St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

By Steve Rucinski. We’ve got the routine down now, when to get up, how to dress, what time is breakfast, pack your lunch quick because the fixings can go fast with 140 people making a lunch. We are seasoned pro’s now, we look a little ragged but we have adapted well to our new home.

I get up early to write, less competition for internet bandwidth and office space to work on. Anyway today we worked a half-day and went to New Orleans for the rest of the day.

Bob and I had to go back to yesterday’s house and board up a window with plywood, that took about 45 minutes, the rest of the crew cleaned up from breakfast and filled sandbags. All of the sleeping quarters have a 3-5 foot high sandbag wall around them so many of the bags need replacing due to tearage or the wall just needs to be higher. The kids did a great job and we capped the work off with a 3-bag competitive race which was won by Dylan and Lana. We wrapped up our work around 10 am and headed for the showers.

We left camp for New Orleans at 11:30, the drive was just a little over an hour long. While there has been much new building and recovery (especially to major bridges) we could clearly see massive destruction of homes, businesses, vegetation, automobiles and more. Just off the exit from the freeway to Canal Street and toward Jackson Square we could see tent city. Tent city is where many residents are still living under the freeway. It was particulaurly busy this day as the police where trying to clear the people out of the area. It was a very sobering sight for us all.

We arrived at the waterfront and found a place to park, grabbed our lunches and walked up and ate on the waterfront just near the Holocaust memorial that had been erected. The riverwalk was really nice and a paddleboat whistle serenaded us with music while we ate. The waterfront and downtown business district seemed to be in great shape, new looking and very clean.

When then took off for a little sight-seeing walk up Decatur street, Liz bought some earrings at a funky little clothing store and everyone bought something at the first tourist gift shop we came to. While in that store we experienced our first serious rain storm, it rained HARD for about an hour. Near the end of the storm we ran a few doorways to a small coffee shop and had something to drink.

Once the rain stopped we continued up the street stopping at more stores and finally arriving at Jackson Square, because of the rain very few artists or peformers were at the square. We enjoyed looking at St. Louis Cathedral which just sparkled after the rain storm.

Right next to Jackson Square we stopped at Cafe Du Mond and had several Bengeits an incredibly delicious pastry. Then it was time for a nap. (Just kidding) It was time for us to start heading back to watch an IMAX movie near a museum call “Hurricane on the Bayou” that told the story of the wetlands and their destruction over the last fifty years (Not caused by global warming by the way, think levies and canals) and how that destruction caused Katrina to be more destructive than it should have been.

Every one mile of wetlands causes the storm surge of a hurricane to be one foot less in height. New Orleans was positioned where it is because the original wetlands 300 years ago provided a natural hurricane buffer. Anyway the film was great and filled with Cajun music which got us in the mood for dinner.

Dinner was at Mulate’s, The Original Cajun Restaurant of New Orleans. We ordered all kinds of great stuff from the big menu, jambalaya, crawfish, shrimp, catfish, alligator, steak, chicken, crab and much more. Everyone really seemed to enjoy the food but the most fun was the Cajun live band that played.

The band first recognized our group and received a very loud OH-IO chant in return. Then we commenced to dancing a few songs with the band and the rest of the patrons. The highlight had to be when Jeff asked the band to play the ‘chicken dance’ and most of our crew joined in.

We left Mulate’s at 8 and headed back to the car and the drive home to camp arriving about 10 pm. I think this mid-week break was just what we needed. The next two days will be spent on one really exciting project which may even be on TV next Monday morning. (Stay tuned for more details soon)