Pictures

5 vans went this morning to the same street in the Lower 9th Ward to clear the vacant lots. By the end of the day, we'd turned three more blocks of overgrown brush-- sturdy chest-level grass, big bushes, some concrete cinder block debris and the occasional stubborn stump-- into polished, mowed empty lots.

We spoke with Miss Linda from NENA, who told us about her own experiences before Katrina and in recovery efforts. She told us how she wasn't planning on leaving, and only agreed to after endless insistence from her friend. She talked about the vibrancy the neighborhood used to have-- how all these lots used to have full houses on them. She herself had lived only two houses down. But after water had been over roof level, submerging even the giant tree we were sitting under, everyone's belongings were lost and and the houses rendered inhabitable. Over the last few years, they've been demolished and the lots overgrown. As we cleared things away, we saw concrete paths and lone steps left in the empty lawns.

Here are some pictures from today:








Also, as promised, some pictures of the painting from yesterday, as well as an addendum:




I (Marina) just wanted to add some thoughts I had while working on the house yesterday. The one big thing that struck me was how appearances can be deceiving. We bloggers had had a debate the other about whether we thought most of the houses we saw while coming into the city looked in good condition, as opposed to run-down and uninhabitable. When we first arrived at the house we were to paint, I thought the work was rather superfluous, inasmuch as the house had a mowed lawn, intact windows, and clean driveway. In fact, all of the houses along the street looked to be in much the same condition as ours. However, one had only to walk around to the back yard to see piles of debris and a second-story porch held up only by rotting wooden poles balanced on blocks of wood. In front, the screen door had lost its screen and come of its hinges, and there was a hornets' nest developing on one of the windows. Most striking was the fact that the owners of the house had only received the use of water and electricity the day before we arrived. It just goes to show how, even if some parts of the city are looking better, they may not necessarilly be functioning any more than the more decrepit areas.

-Marina, Sandy, and Grady