Hi. I’m Summer. I live in the Holy Cross now, in New Orleans. The Holy Cross is the sliver-by-the-river area of the Lower 9th Ward which didn’t get crushed by a tsunami shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit landfall. All around my neighborhood, during the day, you can hear hammering and sawing and the shouts of construction workers complaining about heat and sun. It sounds like a Deadwood background reel, or Black Rock City being built.

my house is on the upper right hand corner … of the riverbend. So awesome

Meanwhile, I’m living with no refrigerator for the moment. Also, zero grocery stores exist within biking distance — reasonable biking distance — so for the past I-don’t-know-how-many days in a row, when I’m not being fed at the fancy-pants restaurant at which I toil, I partake of the HOLY CROSS BREAKFAST: Fried chicken and a pickle.
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I just have one more thing to tell you about before I finish my packing, do the last of my cooking and get out on the road to that BIG thing in the desert.   Haven’t you always wanted to know more about the outreach groups of Burning Man?  You hear they are placing art in China, and solar in Nevada, are creating community activists everywhere, and have events hosted locally as far away as Spain and as close as Silicon Valley.

I have a special place in my heart for the outreach groups, Burners Without Borders, Black Rock Arts Foundation, Black Rock Solar and The Regional Network, and have to admit a bias for the Black Rock Arts Foundation since I blog for them, but all of the outreach groups are out there creating our culture and making a difference the other 51 weeks of the year.
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There is no better place than Burning Man to wear what you dig. Back when I volunteered for The Man we talked about Radical Self-Expression, this idea of Going For It, of opening yourself to who you really are and letting your freak flag fly. For many Burners, costumes are the door to accessing and expressing ourselves and feeling A Part Of It.

Home sewing projects, thrift store finds, random cool junk you found: do not be intimidated. Here are a few suggestions for the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-hotpants crafter.

*When sewing by hand, thread several needles before you begin stitching. This way you can keep on sewing when the thread snags or runs out.

*Very little can be done with less than a yard of fabric. I usually buy 2 yards of anything unless I have specific pattern measurements.

*Old or discount thread snags and breaks. Get the $1 upgrade and buy the good stuff.
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ADOPT-A-DIRTBAG: Why not send a DPW / Gate / Burning Dude desert-rat hooligan (or yourself) to New Orleans to help rebuild with Lowernine.org?

Hurricane Katrina still haunts New Orleans, and she likely always will. She is an ogre. She is an abusive ex-lover out on parole. She is the backdrop, the turning point, the literal dark cloud hanging over everyone’s past, seeping out into the present, humidifying the future. Her human survivors remain buoyant — awash with both what-can-you-do resignation and silver-lining contentment.

Katrina gave America the biggest mother-nature bitch-slapping in its history … right upside this murderous and gorgeous city’s face. 80 percent of New Orleans flooded, and 1500 people died — half as many humans as the ones who perished on September 11th, 2001. Then, while the government callously sat back and watched in catatonia — like an 8-year-old pouring gasoline on an anthill — the good people of the United States mobilized to help.

When the storm hit, for a blessedly large number of out-of-towners, horrified empathy morphed into positive action.

Rick's the one in the dark grey T-shirt

In 2006, Rick Prose chaperoned a church trip from Maine down to post-Katrina New Orleans with his daughter’s youth group. Working mostly in the Gentilly area, Prose shot some video of a man scavenging gutting debris on the curb. The scavenger said something like: “You think it’s bad over here … Wanna come see my house in the Lower 9th Ward?”

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Wed. May 27, 2009
New Orleans, LA
(the backbone of middle Amerika; the soggy bottom of Old Man River)

Hi. I’m Summer Burkes. I just moved from the crispy Bay Area to the sweet warm fog of New Orleans and as a DPW/Gate desert rat, I experience a swampy deja vu on the daily. Here are the top ten similarities between Burning Man and New Orleans I’ve noticed so far.

1. You can walk down the street with booze in your hand, all the time.

2. You encounter random parades, second-line marching bands thrumming with brass and drums to hoardes of ass-shakers, and sexy “pony” girls pulling a modified shopping cart chariot with a man dressed as a flamingo.

ya heard?

3. Sometimes it smells. And you love it.

4. Everybody parties, including the teetotalers, because they know that death is certain – but life is not.

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