Rainy Day In Big Easy

The skies have opened on New Orleans today and the wind is blowing like a witch too. They expect 5 to 7 inches of rain, high tides, flash floods and assorted other miserable gifts from God.

Here are my volunteer colleagues, two other individuals who just showed up. She is a recently laid-off pharmaceutical sales rep from Los Angeles and he is a carpenter and recent college grad from Long Island, New York. We are building a ramp at the side of this house for handicap accessibility for the homeowner. As individual volunteers, we are able to avoid the church and corporate groups who are frequent volunteers and worked instead on this house which is being built by Habitat staff and Americorps volunteers.

So, I won’t be building any houses today. Instead, for your pleasure, I will be writing all day, perhaps later under the influence of delicious Abita dark beer, a local brand. I took some photos with my phone yesterday, but will take many more with a real camera when the skies clear.

Suffice to say, there is still a lot of work to be done here, especially in the outlying areas like St. Bernard parish, where our projects are. To donate, go here. People are still living in FEMA trailers! If you only needed one example to convince you of the ineptitude and incompetence of this current administration it would be their impotent response to Katrina.