Day Two: January 2008

Day Two: Wednesday, January 9



Wow. What a group! What a day! We had a rough night of sleep last night, as a huge thunderstorm rocked our bus and flooded our camp (but not our tent, because we have GUTTERS!). It was fascinating to watch the water pour down from the sky and also rise up from the ground because we are – we think – below sea level here. A few people were so zonked out from our redeye flight that they missed the whole thing.

Once the storm was over, we started the day EARLY, as the breakfast group volunteered to wake up at 6:15 to be sure that things would move fast enough to get us to work by 7:45. Everyone else got up at 6:45 and agreed to hurry and scramble to make the day happen fast. As usual, though, we couldn’t move quite as quickly as we imagined, and we didn’t get to work until 8:15. Oops. Our breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and powdered eggs (both New Orleans delicacies as far as we are concerned) was worth spending some time in camp this morning, but we all see our work as our top priority so we will have to figure out a way to move more efficiently in the morning. (NOLA vets out there: does this sound familiar?)

We went to a Habitat for Humanity build in the West Bank, the area of New Orleans where we live. The West Bank is, strangely, east of almost everywhere else we go in the city, but we won’t try to convince the region to change its usages. Even though we were late, our great new supervisor, Megan, welcomed us and put us on some excellent jobs. Within minutes, some of us were learning the new floor system that Habitat is using, some of us were installing windows, others were building a “truss walk” (a temporary wall that will support us when we raise the roof), and others were actually raising a roof on a different house. It feels like we have already almost done it all, even though it was our very first day of work.

The Habitat crew knocks off work at 2:30 p.m., cleans up and leaves by 3:00. We followed their schedule with them, but when they all went home or wherever, we went to our next job: gutting a house in the Holy Cross area of the Lower Ninth Ward. Many of you might have heard of this neighborhood because it is one of the places where Brad Pitt has focused his energies and lots of media attention. We didn’t see Brad or his project there (yet), but we got plenty of satisfaction out of going into a house that had been partially gutted long ago, but never completed. Complete gutting is necessary to get a house decontaminated and ready for reconstruction. Someone had helped our friend Leroy Palmer get part of the way to that “zero mark” where rebuilding can begin, but we hope to get him all the way there by tomorrow afternoon.

Leroy is the father of Don Palmer, one of the neighbors in the Upper Ninth Ward neighborhood where we have spent the most time over the last three years. Don lives next to our dear friend Rosie and we helped him clear his house in January 2006. Leroy has experienced quite a bit of loss over the last few years: his home was nearly ruined in the storms of 2005, another house he owned was also destroyed, and within a year of the storms, his dear wife Odessa passed away.

We entered his home in Holy Cross at 4:00 or so this afternoon, and in about two hours time got very close to cleaning out his home once and for all after almost two and a half years of waiting. Though most of our crew had never done this kind of work before, they all caught on quickly and developed a great system for pulling down drywall and clearing the space. Everyone was swinging sledgehammers and flat bars like old pros. A couple of outbuildings there seemed to remain untouched since the storm, leaving our group gasping again about the force of the water and the damage it did. We tossed out piles of belongings but also salvaged a few, including a very warped but still recognizable photo album of young Palmer kids (maybe Don and others?) frolicking on fire engines and in parks.

We finally knocked off when darkness overtook us. Of course, that section of the neighborhood had no source of power for us to light our workplace, so daylight was all that we could use. We had completed nine and a half hours of labor when all was said and done. We hope all of our days can be so varied, so satisfying, and so harmonious. We’re glad we’re here. . .




Leo, Emily, and Briana unroll tape while working on the windows. Today we installed and framed windows with Habitat for Humanity on the West Bank.



Tommy and Mark install a window that will soon bring New Orleans sunshine into a home.



Sam and Julie are entranced with their first look at the Lower Ninth.



Erik and Scott give each other a high five as they put on their boots and hard hats to gut a house in the Lower Ninth.



Leo starts the bus to return to camp after dusk. We accomplished our first day of work!


Bienvenidos a Algiers!




In this picture you can see the spray paint from when the house was searched on September 8, 2005 and a sign welcoming neighbors back, a sign of hope.


What we found in Don’s father’s garage which had been untouched since the storm.




It’s all hands on deck, everyone helps getting the Habitat homes weathered.



Many of the students spent the day working to put up windows and trim.



This is just the end of our work site at habitat and everyone is having a great time and enjoying the great weather.



This picture shows us working with Habitat for Humanity. In the location where we are working they have ten different houses under construction, and this is what it typically looks like when you look out while you are working.



This was a burnt car filled to the brim with garbage by our second build of the day in the Lower Ninth Ward. It reminded me of the immense clash problems that New Orleans still faces.



Looking in at Emily and Julie painting siding for a house under a raised house built by Habitat for Humanity volunteers.



Brad and Obi began the day working on the floor joists at one of the Habitat homes - one of the many critical steps to building these homes.



Chris, Mark, and Alec decorating our new home and installing our gutter!



Tying his shoe, with a determined look on his face, Alec is ready to face any thing Habitat for Humanity can throw at him.



Workers from Ohio’s Kent State working to put trusts up on the newly built homes.



Matt Wheeler rises to the occasion and drives nails from the truss into the framing of the house.



Emily Robbins and Bryan Navarro in the process of gutting a house in the lower ninth ward.

Day One, January 2008

Day One: Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Another redeye flight (that was surprisingly less painful than those we’ve taken before) brought us back to our beloved New Orleans today. Fifteen of us are veterans of trips past, having come to work and serve in this great city anywhere from 1-10 times since the storms of August 2005. Those relief workers have completed over 10,000 hours of manual labor so far. Others of us are experiencing the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita for the first time. No matter what our level of experience, we are genuinely thrilled to be here.

Happily, we are also thrilled to be together. Something very beautiful is emerging already as this group solidifies and all of its members operate as one harmonious whole. We were, of course, quite groggy when we landed at Louis Armstrong Airport, but our bus buzzed with anticipation and so did the empty fenced lot that we will call home from today until January 29.

We have to brag -- especially for the benefit of veterans of our prior trips who are not with us here this January – that this is BY FAR the best camp we have ever created for ourselves. Much of the overall layout is the same, with four lovely portapots (from the local company with our favorite name of all – Doodie Calls) standing in one corner, the shower trailer we used last year set up nearby, a dressing tent along the side wall of the showers, our big beautiful rainbow bus expertly parked down the middle, and a three-peak kitchen and dining tent serving as our central gathering space.

The difference this year is some incredible ingenuity. Of course, the trials and errors of groups gone by have brought us to the place we are today. But any of those who have struggled with the quirks of our Bermuda-grass lot would be quite impressed with three things in particular. First, we set each of our dining tents just a few inches apart from the next and found a way to hang a rain-channeling gutter down the gap so that we could not possibly suffer the indoor runoff that last year’s group endured for 15 of its 22 days. Chris, Justin, Alec, and Mark are the primary sources of this very necessary innovation. Elijah, Erik, and Emily led a team that help to wrap the gaps between the poles and keep the wind and rain from finding its way in.

Second, we built a platform by the cooking area that will prevent us from having to stand in inches of rain just to heat some water that might possibly keep us warm. (This platform could also easily be seen – and used – as a stage; we’ll let you know if that happens.) Chris, Tommy, Linzy, and Sergio were the main movers and shakers on this new addition to our NOLA world.

And finally, we actually finally got organized about the way we will manage our gear. Instead of one massive pile of stinking socks and boots, each team will have individual bins in which they can manage their five members’ stinking socks and boots however they choose. (Thanks to Shawny’s sister Sherry for getting us those bins!) Each team also has a bin for its hard hats, gloves, and safety glasses and a separate five-gallon bucket with its assortment of tools. Kate C., Briana, and Julie worked for hours to make this happen. They even have special places inside the bus to store all the media equipment that has never been organized very neatly before. Matt P., Linzy G., Kate C., and others crawled around on the floor of the bus until this job was done. If everything goes as planned, these changes will have a huge impact on our efficiency and our comfort. Yes!

For fun we also found some cheap plastic indoor-outdoor chandeliers to make our tents feel like ballrooms, and we had a huge burst of creativity that led to dialogue sheets inside the portapots, including provocative questions to be answered in moments of quiet contemplation and clear instructions about how to show courtesy to the overall group when using the facilities. We were tired when we arrived, but we still found a way to use our humor and creativity to build a world in which we can all be as happy as possible.

As we settled into our busbunks at night, little flashes of lightning and quiet faraway thunder helped to keep things interesting until we finally drifted into much-needed sleep. Tomorrow we go to a Habitat for Humanity build not too far from our camp, then head over to the Lower Ninth Ward to begin gutting a house that still needs attention more than two full years after the storms. Thanks for joining us on our exciting journey.

Preparing to leave for New Orleans again!

We're all losing our minds on Sunday, January 6th, trying to pack everything that we need to sustain ourselves for the rest of the month in New Orleans. We usually have the great luxury of throwing all of our gear in a trailer and letting the Verrips brothers drive it across the country for us. This year, though, they wisely decided to fly (and will arrive in New Orleans tonight to facilitate the advance work on our living space). Thus, we have the new challenge of trying to pack everything we need into bags that can be checked at the airport. It's been tricky, but we think we will make it. Special thanks to Matt Pelascini for the long hours he spent packing for the group after the semester was long over!

We'd like to go ahead and introduce our teams for this year, so please click on the YouTube links below to meet our crew! Special thanks here to Bryan Navarro for posting our videos and to Rob Limon, Rita Pearson, Alex Stillings, and Devon Perez for their help in preparing them!

The BLOKEs: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Gs-Cm79XFL8

The Elevaters: http://youtube.com/watch?v=KVl5hrZq8rA

Team Team: http://youtube.com/watch?v=gKJOv6mJCTk

Chicas and the Man: http://youtube.com/watch?v=5NxKIEazL74

The Souljas: http://youtube.com/watch?v=GZPpFqGDTKE

BREAK WEEK: Day Nine

April 7: Day Nine, Break Week

Today we returned to California, meaning that our top priority in New Orleans this morning was to pack and load the vans so that we could make our way back to Houston in time for our flight back home. Still, we knew that there were a couple more jobs that we could finish in just a few short hours, so ten of us agreed to get up at 5:30 a.m. and head back to Rosie’s one more time.

On our way from Uptown to the Ninth Ward, we noticed thick black smoke billowing in the air in front of us. As we approached one intersection on South Claiborne Street in the Central City neighborhood, we saw huge flames shooting into the air and a bunch of emergency vehicles all over the streets. A huge old house and an adjacent brick building were being engulfed. It was a highly unusual experience to watch a half block of New Orleans dissolve into fiery embers when we were approaching our 1500th hour of reconstruction labor in just this one week. We drove by slowly, marveled over the weirdness of it all, and then just focused on the jobs at hand.

Once at Rosie’s we scrubbed the floors and grouted the last tiles that we set yesterday, we painted trim, we hung blinds, we cleaned up scattered tools, and we worked on a job or two for Sarah around the corner. Rosie made us coffee and stayed close by, talking about her excitement about the future of the house. Like us, she was still gushing about Janice’s achievement yesterday in walking the new ramp out back. We all took note of what a huge change that ramp would bring to Janice’s life. The folks who went to Sarah’s house learned that she had stayed up late on Friday night to make us homemade pralines, which, as usual, were the best we’ve ever tasted.

The people who hadn’t gone back to the Ninth took responsibility for cleaning and packing up our temporary NOLA home. They doled out our leftover food to other groups staying at our same house and gathered up our dishes, boots, toiletry items, and media equipment so that everything was ready to go.

The folks at Rosie’s and Sarah’s realized that it was time to go, no matter how many more little jobs we could find to do. Because Tommy and Shane were flying out of New Orleans directly (having made separate arrangements from the larger group) we decided to take them back to the houses on our way out of town so that they could finish even more jobs. In that way we got to postpone our goodbyes just a little bit longer.

We collected back at the house where we stayed, made everything fit into the two vans somehow, and headed back to drop Tommy and Shane off for the last time. Rosie had already agreed to drive them to the airport, so all of our loose ends were tying up very nicely. We hugged and hollered and took one last look down the streets of “our” neighborhood: the Upper Ninth Ward. And then we started driving west. And sleeping.

Somewhere along the way we realized why we were so tired: we had completed over 1500 hours of manual labor in this one week alone. Altogether, counting all four of the SMC trips to New Orleans, we have exceeded 10,000 total hours of direct hurricane relief. The numbers work like this on a trip by trip basis:

Jan 2006: 4160 total hours
Break 2006: 720 total hours
Jan 2007: 3700 total hours
Break 2007: 1542 total hours

Grand Total: 10,122!!!

Of course, we could easily count project work as hurricane relief of sorts, but even without counting that work, we hit 10,000 hours! We are exhausted and very proud.

We are also reminded that the work is not over. We know that we made an impact in our 10,000 hours, but we also know that we barely made a dent in the overall crisis still haunting the Gulf Coast. Many homes remain untouched still, almost 20 months after the storms. And people are still waiting. Rosie is waiting for the money promised to her by the state. Sarah is waiting for a reliable plumber to set up her kitchen and bathrooms. Natasha is waiting for the go-ahead from Habitat for Humanity so that she can take possession of her new home. Lisa is waiting for the time when her extended family is no longer is a state of acute crisis, so that she can resume a normal pace sometime in the near future. And thousands of families we haven’t yet met are hoping that a group like ours comes to help them turn the next corner on their road to recovery. Please help them in any way you can.

Thanks for listening, once again . . .




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We ate this morning at one of the all-time fanciest McDonald's that we have ever seen.





There was a lot of tricky tilework to be done in the back of the house, as the rooms are not square. Here's the bathroom floor as it slants around the new shower enclosure.




The kitchen, back entry, and bathroom all share this tilework.




Here's a peek at the new floors and newly-installed blinds in Rosie's bedroom.




Once all the paper is removed, Rosie's living room and bedrooms will have these beautiful laminate floors, perfectly painted walls and trim, and lovely ceiling fans. What a wonderful place!



The long drive to Houston included catching up on some web-posting.

BREAK WEEK: Day Eight

April 6: Day Eight, Break Week

Habitat for Humanity took the day off today for Easter weekend, so we put all of our efforts into the homes of our friends in the Ninth Ward. Mostly, we concentrated on Rosie’s house to finish the jobs that we started there during the week. Our main jobs continued to be the flooring and the entry ramp, but there were tons of other jobs in motion as well. We also took on a big new job in earnest: installing the baseboards throughout the rooms of Rosie’s house.

We were all pretty tired and sore, but those factors had no influence on our levels of energy. We decided to get up even earlier than usual to be sure that we finished the jobs that we had started. No one balked at our 6:30 wakeup time, especially because we had a solid agreement to eat a fast food breakfast rather than our usual bagels and granola.

Once at Rosie’s, a few people immediately hit the floors, literally starting an entire day of crawling around on their knees. They finished tiling the bathroom and back entryway and grouted the tiles that they had set yesterday. At the same time, a whole crew was going through and installing baseboards, which is no easy task in a house whose walls are a bit askew. Others were disassembling a no-longer-necessary fence in the backyard to free up more space around the new access ramp. Suddenly the house that we had entered back in January 2006 looked totally different, as it had new exterior siding, new interior walls, ceilings, and floors, a fresh coat of paint throughout, and a liberating new ramp to access the house from the rear.

It is important to note that all of this was accomplished under somewhat primitive conditions, as we had many fewer tools than we normally have when the Verrips brothers drive a truck and trailer across the country to support our efforts. Thus, where we usually have a chop saw, a table saw, a circular saw and a reciprocating saw, we just had one Skil Saw that we adapted for all of our uses. We also had to innovate over power usage, as Rosie’s electricity is still not hooked up.

While all of this was happening at Rosie’s, Tim was leading the charge at Sarah’s to finish work on the security doors and bars on which she depends. Different people helped him throughout the day, but Tim was the one who dedicated himself entirely to her needs. Sarah stayed right by Tim’s side all day and talked about how blessed she feels that we are helping to take care of her house. By the end of the day, several of us gathered at her back door to attach her security door. It was quite an ordeal, but – as usual – our crew made it happen. Sarah immediately burst into tears.

We all were fighting back tears back at Rosie’s house, as just before the ramp was finished, our friend Lisa Trigo brought Rosie and her disabled roommate Janice out to check out the ramp and the interior work. As we have mentioned before, we built the ramp specifically with Janice in mind, as she currently uses a walker to get around. We just learned, however, that even with the walker, she has never been very mobile. In fact, Lisa told us that until the storm drove Janice out of the house on N. Clairborne, she had not left the house AT ALL for a full SEVEN YEARS!

When Lisa invited her to come see the ramp, Janice was very reluctant to go, thinking that she might not be able to make it up the ramp at all. She somehow got up the courage to try (Rosie’s encouragement sure helped!) and she got her first glimpse back into the almost-restored house. We all stood along the ramp and watched her go, trying to hold back tears. She was excited to see the interior of the house and she was ecstatically proud of her achievement in making it up the ramp. So were we. Rosie said that Janice kept glowing with pride for the rest of the evening.

As we think about it, that ramp might symbolize the biggest single change we have made in any person’s life in our NOLA work so far. Janice could not have maneuvered into or out of the house without that ramp, so we have given her freedom, sunshine, fresh air, and a new sense of pride in her accomplishment. Wow.

We stayed into the darkness finishing touchup painting and other tasks. We made a gumbo run that also included some fried shrimp and boiled crawfish. We held another candelight picnic in Rosie’s front room, joined by Sarah, Rosie, and the Trigos. A few of us made a run to get special souvenirs of our time(s) in New Orleans. We won’t tell you which people are involved, but we will tell you that their souvenirs came from a tattoo parlor. Oh dear.

We didn’t quite finish every job, as we needed to let some things dry before we could continue. So now about half of us are getting up at 5:30 a.m. to return to Rosie’s house and finish what we can before we leave on our long drive to Houston to catch our flight back to California.

We’ll check in one more time and let you know how things went. . .
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Shane continued his mastery of the wet saw today as he cut many tricky notches and cut-outs to accommodate the intricacies of the bathroom and the entryway.




Justin gave a quick tutorial on grout application at the beginning of the day so that we could finish the kitchen floor at Rosie's.




Linzy was one of the lead installers of baseboards at Rosie's.




We communicate quite a bit through the open windows at Rosie's as some of us work inside and some outside.




Janeva and Lindsay work on installing the baseboards at Rosie's.




Brianna turned out to be quite a master at the art of grouting.




Sarah surprised us by cooking a lunch of spaghetti, corn, and bread for us today.




Sarah joined us for lunch on Rosie's other porch.




Tim took this great aerial shot of the ramp in progress from Red's steps behind Rosie's house.




Jack and Bryan sign their names on a slab of concrete that we poured by the ramp.




Here's a look at the floor after it was grouted.




A whole crew of us worked to install Sarah's security door so that she can finally lock her house entirely.

BREAK WEEK: Day Seven

April 5: Day Seven, Break Week

What a day of work we had today! We started early, as Shawny has a new trick to get us out of bed: if we don’t get up when she awakens us, she sits by our beds and tells us stories about her childhood. Some of us heard about the tornado in her hometown when she was a kid, others about the tobacco farms where she grew up, and others got the scoop on the old moped that one of her friends used to have.

We hustled on out to New Orleans East to finish as many jobs for Alisha as we possibly could. We knew she was counting on us, so we went back and finished re-setting windows at one house and touching up paint and building a fence at another. We were again fixing errors left by other groups.

Among other things, we learned that the amount and quality of work that a group completes really establishes the reputation of the organization that they represent. For example, a couple of college groups were obvious letdowns for the Habitat staffers, leaving them still commenting about the shoddy work (or work ethic) of those groups. We are quite pleased to know that we are in a whole different stratosphere in terms of our reputation. The worst thing that we have heard about our group is: “You work TOO hard!” People are always impressed with our stamina and productivity.

Once we left New Orleans East, we headed back to Rosie’s to go full steam ahead on some of the jobs we still hope to finish. The two huge jobs of the day were 1) continuation of the ramp/deck that Jack began yesterday and 2) tiling the floors in the kitchen, back entry, and bathroom. There were tons of other catch-up jobs too, including finishing the paint jobs that we’ve been working on all week for Sarah and for Rose, moving Sarah’s massive concrete front steps into position, weed-whacking Rosie’s yard, and prepping Rosie’s baseboards for installation.

People fanned out in all directions to make all of these things happen today. There was a frenzy of power-saws and drills, as everyone was moving more quickly than ever in pursuit of the completion of these undertakings. A certain set of people crawled and climbed around the kitchen on all fours, applying mortar to backing board and installing tiles.

Our usual homemade lunch was rejected in favor of a big pile of cheeseburgers from a nearby Burger King. We made several runs to pick up more and more material for the jobs that we were on. We were like an anthill.

We kept going and going until darkness began to fall, at which point we located some light sources (Rosie’s electricity is still not hooked up) to make it so that we could go and go some more. We got hungry as the evening dragged on, and Elijah volunteered to make a run for one of our everlasting favorites: Popeye’s Chicken.

We hadn’t run a light to the front of Rosie’s house, so we improvised for our dinner and ate by candlelight. It was unbelievably sweet to sit in that crowded room with its flickering glow and toss biscuits from one side of the room to the other.

By 9:00 p.m., we realized that we had to stop our saws from squealing into the night. We gathered up everything, packed it all away, and pledged to ourselves that we will return super early tomorrow to keep the momentum going.

Rosie is thinking of a new name for her house: “Saint Mary’s Cottage.” We like it. . .



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Bryan and Matt were part of a fence crew that laid out property lines, dug postholes, and set fenceposts for a fence at Natasha's house.




Elijah and Bryan pour cement to stabilize Natasha's new fence around her house in New Orleans East.




Bryan and Matt have spent the week shooting footage for a break documentary. Today they interviewed Kate on Sarah's porch.




Bryan, Lindsay, and Bree work to clear the rest of Rosie's yard where the shed used to be.




Shane tends to the wet saw as he prepares to cut ceramic tiles to be installed on the kitchen and bathroom floors at Rosie's. It turns out that Shane is a bit of an expert at this particular job.




It took a big chunk of our crew to move Sarah's concrete steps back into place in the front of her house.




Here is a perspective on the ramp that Jack and Justin designed as the back entry to Rosie's house.




Linzy, Justin, and Shawny join into the Popeye's picnic by candlelight in Rosie's front room at the end of the day.

BREAK WEEK: Day Six

April 4: Day Six, Break 2007

We broke into two groups this morning; one went back to finish the roof on the Law St. house and one went back to New Orleans East to help Alisha finish the houses over there. Soon after the roofers began their task, rain started to fall and the Habitat staffer at that site pulled everyone off of the roof. When they learned that they would not be able to get back on the roof all day, they decided to join the other part of the group out in New Orleans East.

There they found their teammates spread around the neighborhood doing a range of jobs. Some were digging post holes for chain link fencing that will be installed around Natasha’s purple house. Others were touching up paint at two different houses. A few were installing the porch ceiling at a house around the corner while others were doing some work on the edge of the roof at that same house. No matter what anyone was doing, we were all actually thrilled to see the rest of our team arrive.

We have learned over the course of our four trips that we love it best when we are all together or at least within walking distance of each other. Maybe that’s why we love to work with the families of our favorite blocks of the Ninth Ward so much: they live close together, meaning that we, too, can be close together.

We all congregated briefly and talked about how best to use the day. Once we realized that we had a solid chance to work on Rosie’s floors without having everyone in our group passing through the rooms, six of us split off and headed to the Ninth to install laminate flooring.

We were determined to finish those floors today no matter what. The easy way to do it would have been to put thresholds between all the rooms and just fill the floors in from wall to wall. However, we realized that Rosie’s roommate Janice already depends on a walker to get around; thus, we needed to make the floors as smooth as possible, meaning that we needed to run the floorboards all the way across the door frames and into the next room.

Even though we were installing “quick” clip flooring, the notches, edges, irregularities, and overall quirks that we had to address were quite challenging. Fortunately, Chris, Shane, and Aaron were up to the challenge and figured out just what needed to be done over the last couple of days. After arriving at 10:00 a.m. to finish the floors, the floor crew took until 8:00 p.m. to reach their goal. When that last board clicked into place in the corner by the front door, a big cheer went up into the backyard.

We also began a big new project at Rosie’s, this one designed by Jack and Justin. In order to help Janice get in and out of the house more comfortably, they came up with the plan to build a ramp out the back door and into the carport. It is a BIG project, but with a crew this large we can make real progress pretty quickly. Many of us learned to mix and pour concrete and dig postholes right there on the spot. Jack kept track of every part of the job and we look forward to finishing this undertaking before we leave.

Happily, the company that donated siding to some of the neediest residents of New Orleans showed up over the last couple of days to replace aluminum siding on Rosie’s house. In other words, as we were fixing and transforming the interior of the house and the backyard, someone else was simultaneously improving the façade.

For those of us who were in the first wave of relief at Rosie’s when we arrived to clear her house in January 2006, the changes that have occurred there over the last few weeks are unbelievable. Her house will be very beautiful even in the next few days; by the end of April, it should be in the best condition it has achieved in the last 80 years.

At the end of the evening today, we gathered in Rosie’s backyard with our other Ninth Ward friends and had a big cookout. Different people brought different contributions and we all sat outside and had a lovely garden party. We celebrated the end of the flooring job, the beginning of the ramp job, and our overall joy at being in New Orleans again.

We still have a lot of work to do before we can leave satisfied. Because we are leaving on Saturday (to give ourselves the time to get to our families for Easter if we so choose), we must work very efficiently. We haven’t even talked about going to the French Quarter or any of the other normal tourist stuff. We will probably squeeze in a run to the Quarter, but it’s not our priority. Work is.

For those who are worried about the fact that we effectively surrendered our break this year, we want to reassure you that even though we are exhausted (and sore) we are rejuvenated. As we have said many times, we are happy to be together, we are happy to feel so productive, and we are happy to know that our community bond remains strong even when some of our beloved friends are not with us. Thanks to all of you New Orleans veterans for contributing to our strength this week . . .



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Linzy and Lindsay teamed up to fix the soffit over the porch at a Habitat house in New Orleans East. They mastered the art of popping and locking the sheathing despite the errors in structure that they also had to correct.




Brianna works on a house in East New Orleans that needs quite a bit of damage control. Bree's job was to fix mistakes that had been made in installing the windows.




Jed and Lindsay participate in one of our many bucket brigades to transport the materials delivered from Home Depot today to the backyard at Rosie's.




The group begins to set things up for the evening cookout we had with our NOLA neighbors in the Ninth Ward.




The age-old entries to Rosie's house are not terribly accessible, so Jack and Justin designed a new back entry ramp from the carport. Here Matt and Jed help to establish the basic layout of the plan.




Shawny, Aaron, and Shane joined Chris, Jed, and Tommy to finish the new laminate floors in Rosie's house. Things were a bit out of skew in each of the rooms that they floored, meaning that the job has extended over parts of three days.




Jed, Jack, and Matt each do their part to raise the new access ramp at Rosie's so that her disabled roommate Janice can get in and out of the house on her walker.




Kate, Lindsay, Emily, and Lauren Trigo gather 'round the camera, as we had no campfire and only one lightbulb to light our cookout.




We got to end the day with a lovely cookout in the Ninth Ward planned by our wonderful friends the Trigos: Bruce, Lauren, and Lisa. We can't imagine trying to function in NOLA without these amazing friends.