I found last week in New Orleans that you only have to drive about a half mile from the French Quarter, down Decatur Street and past Cafe Du Monde, making a left on Elysian Fields Avenue, to find single-family houses boarded-up and still bearing the spray-painted markings that are the hallmark of Katrina-affected homes. The question in my mind becomes, in circumstances such as these, what needs to fall into place in a city to bring people back home?

First, warning and apologies that this post is about as looong as the Mississippi River. For heck's sake, it's so long it has subheads. I'm talking seven screens long at 1024x768-- might want to grab a drink first. But rebuilding the city is just such a rich problem and so vast in scope.

There's more...

I've been back from New Orleans for a few days now and have gotten a chance to sort through my thoughts, notes, and research. I went down with the intention of focusing on the rebuilding process and it seems to make sense for me to chop up what I have into three posts. The first up is this post, on the scope and impact of Hurricane Katrina in post-storm New Orleans. The second will look at major factors in the rebuilding process. The third will be a report on the day I put down my pen and camera (mostly) and picked up a crowbar to help ACORN gut a house in the Lower Ninth Ward.

It doesn't take long back in New Orleans to figure out that Katrina is embedded in every fiber of this city's being. It's all "storm," all the time, some 20 months since the storm.

There's more...