Ancestral Homelands, Revisited

Over the last two days we traveled from Rogers, AR to Milwaukee, WI. It's hard to believe that we were in Texas a week ago. When we were in Texas, we wondered when it would start to cool off--or if it would cool off--on our northward march. Not sure where the demarcation line is, but it's much cooler here in Milwaukee. It was still hot in St. Louis, where we snapped a shot of the arches before we crossed the Mississippi river (for the second time). We'll cross it again when we head for the Dakotas next week.

A few things of note about our last two days on the road. We stopped to get root beers at the site of the World's Largest Rocker on historic route 66. Historic route 66, for those of you who don't know, runs in a much straighter line than either of us can draw from Chicago to Santa Monica. At various points on our journey we have followed it's route, several times in the wrong direction for a westward migration.

We then stop at the Cahokia mounds historic site, just outside of St. Louis, MO. The mounds are the largest archeological site in the Americas north of Mexico. There are mounds like this scattered all over the American Bottom, but the mounds at Cahokia are the remains of a great Mississipian culture, a sprawling city on the flood plains of the Mississippi river. The tallest mound (otherwise known as Monk's mound, because a bunch of Trappist monks took up residence there) has three terraced levels, and from the top you can see St. Louis and a wide swath of the Mississippi valley. You can also see quite a few locals running up the steps for a good cardio workout. It's the perfect place for a self-timer photograph.

We stayed in the glorious little town of Litchfield, IL, where we wanted to eat dinner at Ariston's, a legendary Greek cafe on Route 66, but it was closed on Mondays, so we tucked our tails between our legs, choked back our disappointment, and ate at Pizza Hut, which began our extended meditation on the question: "If you grew up in Litchfield, IL, what do you think you would do?" That question stayed with us through our surprisingly decent breakfast at Denny's the next morning. One of us said they would have done 4-H. One of us said they would have driven a low-slung muscle car.

On our way from Litchfield to Milwaukee, we drove through or by both of our Ancestral homelands (my paternal homeland of Springfield, IL, her maternal homeland of Winetka, IL). We stopped in Springfield, IL to get a coffee at Starbucks and to fill up our gas tank. We noticed a giant smoke stack (a kind of theme out here in the Heart of the Heart of the Country) looming over the town as we got back on the highway. We didn't actually see Winetka, IL, but we waved to it out the window from the I-294 toll road as we zipped by.

We will have more to report about Milwaukee tomorrow. So far it has been a very exciting (and musical) city.

Lake Lifts, Predators and Wal-Mart

Yesterday we went a floatin' in the lake. My aunt's next door neighbor's son has a house in a shady cove on Beaver Lake, so we set out with a few Heinekens and our swimming trunks for some swimmin'. It was mighty hot yesterday, which we learned on our longish run through Hobbs State Park yesterday morning, so we were happy to have some water to cool off in.

Now the lake house is actually high up on a cliff overlooking the lake. Some of the older houses have these elaborate lifts (like a small, slow-moving roller coaster) to take residents and their coolers, children and dogs down to the water. The Army Corps of Engineers (those bastards that brought us the flooded lower 9th ward!) apparently oversees all construction around the lake, since they are in charge of the dam. The Corps has since forbidden the construction of the lifts, so we were riding on a small piece of history in the greater Rogers area: one of the last remaining lake lifts.

The lake itself was...less refreshing than we might have hoped. The top two feet of the water was probably 85 degrees, which reminded me of swimming in a kiddie pool. But down by our feet the water was cold, and every so often we found ourselves in a cold eddy. The cold Heinekens helped a little.

Last evening I took Rebecca out for a romantic evening on the town, to take in Robert Rodriguez's latest masterpiece: "Predators." Though the cherry slushee I got was by far the most disgusting high fructose corn syrup concoction I've ever had, it didn't ruin the film. Fans of the Predator franchise will not be disappointed. If you are not a fan of the franchise or if you don't like horror/action movies, then you are to be praised for putting up with your loved ones taste in movies about alien hunters with lots of explosions. Topher Grace does put in a surprising cameo.

Today we made a pilgrimmage to the Flagship Walmart in Rogers. Did you know that Rogers, AR is where Sam Walton got his start? We are in the heart of Walmart Country here, where the aisles are many and long, and where you can get, in the same store, green onions (for $1.10), running shorts (for $5) and a 30-30 rifle (for $390). You can (and we did) get a universal phone charger for the car, a pair of titanium bladed scissors, a set of Pilot G-2 .05s (for $2.50) and Rainier cherries (for $3.48; same cherries at the Whole Foods in Dallas: $9.99).

We are heading further north and east tomorrow (the perfect direction for a westward migration).

Annie in the Ozarks

After a glorious drive from Texas, across the great state of Oklahama (where we had lunch in the lobby of a cavernous Walmart), we arrived in Northwest Arkansas. Continuing with our great cultural examination of the American south, we took in some community theater in Springdale, AR, at the Art Center of the Ozarks.

The theater at the ACO was almost full on a Friday night, and there was something in the air. That something was the condensation of the audience's breath, so cold was the inside of that theater. Rebecca tucked up underneath her dress, and I wrapped my arms in a few rags that my aunt Sheila happened to have in her car, and we settled in for a few hours of entertainment. The audience was filled with children and the (possibly) proud parents of the many actors playing the orphan girls (there were probably 25 young girls playing orphans, ranging in age from about 6-7 to maybe 11-12). The girls behind us were playing a game which consisted of one girl asking: "Who's playing...Sandy?" and another girl reading from the cast list: "Honey." For those of you unfamiliar with the musical, Sandy is Annie's dog, and the Honey, who played Sandy, gave a truly awe-inspiring performance on Friday night.

A few notes about the performance itself. All of the chorus numbers done by the orphan girls were overpoweringly adorable. They sang pretty well and did their choreography dutifully, and there was this enthusiasm and earnestness on their little faces that was truly a joy to behold. Some of them didn't entirely know their lines, and from time-to-time a few of them appeared to be looking off into the wings for direction, but on the whole they seemed confident and comfortable on the stage, even hamming it up and playing to the audience.

The same cannot be said for the chorus numbers performed by the adults. These numbers (like "Hooverville" and "NYC") had the same mostly amateurish feel of the orphan numbers without the incredible cuteness. Seeing a man in his fifties bumbling his choreography or a woman in her thirties singing 30 cents flat has a different effect; it is much more sad and much less, well, adorable.

My harshest review goes to the performance of Evan Crawford, who played Miss Hannigan, the cruel drunk who runs the orphanage, and has a great deal of animosity towards the children in her care. It was clear the director was familiar with the 1982 film version of "Annie," starring Carol Burnett. Miss Crawford was clearly mimicking the masterful performance by Miss Burnett, but it was a far miss. Her slurs were too slurry, and she shouted most of the notes in her songs. She lacked dynamic range; the whole performance was pitched at 10. For reference, check out Carol Burnett's performance below, then amplify it by 10.



The two best individual performances were by Lucy Rossi (Annie) and Honey (Sandy). Lucy's Annie was full of wholesome and earnest "oh boy" energy, and she had good pitch and projection. She seemed confident up on that stage, particularly during some of the adult chorus numbers, where she stood off on the side and occasionally chimed in. She seemed much more at home on the stage than most of her adult counterparts. There were a few awkward moments between her and Daddy Warbucks (Jim Blount), particularly during the melodramatic "I don't need anything but you."

Miss Rossi and Honey, her loyal English sheep dog, had the most chemistry on the stage. After Annie escapes from the orphanage and wanders the mean NY streets, she comes across a dog (who himself had escaped from the wandering dog catchers). The stage went dark except for a lone, trembling spot light on Annie, who called out a confident: "Come here boy!" Then from the darkened wings of the stage emerged Honey in all his glory. He went straight to Miss Rossi's side, looking up into her eyes for approval. So adorable was this scene that Rebecca and I both broke into gales of uncontrollable laughter, which continued through almost the entirety of Miss Rossi's (possibly touching) rendition of "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow." We sincerely hope that the people sitting around us didn't think we were laughing at Miss Rossi; it's just that the dog was so incredibly cute.

One other thing to note about out time in NW Arkansas. We drove about 45 minutes yesterday to get a replacement filter for my Toddy cold brew coffee system, and on the way back we encountered a flash flood. It was very exciting. We're going for a run in Hobbs State park, and then for a swim in Beaver lake this afternoon. It's hot here, but it seems that little Miss Rossi was correct last night when she sang: "The sun will come out tomorrow."

Pritzker Prizes in Dallas/Forth Worth

If you have asked me before I got on the road: "Hey, Gil, where along your serpentine path across this country will you have your finest food and see the most elegant expressions of American art and architecture?" I probably wouldn't have said: "The greater Dallas/Fort Worth Metropolitan area." In fact I probably would have mocked you for asking such a pretentious question. But to my surprise this is exactly what happened in Dallas and Fort Worth.

We left Austin yesterday morning and stopped at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower center, which our Frommer's guide says is a "must-see." We are not convinced it is a "must-see" site. It was pretty enough, and we discovered the name of our new favorite plant (horsetail!), and we saw some really large ants and dragonflies. In Texas, even the ants and dragonflies are bigger.

From there we headed north four hours to Dallas, where we stopped off to see a few architectures and check out some art. First we went to the Nasher Sculpture Center, designed by Pritzker-prize winning architect Renzo Piano. We checked out some sculptures and saw some drawings by Rachel Whiteread, who is not an architect but whose drawings (of water towers and herringbone floors) seem architectural. We also saw and basked in the not air-conditioned cool of installation by James Turrell.

Then we wandered around in the sweltering heat (the heat here in Dallas/Forth Worth is as oppressive as the air conditioning in Dallas/Fort Worth) and saw the Wyly Theater, designed by Pritzker-prize winning architect Rem Koolhaas.

We crossed the street (the sweltering, sweltering street) and saw the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony center, designed by Pritzker-prize winning architect I.M. Pei.

We would have liked to see the insides of these buildings, but since it was the middle of the day no one would let us in. It is hard to judge the beauty of a building based solely on their outsides, but I ranked the buildings in the following order:

1. Nasher
2. Wyly
3. Symphony (mostly because of the ugly red thing on top)

We then drove over to the Sixth Floor Museum, which lives on the (you guessed it) sixth (and seventh) floors of the Texas School Book Depository, the building from which Lee Harvey Oswald (allegedly, depending on your perspective) shot President Kennedy. The museum contains a truly encyclopedic quantity of information about Kennedy, his ascension, his family history, his campaign for presidency, his social, economic and world agenda, and, not surprisingly, his fatal trip to Dallas and the aftermath of the assassination. They have the area where Oswald shot from walled with plexiglass, so you can't actually stand on the spot and look down at the street. But I stood at the window adjacent to the sniper's nest, and looked down at the street and thought to myself as quite a few cars drove by that the shot(s) seemed totally possible. It was actually quite eerie, and somewhat vertiginous looking down at the spot where Kennedy was shot. They didn't allow photography in the museum; if they did I would have included a shot out the window towards Elm St, where the motorcade sped off.

We actually drove down the motorcades escape route for a while to get on the highway that led us to the glorious MCM Elegante hotel just north of Dallas. When we checked in we saw the following just before we entered the double-doors:

Just in case we forgot we were in the heart of Texas, our hotel reminded us.

We had a late dinner at The Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek. The word on the street (or the guide book) is that the restaurant here has the best food in all of Texas. I will go on record at this point and say that we have had some very fine meals in Texas, and my loyal reader will probably remember that we have had some very fine meals on this trip. All-in-all this was one of the finest dining experiences I've had in my life. The valet didn't know what to make of our car, with the box on top and the back filled up with crap (containing, of course, my 24" iMac and my Gibson es-335, which is some very expensive crap, but which to the average or even the very discerning valet merely looks like a car full of crap). They made us a little welcome card, with my name printed on the envelope, which they handed to us as soon as they sat us down in an elegant corner booth. They then proceeded to overwhelm us with well-proportioned and exceptionally simple food, served by knowledgeable, helpful and not overly intrusive people. I don't have much to say about the filet mignon with marrow butter and the barbecue prime rib that I ate; I could go on for hours about the watermelon, feta and crunchy prosciutto salad. We blew three days worth of per diems on this meal, but it was worth every penny.

This morning we drove into Fort Worth for more art and architecture. We stopped first at the Kimbell Museum, designed by Louis Kahn, who would have won a Pritzker prize if it existed during his lifetime. We saw Picassos and Matisses and Cezannes, and then we sat outside (in the mind-bending heat) and sketched the building (well, Rebecca did; I wrote poems about Georgia and South Carolina). Did you know: the museum is free! And like many of the other museums, handguns are forbidden inside the museum. (You know you're in Texas when this must be written in big letters on the front door to a museum.)


From there we went across the street to The Modern Art Musem of Fort Worth, which they refer to as "The Modern," designed by Pritzker-price winning architect Tadao Ando. The building is enormous and sort of calming, a great concrete and glass presence, with the three main viewing galleries perched over a shallow lake. We ate lunch in the egg shaped Cafe Modern (which was about 60 degrees inside), and began drafting an open letter to whoever would listen about the perils of over-air-conditioning. Rebecca drank hot tea (it was 100 degrees outside) to warm herself up; she had goosebumps all over (can you believe she forgot to bring her sweater?). After lunch we explored the expansive and niche-filled museum, scoffing at all the art that consisted purely of large blocks of color or things which seemed like we could have made them ourselves (for example: the giant pile of hard candies); we sat and watched a fascinating little animated short depicted a series of jetliners flying inside a house. We read the following from an interview with Tadao Ando about his building: "There is an image I have in mind that is not typical of any of my buildings. I envision this building as a swan floating on the water. From a distance, it is the image I think you will see. To make a building look like a swan is not an easy job. [Laughter] But it is not impossible. It has been done before."

A few other things we saw at the Modern:



Note: this is a photograph of a sculpture, not a photograph or living human being. The figure here is about 1:4 or 1:2 scale of a human being, but it looked like she was about to start telling us about the Great War.
From there we wandered over the Amon Carter Museum, designed by Philip Johnson, the first architect to win the Pritzker prize. This museum contained many, many paintings of cowboys and horses and cowboys on horses, which I must say I wasn't all that interested in. We did see a collection of Ansel Adams photographs, a pre-glimpse to some of the land we will see when we head farther west (but we'll be heading north and east first). And we did see this lovely ceiling.

If you are interested in learning more about the Pritzker prize, click the link. In a nutshell it is like the Nobel prize for living architects. Apparently you're nobody in architecture until you build some kind of big ass building in Dallas or Fort Worth, or maybe it's just that there's a lot of money in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and they like there philanthropy and big things. So they found themselves the best architects they could find to build some big ass art houses.

We are leaving Texas tomorrow. Driving home from dinner tonight (the salad bar at Whole Foods Market) we both were simultaneously saddened by this fact. Texas marks a turn in our journey, literally and figuratively. We are literally turning north and east (after a long period of going south and west); it marks the end of our Southern journey. We will be spending the next weeks or so with family, which will be a different kind of traveling than the last two weeks.

Austin says: "Keep Austin Weird"

We had a long drive into Austin, and once we got here the pace slowed way down. It's nice to be staying with friends, being in a house again, and knowing locals such that we don't feel like tourists anymore--at least for a little while.

Yesterday we had a delicious brunch at Paggi House in Austin, which is one of the best brunches I've ever had. They had a buffet that featured Niman Ranch Bacon, which is like the Kobe beef of the pork world. They also had the best hash browns we've had on this trip (and we've had our fair share). I had chicken and waffles, which is apparently a southern tradition I hadn't encountered until I got to Austin. I was surprised at how simple and delicious it was. Fried chicken, waffle, syrup: voila. After reviving from a brief food coma, we went to a little bar on W 6th street (Austin's famous main drag) and watched some of the World Cup finals, which we finished watching on the couch (in the AC) a little later on.

We had dinner at Chuy's, a funky and very popular Texican joint with hub caps on the ceilings and Elvis kitsch on the walls. The food was good, particularly the queso and the jalapeno cream. I've decided that next year, during my period of unemployment, I will focus on developing the perfect queso sauce.

After dinner we rode bikes down to the Congress street bridge to see 1.5 million Mexican free-tail bats emerge from their daytime perches under the roadway. But they didn't show, at least not that we could see. They were supposed to emerge en masse around dusk, but alas they didn't. Harboring some disappointment and a deep grudge against the echolocating critters (who we could hear pinging their little sonars under the bridge, but who hadn't come out by 9:45), we rode on to to Amy's Ice Creams, where the ice cream is exceptional and the staff is...extremely irritating. There was a line out the door, and this line was was comprised almost entirely of high school aged kids, possibly on a church group trip or summer camp excursion. Now...I love(d) working with teenagers. One-on-one and in classroom settings they can be truly interesting and intriguing human beings. But en masse and in public they are...excruciating to be around.

As teenagers are inclined to do, this herd turned the inside of Amy's into their own personal cafeteria, jumping up and down on the chairs, shouting at each other, getting into physical contests in corners, making out in the little photo booth. Perhaps it is merely because I had no allegiance to them, but I found myself unreasonably disliking them--even loathing them.

But my deepest malice was reserved for the guy who prepared my ice cream. He was not much older than the teenagers (and there were probably 25 of them), and he was putting on a show for them. You may remember the 1988 classic "Cocktail" starring a young Tom Cruise and Elisabeth Shue, about a bottle flipping bartender in some little beach town. This guy was trying to be that guy, throwing his little ice cream paddle up in the air, tossing balls of ice cream and then catching them in cups or cones (or missing the cups or cracking the cones with his little paddle). Now I am not opposed to a little showmanship. But there was something fake and disingenuous about the whole show; it seemed a little too motivated by the tip jar. It also struck me that they had a line out the door, and their little show was slowing down the whole production. Only the teenagers (on both sides of the bar) seemed amused.

"Are you having a wild and crazy and weird evening?" He asked me. Perhaps you've seen that tee-shirt that reads "Keep Austin weird." I think that what ultimately irked me about the whole scene in Amy's was that it was artless weirdness, weirdness for the sake of being weird in a town that prides itself on being weird, and so (in a bizarre twist of fate) became hopelessly commonplace, plain and common and normal and dull.

John and Leah have two dogs, Nelson and Rosie. They are perhaps the cuddliest, friendliest dogs I have ever come across. They both have this very otter-like habit of lying on their backs; and Nelson (the smaller of the two) resembles a seal pup. They woke us up this morning by jumping up on the bed and lying across us and licking our faces. They make at least one of us want a dog (who will be named Mies Van Der Dog).





Today we had breakfast at a taco train, juice at a juice hut in a converted garage, then went for a swim at Barton Springs pool, a natural spring that the city of Austin transformed into a swimming pool. The water was about 68 degrees, which is pretty damned cold, but in the sweltering heat (which I might add I haven't commented on until now) it was about as refreshing a swim as I've ever had.

The Running of Gil, Rebecca and the Bulls

So we had this slick plan this morning. We were going to get up early (at seven, before the city had slept off its hangover), go for a run to keep us from getting restless on our 9 hour drive to Austin today, then get out on the road early. All was going well until we stepped out the front door of our hotel and saw the streets crowded with men and women wearing white shirts and pants and red scarves. Beer flowed from kegs sets up on street corners. Many of the corners bars were open, and crowds formed to drink up before...the running of the bulls. Off in the distance we saw women clad in tight red and black clothing, wearing knee pads and helmets with elaborate horns on them. They were also wearing roller skates, cruising down the cracked streets. Apparently the roller bulls race through the streets, beating the matadors with wiffle ball bats. So off we ran, at 7:15 am, through the crowded streets, getting the strangest looks from the bulls and the matadors and the other people we passed. Why on earth would anyone be running on a morning like this?

The matadors were supposed to run right down Conti street in front of our hotel. But as they began to run (or, walk, really; there were a lot of them and most of them were really drunk) they turned down Dauphine Street, much to the surprise of the onlookers. Who knows where they will end up.




Maybe we'll get out of New Orleans today. But until then: Ole, Ole, Ole!

Wetlands and the Lower Ninth Ward

It's been a hot two days here in New Orleans, but since we've entered the south it really hasn't been anything but hot. Maybe it's time to give the temperature a rest, particularly since it has apparently been much, much hotter in the Northeast.

Yesterday was my day to plan (Rebecca planned our funtivities today), so I set us up for a day of learning about the fragile ecosystem that is the Louisiana wetlands. But first: we found a Whole Foods market and got sandwiches and new sunblock and some truly delicious watermelon, then we went across the street to Pinkberry and had refreshing and tangy frozen yogurt, which Rebecca has been craving since we left DC. From there we went to the Audubon zoo. Google maps gave us very, very strange directions, so we ended up parking a long way away from the zoo and having an invigorating walk (in the 96 degree swelter) across Audubon park. By the time we got to the zoo, I was dripping in sweat. A few minutes later, I had sweat through my shirt. In all seriousness I don't believe I have ever sweat so much in such a short period of time. So much for not talking about the heat.

At the zoo we saw a whole host of animals desperately trying to stay cool. There was a black bear lounging in the shade beside a claw foot tub full of algae green water. There was a raccoon trying to escape his enclosure. There was a siamak who appeared dead, lounging under a concrete slab on stilts. The only creatures that appeared comfortable at all were the gators, the turtles and the otters. Otters may be the most joyful creatures on this planet. Watching them move makes me smile. Rebecca has decided that turtles and ducks are the cutest creatures on the planet (something to do with their little webbed feet). We may have to get a turtle, a duck (and possibly a penguin) as pets when we finally land in Oregon.

The zoo had a literary angle to it. Flags, fences and other signs presented snippets of poems from some of my favorites: Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda, and Mark Doty (who I studied with at Columbia). The poem here (which was yellow on a green fence) stopped me and quite a few other walkers dead in their tracks. You can't really walk too terribly far in this city without being reminded of Katrina, but I find it important to remember that New Orleans has been beaten down by hurricanes for centuries. Katrina was the worst, but not the only beating this city has taken. More about that in a minute.

Two more photographs, both about white animals (and both taken by a white primate named Rebecca): the white rhinoceros and the (extremely rare) white alligator.




From the zoo we went to the IMAX on the river and watched a film called "Hurricane on the Bayou." I suspect that the film was begun as a documentary about the importance and the value of the wetlands surrounding New Orleans. It was centered around this young girl (who was terribly irritating) and how she set about to discover what life was like out in the bayou and about the science of wetlands. And then Katrina hit, and the whole film changed. A few things we learned from the film. The wetlands around New Orleans have been decimated in the last 50 years, mostly because the Army Core of Engineers has contained the Mississippi, keeping it from dumping its spring loads of silt and sediment and building up stores of incredibly rich soil for mangroves and cypresses to dig into. The trees keep the soil in place, and the trees need the soil to survive, so the containment of the river creates this vicious cycle. There's also a series of canals that cut through the wetlands and let salt water creep inland, killing trees and plant life. Some of us might lament the loss of habitat for alligators and gar and all kinds of birds and creepy crawlies, but the fact that stopped me cold was this one: every three miles of wetland kills a storm surge by a foot. Katrina had very little slowing her down on her route towards New Orleans; fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, she would have done a lot of damage, but not nearly as much as she did. (And that's ignoring the colossal failures of the Army Core's levees around Lake Ponchetrain).

We cooled off in the AC at our hotel for a while, then we headed down to Frenchman Street for some jazz, stopping at Snug Harbor to hear the Barry Martyn Trio. Barry Martyn (advertised as a "percussionist," a title which he mocked, saying "I'm a rhythm drummer") and his trio played traditional, old-fashioned jazz. As you can see from the photo, drums, banjo and trumpet make up the entire "orchestra." The trumpeter was a protege of Louis Armstrong; his singing voice was an almost perfect match. They were a classy, classy ensemble who put on a good show, even inviting some audience participation. A famous clarinet player (I'd never heard of him) got up and sang "Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans." And a 13 year old army brat sang (well, butchered, really) "The Saints Go Marching In" in honor of her father's 33 birthday. Diamond actually asked Barry if he knew the tune. He replied: "Well, I think we can figure that one out."

Today we woke up earlyish and headed down to the lower ninth ward to see the rebuilding efforts there. A few things I will note, and then I'll rush off to dinner. We drove through quite a few neighborhoods getting to the Lower Ninth ward. And in many of the neighborhoods there were few if any signs of the storm. But as we moved farther "down" (as the river travels), more and more abandoned and boarded buildings appeared. Many of the buildings and houses (and quite a few that are still occupied) still have the spray-painted symbols left by the search and rescue teams adorning their walls.

My overwhelming impression of the lower-ninth ward is this: it's like a giant grassland now, with a few new (and quite gorgeous) houses here and there. The photographs below probably won't convey the full effect--the emptiness--of those neighborhoods, but I hope the photographs of the houses show something of the strangeness and the beauty of what the city is doing, house by house, one lot at time, to rebuild.








If you want to know more about some of the cooler, funkier rebuilding work, check out:

Musician's Village (Habitat for Humanity)
Make It Right NOLA
Katrina +5