Last group of Nola pics...for now

Ok, here are the last group of my pictures from my Nola trip. I know that this is the equivalent of subjecting you to my vacation slides but otherwise I’ll be forced to write about Mel Gibson’s DUI tonight and none of us want that. So, from top to bottom

Picture 1: That is basically a day’s worth of work in terms of tearing down a house. I dumped a decent portion of that trash as well as I took it upon myself to do garbage detail a lot of the time. Don’t take that as being a noble endeavor on my part, it basically was an attempt in order to get outside and be able to take off the mask every once in a while.

Picture 2: The Superdome with the sign stating that it will be ready for the Saints home opener in September. If you remember the week of Katrina you’ll remember the images of people camped out on the overpasses outside the Superdome. Well, that is where this picture was taken from. You still get a little bit of a chill up your spine when you realize what happened there as you drive down the road.

Picture 3: Another picture of our handiwork including the floorboards, which I swear if I ever have to do again I am going to outsource like mad. Either that or I need to start working out because that was really, really tough work.

Picture 4: One of my favorite pictures of my favorite place in the world, Pirate’s Alley. I have a professional version of this view above my CD collection and one of the things that you notice when you compare these two pictures is that all the trees are gone. But, the most important thing is the history of those buildings. William Faulkner wrote his first novel while living in the yellow building. In the red building (directly behind the statue of Jesus) lives Declan Mulrooney, the last in a long line of mystical Irish shaman (or at least, that is who lives there in my novel). The grey building next to it is where I want to live and it is still for sale. It is a very tempting proposition.

Picture 5: If you want a sense of the devastation in the ninth ward this is it. This was a house moved a far distance off of its foundation. Just jaw dropping.

Picture 6: When I talk about gutting a house this is what I mean. We took down all of the walls and the floors until all you had left was the frame of the house. Luckily, we were able to save the ceilings in this house, which wasn’t always the case.

Picture 7: I don’t know if it will be readable but this is the front door of Pat O’Brien’s with a sign on it stating the new hours and that it is closed on Tuesdays. Now the French Quarter is back but until Pat O’s (the place you just have to stop in when you are in town) can afford to be open seven days a week, it really isn’t back.

Picture 8: Part of the group standing in front of Jackson Square. Now I have shown people my photos before and they have looked at this picture and have questioned whether or not I may have had ulterior motives in going on this trip. I can neither confirm nor deny those statements.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Blake Babies “Sunburn”
2) Robbie Fulks “Country Love Songs”
3) Emmylou Harris “Stumble Into Grace”
4) Moby “Play”
5) Scott Miller and the Commonwealth “Upside Downside”