Hurricane Katrina

In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina roared ashore the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans, forever changing the lives of all who lived there. Businesses, schools, and homes were left in shambles as people wondered how they would possibly be able rebuild not only their communities, but their lives.

Amidst the devastation, many new bonds were formed as people began to work together toward a vision of a new community that would be stronger and more vibrant than ever. In 2006, in partnership with Cisco Systems, Digital Opportunity Trust USA was formed to assist communities in Mississippi and Louisiana continue on the road to recovery by and create a new foundation in education by empowering teachers and students in the use of 21st Century Technology.

Now, five years later, communitiy members across Mississippi and Louisiana to rebuild a better and brighter future. TeachUp! is proud to be a part of that effort, and remains commited to empowering the next generation with 21st Century Skills. There are over three hundred Interns working throughout the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the model used here has become the standard for program expansions to other countries such as Mexico and China. The TeachUp! Program is a shining example of the good which can arise out of even the worst circumstances.

As we continue into the future, we invite you to join us in remembering the storm that changed so many lives and reflecting on the efforts still underway. 

I am an ex-patriot. I left my city because I cannot stand the thought that it is broken - because if it is, then so am I. 

August 25, 2005. I immediately got in my car and drove into it because that's how it was between us, me and my city. That's loyalty. I drove until the water was too high and then I walked. I walked until the water was too high and then I swam. I swam until a wrinkled, old man, thin as a reed, picked me up in his two person shrimping boat. We got lost because water covered the tops of houses, street signs, and landmarks we took for granted - before. Nothing looked familiar. Nothing looked like nothing. The brown, craggy man, who wore a baseball cap that said in red letters, "Old Fart," turned to me with tears and resignation in his eyes and sighed, "Our city is gone. It's gone." I turned my face away from his, into the eerily silent, damp velvet air, knowing he was right.

That's the thing with us: we know each other. Who belongs here and who doesn't.  It's the soul of it; and I'm not talking about music. The decadent grace and regal ornamentation of antebellum homes dripping with cypress and ivy. The languid scent of magnolias and night blooming jasmine wafting through the labyrinth of cobblestone. A collectively high tolerance for eccentricity and low one for malarkey. The oddities that only make sense here: jazz funeral parades and drive through bourbon stands. And time - it doesn't really exist. There are no seasons: there's hot and damn hot. Bars don't ever close; we take our drinks into the street from four to five in the morning, so they can tidy up. And then there was that young Creole kid I saw on every street corner, making me doubt if it was today or yesterday, or maybe even tomorrow. He played his battered trumpet and the rest of the world just fell away. He only played Otis Redding's, "I've Got Dreams to Remember," but I would always wonder what he would play next, no matter if it was yesterday or tomorrow. That kid had soul.

It was easy to tell who was an outsider because they don't know our language. A rue is a street and a sidewalk is a banquette. My gallery is their balcony and my balcony is their porch. My court is their yard and my home is their vacation. Tourists thought my city was a carnival caricature, a distraction of debauchery: Bourbon Street, Mardi Gras, and nubile girls lifting up their shirts. Our secret is: we never told them they're wrong. We didn't want them to stay. I would sit at Envie coffee shop and watch, ringside on Rue Decatur. Their skin humming with cheap liquor sweat, clogging the streets, perusing for postcards and pralines. It wasn't their damp hairlines, unaccustomed to subtropics that gave them away - it was their clean shoes. A city built at sea level provides more dank puddles than a shoe could take. There is also a difference in how we walk the cobblestone. Tourists, unaccustomed to the unevenness, stumble like the first time a baby drag queen tries on his mother's church pumps. I do it with a go-cup of bourbon in my left hand, a smoke in my right, and five-inch platforms on my feet. And I don't walk; I saunter. As the Cajun old timers say, "What's the hurry there, baby? If you're going, you might as well look good as you get there." They had soul too. 

That is who we were. We were the dreamers, the writers & the artists. We did not blend well and we did not care to. We all know the location of Stanley and Blanche's house over on Elysian Fields because Tennessee Williams' told someone who told someone's cousin and then we all knew - but we're not telling. We went to Tip's to hear Alligator Charlie play the blues and he only has one hand so he knows what he's talking about; we went to The French Market for homemade Creole hot sauce, so fiery that it made us repent for sins that weren't even ours; and we went to Preservation Hall to be reminded that 3-4 rhythm jazz is the same as a heartbeat and that surely they were born of each other. 

When I visit now, I see what isn't. The holes in the sky poked out by the absence of hundred-year-old oak trees. The wooden benches around Jackson Square are a few feet off from where they were - before. I used to sit on the one, closest to Pirates Alley, sit real tall, and watch the steamboat smoke playing tag with the Mississippi. The Shim Sham Club closed, but I always forget, and I walk through the Quarter to visit with friends who are also no longer. Nine of us danced burlesque at the Shim Sham and anywhere else in the world, that makes us whores. There, it made us legends. I even fell in love once, at the intersection of Independence and Desire. I blame the fat moon that was so full it was tipping over. Those streets are still there, but that boy's body is just one of hundreds that has never been found. I can only clearly see what was because what is - isn't what was. The soul is gone. I am an ex-patriot.