I am currently eating some super delicious shrimp and veggie stir fry, courtesy of the Crescent City Farmers Market this morning. I never had to shell/pull the heads and feet off of shrimp before because I've never bought them this fresh. Gross... but awesome results.
Also, the mailings are out, and flyers for the center's summer day camp coming up next month are posted. And I went to a free yoga class at the NHS community center! Good day!
30 June 2009
29 June 2009
Rain rain go away come again another day (or never)
Today it started pouring (or dumping buckets, or faucet-ing) rain about half an hour before I wanted to leave work. Thankfully I was able to get a ride home for myself and my bike. But just from loading and unloading my bike from the back of Shana's truck, I was completely soaked. I had to Q-tip my ears when I got home, that's how wet it was!! And to think, around 1 today I was biking to Office Depot to buy return address labels, working up a healthy sweat and a little bit of sunburn on my face and chest. Rain happens quickly here. But on the bright side, it cooled off enough after the rain that I was actually able to take a legitimately hot shower for the first time since I got here!
Everything should be ready to get the property campaign letters in the mail tomorrow!
Everything should be ready to get the property campaign letters in the mail tomorrow!
28 June 2009
First Weekend in New Orleans!
From the French Quarter (click on it to make it bigger):
My first weekend here has been pretty good. On Friday after work, another intern at the office and I went down the street and got snowballs (they apparently really are a big deal). This place blended them with real fruit--I got pineapple mint, which looked kind of weird with the green mint lives ground into it, but it was really really delicious. Then we rode our bikes along the river where there was something of a breeze--Audobon Park is gorgeous--before getting dinner at a bar and grill nearby.
Later on, I went back near the bar and grill by myself--I couldn't justify going to bed at 9 pm on a Friday night in New Orleans! I found a group of people (mostly Tulane students) sitting across the street in front of this Irish pub-type place... and managed to talk to them. It was super awkward at first, but then they were introducing me to their friends and I actually had a pretty good time, and got some tips for other places I should visit while I'm here. I also now know where I can find a variety of drugs (sketchy) and perverted off-duty New Orleans cops flashing their badges to attempt (unsuccessfully, thankfully) to get favors from female underage drinkers. I mean really--did you miss the whole "to serve and protect" memo? But besides that awkward and pretty infuriating situation, I had a surprisingly good night.
Yesterday I slept in, but then took the St. Charles streetcar to the French Quarter and spent the entire afternoon walking around all the shops and the market--people watching, mostly. I took some pretty decent pictures, ate beignets and drank iced coffee, and had random cheap Indian/Pakistani food for dinner (I know the dinner part is not what I'm supposed to eat in the French Quarter, but it was so good! And really cheap!). It was a great, lazy afternoon that left me surprisingly too worn out to go out at night--the heat makes me more tired that I otherwise would be, I think, and I did walk a lot.
Today I've been pretty lazy sitting here with my A/C, but once it cools down a bit, I'm heading out on my bike for some more exploring.
My first weekend here has been pretty good. On Friday after work, another intern at the office and I went down the street and got snowballs (they apparently really are a big deal). This place blended them with real fruit--I got pineapple mint, which looked kind of weird with the green mint lives ground into it, but it was really really delicious. Then we rode our bikes along the river where there was something of a breeze--Audobon Park is gorgeous--before getting dinner at a bar and grill nearby.
Later on, I went back near the bar and grill by myself--I couldn't justify going to bed at 9 pm on a Friday night in New Orleans! I found a group of people (mostly Tulane students) sitting across the street in front of this Irish pub-type place... and managed to talk to them. It was super awkward at first, but then they were introducing me to their friends and I actually had a pretty good time, and got some tips for other places I should visit while I'm here. I also now know where I can find a variety of drugs (sketchy) and perverted off-duty New Orleans cops flashing their badges to attempt (unsuccessfully, thankfully) to get favors from female underage drinkers. I mean really--did you miss the whole "to serve and protect" memo? But besides that awkward and pretty infuriating situation, I had a surprisingly good night.
Yesterday I slept in, but then took the St. Charles streetcar to the French Quarter and spent the entire afternoon walking around all the shops and the market--people watching, mostly. I took some pretty decent pictures, ate beignets and drank iced coffee, and had random cheap Indian/Pakistani food for dinner (I know the dinner part is not what I'm supposed to eat in the French Quarter, but it was so good! And really cheap!). It was a great, lazy afternoon that left me surprisingly too worn out to go out at night--the heat makes me more tired that I otherwise would be, I think, and I did walk a lot.
Today I've been pretty lazy sitting here with my A/C, but once it cools down a bit, I'm heading out on my bike for some more exploring.
24 June 2009
Car Trouble (at least the brake line didn't snap this time!)
Today after dropping the CBI director, David, off at a networking shindig, the other intern, Erica, and I drove around in his car and finished photographing the rest of the properties for the campaign, getting back to the office just as the heat really started to pick up. Shortly thereafter I left alone to go pick David up again. Staying true to the entire morning spent looking for houses wherever they weren't, I of course turned the wrong direction as soon as I left the parking lot. I started to make a second turn to turn around when the car died in the middle of the street.
Oops!
A cop showed up just as I had stopped laughing long enough to dial the 9 in 911, which was rather convenient. He pushed me to the side of the road, but then of course, as soon as I was "legal," he left. The number for a tow truck? Off the top of his head, he couldn't think of it. Maybe my expectations are too high, but I feel like he should have known that, or at the very least shouldn't have shrugged and shook his head and walked away when I asked him if New Orleans has an information number I could call to find one. He just... left me there.
Ah well. David called the tow truck and walked to his car and I walked back to the office and an otherwise interesting day ended with data entry, rain, and... blogging. I also discovered that dicing up cucumbers and putting them in omelets (sans seeds) is actually really good. Take that, nasty Walmart cucumbers!
Oops!
A cop showed up just as I had stopped laughing long enough to dial the 9 in 911, which was rather convenient. He pushed me to the side of the road, but then of course, as soon as I was "legal," he left. The number for a tow truck? Off the top of his head, he couldn't think of it. Maybe my expectations are too high, but I feel like he should have known that, or at the very least shouldn't have shrugged and shook his head and walked away when I asked him if New Orleans has an information number I could call to find one. He just... left me there.
Ah well. David called the tow truck and walked to his car and I walked back to the office and an otherwise interesting day ended with data entry, rain, and... blogging. I also discovered that dicing up cucumbers and putting them in omelets (sans seeds) is actually really good. Take that, nasty Walmart cucumbers!
23 June 2009
Research: Efforts to Rebuild After the Hurricane
So I flipped through a Powerpoint presentation from the Department of Planning and Urban Studies at the University of New Orleans entitled "Planning Efforts in Post-Katrina New Orleans" about the City's approach to rebuilding after the hurricane. The Mayor's first plan (from the Bring New Orleans Back Commission) created an uproar because it recommended turning former neighborhoods into parks (such as Broadmoor--more details later), shrinking the city's footprint overall. The uproar sparked community-based initiatives across the city. City Council then proposed the Neighborhoods Rebuilding Plan. Then the Unified New Orleans plan finally sought feedback from neighborhoods, so some improvements.... Planning planning planning and not too much action on the part of the city.
Part of the city's Road Home project to bring former residents back to their rental units is evaluated in "Bringing Louisiana Renters Home: An Evaluation of the 2006-2007 GulfOpportunity Zone Rental Housing Restoration Program" (PolicyLink June 2007). The study only looks at renters--supposedly initiatives to help homeowners were more successful, but don't quote me on that. Basically the renter portion of Road Home was way underfunded and was not initially targeted towards poorer neighborhoods and only found/built housing for something like one fifth of the need. Fail.
Something that has been successful, however, is more community-based, community organizing-type approaches. The Broadmoor Guide for Planning and Implementation takes lessons learned from the Broadmoor neighborhood, just north of Freret where I am, and turns them into a handbook on how to organize a community after a disaster. It's a really impressive piece, basically describes how community organizing should work to work well. It seems that it's groups like The Broadmoor Improvement Association and The Broadmoor Development Corps, and Neighborhood Housing Services, that can really make a difference.
This does not mean that I agree with everything said in Local Knowledge, published by the Mercatus Center (re: conservatives!, albeit intelligent conservatives that make a lot of very good points... good enough to almost convince me, but not quite!). It's an interesting publication, though, focusing on how entrepreneurs were able to make real improvements in their neighborhoods after the disaster. Someone needs to "build a box" around those entreprenuers so they can grow (borrowing from LeAlan Jones' ideas, as presented in Chad's class last quarter).
Part of the city's Road Home project to bring former residents back to their rental units is evaluated in "Bringing Louisiana Renters Home: An Evaluation of the 2006-2007 Gulf
Something that has been successful, however, is more community-based, community organizing-type approaches. The Broadmoor Guide for Planning and Implementation takes lessons learned from the Broadmoor neighborhood, just north of Freret where I am, and turns them into a handbook on how to organize a community after a disaster. It's a really impressive piece, basically describes how community organizing should work to work well. It seems that it's groups like The Broadmoor Improvement Association and The Broadmoor Development Corps, and Neighborhood Housing Services, that can really make a difference.
This does not mean that I agree with everything said in Local Knowledge, published by the Mercatus Center (re: conservatives!, albeit intelligent conservatives that make a lot of very good points... good enough to almost convince me, but not quite!). It's an interesting publication, though, focusing on how entrepreneurs were able to make real improvements in their neighborhoods after the disaster. Someone needs to "build a box" around those entreprenuers so they can grow (borrowing from LeAlan Jones' ideas, as presented in Chad's class last quarter).
Freret Neighborhood and NHS Background; my current place in it
So far at work I've mostly been doing some background reading on the history of New Orleans, particularly the neighborhood of Freret (where I'm working). There's a lot to take in, so I should probably write down some notes for future reference before I get to what else I did today...
An article by Coleman Warner, "Freret's Century: Growth, Identity, and Loss in a New Orleans Neighborhood," gives the history of the neighborhood from it's creation when swamplands were drained in the mid-1800s to the 1990s. The neighborhood was historically a real neighborhood, where businesses, homes, schools and churches were interspersed and close together--it was a "walking city," in which nothing was more than a 30 minute stroll away. Freret Street was the center of it all, with a cobblestone street and later a streetcar. Jane Jacobs would have loved it. The city was majority black, but barely, as working class whites fled overcrowding and rich whites built large homes on the boulevards surrounding Freret. Racial segregatation mirrored the rest of the states, black schools were seperate and unequal (re: Jim Crow), but racial tensions were relatively harmonious.
The decline of Freret began around 1952 when the school board moved to turn a formerly white school, Merrick Elementary, into a black school (note that this was before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that sparked similar racial unheaval in other cities). Although it made sense to serve rising demands for quality--and equal--schools for black children, it had been the only white public school actually in the neighborhood (although there were several all white private schools). White families pulled their kids of out of the public school system and moved away to the suburbs, eroding the consumer base on which Freret businesses had formerly depended. America's obsession with cars and suburbia also contributed to Freret's decline--the "walking city" was no longer attractive in light of new shopping malls and highways. Even black population in the community has declined.
The 1990's saw further erosion as local businesses died out and crime rates and vacancies rose. But the decade also saw some imrovements, particularly at the hands of Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS). Warner writes:
"At the center of the recent effort to revitalize Freret is Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit organization that has grappled with the underlying problem of an eroding residential base by hosting homeowner training classes, arranging financing for homebuyers and, in certain cases, restoring and selling blighted homes. One of the more sophisticated nonprofit groups active in troubled sections of New Orleans, NHS has recruited neighborhood students for beautification projects, revived a Freret Street Festival, furnished staff support to the merchants' association, and helped establish a community garden."
Although I can personally see in all the boarded up storefronts on my way to work that Freret is still not what it used to be (I have yet to find a grocery store that I don't have to drive to, although I'm working on it--I saw a fruit stand/truck today that I might check out), NHS is still providing the services that Warner mentioned. I am interning with their Community Building Initiative (CBI) visited the Community Center across the street today, which provides space for all kinds of community events. It's a pretty great place for summer camps and meetings, and they have a computer lab in the back. Next week I might check out their free yoga classes.
One of the CBI's current projects that I'm working on is to document and catalog abandoned/blighted homes in the community, and send letters to the owners pressuring them to renovate. The letters allow community members to affirm their commitment to the maintenance of their neighborhood and hopefully shame homeowners into doing something with their vacant properties, whether on their own or with NHS's assistance. This entailed driving around today taking pictures of properties. It was interesting to see the neighborhood--parts of it surprised me by reminding me of the mountains, with the wooden houses built on cinder block post foundations.
But anyway, if the pressure from the letters doesn't work, the next step (escalating! like in my community organizing class!) is the code-enforcement office, which can write citations requiring repairs to be made in the interest of safety and maintaining properties at levels required by building codes--NHS apparently has a pretty good relationship with the office.
An article by Coleman Warner, "Freret's Century: Growth, Identity, and Loss in a New Orleans Neighborhood," gives the history of the neighborhood from it's creation when swamplands were drained in the mid-1800s to the 1990s. The neighborhood was historically a real neighborhood, where businesses, homes, schools and churches were interspersed and close together--it was a "walking city," in which nothing was more than a 30 minute stroll away. Freret Street was the center of it all, with a cobblestone street and later a streetcar. Jane Jacobs would have loved it. The city was majority black, but barely, as working class whites fled overcrowding and rich whites built large homes on the boulevards surrounding Freret. Racial segregatation mirrored the rest of the states, black schools were seperate and unequal (re: Jim Crow), but racial tensions were relatively harmonious.
The decline of Freret began around 1952 when the school board moved to turn a formerly white school, Merrick Elementary, into a black school (note that this was before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that sparked similar racial unheaval in other cities). Although it made sense to serve rising demands for quality--and equal--schools for black children, it had been the only white public school actually in the neighborhood (although there were several all white private schools). White families pulled their kids of out of the public school system and moved away to the suburbs, eroding the consumer base on which Freret businesses had formerly depended. America's obsession with cars and suburbia also contributed to Freret's decline--the "walking city" was no longer attractive in light of new shopping malls and highways. Even black population in the community has declined.
The 1990's saw further erosion as local businesses died out and crime rates and vacancies rose. But the decade also saw some imrovements, particularly at the hands of Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS). Warner writes:
"At the center of the recent effort to revitalize Freret is Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit organization that has grappled with the underlying problem of an eroding residential base by hosting homeowner training classes, arranging financing for homebuyers and, in certain cases, restoring and selling blighted homes. One of the more sophisticated nonprofit groups active in troubled sections of New Orleans, NHS has recruited neighborhood students for beautification projects, revived a Freret Street Festival, furnished staff support to the merchants' association, and helped establish a community garden."
Although I can personally see in all the boarded up storefronts on my way to work that Freret is still not what it used to be (I have yet to find a grocery store that I don't have to drive to, although I'm working on it--I saw a fruit stand/truck today that I might check out), NHS is still providing the services that Warner mentioned. I am interning with their Community Building Initiative (CBI) visited the Community Center across the street today, which provides space for all kinds of community events. It's a pretty great place for summer camps and meetings, and they have a computer lab in the back. Next week I might check out their free yoga classes.
One of the CBI's current projects that I'm working on is to document and catalog abandoned/blighted homes in the community, and send letters to the owners pressuring them to renovate. The letters allow community members to affirm their commitment to the maintenance of their neighborhood and hopefully shame homeowners into doing something with their vacant properties, whether on their own or with NHS's assistance. This entailed driving around today taking pictures of properties. It was interesting to see the neighborhood--parts of it surprised me by reminding me of the mountains, with the wooden houses built on cinder block post foundations.
But anyway, if the pressure from the letters doesn't work, the next step (escalating! like in my community organizing class!) is the code-enforcement office, which can write citations requiring repairs to be made in the interest of safety and maintaining properties at levels required by building codes--NHS apparently has a pretty good relationship with the office.
21 June 2009
you're on a boat, but i'm in new orleans
Watch this while I try to figure out what to write.
Mmk. Now that we've got that over with:
I'm in New Orleans! I'm surprised I'm still awake, seeing as I left the house at 4:15 this morning (escorted by the lovely Misses Lauren and Vikki, of course!). But after flying out of Midway (for the first time) on Southwest (for the first time) and going first to Houston (for the first time) and then to New Orleans (for almost the first time--I'm not sure that one afternoon with Habitat counted) here I am in my little apartment in Freret, just west of Tulane University... for the first time, too many firsts. The top of my door is cut at an angle to allow it to close after the floor decided to tip over a bit, but the air conditioner in my bedroom works alright.
So after one day here I have learned several things:
1. The pizza is more like New York than Chicago, but still pretty tasty.
2. What one person thinks is an acceptable size bike for someone my height might not make much sense--in fact, it may make so little sense that despite feeling bad about making the guy drive 45 minutes to bring said bicycle to me, there's no way in hell I'm buying it.
3. The blocks are short, and the roads are narrow and don't always make very much sense--something I discovered driving my roommates car to Walmart for groceries and bedding (she just bought it but hasn't gotten her license yet, so I got to drive).
4. The really really huge beetle/bug/alien species on the bathroom floor isn't worth gasping about because it's already dead. My house is kind of crappy, but hey, the rent is cheap!
I think four lessons are enough for today. Time for bed. I start my internship at Neighborhood Housing Services tomorrow at 10 am.
Mmk. Now that we've got that over with:
I'm in New Orleans! I'm surprised I'm still awake, seeing as I left the house at 4:15 this morning (escorted by the lovely Misses Lauren and Vikki, of course!). But after flying out of Midway (for the first time) on Southwest (for the first time) and going first to Houston (for the first time) and then to New Orleans (for almost the first time--I'm not sure that one afternoon with Habitat counted) here I am in my little apartment in Freret, just west of Tulane University... for the first time, too many firsts. The top of my door is cut at an angle to allow it to close after the floor decided to tip over a bit, but the air conditioner in my bedroom works alright.
So after one day here I have learned several things:
1. The pizza is more like New York than Chicago, but still pretty tasty.
2. What one person thinks is an acceptable size bike for someone my height might not make much sense--in fact, it may make so little sense that despite feeling bad about making the guy drive 45 minutes to bring said bicycle to me, there's no way in hell I'm buying it.
3. The blocks are short, and the roads are narrow and don't always make very much sense--something I discovered driving my roommates car to Walmart for groceries and bedding (she just bought it but hasn't gotten her license yet, so I got to drive).
4. The really really huge beetle/bug/alien species on the bathroom floor isn't worth gasping about because it's already dead. My house is kind of crappy, but hey, the rent is cheap!
I think four lessons are enough for today. Time for bed. I start my internship at Neighborhood Housing Services tomorrow at 10 am.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)