going home...

I headed back home, New Orleans, for the first time since the storms. I was only there for two days, spending my time with family. More than a year has passed and there has been growth, change, progress and neglect. My mom has moved to Gert Town near Xavier and it seems that maybe three houses on her block are occupied. The rest sit like discarded paper cups, marked with spray-painted symbols. They have significant meaning those X's and numbers. I don't want to know what they mean. We drove to around mid-city & uptown, seeing the water marks, the holes in the landscape and the tiny signs of regrowth. I visited City Park and gasped as I drove up Carrolton Avenue seeing the museum. You used to not be able to see the museum driving up this way. There were live oaks shielding your sight. Live oaks weren't like decoration they were the solem natives populating the park, now so many of them are gone and the park sits exposed.
The most alarming parts were the empty streets, crossing Carrollton Avenue and not seeing the St. Charles Streetcar, the demolition of the Carrollton Shopping Center and those vacant houses.