The View from Louisiana

I’m back from Louisiana and the trip was even more interesting and worthwhile than I thought. I’ll have some video up soon of a woman telling her story, but here are some pictures for now. These are from Cameron parish, about 45 minutes south of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

I’ve uploaded all my pictures here.

[A boat motor that needs washing]

[The temporary Cameron Library building]

[There are many buildings that people haven't tried to repair or demolish]

[FEMA trailers]

There is technology in Louisiana

The volunteer center we’re staying at in Lake Charles, Louisiana is sponsored by the United Way. It’s actually pretty interesting because the center started as a faith-based program but now that UW supports it they can’t have anything religious in the place. Last year there was a prayer room but now it’s been replaced with a meeting room. It makes sense though since Americorps, Helping Hands and other volunteers come too, rather than just churches. Anyway, this means I can update at night and Twitter during the day. Stay tuned. I’ve just had some great hushpuppies, catfish and shrimp so I’m already happy.

Heading Out

I’m leaving for Port/or Lake Charles, Louisiana tomorrow for a mission trip where I believe we’ll be doing hurricane clean up and re-building type things. I won’t be able to get to a computer so I’ve put my Twitter RSS feed over to the right here to give updates on what’s happening. It should be interesting; I went to New Orleans in April 2005 before Katrina and now I’m going to Lake Charles after hurricane Rita. So check it out, the updates should be interesting.

Note: The previous Twitter posts on the feed were from the Online Journalism Symposium at UT and for a class sports blog project.

I was looking for videos of Lake Charles and Hurricane Rita and happened upon this. The Charlie Brown music and upbeat voiceovers made this storm sound like a Sunday picnic coming.