Green Redux

New Orleans owns a pretty big piece of my heart and, post-Katrina, my thoughts often turn to the city and the area. I first fell in love with the region on a 2004 trip to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Then again on a two week field study trip up and down the Mississippi River where I learned about Environmental Justice, met community activists fighting for their communities and reaffirmed my love affair with the sights, sounds and smells of the Big Easy.

My last visit was about six months before the storms of 2005. That August, from my home in Connecticut, I watched the swirl of devastation heading to Louisiana and neighboring states. It marked one of the most desperately helpless moments in my memory.

Knowing what I know, having visited people in the bayou whose homes were precariously located near hazardous waste dumps (its hazardous in Texas, but not when it crosses the Louisiana state line), having stood on the gelatinous mounds of earth meant to hold back the Mississippi, having had lunch at St. Rita’s nursing home, my heart sank in the hours before the storm and has not yet rebounded to its former state.

Scott has family ties to the area and both of us hold on to the hope of finding a way to put our skills to use in the ongoing rebuilding efforts. Part of that hope is here in this weblog. My dream is that the small revenues we might see from our posts here transform into a sizeable donation to New Orleans rebuild projects or the makings of a Green Redux funded volunteer vacation.

Whether or not that comes to fruition, I can’t help but integrate New Orleans into the lineup here, perhaps with a special focus or its own section. In the least we can try to help keep the region from being forgotten in what is still a time of need.

It is from this perspective that I’m always happy to see efforts to rebuild New Orleans continue to show up in the mainstream media. Although at first I was hesitant about Hollywood taking a leading role, Brad Pitt’s work has kept a light on the Lower 9th Ward and integrated green building into the plan to boot. In partnership with Global Green and now with Make it Right, Mr. Pitt has stood fast and is still making a difference.

The latest mainstream spotlight is from an old favorite, This Old House TV. The show has taken to New Orleans with the Season Premiere: New Orleans Rebuilds to help renovate an 1892 Italianate-style shotgun house, and to report on other important rebuilding efforts. The show premieres today, January 24th, on PBS (find local showtimes here). And below is the shotgun that is the focus of the show, find more before pics over at TOH.