If that doesn’t put a fire in your belly, nothing will.
Valentine Pierce is a friend and has guest posted here on NOLAFemmes. When she saw the slide show I posted the other day she emailed me with a slide show she had compiled back in January 2008 in response to someone who said New Orleans didn’t need anymore money for rebuilding and restoration. These photos tell a far different story and the slide show is a wonderful historic montage of over 90 snapshots of where the city was 2 1/2 years ago. Some of the photos aren’t too different than the ones posted here that were taken within the past month, minus the piles of garbage. Since I’m somewhat tech-challenged, I couldn’t figure out how to embed her slide show into the blog so I chose 25 shots and made a new slide show with WordPress’s uploader. That I know how to do. You’ll notice that Valentine has comments on many of these photos – yet more historic evidence of how we felt about the state of the city 2 1/2 years ago…the sadness, the rage, the absolute incredulity of nothing happening to rebuild entire neighborhoods or to bring our people back. The empty lot where Valentine’s mothers house once stood is in this montage. You’ll see and read the raw emotion of this message to those outside New Orleans who felt we should be, must be OK. They just didn’t get it. I don’t think they ever did.

Thank you, Valentine, for this piece of history. Lest we forget.

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Valentine’s Websites:
Valentine Pierce Designs
Poet Sense and Sensibilities

We are honored to have Valentine’s slide show for our 28th day to Year 5 post.
Read about our journey to the 5th anniversary of the failure of the federally built levees in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina here.