June 17, 2008 ~ Getting Down to Business

June 17, 2008. Today we got a small taste of what we're going to do for the rest of the summer. Rudy wants us to train our eyes and mindset to do assessment on buildings when we see them. We learned that the first step in doing assessment work for conservation is: find the source of the problem.

To put what we learned into practice we went into one of our PRC homes. It needs a lot of work and that's why it was the first one we explored. The rest of the afternoon was lecture in the church.

June 16, 2008 ~ Back to Work

June 16, 2008. We continued our cemetery tours, this time looking at the Lafayette Cemetery. Anne Rice fans would appreciate to know that she used two tombs in the cemetery in the Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair Witches books. This is also the cemetery where Judge Ferguson is buried. We learned that later in the summer the Krewe is going to repair a tomb that was damaged by a tree during Hurricane Katrina and Rita.

Later that afternoon back in Holy Cross we met the contractor whose company will be working on our PRC homes in Holy Cross.

June 15, 2008 ~ Diva Review

June 15, 2008. Sunday was a much calmer day but we had so much fun the previous night we wanted to have more fun before the work week began. That afternoon we went to the French Market to partake in the last day of the 3-day Seafood Festival. We did some good shopping that ended in me adding 3 more masks to my collection. Ate a craw fish sausage po-boy that ended with me getting a slight case of the 'itis. There was also a live Zydeco band.

We remembered out invitation to the Diva Review and heading to Cow Pokes Bar and Grille to catch the show. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

June 14, 2008 ~ The Main Event

June 14, 2008. A weekend break! We covered a lot this past week, so a little break is welcomed. We started our day by starting late and catching up on some recreational reading.
Early in the evening, around 9pm, we were ready to explore the Quarter. We wandered around until we came to the infamous Bourbon Street. It was lively to say the least. We stopped for drinks and jazz at Maison Bourbon. Thankfully the jazz was better than the drinks. When the show ended so did our opening act of the evening. We left Bourbon Street in search of a main event on Frenchmen Street.

Frenchmen St. is similar to Bourbon St. but not as many tourists. After wandering around Frenchmen St. and finding nothing to entertain us, Dee remembered that we had been invited to a bar by Malcolm, a front desk worker at our B&B. It turned out to be the Main Event. Free gumbo, free cake, free drinks, and a free drag show, it was highly entertaining.

June 13, 2008 ~ Friday the 13th

June 13, 2008. What better way to spend Friday the 13th than to tour a famous New Orleans Cemetery? We began our tour by looking at the different styles of tombs and gaining an understanding of how people are buried in the tombs. Many of the tombs are very decorative but all of them are deep on the inside. A high light of the tour aside from the beautiful tombs and the rich history we saw the tomb of Homer A. Plessy (as in Plessy vs. Ferguson).

June 12, 2008 ~ Lower 9th Ward-- Pt 2

June 12, 2008. Today was a powerful day. This was the day we went to where the levees broke. To be in that area was an unbelievable site. In an area where the streets were dense with houses there are only a handful of homes rebuilt. The plots, roads, and sidewalks are being reclaimed by nature and is beginning to look like a green swamp again. Words cannot explain the sight. It makes you wonder: Why after three years so little has been done? Where did all of that donated money go? Where are the residents?

You can see that in many cases the concrete steps of the front entrance and the foundation slabs are the only evidence that houses were even here.


Here we're sitting on what remains of a front porch. The house would have been on the left of us facing the street to our right.





The houses in the background are just a few that survived the rushing water of the broken levee.

Back in the Holy Cross Neighborhood, we began looking at the four homes that we are going to restore. To see the shape these houses are in its hard to believe that those homes were abandoned before the storm, and the damage to these buildings were not because of the hurricane or the flooding but caused by the Help Yourself Salvage Company. We really need to put that company out of business.....

The evening concluded with the class attended the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association weekly meeting located at the Great Little Zion MB Church. It was intense. The residents are so passionate about what goes on in their neighborhood. They are determined to not let their neighborhood be forgotten or mistreated. The Holy Cross neighborhood is a neighborhood of fighters and they are going to fight for everything they believe in. If every neighborhood was as organized and passionate as these people the government would be on pins and needles.

June 11, 2008 ~ Lower 9th Ward--Pt 1

June 11, 2008. We're starting to get into what really happened and what's still going on in the Lower 9th Ward. The neighborhood is still not where it needs to be, not where it should be. Today we visited the Lower 9th Ward Village, a community center in progress.

The Village will act as a social center for the neighborhood when its completed. It will be equipped with a library, recording studio, basketball court, and computer lab. Until the Village is completed Americorps volunteers inhabit the future basketball court. They live in tarps and use the Village kitchen to keep their food.

In the afternoon we were fortunate to tour a LEED Platinum home in the middle of the Holy Cross neighborhood. The Global Green House was created by Global Green U.S.A. The house is low of VOCs and is build with blue wood. The building is a modern shotgun style home and is designed to be highly energy efficient. It is the first of five and the block will be completed with a apartment complex and business center. Its nice :/

The house manager, who is allowed to live in the house, explains to us the beauty and wonder of blue wood.....

This is Brian not really impressed with the blue wood.....