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2006
Conferences
and Seminars

The Lucrative Travel Conference
February 10-12
San Antonio, TX

Living and Investing in France Conference
 March 17-19
Paris, France

The Ultimate Travel Photographer's Workshop
May
Paris, France

Living and Investing
in France Conference

May 26-28
New Orleans

2005
Conferences
and Seminars

Invest in France Seminar
October 26
New York, NY

Living and Investing in France Conference
 October 21-23
San Francisco, CA

Invest in France Seminar
August 10
Paris, France


The Ultimate Travel Photographer's Workshop

May 25-28
Paris, France

Working and Living
in France Conference

May 20-22
Paris, France

Living and Investing
in France Conference

February 11-13
New Orleans


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© Copyright 2005
SkyBoy Enterprises, LLC

The NOLA Report

Once again, thanks to all who contributed to my friendship fund! With your help I was able to assist my friends in buying building materials, trees and plants for re-landscaping, and some groceries (necessitated by one especially long, 21 hour power outage).

If you’ve never been to New Orleans and were to visit there now, you would probably just think it’s a very dirty city—as long as you stayed within the confines of the popular tourist areas. The visible remnants of hurricane Katrina has pretty much diminished to blue-tarped roofs and lot of curbside debris, piled there by returning locals after cleaning out their water damaged houses, and waiting for pickup by city garbage trucks.

For me, having been to New Orleans a number of times, even the ride in from the airport left me nearly speechless. All sorts of debris littered the grassy areas along either side of the freeway. An area under the freeway where cars were parked demonstrated the depth of flooding—starting at the very top, several waterlines marked the receding waters. Office buildings along the way were missing signs. Broken windows were boarded up. At some points you could easily see the downed trees, broken fences, blue-tarped roofs, and debris-clogged streets of the neighborhoods.

My friend Ray, who picked me up, took me into the Marigny/Bywater part of town, entering through some of the devastated neighborhoods. There were people cleaning out their homes, hauling the bits and pieces of their ruined lives to the curb. I had my camera ready, but didn’t have the heart to take any photos. It just didn’t seem right to intrude on their heart rending task.

The most chilling part of my stay took place after breakfast one day. We’d eaten at Elizabeth’s, a well known and popular spot in the Bywater—it had just reopened the week before. Regular patrons were crowding the eatery, happy to have one bit of normal life back. After leaving, Ray decided to see if we could get into some of the worst hit areas, neighborhoods where some of his family lived—or had lived. There was a National Guard checkpoint, but they were letting anyone pass through.

Once across the Industrial Canal, we turned off the main street, onto one of the first side streets we came to. I was speechless. I have never seen such concentrated devastation. Trees down everywhere. Water marks on houses rose above first floor windows. Grassy lawns and shrubs were dead. Everything was covered with a film of gray mud, left by the receding waters. In other neighborhoods, the ground was nothing but caked mud—dried and cracked like a bone dry mudflat. On many rooftops, we could see the holes chopped through to allow those living there to escape. One such house was that of my friend’s aunt.

We drove as close as we could to the lower 9th Ward—the hardest hit area. There were still barricades to prevent unauthorized entry, but you could get fairly close. Even more chilling. It looked like a nuclear winter. A surreal landscape, something from a movie set. I couldn’t help but feel…humbled. But humbled isn’t quite the right word. I was moved by a connection to people I’d never met, would never meet. A sense of humanity, I think, that binds us when our kind have been through such an ordeal.

It was an experience I shall never forget.

I stayed in the Marigny, a neighborhood bordering on the French Quarter. These two areas, the bordering Bywater, and the Uptown/Garden District were relatively lucky. They avoided the devastating flooding that occurred in other parts of town. But they did suffer a lot of wind damage. Many courtyards, kept cool by towering oaks and other trees, were obliterated when the hurricane-force winds uprooted trees and snapped branches like twigs. The wind also damaged many rooftops, allowing the driving rain access to interiors.

Such was the fate of the friends I spent most of my time helping. They own a B&B in the Marigny (www.ladauphine.com) as well as a condo conversion building nearby. Both properties suffered extensive wind damage. The courtyard at La Dauphine was filled with trees and branches from the yards of surrounding neighbors. There was some roof damage. At the condos, the large courtyard there, once surrounded and shaded by large trees, was a disaster. The building suffered wind damage to one of the upper balconies and some of the wood siding. Most of my efforts went into rebuilding fences and the railings on the balcony at the condos. The last weekend there, my friend Dean, came down for a few days to help. Between the two of us, we got the second balcony railing looking good as new—if you don’t look to awfully close.

When I first arrived, in addition to the debris, curbsides were notable for the tossed out refrigerators and other appliances. Most were duct taped shut to keep the horrors of rotting and decomposed, weeks old perishables confined to the interior. Most had been sitting out for weeks. They started to become a sort of public forum. People would write on them; announcing the opening of another restaurant or club or making some political statement. Pickup eventually began and now you see relatively few of them around—at least until other residents return and they too go through the cleaning out process.

By the time I left, life for residents in the “lucky” areas was becoming more and more normal. They’re really trying to make it so, anyway. There is still no conversation that doesn’t include talk of Katrina—where one went, the state of family and property, work, etc. Even in the areas that are relatively back on line, power outages are frequent. There were four in our neighborhood during the two weeks I was there. One lasted 21 hours—prompting another round of grocery shopping. But people are getting back to work, going out to cafés and restaurants, doing more than making pilgrimages to the suburbs to Loews and Home Depot.

There is still so much devastation the needs to be cleaned up. So many lives that are not back to normal, and won’t be for a very long time. But the city is alive! If there’s one thing I want to impress on people since my return, it’s just that. The New Orleans that thousands of people around the world know is alive and well! Let the government and powers that be deal with the task of rebuilding. What ordinary people can do is return to New Orleans and spend money there. If you’ve ever been there, the city needs you back. If you’ve never been there, the city needs you to visit. You’ll find everything you need to keep up-to-date on the city and all the goings on at www.nola.com. I’m going back as soon as I can!

Schuyler Hoffman

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