Big Easy is Not So Easy!

Spent the last week of June in New Orleans attending the American Library Association's annual conference. My hotel, the Intercontinental, was about a mile from the Morial convention center. The convention center is just over a mile long. I did a LOT of walking! I blogged my conference sessions at Annot8tions. This post is about the other things I did on the trip.

The first day, I walked to the convention center to register, and then strolled through the Riverwalk shopping mall. On a whim, I bought a ticket for the Battlefield Cruise on the Creole Queen stern-wheeler. Best idea of the day! We cruised 8 miles downriver to the Chalmette Battlefield, where the Battle of New Orleans took place in 1815. The operator identified historic buildings and sites along the way, and there was a little breeze to take the edge off the sweltering heat. We disembarked, crossed over the levee, and got a blow-by-blow from Howard, the park ranger. On the way back, just before we docked, ominous black clouds piled up across the river and treated us to a lightning show.

The next day, I participated in ALA's Libraries Build Communities program. It started with an offer 5 years ago to help New Orleans libraries recover from damage caused by Katrina, and proved to be very successful. Now the program has broadened to include restoration work on homes still needing rehabilitation. My group of nine librarians put in about 5 hours of work on Kevin's house - still uninhabitable after 5 years. His application finally rose to the top of the list in the St. Bernard Project, and we were the first step in beginning the rebuilding process. We cleared many trash bags of stuff from the inside, borrowed a weed-whacker from a neighbor and knocked down the overgrown front lawn, and removed 5 years worth of jungly brush from the back yard. We also painted the front of the house. Shortly before we quit for the day, Kevin and his son stopped by to thank us. I can't describe the feelings that ran through our ranks as we listened to him tell how his family has been coping for the last 5 years, and his dream of finally being able to return to his home.

The rest of the week was basically conference stuff.  I stayed two days after the conference ended to do some personal research about my mom's great grandfather, Noel Crosswell, but didn't find anything in the two libraries I visited.  I'll just have to go back for another visit, I guess.