Day 754

Day 754
New Orleans, La.

Dear Family and Friends,

Daylight savings time provides an emotional boon across the City. People play later, leave work earlier and enjoy the everythings and want-to-bes of spring time life. The local parks are always full.

In a few more weeks, nearly everyone will be wearing linen.

When I first moved here 754 days ago, our newspapers and televisions led and ended with Katrina stories. Every day. I gauge the passage of time now by the amount of with "Katrina" in the newspaper. Now, there are coffee and paper mornings--I swear it--where the K-word can't be found.

I like these mornings.

When year two turned to three, our public figures and friendly tableside rhetoric shifted slightly: "Now three years later..."

And as the months progress, we are saying, "Now three and a half-years later..."

Soon it will be, "Now four years later..."

That moment in time, the day the New Orleans calendar reset, will be with this community for a long-long time. It guides the people here, provides a measuring stick of sorts. What's more than interesting for an outsider like me are the experiences that make New Orleans what it is, even if Hurricane Katrina had never happened.

Crawfish boils, annual festivals, irreverent dress-up days, and second lines come to mind.

The messy stuff is what people elsewhere see about New Orleans. I paraded from 6am to 3pm on Mardi Gras day with a blue sky and a slight breeze the whole way. When we finished, my friends and I played football in our street.

But my friend outside the City texted, "Were you near the shootings?"

Six people were shot along parade routes on Mardi Gras day. There were a few others earlier in the week as well.

New Orleans according to everyone else is a dangerous outpost where people here on business are timid about walking after dark. New Orleans according to those living here is a cultural outpost where people laugh harder, cry longer and eat better than most.

Now, if only the spring weather stayed could stay longer than May.

Best,

Robert

Life in the French Quarter

Dear Family and Friends,

Our sidewalks are brick and a parrot two doors away squawks when people pass her.

I've been in the French Quarter a short time now, surely not enough to call myself a part of the neighborhood, but long enough to have come home to random people on my stoop, my car rifled through by a homeless man and a next door neighbor who will sign for my packages.

Our house was built in 1830 and has 14-feet ceilings. My roommate Andrew and I, we bought a basketball hoop. It's nine-feet high; most shots are accessible and the toughest one makes you navigate a once-was-dining-a-room chandelier.

In the morning, sunlight comes through three bedroom windows. I wonder often who lived here when way back when was an era of horse-drawn carriages and dirt streets. Every time I hear people say that New Orleans shouldn't be rebuilt, I touch my keys and think someone has been opening a door to this place for 179 years.

The parking is atrocious. I have a lemon tree in my backyard. These two things cancel each other out. During the big events, Mardi Gras most recently, police sirens and drunken sidewalk singing sessions both invade my thin second-floor bedroom windows. On nights like these, I've found, it's better to be out with the people than trying to sleep through them.

When I look back and say "When I was 25..." I hope living in America's most notable neighborhood will make me smile.

But there are those nights when people seem to lurk too closely in the shadows. Recently, the news extensively covered the murder of a bartender by a 15-year-old in a stick-up gone bad. The intersection where it happened is about eight blocks from my house.

The news was clear to state that our police district is the smallest, yet has the most patrol units. Crime, although not acceptable anywhere, certainly isn't acceptable here. It is the French Quarter, our tourist livelihood.

"Walk on the side of the street without the cars," people say. "Muggers hide behind cars."

During my first conversation about moving in with Andrew, after he said how great living here is, he did, almost like slipping in an earmark into a piece of legislation, say that a man fired a gun from our doorstep his first night.

"Nothing has happened since then," he said.

I've said that we're urban soldiers. I hope this joke remains funny. The alternative is scary, of course, but not enough to not love living in New Orleans. Sure this place has its black eyes, bad roads and everything else that comes along with the fabric of a poor American city recovering from a major disaster.

But, today the temperature is 70 degrees. And I have a parrot for a neighbor.

Best,

Robert

Maya Angelou drives 22 hours to New Orleans

University of New Orleans
February 12, 2009
New Orleans, La.

Dear Family and Friends,

When Maya Angelou appeared from behind a temporary partition, we knew tonight would be a life-long memory.

There were 2,000 people watching, but she made the event seem so much smaller. Her words convince some people that there is a wholly higher level of communicating.

She bends at the hip.

"Romance," she says. "Makes us who we are." Her voice is strong. It offsets the cane she uses to walk. Hers is a voice, people wouldn't mind listening to while on hold. If I could, I'd pay her to greet friends and colleagues leaving me voicemail.

"Hi, this is Maya Angelou, Robert isn't here."

Even her name is cool. Although I wiki'd her and found out Maya is a nickname and short for Mary Elizabeth. She drove 22 hours to New Orleans, she said, because airports make here anxious and she can't stand people hanging over her. And because she's always loved the City.

There isn't a shortage of doing good in New Orleans, though. It seems, that everywhere you look, more community meetings are held, more tutors read to kids, more protests about social injustice draw news media. The more I think about it, the more Maya Angelou gives a voice to the voiceless.

Because her success is about as unlikely as New Orleans success. Angelou is a child of the civil rights movement. She moved around, was raped as a young girl and became mute. A teacher and history's most famous wordsmiths revealed Angelou's voice she said.

She told New Orleans that there are always rainbows within the clouds. Coming from Maya Angelou, it didn't sound sappy at all.

Robert

Volunteers bundle Christmas Trees for Wetlands Restoration

Former Recovery One Landfill Site
Bayou Sauvage National Refuge
Orleans Parish
January 31, 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

Somewhere between New Orleans East and Venetian Isles, the stacks of browning Christmas trees stand six feet high. In southern Louisiana, post-tinsel Christmas trees take on new roles as a part of the state's "Christmas Tree Recycling Program."

This year, the Sanitation department collected over 7,000 trees in Orleans parish. For the past two weeks volunteers have bundled the trees into fence-like structures, which experts say can catch sediment and deflect waves in America's most fragile natural habitat.

Since 1989, over 1, 500,000 trees have been placed in Southeastern Louisiana wetlands thanks to thousands of volunteers.

You'd think there would be more efficient ways to consolidate trees into bundles of 80-90 trees each than by using an assembly line of volunteers. Easier ways do exist, of course. But, as Wynecta Fisher, the director of the Mayor's Office of Environmental Affairs says, the education and awareness experienced by a citizen bundling process is extremely valuable.

Over 100 volunteers have come to bundle trees over the past week. The process is a team effort. Metal straps about 50 feet long are laid out and volunteers grab trees empty of all decorations and place them in a row. The bottom row takes about 20 trees and then another 60 are stacked in separate rows on top.

"The wetlands are an integral part of life in Orleans Parish," Erica Johnson, a volunteer says. "The volunteer project provided a fun and easy way to help preserve this valuable resource while enjoying the sunshine and the camaraderie of fellow volunteers."

After the trees are bundled, the National Guard donates two helicopters and 15 servicemen to place the completed tree fences in the coastlines of 19 Louisiana parishes. Over eight miles of tree fences are currently in Louisiana wetlands. According to the State of Louisiana's Department of Natural Resources, the primary goal of the Christmas tree fences is to "slow fetch and trap sediments." The fences reduce wage energies, while allowing the movement of water and sediments.

The National Guard has dropped tree fences in several types of locations according to the state like, open water bodies, shoreline protection, along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, interior lakes, and abandoned oilfield canals.

The Gulf Restoration Network (GRN), a Louisiana wetlands advocacy group, says the nearly a football field every 45 minutes of Louisiana's wetlands fully submerges because of Louisiana's natural subsistence problem as well as man-made destruction of coastal areas. The wetlands act as a buffer during storm surges and GRN as well as several environmental scientists say Louisiana has little time to rebuild wetland protection.

The Christmas tree project, however, is not the answer to saving the wetlands. Some analysts say it is a multi-billion dollar problem. But the tree cycling program is great to raise awareness and to expose New Orleanians to the largest urban wildlife refuge in America, Bayou Sauvage.

"The trees smell so good and great to feel like we were contributing to stabilize the wetlands," Michael Barr, a volunteer said. "And to just to get my hands dirty on a sunny day."

A night with EMS

Underneath the Crescent City Connection
January 28th, 2009
New Orleans, La.

Dear Family and Friends,

From underneath, the bridge looks like it belongs in Gotham. Ambulances line a curbside and around the corner, there is a lot where EMS paramedics once grounded rescue helicopters after Hurricane Katrina. Nights like these, cold enough to see warm breath, are typically slow. No matter the temperature, paramedics respond to citizens' most vulnerable or embarrassing moments-sometimes they pick men up who've fallen off bar stools.

The New Orleans' Emergency Medical Services (EMS) department has 116 members. It's not so infrequent, however, that the department seems much larger because of EMT trained volunteers. They are called VIGORs, a 30-year-old acronym for the City's volunteer program, Volunteers in Government of Responsibility.

Many of them, especially the young and eager, volunteer more than 20 hours a week.

Ben Swig, 26, is one of those guys. He's a graduate student at Tulane University. A San Francisco native, he has been "riding" since age 19. "I love it," Swig says. "You learn the city really well by riding on an ambulance. You know the fastest routes and the best places to eat at 4 am."

Swig looks like a paramedic. Acts like one too. He isn't afraid to offer assistance or ask a patient a question. But he's the first to hop off the truck to unload a stretcher, a sign he knows his place. But, as T.J. Boudreaux, the lead paramedic on this truck says, "VIGORs are so valuable."

Our first call, a man is short of breath. As an on-looker, Swig, the volunteer, looks and acts like he's on the payroll. After they get the man on the ambulance, Boudreaux asks, "What was the (blood) pressure, Ben?"

Swig answers calmly and moves with Boudreaux's next orders.

The EMS-VIGOR program has been around since 1985 and many volunteers have been hired as full-fledged paramedics. Volunteers must have received their EMT-Basic credentials, which typically takes one semester to complete. They also agree to work at least one 12-hour shift every 60 days. At last count, 24 people are listed as active EMS VIGORs and paramedics rate their performance on every shift. The paramedics, who've been around long now, they like to talk about the young volunteers way back when who become powerful and prestigious doctors around the City.

Boudreaux has been with EMS for five years. He volunteered nearly three shifts a week for an entire year before being hired. "They get to know you," he says. "And I really got to see what being a paramedic was like."

They are scared, the first time.

Boudreaux was on a shooting call during his first volunteer ride. "You start out as an observer," Swig says. "But as you gain trust they give you more."

Paramedics, the men say, don't have queasy feelings regular people might have seeing tragedy. It's their job, they say, to get sick or injured people from "Point A to point B in the best condition possible."

On normal trips to the hospital, as one medic drives with red beams on high, the other works on the patient. Sometimes, if the patient is bad enough, the paramedic's options are limited.

"A VIGORs extra hands are important," Boudreaux says. "Working on a cardiac arrest, it doesn't stop. You need an extra hand, but if there is only me and the driver you have to stop doing other things."

The trio tonight includes EMT Anthony Calvin, 25, who jokes with Swig like he's a part of their crew. Swig says he knew he was in with Calvin and Boudreaux when he got to see pictures of Calvin's daughter.

"It's fun, you're always learning something," Swig says. "The friendship, we have a blast."


To inquire about volunteer opportunities with the EMS-VIGOR program, click on the EMS department's portal on www.cityofno.com




Best,

Robert

When Bush 41 and Bill Clinton came to town

Ernest Morial Convention Center
New Orleans, La.

Dear Family and Friends,

I know a dishwasher who spent a week outside exhibit hall A way back when.

Yesterday, inside hall A. President H.W. Bush, 84 told jokes with irreverence and President Clinton followed recalling memories of his first car to 20,000 American automobile dealers.

Two Presidents, who are paid big money to give stump speeches, spoke with genuine interest about the future of the auto industry and the recovery of New Orleans. The auto dealers said all week how bad the last two years have been. The chairman of the National Auto Dealers Association says that 1,200 dealerships closed last year.

The Presidents spent most of the hour on the auto industry and recalling regrets and successes during their respective administrations. But both highlighted the role of the ordinary American, who before Katrina, may never have thought about New Orleans. Ordinary Americans, who helped donate 160 million dollars to the Bush-Clinton Katrina fund.

Resistance at St. Henry's

St. Henry's Church
812 General Pershing St.
New Orleans, La.

Dear Family and Friends,

The 24-7 occupation of a local church has lasted longer than expected, on the backs of women in wheelchairs, retired couples, and on long-time parishioners who used to only see St. Henry's on Sunday.

It's a quiet place most hours now, where air mattresses are laid out for overnight vigil shifts and Christmas lights go on at dark. One vigiler leaves donuts for the people who relieve her. There is a mini-fridge, like the ones in Tulane dorm rooms about a mile away.

St. Henry's is 157, but the archdiocese of New Orleans closed it two months ago, citing a lack of priests parish-wide. After the final mass, when St. Henry's priest asked everyone to abide by the archdiocese's wishes, two parishoners refused to leave.

St. Henry's new existence, an around the clock vigil, enters hour 1, 500 on New Year's eve.

Leaders of the movement began a newsletter along with the vigil campaign. Their letterhead reads, St. Henry's: "Established by New Orleans Catholics in 1851 and Suppressed by the New Orleans Archdiocese in 2008."

When one month became two, parishoners silently congratulated their successes--spreadsheet schedules, breakfast duties and even a vigil cell phone left near the alter at all times. But, as these families are hoping for a victory--a sanctioned reopening of their parish--they are simultaneously preparing for a long and unglamorous task.

In Boston, one parish is staging a 24-hour vigil that will enter its fifth year in 2009.

"We'll be here as long as it takes to get our church back, vigiler Donna Williams says. "They can even turn the lights out on us."

Currently, all electricity works at St. Henry's because an adjacent building the parish owns is being rented, Donna says. Vigilers say that even if the power is shut off, their occupation will not stop. Most shifts last four hours, but the overnight shift lasts eight.

St. Henry is financially stable and had little flood damage in Hurricane Katrina according to parishoners. The archdiocese cites declining Priest roles as the reason for the closing.
“The driving factor is that there are fewer and fewer vocations,” archdiocese spokeswoman Sarah Comiskey told The Associated Press. “There are a declining number of priests and we have to be responsible as to how we assign them.”

The Louisiana Weekly says a total of 33 parishes have been closed to date. Among those, six churches have been converted to other uses. The three closed Oct. 26 — St. Henry, Our Lady of Good Counsel and St. Francis de Sales — are the last to be shut down, Comiskey said.

Parishoners have filed an initial appeal in Rome and recently found out that it was denied.

In a decidedly Catholic city, the parish closings have been lumped in with other post-Katrina tear-jerking scenarios. Tragedy piles are high, and the heaps continue their growth three years after the storm. Churches closed. Schools closed. Hospitals closed.

St. Henry's demise is head-scratching because parishoners claim financial stability, a physically sound building and a Priest who has been its leader for 19 years.

A statue of St. Joseph flanked my air mattress during my overnight vigil. I only decided to sleep in a church because it was a mini-adventure. I now realize though, people love their buildings. Especially in New Orleans, where so many were lost, keeping the ones we have means very much.

The buildings where people say, "I was born there" or "That was my school" are even more important to the health of a community. They keep the City's memories and host the new ones.

The final archdiocese-recognized activity at St. Henry's happened in November.

It was a wedding.

Best,

Robert

Hurricane Media

December 13, 2008
New Orleans, La.

Dear Family and Friends,

It wasn't quite sunrise when I realized hundreds were here to write New Orleans' obituary.

That day, September 1, 2008, three hours until Hurricane Gustav was due, I slept little.

Outside, the wind blew back a reporter from the Weather Channel hoping for a live shot. Inside, I counted coins. Nickels first. I'd heard Katie Couric was staying in the same hotel. The only people in New Orleans, it seemed, were military and media. The military were necessary. The media, as I now reflect, I'm not so sure.

The previous 35 hours, we evacuated 18,000 New Orleanians on trains, planes and buses. Over 2 million fled the region. Officials estimated 5,000 people stayed in the City for Gustav. It's unclear whether they count about 1,000 media members.

They came from around the world. Reporters with notebooks. Cameras. Production teams. Microphones. As I watched them work, and read their words on blogs and websites-- while witnessing what they were witnessing--I wondered how many stared at hotel room walls, penciling out their yet to be printed versions of "Death of a City."

Most only knew two neighborhoods. The Lower 9th Ward and the French Quarter. Most tourists only know two neighborhoods too. Lakeview? Nah. Broadmoor? Forget about it. The difference between a breached levee and overtopping? Does it matter?

And, I guess, that's what bugged me most. Are journalists from New York or LA qualified to report events in unfamiliar territory? I went outside several times during Gustav. And I went back to my computer every time I came back inside.

And nearly every time, the national headlines read something entirely different than the reality I'd just experienced. But, I turned on the local radio and the local media and minus a few instances, I felt like they were getting it right.

There were not doomsday photos flying across the wire like the one of a nearly submerged stop sign near the industrial canal. If the photograph was taken by a local journalist, it would have been, with local knowledge, understood that the area off the St. Claude bridge floods with a hard rain.

I felt like the national media were willing a story that wasn't there.

At one point, however, in a sign of redemption, CNN actually started a live feed of a local television station. It seemed like a producer finally woke up and said you know what, somebody who lives in New Orleans should be our voice!

As it turns out, no obituary was written about New Orleans. In fact, I believe once the storm had passed and there was no turning back, the national media had to cover the positives of an historic and successful evacuation.

But I'll still remember feeling like a TV crew speaking Italian in a New Orleans bus depot as awkward and uncomfortable. So much so that I started taking pictures of the journalists. You see, the people who left with assistance have told their stories enough. They've spelled their names and the neighborhoods for the last three years.

Not much after one writer finished interviewing a man boarding a bus, I went up to him.

"What's your name," I said.

"Jerry," he said.

"Good luck."

Because sometimes, a notebook can be a scary thing.

Best,

Robert

fifty people one question

fiftypeopleonequestion.com
November 19, 2008
New Orleans, La.


Fifty People, One Question: New Orleans from Benjamin Reece on Vimeo.

Be a New Orleanian. wherever you are.

Dirty Coast Headquarters
5704 Magazine Street.
New Orleans, La.
October 13, 2008

Dear Family and Friends,

Stickers are on skateboard bottoms and little boys' bedposts. On backpacks and lunch boxes. And as time goes, stickers generally do too. Skateboards break. Little guys grow. Backpacks wear and lunch boxes just aren't cool anymore.

But sometimes, no matter where or how long some stickers stick, they last.

Recently, when I saw a “Be a New Orleanian. wherever you are.” sticker on a leaning post in a struggling New Orleans neighborhood, I knew it had staying power--even if the post doesn’t.





Blake Haney, 33, created the sticker while he and several-hundred thousand other New Orleanians found themselves displaced in different cities and towns after Hurricane Katrina.

“'Be a New Orleanian. wherever you are.' is a shout to all of us that were scattered across the country," Haney says. "Even if you're stuck in Houston or Jersey, remember to be who you are."

It’s now the adopted ode of displaced locals around the world, frequent visitors and never-beens who can’t shake Katrina images from their minds or internet searches.

Three years post-Katrina, Haney and his business partner Patrick Brower, 30, have turned the "we're in this together" rallying cry into a profitable tee-shirt company called Dirty Coast.

Their flagship shirt was an adaptation of the “Be a New Orleanian. wherever you are." sticker. They have since released over 50 often inspirational, sometimes satirical and always pro-New Orleans tee-shirts. Dirty Coast's best-seller these days has a head shot of Barack Obama, with “Geauxbama” underneath in homage to Louisiana’s French roots.

Others play recognizable American themes with post-Katrina New Orleans twists.




Their shirts have ended up in national media on the backs of Angelina Jolie, Jimmy Fallon, Brad Pitt, Sienna Miller and others. The company has grown considerably from the weeks after Katrina. They opened a store in a hip section of New Orleans and hope to open a second store in the next two years, while continuing to grow internet business at dirtycoast.com.

There are at least 30 more shirts in the developed idea phase according to Brower.

Dirty Coast's trademark X and fleur de lis sometimes trips fans up because of the thousands of spray painted Xs on the facades of New Orleans homes.

"The X marks the spot and New Orleans represented by the fleur de lis is the treasure," Brower says.


Haney created the X marks the NOLA design while in a coffee shop in Lafayette, La. about three weeks after Katrina.

"If you know New Orleans, there is something about it that attracts a certain personality. It's a mindset, a way of being, and I think it's the thing locals and NOLA converts connect with."

Haney ordered 5,000 stickers while to return to New Orleans. Guerilla marketing, Brower and Haney say, built Dirty Coast.

"I started dropping off stickers at local businesses when I got back," Haney says. He knew he was on to something when he would return and storekeepers asked for more.

"They couldn't keep them in the stores."

Dirty Coast has distributed about 800,000 stickers, Haney says.

They've ended up on turn tables in LA, bar shelves in Manhattan, bumpers in Maine and water bottles in South America.

One New Orleanian, Brower says, tattooed an image of the sticker. He has a picture at his desk to prove it. It's even signed by the tattoo artist.

About 10 minutes after Brower shows me the picture and after several more stories of random "Be a New Orleanian..." sticker sightings, I ask him where the craziest place he's heard a sticker is.

"Oh," he says.

A moment goes.

"That guy's back."

Best,

Robert

To buy Dirty Coast gear, go to http://www.dirtycoast.com

To see some places where the sticker has been sighted:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/312424@N20/pool/

Volunteers Key to Successful Evacuation

http://www.nola.com/timespic/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1223097623224550.xml&coll=1

504ward

504ward Promotional Film from Benjamin Reece on Vimeo.

A buddy of mine, Mark Martin and I are in the above video as well as some other young professionals in New Orleans.
--Robert

Competition Looks To Keep Youth In N.O.

NEW ORLEANS -- Business leaders are launching a competition aimed at trying to keep 23- to 35-year-olds who came to the city to help rebuild it after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans longterm.

The competition, part of a new initiative called "504ward," a play on New Orleans' area code, offers a package worth more than $200,000 _ including cash and professional services _ for the winning idea, according to The Idea Village, an economic development group that invests in local entrepreneurs.

"There are so many challenges in New Orleans," said Tim Williamson, the group's president.

Those who are smart and have drive can rise to lofty positions _ in business and elsewhere _ at a relatively young age now, he said. "Those folks don't have the historical baggage of what was; they look at how it can be."

Applicants must meet certain criteria, including being a for-profit with "high potential" for long-term sustainability and demonstrated ability to hold onto that prized demographic. Just what they propose _ and how broad their reach may ultimately be _ remains to be seen.

Pitches for the initial round must be submitted by Dec. 4 and can be made on YouTube. There will be three rounds, with five finalists brought here in March.

After Katrina hit in August 2005, volunteers flocked to the region to help with relief and recovery work, such as house gutting. The city was billed as providing Peace Corps-type opportunities for younger people, and idealists of any age, interested in helping rebuild a major U.S. city and key institutions, like the public education system, flawed before the storm.

Younger people came; there's evidence of that in the new teachers in the state-run Recovery School District and within city or redevelopment agencies.

But some new-recruit teachers and fellows are with finite commitments, like two years. Keeping them beyond that is a trick for a tourist-dependent city still faced with violent crime and limited health care and in the midst of efforts to tap into the green revolution and otherwise diversify the economy.

504ward plans a Web site to act as a networking hub, plus a mentoring-style program to link younger and older professionals and bring them into the business fold.

Greg Rigamer, a demographer who's closely tracked post-Katrina New Orleans, said he'd expect young people moving to the city to register to vote if they're committed to the area longterm and that he hasn't seen "any blip" in voter registration rolls relative to pre-Katrina to signal a major influx of such newcomers.

"What we really have to do is build a sustainable economy," he said. "That's what keeps people here."
___

On the Net:
http://www.504ward.com/
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or

The First Re-vacuee

Union Passenger Terminal
September, 2008
New Orleans, La.

Dear Family and Friends,

It seems long ago now, July 9th, when kids played homeless men, old ladies and mothers with children during a dry-run of the City's Assisted Evacuation Plan (CAEP). Afterwards, everyone involved not-so-quietly hoped we'd never have to do it for real.

Hurricane Gustav's path became apparent on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. That cruel irony heightened some New Orleanians' senses--eyes, ears and the little hairs on their necks--enough to pack up and leave town three years to the day they saw their City drown.
Over the next two days, nearly two million residents fled New Orleans and Southern Louisiana. Part of that number were 18,000 New Orleanians who used the first no-kidding rendition of the CAEP.

They were New Orleans most vulnerable citizens.

A homeless man with one shoe. A mother with five kids under eight. An 80-year old married couple.

Thousands representing the family-unit in poor, Urban America came through the turnstiles. I never quite realized how matriarchal it was.

Great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers, and sisters towed small children.

Sometimes family units would be 16 people. They'd often have a single spokesperson. It was usually the most senior woman unless she was extremely elderly. Family after family came through that way. And off they went.

Several hundred homeless residents came through.

Nearly 1,000 Latinos with little English skills came through and bi-lingual translators assured them they wouldn't be hassled about their residency status.

The spectrum of evacuees was large. Many evacuees were run-of-the-mill New Orleanians, who, for some reason or another, have not adopted the American "I need a car" mindset.

My favorite group was the 20 international young people who work on temporary visas as servers and busboys, linen changers and line cooks in French Quarter restaurants and hotels. They arrived with huge traveling backpacks and "What did we get ourselves into?" looks on their faces.

We waved and well-wished several people I'd known pre-evacuation, including a clerk at the Walgreens beneath my apartment and a retired bookkeeper who volunteers at City Hall.

The planes, trains and buses took evacuees to cities and towns in northern Louisiana like Shreveport as well as shelters and Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas. The process took just over 35 hours to complete. Residents had 17 different pick-up locations where they could catch a ride to the main transportation hub for the evacuation.

The local city-bus operators shuffled thousands from the different neighborhood pickup points to the Union Passenger Terminal. Special needs citizens were given door to door service.

Once the UPT shut its doors about 12 hours before Gustav made landfall, it looked ready to resume Amtrak and Greyhound service. A City employee who worked the Superdome during Katrina said one of the CAEP's litmus tests of success was the appearance of the UPT after the last train headed to Memphis.

When we left, I told him I'd be happy to eat a bag lunch on the floor.

Larman Sparkman's left foot hit New Orleans' soil last Thursday, making him the first returned resident in New Orleans historic and unprecedented assisted evacuation. There wasn't a welcoming committee waiting for Sparkman and the people he'd spent the past week with, just a few people who happened to be on sight at New Orleans' Union Passenger Terminal planning for the first of the evacuee arrivals to begin the following day.

Sparkman (pictured in white) and 26 returned others became the impromptu trail-blazers of an elaborate plan that, by and large was a success. The measurement stick: the evacuation would have saved several lives if Hurricane Gustav had actually carried the bite forecasters feared.
There are three camps with observations about the treatment of City Assisted evacuees once they arrived at shelters.

Some evacuees said they were treated miserably. Bill Quigley, a Loyola University law professor and other social activists are protesting alleged inhumane shelters in northern Louisiana.

Quigley volunteered during the evacuation and more than once he told me how well he thought the plan was working.

Shelter-condition protesters came to City Hall on Tuesday. As residents of Galveston and other Texas communities deal with Hurricane Ike devastation and as several southern Louisiana parishes are still in states of emergency, the timing seemed off. There is no doubt a time and a place is needed for those conversations, however.

Others said they'd had pleasant experiences and would definitely use the service again.

Finally, there were accounts from people like Gloria Ivory, 64. She wasn't upset by the conditions or the treatment at the shelter in Knoxville, Tenn. She was "embarrassed" by her fellow New Orleanians that fought, stole and were disruptive while in Knoxville.

"I doubt they'd ever take us back," Ivory said. "I don't blame them."

Gustav missed New Orleans and the City was largely spared minus the week-long, city-wide power outages.

Several scenarios and replays, reflections and "lets work this out" discussions have and will continue to occur while preparing for the next hurricane. The biggest fear for us all, however, is that many evacuees who returned weary, beleaguered and bleary-eyed from Gustav will choose to stay for the next storm.

Sparkman said he'd do it again. Beverly Mitchell, the volunteer at City Hall, said the same.

Best,

Robert


Photos: Robert X. Fogarty, Julie Plonk

City Assisted Evacuation from Hurricane Gustav

Written from City Hall
8/31/2008
23:00

Dear Family and Friends,

By now you've heard.

What you may not have read however, amidst the impending danger, was New Orleans' ability to evacuate 18,000 people without alternative transportation. Homeless, elderly, special needs, you name it, they came through the assisted evacuation program.

There were guys like Jerry, 51 from the Carrollton neighborhood. There were thousands of people like Jerry actually, all scared about what lies ahead yet sensible enough to leave. The process is called the CAEP and the city, state and federal government have been planning it for three years.

We hoped it would never be needed.

Over the last 41 hours I spent 20 of them at the Union Passenger Terminal.

You might be wondering why I was there? Backstory, 25 words or less. Been here 18 months. In AmeriCorps. Coordinate volunteers for Mayor's Office. Needed volunteers for this plan.


---- Original Message -----
From: Robert X. Fogarty
To: xxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sun Aug 31 15:11:05 2008
Subject: Volunteers at UPT

Over the last two days concerned and invested New Orleanian Citizens and AmeriCorps members displayed incredible passion, knowledge and unlimited willingness to do whatever incident commanders at the UPT needed to successfully run the CAEP.

Working a minimum of 12 hours with shifts often more, loaded buses with a highly effective counting system taught to the by the La Natl Guard. By O700 Sunday AmeriCorps members from around the country who have moved to New Orleans after the storm were running the bus loading process along side state employees.

AmeriCorps members also embedded with Red Cross personnel to distrbute thousands of bottles of ice cold water.

Concerned citizen and AmeriCorps volunteers also were the first to greet evacuees and afix tracking bracelets to their wrists. When special needs citizens needed help getting off buses AmeriCorps members were their to provide wheelchairs.

A special team of bilingual volunteers who were on site to translate and calm anxiety of non-english speaking latinos.

Bilingual translators were community leaders who were calling with bus updates on the hour to local spanish radio stations

With a drastically reduced help from city and state organizations who had large numbers on Saturday,
citizen and AmeriCorps volunteers were vital to the CAEP on Sunday.

Incident Commander John DeMartini and Lt. Col. Jerry Sneed are cc'd'on this email.

Over the last 72 hours citizens and post-K AmeriCorps transplants now living in the City accounted for over 700 hours of service to this evacuation.

Breakdown
30 individual New Orleanians
25 AmeriCorps members provided by sponsoring organization Rebuilding Together a local non-profit whose mission is to restore homes or elderly and disabled citizens. Rebuilding Together executive director Kristin Palmer were on site to lead. 16 AmeriCorps National Civilian Community members
10 AmeriCorps members sponsored by the Tulane University Center for Public Service.




So there's the skinny. I'm hunkered down at City Hall with the Office of Emergency Preparedness and their command center. It's the safest place I could be.

I hope to be able to do these things at least once a day, but sleep may become a priority.

Know this about the people you see in these photos. They are safe and sound outside of the City. No matter what happens, remember that.

Best to everyone,

Robert
(8/31/08 23:40)

Year Three

August 29, 2008
New Orleans, La.

Dear Family and Friends,

The calendar is still valid here. Modified, of course.

Post-K New Orleans turns three today, and the City still carries the markings of its embattled recovery. Over 100,000 people have left, one in three residential addresses is vacant or blighted and its crime rate has passed casually guarded on its way to "Wow, I really do have to think about my safety."

Government-dispensed spray paint still lingers on many homes' facades. The X's are as common as mailboxes around these parts. "They're memorials," my friend says.

But, we, as Americans, shouldn't give up on New Orleans.

You'll read a lot about the bad today. And you'll read a little about the good.

For that, a buddy of mine decided to round up the 100 best things to come out of New Orleans since Katrina to balance the good versus bad scale. Like never before, thanks to the internet, bottom-up information gets the same street credentials as the stuff delivered to your doorstep.

He calls the list the NOLA 100.

New Orleans blogosphere is filled with citizen activism. No grants, no awards. Nothing but concerned citizens in love with their City. Likewise, neighborhood groups have been and continue to be the leaders of recovery. Caring for returned neighbors and the resurgence of one's neighborhood now comes right behind family, food and church.

They're paying it forward too. A contingent of neighborhood organizers went to Cedar Rapids in the weeks after the Iowa floods to give best practices on mobilizing neighbors.

Observing neighborhood resilience is enough to for me to know New Orleans is going to be fine. People who came back right after the storm will tell you that the City has progressed in many ways.

My co-worker Loretta, she uses military-issued "filtered drinking water" on the office plants.
We still have a case of the stuff.

She spent three months on the floor of a college basketball arena in Lafayette, La.

Talk about progress.

Now that I feel like I've got one foot in here, I sometimes forget about Loretta's story. The everyman story here, actually.

I watched the Spike Lee documentary When the Levees Broke the other night. My friends and I, who've come here post-Katrina, we should be obligated to re-watch and re-read the accounts of New Orleanians who watched their City drown.

Because sometimes when we're partying till sunrise, New Orleans without the baggage feels too damn good.

My friends in DC, policy kids, capitol hill kids who get chided for their insatiable need to be inside are sending similar criticism towards New Orleans' transplants.

"You're using New Orleans," they say.

And now I wonder aloud. Is New Orleans becoming a frontier for socially-conscious opportunists? An it phrase on a resume?

I must disclose now that I didn't move to New Orleans with its professional benefits on my mind. I thought a year here would do me good. The "you're only young once" mentality.

Tulane University had more applicants for this year's incoming college class than ever. They stopped taking applications at 34,000. Shut down for an entire semester after Katrina, Tulane is now the most selective school in the country.

Seventeen-hundred new Tulanians began class on Wednesday.

People say the flood of applicants to Tulane is a direct correlation to the service trips by church groups and other organizations since the storm. Talk to any neighborhood activist and they talk about service volunteers like knights in shining armor or guardian angels.

But the need for unskilled grunt work is nearly gone now, any houses that still need gutting should be demolished. Volunteers are being used nicely to help curb neighborhood blight, however. Because, as I said earlier, one in three residential homes is vacant.

I sometimes question how people still coming to help view this place. Is it a pity trip? Is New Orleans like a kid whose black eye is seemingly still swollen?

Maybe.

The black has turned though. Kind of yellow and brown now. Just give it awhile.

Best,

Robert

Hurricane Evacuation Exercise

July 14th, 2008
New Orleans, La.

Dear Volunteers,

I once stood in the dark with Ken Fisher.

He'd taken me over to the municipal auditorium where 250,000 bottles of water and 25,000 packaged meals are stored. "Just in case," he said. "We're ready this time."

Mike, a fictional Category 3 Hurricane was 50 hours from landfall last Wednesday during the Southeastern Louisiana evacuation exercise. Fisher was an important decision maker in the New Orleans Emergency Operations Center. As you waited at pick-points and went through registration, Ken was getting fictional worst-case scenarios thrown at him, making strategic decisions.

"Ken, yet again, demonstrated his prowess in emergency management last week during our Hurricane drill and the after action comments indicated as such," Jerry Sneed, the director of the New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness said.

Ken died Saturday.

It was quick. Natural causes, Sneed said.

Times like these that make you remember the value of friends and family. A sense of community. Last Wednesday, while you didn't see him, he was watching out after you.

After all, it was his job and he loved it.

This letter began as a simple thank you for your efforts. With a heavy heart, I realized Ken would be proud of your engagement. He'd also be proud of those of you who had comments of uncertainty about the evacuation plan. If anybody could handle heat, Ken could.

So, for your time and insight last Wednesday--Thank you.

Three hundred and twenty volunteers was the largest volunteer turnout for a Hurricane evacuation exercise in a single parish since Katrina.

If we learned anything Wednesday, it's that the real thing will not be easy.

You played elderly and disabled. You played criminals and pregnant women. And sometimes you felt like yourself, and wondered why first responders weren't treating you like you were 86.

The drill, you said, is an imperfect operation with progressive concepts and unsettling setbacks.

In the real deal first responders will not have the bright orange cards identifying special needs. You asked, "How are you going to tell?" "What about a sick person who gets separated from his family?" "Are bus drivers considered first responders?"

Others found the evacuation exercise eye-opening and positive. The City has a plan and the ability to execute it kind of thinking. "I'm glad it wasn't easy for us because it won't be easy if it really happens," one volunteer said.

Wednesday was hot like it would be during an actual evacuation. All of you sat hours with little information.

Cole Judge, a volunteer, said, "At one point, I felt like I was actually evacuating."

Another's eyes teared, knowing how close it felt to 2005 and how it might feel if it happens again.

An emergency planner said that the evacuation exercise shows that preparing to get out on your own or to hitch a ride is the best way out. From an organizational standpoint, the drill was a success, officials say. They found glitches they need to work out. Several first responders wondered aloud where all the volunteer role players came from.

You challenged them.

The emergency operations center at City Hall is on the ninth floor and behind a security door. It's a little enclave of technology and information. Ken watched monitors, tracked the storm and made decisions with you in mind.

He loved talking about the stockpiling of goods for the next storm and the improvements the office had made after Katrina. Especially the evacuation plan that you were so valuable in testing last week.

Thanks Ken. We'll miss you.

Best,

Robert

Day 473

New Orleans, La.
June 22, 2008

Dear Family and Friends,

New Orleans is a city of things uncommon. Its core is filled with orange cones and flashing yellow street lights that are the everyday signs of consistent brokenness. The longer I stay here, the more I believe back to normal is in a constant state of maybe tomorrow.

This is a move away from my honeymoon days when I neither cared nor noticed the systemic problems that may never be fixed. Or maybe I noticed the problems too much, still naive to believe that one year's time was long enough to make a difference. Now, when six days pass before a downed streetlight is removed, I shrug and say, "Only in New Orleans."

I don't blame the City's department of Public Works. In fact, I applaud their efforts. Sixty-thousand blocks are in New Orleans and all of them have been neglected for decades. Throw in Katrina, which devastated infrastructure and City staff, and New Orleans picked up more broken streetlights, massive potholes and missing street signs.

Then again, people aren't screaming from the rooftops about these daily inconveniences.

This has always been a violent city. The French sent criminals and prostitutes to populate the colony. Decades later, the Ursuline nuns came to center their spirituality. Today, in high crime neighborhoods, street signs suddenly become far less important where police staffing is low. The New Orleans Police Department lost 500 officers after the storm and the post-K attrition rate is just now starting to settle.

When people ask me whether I'm apprehensive about my safety, I used to say no. But, now, little doubts have crept in. As a 473-day veteran of New Orleans, I know now there are inherent risks while living here. These are the tiny disclaimers that everyone should hear, I suppose.

Out of my extended circle of friends, five have had their cars broken into and/or stolen, two have had their bikes stolen, one had her house broken into, one has been mugged.

One has been shot.

My friend who was shot loved the neighborhood he worked in, despite its notorious reputation for drugs and overall down-and-outness. He was AmeriCorps member and spent three weeks in the local (LSU) university's hospital. One of only four fully functioning hospitals here, by the way.

Thank whatever deity you choose that he was a college athlete. His physical strength saved his life, doctors say. He's back in Pennsylvania, and I'm hoping, not entirely spoiled on his altruistic post-college pursuit to do something bigger than himself.

Because laying floorboards and hanging drywall for poor people is a long way from where he could have been during his first year out of school. He'd joined a new community worked long for little and finally was fed up with his friend's car being stolen for the second time. When he and a friend saw the thieves, "We chased after them," he told his local news station. "I caught up with one of them and when I caught up to him he pulled out a gun and shot me twice."

Some say he was stupid to chase. His youthful gumption was courageous, I say.

It's too bad, but only $10,000 of his $90,000 in medical bills will be paid by AmeriCorps.

"It's a horrible thing that happened, but I met a lot of good people, lots of friends down there and I helped a lot of great people, so I don't regret going down," he told his local news station.

So, yes, New Orleans is a City of things uncommon. Uncommon because with all its flaws, the little heartbeat it still has left beats loudly enough for us all to want to be near it. Perhaps, those of us who aren't locals, have been drawn to its dysfunction. Every day here is unlike any other day somewhere else.

And now, during my 473rd day, I wonder whether we're working for a restoration we'll never see.

Who cares, I say. As long as we try.

Robert

Ten month wild ride

Camp Hope by Habitat for Humanity
May 15, 2008
St. Bernard Parish, La.

Dear Family and Friends,

They aren't glamour children. Often they're just out of high school or taking a break from less than starry-eyed college experiences. Some have finished their degrees. Whatever the path, AmeriCorps NCCC members are quietly doing some of the most important work in the rebuilding of the gulf coast--the stuff that happens in the sun and sometimes the moonlight.

At the Orleans St. Bernard parish line Claiborne Avenue becomes Judge Perez Avenue, residents' skin goes from black to white in nearly an instant. The boarded doors and vacant businesses remain strikingly strong, similar.

Fifteen miles past the parish line, an old elementary school now houses up to 600 recovery volunteers a night. They cook for each other, clean up after each other and ultimately work with each other here in south Louisiana, understandably foreign to all of us.

One license plate in Camp Hope's parking lot tonight reads, "Ontario."

Camp Hope is the brainchild put into action by Habitat for Humanity. Currently there are about 200 people staying here because of President Jimmy Carter's blitz build happening this week. The non-profit hopes to start and finish 7 homes from start to finish as well as dedicate and/or start 50 more.

But, I've come to meet some of the most interesting young people in America. Of the 200 people staying here, about 110 of them are members of an AmeriCorps' program called the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC).

The "N-triple-C" members implant themselves into communities in teams of 11 for three months at a time. They are at the beck and call of the non-profits they serve. Once the locals get to know them, the National Civilian Community Corps members are referred to simply as the "N-trips." Their total term of service is 10 months.

Jessie Loubet, 24, is a leader of an NCCC team. His nails are painted black and his hair passes his shoulders just enough to look like a rocker on R and R. He says his team works 9-12 hour days that include physical training three days-a-week. NCCC teams live, eat, sleep and work together. All teams are composed of Americans 18-24.

It often, former AmeriCorps NCCC members say, becomes the Real World without the cameras.

"At the end," Loubet says, "we become like family."

Loubet's team is working in New Orleans with a non-profit called Hope has a Face. They are working to turn a warehouse into a community center and volunteer housing quarters. Before New Orleans, the team spent seven weeks in Pearlington, Miss. This is the best description of Pearlington, written by blogger and photographer Clayton Cubbitt:

Pearlington Mississippi was never much to look at, as far as towns go. Even before Katrina it had barely 1,600 citizens. It doesn't have a main street, or a town square. It doesn't have a mayor or a city council. Since Katrina, it doesn't have a post office, a library, or an elementary school. It's a collection of winding country roads, of mossy trees and swamps, dotted with a patchwork constellation of homes, most quite humble even before the storm sank them under twenty feet of muddy water. It's primordial America. It's America before mega-malls and exurbs and freeways stitched it up and plasticized it. But this isn't the autumnal village America featured in political ads or Rockwell paintings, either. This is the dirty deep American South, scruffy and proud. Red mud and fried shrimp. Hard work and love of God. Blacks and whites on different sides of town, mingling in the middle. It sits on old Highway 90 midway between the decadent nights of New Orleans and the white beaches of Biloxi. It's a tiny microcosm of Louisiana and Mississippi lost in the bayous on the border between them. It's the old American dream, covered in drifting Spanish moss (www.operationeden.blogspot.com)

Pearlington, corps member Andrea Portales says, made the team of 11 bond quicker than expected.

The town had no stop lights and no places to go, so they spent time with one another, she says.

At 24, Portales is the oldest on the team.

"They used to call me Mother Goose," she says.

Portales is from Del Rio, Tex. She started school at Texas Tech in Lubbock and went to school for three years. "I'm going to have to start all over," she says. Portales isn't unlike many of the people NCCC attracts. Young Americans looking for something bigger than themselves and the personal benefit of getting 10 months to think about their next move.

On Loubet's team, three have college degrees, five have attended some college and three have not been enrolled in school.

"Last year I got the experience of a lifetime. I gutted homes in New Orleans, I did forestry work in the hills of Tennessee and tutored kids in Charleston, S.C.," Loubet says.

"What other program can you do that in?"

There's four teams (44 people) working with Hope has a Face so they've broken the work into shifts for all the teams. From sunrise to darkness, NCCC teams work at the warehouse.

The last team finishes just before midnight.


Best,

Robert

AmeriCorps week profile: Narda Hernandez

May 7, 2008
Tulane University Community Health Clinic
611 N Rampart Street
New Orleans, La.

Dear Family and Friends,

When we heard the news, it made us feel like, at least for a moment, somebody got something right.

Narda Hernandez, 23, has been awarded a fellowship to stay and work in New Orleans for two more years. There's talk down here about a brain gain--young people with educations moving here falling in love with the City and staying.

Hernandez is a part of this group, but she's more valuable than most, because she's big on ideas others don't pay much attention to.

Hernandez is from Laredo, Tex. Her word choice switches from English to Spanish, sentence to sentence, no matter the native tongue of her counterpart. She came to New Orleans with the AmeriCorps, a one-year commitment she made right after graduating college.

Over 600 AmeriCorps and Teach for America members are currently working in the City.

After the storm, Spanish-speaking day laborers flooded New Orleans. They, in no small part, have been major contributors to the recovery.

She's always had an interest in community health, and heard about the migrant and seasonal workers moving to New Orleans. Hernandez wondered what kind of health care options would be available.

New Orleans' Latino population pre-storm was only 3.1 percent according to the 2000 census.

Tulane University Community Health Clinic organizers tell the simple beginning story of one doctor, one table and an ice chest keeping the tetanus shots cold. The clinic is now funded by a portion of the 100 million dollars the nation of Qatar gave to New Orleans after the storm.

Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Amir of the State of Qatar, visited New Orleans two weeks ago. Maybe to see how his money was being spent.

Since she's been in New Orleans, (less than a year) she's started a language translation program at the health clinic. At almost all times, a Spanish speaker is available to translate doctor-patient dialog. When Hernandez first came, few Spanish speakers used the clinic. Receiving healthcare in a different language is often an intimidating or unpleasant experience, Hernandez says.

"Word of mouth started spreading and we started getting alot of Spanish speakers," she says.

Now clinic officials say that they see 30-50 Spanish speakers a week in the four full-time doctor staff that is augmented by medical residents at the Tulane University Medical School. The Spanish interpreter program is volunteer based with eight people who commit to six to eight hours a week. Tulane University undergraduate Spanish students also volunteer during the school year.

Hernandez will be leaving the AmeriCorps and community health clinic at Tulane in June for the the New Voices fellowship. New Voices provides the salary for its fellows to work for two years in accredited non-profits around the country and its mission, like the name, is to fund social entrepreneurs who may not look like decision-makers from previous generations.

"Eso es mi mero mole (That's my thing) ," Hernandez says about working with the Latino population here. During her fellowship Hernandez will be working with the Common Ground health clinic. She'll continue healthcare outreach to the migrant workers in New Orleans, but will be focusing on the Latinas who work in the hotel and tourism industry.

"The focus has been about helping males," she says. "But what about the Latinas?"

Hernandez is one of the won't take no for an answer people that New Orleans desperately needs. The small group working to improve Latino access to healthcare is strong she says.

"There is a sense of uncertainty about what will happen. The health care infrastructure is above us, but because we are a community health clinic, it gives us a sense of flexibility," she says.

"There's nothing stopping us from a community front."