New Children's Library at All Souls Church in the Lower Ninth Ward

One of the LeMoyne College students' projects during last week with Operation Southern Comfort in New Orleans was to clean, sheetrock and paint unfinished parts of the church. This beautiful library was only a dream before last week! 

Surge Protection

The US Army Corps of Engineers is building a huge surge protection wall around St. Bernard Parish. They are building it in record time. They have mostly admitted wrongdoing and accepted blame for the surge and levee failures that inundated New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish during and after Hurricane Katrina. Closure of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) and building this wall, combined with renewal of destroyed wetlands all around the area, will help to safeguard the vulnerable wards and parishes from tragedy and disaster again.  

Old Arabi, St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana

Operation Southern Comfort is a not-for-profit that organizes and supports 6 trips a year from Central New York to places hard-hit and still recovering from Hurricane Katrina five-and-a-half years later, particularly to St. Bernard Parish just south and east of New Orleans.

This week I have joined a group of 110 people including 80 college students from SUNY Oswego and LeMoyne College for a week of work sandwiched between 2-day drives from CNY each way.

We left home last Saturday and began working bright and early Monday morning. It is cold here this week with daytime temperatures in the 40s and 50s and nighttime temps in the 30s and 40s.

The group of Oswego students with whom I am working has responsibility for gutting half of a double shotgun house. The house, and every other house and business in all of St. Bernard Parish, was under several feet of water for weeks following Katrina and the breakdown of flood control in its aftermath.

Difficult circumstances have kept the owner of the house from taking on the task any sooner. It is a painful week for her as she recognizes, describes and touches, and finally lets go of, material representing a lifetime of memories.

Shown here is a room from which furniture and personal items have been removed and sheetrock has been taken down. The guys are pulling nails. In coming weeks, after we leave, the house will be steam cleaned to remove mold and dust, and sprayed for pests including termites.

Not knowing where to start or how to describe this week, I will just find a place, this place, to begin. Please bear with me, and feel free to ask questions in the Comments area.

Louise Bourgeois, 1911-2010

Sculptor Louise Bourgeois died over the weekend in NYC at 98 years old. 

This Spider is in the sculpture garden at New Orleans Museum of Art. She produced many other spiders and a vast quantity of sculpture over a long successful career. 

The spider Maman in the plaza of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa is 10 meters tall.

Her work is strong and emotionally evocative. She was working in her studio until last week. We will miss her greatly.

I took this picture during the last week of 2008. I drove to NOLA with Joli; Ed joined us a day later. We were surprised and pleased to find Prospect New Orleans: P.1 art exhibition spread throughout the city, some of it in the hard hit Lower Ninth Ward, reflections of the devastation of Katrina. 

Planned as a biennial due to rise again as P.2 at the end of 2010, it has already been delayed until 2011 because of New Orleans' continuing economic struggle. The gulf oil spill will only hurt NOLA further. We grieve.

Blow the picture up to great effect.