inhabitable devastation: New Orleans.

Driving into Hollygrove or the Ninth Ward of New Orleans enabled the media coverage of Katrina to become calcified in my mind. Seeing someone's hopes and dreams collapsed in the middle of a piece of property humbled me with the knowledge that nothing can prevent the devastation that nature can inflict upon a city and the culture contained therein. I was abroad in Italy last fall when the hurricane hit the United States, and the physical displacement from the situation somehow made me feel like I was not a part of the disaster, or, rather, I did not have to be a part of the disaster. This past weekend in New Orleans showed me just how much I NEED to be a part of the disaster relief efforts. I felt better about leaving knowing that we would be back in April equipped with the ability to build a house for a member of the Hollygrove community.

With all of the devastation, I think that it becomes rather easy to objectify the situation or somehow quantify the effects of the storm. I caught myself doing this on a number of occasions as we were driving around. I had to constantly remind myself of the personal effects of the storm on the various individuals of the community, the effects that the storm had on the communites as a whole, and then, on a larger scale, the effects that the storm had upon the entire city and surrounding areas of New Orleans. The conversations that we had with the individuals in Hollygrove concentrated the disaster in terms of individual perspectives, and these conversations impacted me more than the wasteland that was left over in the wake of Katrina. Hearing stories of how the storm affected and devastated the individual lives of the community members left me with a feeling of urgency - an urgency to get involved, an urgency to help, and an urgency to help rebuild the community of Hollygrove.

The other side of visiting New Orleans this past weekend was the French Quarter, where the devastation was not as visible, and the tourists and students were abundant. The dichotomy that exists between the exterior neighborhoods that remain largely untouched and unrepaired after the storm compared with the bustle of Bourbon Street struck me as quite interesting. How has New Orleans reacted as a cultural center to the impact of Katrina?