One year after Katrina

It is hard to believe it has been a year since Katrina hit. A lot has been cleaned up here on the Mississippi coast, but there is so much that needs to be done. The biggest improvement is the tons of debris that has been hauled off. Now there are just miles and miles of empty slabs. Brad and I still go for drives to explore the coast each weekend and although we have been doing that for a year, we still stumble on places that we had not seen before and it still shocks us when we see the damage. I had planned to watch some of the Katrina shows that are all over the TV this week, but after watching just a few, I had to stop. Not because the images of the coast hurt to look at......but because Mississippi was not on any of them. Even Jim Cantore, who was here in Mississippi when the storm came ashore, did a show from New Orleans. I watched several shows that played film clips of the hurricane as it came ashore here, but the narration only talked about New Orleans.
My heart goes out to the people of New Orleans. There is no doubt that they suffered more in the aftermath of the storm, but I feel like it is important to try to get the story of the Mississippi coast out too.
One year after the storm there are cemeteries like the one in the picture, that have not been cleaned up. One year after the storm neither one of the bridges on our main roadway have been repaired. One year later 70% of the homes in my neighborhood house 2 or more families. There is a lot of good things that have happened. There is a huge building boom going on. The economy down here is growing by leaps and bounds. There are new businesses coming in every day. We will recover and we will be better than ever, it is just going to take a few more years to get there.

They found him

I did not have a chance to update before now, but they found our Golden Fisherman just 2 days after he went missing. He had been stolen and taken to Mobile. The city government here had offered a $15000.00 reward and someone turned in the thieves for the money. The Chief of the Mobile police department took a look at the statue and said "Well, I don't understand what all the fuss was about, but there is no accounting for taste." There have been a lot of people calling in to our local paper with suggestions of what to do with the statue. Most of them suggest we give it a decent burial and be done with it.

~~Wheeeere's my Golden Mummy~~

Remember the story about the Golden Mummy that I posted awhile back? Well, it seems like the mummy.....errr.....The Golden Fisherman....has been stolen. Police have no clue who took it or how. The statue weighs over one ton and is in a very public area. It is made up of old junk from fishing trawlers, so there is no monetary value to it, just sentimental. They say it would have taken a crane to lift the statue and there are no signs of it being cut up before it was hauled off. Maybe if we are very lucky, we will start receiving photos of the statue dressed as a gnome and traveling around the world.

April 2, 2006

click on image to enlarge

I really thought I was going to be able to change the focus of this blog. I am tired of Katrina and her constant presence on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. As time goes on, I have realized that there is just no way around it. We will be in Katrina recovery for years to come. I am still taking hundreds of photos to document the damage down here and yet I rarely show them to anyone outside the area. I keep hoping to take that one magical photo that I can show to an outsider and they will say, "Oh, now I understand.". It can't be done. Many professional photographers have published thousands of pictures and yet every single person I have met from outside the area, is surprised at the actual destruction when they get here. They have seen the pictures, they have seen the videos and they all say they same thing. It is so much worse in real life. The images they have seen do not show a fraction of the devastation. On my way home from my sister's house yesterday, I stopped to take some pictures. I ran into a man who was down here from Chicago with a group of about 30 men from a Baptist church. They were all in construction and had come down here for a week to rebuild a house. As he and I stared out over the Ocean Springs bridge that local politicians are still fighting over how to rebuild, I thought about what a wonderful thing it was that this man and his church and cut through the red tape, came down here and rebuilt a house. I told him if we had more people like him, and less politicians, we would be far better off by now.

click on picture to enlarge


This picture is one that I thought would be a good one. It is of the remains of maybe 3 or 4 houses in a wash about a mile from the ocean. When you look at this huge field of debris in the middle of the woods, you get an idea of how strong the storm was. When you look at the picture, you only see a small pile of trash. It is very frustrating not to be able to share the extent of the damage or the emotion that goes with it. I keep thinking if I was a better photographer, or a better writer, I could bring outsiders into our world. So far, I feel like I am not succeeding at all.

The Golden Mummy

This statue is actually called The Golden Fisherman. It was standing right along the beach where everyone who drove into town could see it. Most of the locals hated it and called it The Golden Mummy. When I showed my friend Laura (who posted on the post below as busyizzie) she asked me if all of the locals ran up to the statue and hit it with their shoes like the people did to the fallen statue of Saddam Hussein. I told Brad and we both laughed about that comment for two days. I think I am going to plan a Mardi Gras party at the site of the statue, and tell everyone to bring some flip flops to hold a "Thumping of the statue" ceremony. What a great way to celebrate the end of Katrina and a new beginning for the coast.

Thanks for the laugh Laura.

Now I remember why I love the Gulf Coast so much

My sister Rose is an artist who has painted some gorgeous pictures of coastal life. I was looking at these two paintings recently and was struck by the beauty of them. It made me realize why I love living down here so much. Looking at her paintings gave me hope that it will be beautiful again one day soon.

Mock Wars

Click to enlarge

I saw these two Mockingbirds fighting today and was able to get several good pictures of them.