth Ward. Unfortunately, the restaurant itself still isn't open.

Today was a business as usual at NENA. The beginning of the day was a little slow, so I called a few more folks I had hoped to survey before. With a little extra time, I compiled all of the spreadsheet data I had into graphs and pie charts. A word from the pseudo-wise: When in doubt, organize. That rhymes!

I went on to do research in order to publicize our Fight the Blight program. There were actually pretty fascinating RAND Corporation articles on the effect of blight and general uncleanliness on local business, public health, and youth violence.

At around 2:00, a local Salvation Army worker came to work with us on a neighborhood beautification program. It turns out that in late July we'll be receiving forty volunteers for four days. We plan to use the volunteers to provide free grass cutting, flower and tree planting, and other landscaping to ninth ward residents. We left NENA headquarters to walk around the nearby streets, surveying homeowners about what services they might like (if any). It was interesting to truly walk around the area; in my high school volunteering days I was always shuttered within one or two streets for fear of violence in the area.

It was difficult to accept the lack of change in the area. Though there were certainly vibrant, fully rebuilt houses on each block, countless others hadn't been touched since the storm. Our Salvation Army coworker described the effect of the area on her quite well, sighing, "it makes my soul weak." There were, however, a few gratifying moments when we informed the homeowners of our intentions. Some residents lit up at the mention of free beautification. Those moments were worth every minute of dispair. I'll be continuing to survey the area for those who want the beautification services as well as leading a group of volunteers when the day itself comes.

After we returned to NENA, I compiled a list of poisonous plants which are often mistakenly planet at homes. We don't want to get the residents sick after promising them a brand new lawn. . .

We just started our Urban Geography of New Orleans class. It seems like it will be fascinating. To introduce us to the concept of human geography, our professor showed us many maps which supposedly measured the density of a certain human factor and had us guess which factor they represented (for example, most males per country, most African-Americans per county, etc.). For now, I'm planning on watching When the Levee Broke, a Spike Lee documentary about Hurricane Katrina. Adios!

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.