By Bill Bullock/TinctCreative

More Katrina coverage here.

New Orleans -- This is a place where 600-year-old oak trees have names and are considered neighbors. The McDonough and The Roosevelt live down on Lelong Avenue in the New Orleans City Park.

But now everywhere in Southern Louisiana the views are filled with dead or dying bushes and trees. A combination of toxins, salt water and briny water -- a mix of fresh and salt water -- and a lack of oxygen to the roots all play some role in this immense loss of life. Even native plants that have adapted to the flooding typical in the region might die, but it could take three to four years to find out.

Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, boasts that the park is home to "the largest collection of mature live oaks in the world" (visit www.neworleanscitypark.com/katrinatree.html). But some are in a decline toward death. While not as dramatic to an outsider as flood levels illustrated by horizontal brown lines halfway up the second story of a house or rust lines on "No parking" signs, the loss of these trees is a big deal for their neighbors, many of whom are working to replace the 1,000-plus trees already lost in the storm.

Measured in trees or in human lives, Hurricane Katrina brought death to this area.

"Every time you go back, it's still unbelievable. It's incomprehensible," says Allen Wuescher, who moved to Mount Adams from Metairie four years ago. "When you drive about, you could actually see that non-indigenous trees are dying.

"The media tends to oversensationalize everything. It was one of those events you can't over-sensationalize. It's just not possible."

Wuescher speaks as though he still lives in New Orleans -- pronounced "Nawlins" -- when he talks about a friend who was doing yard work in front of his demolished home when a tour bus rolled past.

Photo By Graham Lienhart

The "Private Property, No Trespassing" sign hardly seems necessary, but people in this Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood and throughout New Orleans value what little they have left after Hurricane Katrina's visit Aug. 29, 2005.

"If we had our druthers, we'd rather not be on the tour bus route the way we are now," he says. "I left New Orleans, and I always loved bringing people back. But it's harder to celebrate now.

"But the good side is that people who didn't know about New Orleans are learning about it now."

A city without mailboxes
A number of first-time visitors were among the 44 Cincinnati volunteers who went to New Orleans from Aug. 5-13 to help build 40 new homes. Wuescher joined them. Katrina Collaboration, as the project was known, was a collaboration of three young professional (YP) groups: Give Back Cincinnati, United Way of Greater Cincinnati Young Leader Society and Cincinnati Habitat for Humanity Young Professionals.

Each volunteer paid $200, used vacation time and paid for most of their own meals -- all for the opportunity to sweat through construction in the Louisiana heat and humidity during the height of hurricane season -- because they wanted to make a difference.

New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity was the temporary "employer" for the volunteers for the trip. The volunteer construction workers ranged in age from twentysomething to fiftysomething.

There is plenty of work to be done a year after Katrina struck. The selection of this particular group and construction project was deliberate, according to Mack McCoy of Northside, a member of the United Way Young Leaders.

"There were discussions about what sort of organization we want to work with," he says. "Me and others on the committee aren't as religiously focused as others. While Habitat is a Christian-influenced organization, we did not want to get involved with some of the churches down in New Orleans that had some pretty specific rules and regulations. How can we recruit volunteers who are really going to care about this and tell them, 'Oh, by the way there is a mass or a service that you have to attend'? It felt uncomfortable to us.

Photo By Graham Lienhart

After seeing the devastation of the Upper Ninth Ward, volunteers get a look at the Crossroads Baptist Church construction project that was planned pre-Katrina to help end "poverty housing" in the socio-economically depressed neighborhood.

"One thing about young professionals is that there's a pretty significant diversity of beliefs but there also is a desire for that diversity. They get uncomfortable in situations where people try to impose their own whatever on them."

Diversity could have been the theme of the orientation the group received after an overnight, 15-hour bus ride south. The Rev. Inman Houston, associate pastor of community ministries and single adults with the First Baptist Church of New Orleans, welcomed a group from Canada in addition to the group from Cincinnati, and launched into a description of the situation in the Crescent City. Painting a picture that he called "a true tale of two cities," he explained that areas with middle- to upper-middle or high-income residents were being rebuilt. But that's not the case in the Upper and Lower Ninth Wards.

The Crossroads construction project in the predominantly African-American Upper Ninth was actually planned before Katrina as a means to help end "poverty housing" in the city. Whether or not former residents will move into the new homes is unclear -- only 4,578 have returned of the approximately 25,718 people who used to live in the Upper Ninth. Houston told volunteers that being aware of the population drop and the conditions of the homes to which residents would return is essential to appreciating the significance of their work on the new homes.

"It's important for you to see the structure of the city," Houston said. "Take pictures of the flooded areas and distribute them. We do want people to capture the devastation. It makes a difference to see it, experience it. It creates sensitivity. It's different than flipping through a coffee table book."

Things that aren't immediately obvious in television news footage or still life photos quickly become apparent when walking around. Traffic signals still don't work; makeshift stop signs are set up on traffic barricades or attached to whatever vertical pole is near the intersection. Streetlights -- many still won't work -- and telephone poles tilt at odd angles. Shopping center signs lie on the ground in vacant parking lots or collapsed against empty buildings.

There aren't any blue mailboxes on street corners; if you want to mail a bill or letter, you have to find one of the few operating post offices scattered throughout the city. Locals say mail delivery takes a week longer.

Necessary numbness
Visitors to even the least devastated areas of town must deal with the snail-paced recovery. At the Saint Anne/Marie Antoinette Hotel, for example, guests receive grateful greetings from staff, in a letter left on the beds.

Photo By Graham Lienhart

Katie Gilfilen takes a break from her work constructing a porch roof to talk to Dewy T. Sampson, a string bass and violin player. He will purchase the yellow house with green trim that Cincinnati volunteers helped build for Habitat for Humanity at the Crossroads Baptist Church project in the Upper Ninth Ward in the city of New Orleans.

"As a result of the effects of hurricane Katrina, it will be an arduous undertaking to return to where we once were, and our work continues everyday," the letter said. "The hurricane has left us without the presence of many of our more tenured employees. As they gradually return home, we ask you be patient with us as we strive to provide the outstanding level of service that our guests have enjoyed in the past.

"Until 100 percent of our team has returned, please note that we will routinely provide full housekeeping services on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. We are aware that this may pose some slight inconveniences, and again, we are most grateful for your patience during this time of rebuilding."

That doesn't seem so bad; most people don't put fresh towels in their own bathrooms every day. But step into the shower, turn the handles all the way and the water trickles out, accompanied by what sounds like a jackhammer going full force behind the wall. The hotel staff apologizes when they explain there's nothing they can do about the water pressure and its soundtrack.

The hotel is far from roughing it in FEMA tents, as originally proposed for the volunteer accommodations. The A/C works just fine, and it's difficult to remember this isn't a normal hotel in a normal town -- well, except for the layer of dust on the bottom of the overturned glasses, the outdated TV channel guides or having to wait several hours for clean towels in order to shower after a long day of construction.

Abnormal is the "new normal" in New Orleans, according to Forrest Willoz, a lifelong resident, attorney and reservist in the Army Judge Advocate General Corps. Coping requires "becoming numb" to the difficulties. It takes some doing, especially when he's been in another city.

"When I get back, it's kind of sharp again," Willoz says. "You've been reminded what's normal, so you're not numb any more. When you come back, it takes a few days to get numb to it again.

"When I go on business trips I think, 'Look at this normal city. This is the way Nawlins used to be.' I'm appreciating what people take for granted. People don't realize how normal things are. Your eyes get kind of wide. They've got all these things that you used to have."

Photo By Graham Lienhart

Allen Wuesher, a resident of New Orleans until four years ago, helps maneuver roof trusses into place on a house YP volunteers from Cincinnati helped build Aug. 5-13.

When he marvels at things like operational traffic lights, grocery stores and mailboxes, Willoz says people tend to treat him with kid gloves. They're hesitant and very careful in their word choice when they ask about his experiences and listen wide-eyed, because they have no idea how terrible the situation is in New Orleans.

According to the Katrina recovery page on FEMA's Web site (www.fema.gov), approximately $20.28 billion in federal money has gone into the clean-up and rebuilding of Louisiana alone. Add private insurance payments, and it seems so much money would have made more than a dent in the recovery effort.

It hasn't. Snippets of conversation at local bars -- the Copper Monkey, the favorite watering hole of the Cincinnati volunteers; and the Blue Angel Lounge, where a tour of Plaquemines Parish ended in an authentic Louisiana shrimp seafood boil -- make it clear that traditional southern hospitality is laced with anger about the lack of rebuilding funds, about FEMA and about President Bush.

Order a hurricane drink and you're asked if you want a "cat five" --a double shot. Talk about the war in Iraq and voluble reactions follow details of what could be done with the billions spent killing people and destroying homes and communities in another country when "we don't even take care of our own."

Even the hopeful outlook at the Habitat construction site, where a row of 20 colorful houses line Alvar Street, is surrounded by stark reality of daily life.

"People think, 'They've pretty much gotten back on their feet.' But there's a great need down here," says Ken Francois, construction manager for New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity. "Just look across the street."

Abandoned homes, some of which haven't been visited by their owners for a year, are interspersed with white FEMA trailers and piles of garbage being hauled to the curb by those who are returning or can finally afford the time to do the necessary work of gutting the structures.

Photo By Graham Lienhart

Once the stage for activities such as getting ready for school, the demolished or severely damaged structures now house wreckage that used to be the trappings of everyday life.

Francois took a 50 percent pay cut to act as construction manger. He still hasn't moved his family from Texas to New Orleans because he's not sure he's willing to make the commitment to live there until the city infrastructure is in better shape. He spends three weeks in Louisiana and returns home for a long weekend every month. He's doing it, he says, because he wants to help make a difference.

Francois' unofficial title could be "chief organizer of chaos." After making a call to a new contractor who was supposed to have three foundations finished a week ago, he happily receives a load of lumber from a local supplier, fork-lifting the pallets himself. He wants to make sure the lumber can be put to use by Wednesday, when 350 volunteers will swarm the staging area. The foundations must be completed before the flooring systems can be laid. Additional staff would help lighten his workload, but he's not optimistic about hiring anyone soon.

"I have open positions, but hiring is a problem," Francois says. "Rents are twice what they were before Katrina. We need to figure out how to incentivize people to work for such low pay when more than half their salary can go toward rent."

Enter "The Cincinnati All Star Framing Team."

'I've decided to laugh'
Every morning volunteers meet in a parking lot next to the construction site to find out what work needs to be done that day. Then they break up into teams. During the first full week of August, about 150 people were on hand each day.

A number of Cincinnati volunteers had their sights set on framing. They were first to raise their hands when asked to put up interior and exterior walls, roof existing structures and rework the window frames, done by other volunteers, that were too big for the windows. The Cincinnatians quickly mastered their new craft and did not want to change assignments, and their Habitat team supervisor didn't want to share them when other projects needed able bodies.

Other volunteers counted ladders and supplies (inventory crew), painted the interiors and exteriors of homes, placed cabinets or worked off-site at other Habitat for Humanity construction projects. Tina Terry of MainStrasse Village was struck both by the conditions of the community and the kindness people show one another.

Photo By Graham Lienhart

Clay Bartholomew, a Plaquemines Parish employee, encourages Antoinette Graham as she does an oyster shooter at the Blue Angel Lounge in Belle Chase, La.

A car driven by an elderly woman bottomed out in what Terry laughingly called a "pothole" so deep the woman couldn't drive out of it. Just behind her was a tow truck. The work crew and tow truck driver helped the woman and her passengers out of the car, pulled it out of the hole and saw them off.

"It was just amazing," Terry says. "Everyone is so friendly and willing to help. Nobody thought anything of it. We just did it."

This meets with the expectations she had before departing on the trip.

"I think this trip is iconic," she said a week before leaving. "I don't think it's about Katrina. It's about finding out why people are going and building on that. A precursor to leadership is learning what we can do when we collaborate."

A volunteer for Legacy YP in Northern Kentucky, Terry says she wants to "make the river more narrow" by partnering with Cincinnati YPs. She also has ambitions of returning to her home in rural eastern Kentucky and using the things she learned in New Orleans and Cincinnati as a way to help her community.

"I'm from down the holler, and I can tell you, if the people there had a choice between leaving their homes or dying, like the people in New Orleans did, they would stay," Terry says. "It's their home. It's where their family is."

That's why Terry is motivated to learn and do more than just earn a paycheck.

Photo By Graham Lienhart

Next door to a restored home with beautiful landscaping are the battered remains of another home, which is a more common site in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans. Ironically, both homes are directly across from the 17th Street canal breech that contributed to the massive flooding in New Orleans.

That desire to stay rooted in his home and improve the city is what drives Forrest Willoz to stay in New Orleans, despite being surrounded by destruction and health hazards posed by mice, rats, snakes and fungus occupying most of the homes.

"A lot of locals want to remain local," he says. "I don't mind being a frontiersman within the city limits of Nawlins. I hear total and complete silence around me. It's like being in the country, just surrounded by rotting homes. It's a unique situation. I'm hopeful that the city will be a better place."

Willoz had to raze his house but would like to buy his neighbor's lot and build a new structure almost one story above ground to avoid losing everything he owns a second time. Avoiding the destruction of a storm doesn't necessarily mean moving from the area.

"It's where my friends live," Willoz says. "It's where my family lives. It's where my connections are. It's where my roots are."

He says he's traced his family genealogy back to before New Orleans was a city. He says loyalty in the area is strong, and he believes people will return and rebuild.

Much of the neighborhood of Lakeview will have to be razed because the entire first floors of many of the homes were submerged in toxic flood water for more than 30 days. Sharon Smetherman, a former resident and owner of a ranch house in Lakeview, says she can't rebuild because engineers have found her home structurally unsound. That makes her wonder about the area she describes as "the tax base" for the city of New Orleans.

"The city is on the verge of bankruptcy, and I don't know how this place is going to survive if these people don't come back," she says.

Photo By Graham Lienhart

Tina Terry looks on as Jessica Cooper high-fives Royce Bassarab on Blue Shirt Day. Katrina Collaboration volunteers wore matching shirts every day, a good way to quickly find cohorts at a busy construction site.

Now living north of Lake Pontchartrain, Smetherman never thought she'd leave the city. Describing herself as a sixth-generation New Orleanian, she says she's not sure what she'll do with her house. She owns it free and clear because, when she got her insurance check, she paid off the mortgage -- she didn't want to take the chance of losing it. Thinking she had bought herself some time after losing her home, car and job in the wake of Katrina, she learned the city would place a lien on and seize all houses that hadn't been gutted, claiming they're a hazard.

"By Aug. 29 your house has to be gutted and boarded up," she says, "I'm a 65-year-old woman. I can't gut my own house. It costs $6,000 to $10,000 to gut a medium-sized house. How can you pay for that on top of everything else? It's a real Catch-22."

By coincidence, she was waiting to be seated at a restaurant, pouring out her woes to a friend, when a man interrupted their conversation, explaining he was part of a church group gutting homes for free. A few months later they called to say they'd be at her home later in the day.

"Everything that I owned was a pile of debris the width of my lot and half of the neighbor's," Smetherman says. "I'd see a scrap of fabric and remember the scarf I used to wear."

Remembering her first look at her home after the floodwaters receded and residents were given the opportunity to "look and leave," Smetherman says she refers to that experience as "peek-and-shriek."

"You can laugh or cry," she says. "I've decided to laugh. After the peek-and-shriek, my daughter said her aunt called to find out if I had been able to find any pictures. 'Pictures?' I said. 'I can't find my piano!' It was nowhere in the house, there was no evidence that I ever even had a piano.

"When water soaks into the stuffing in cushions or mattresses, it expands. The fabric can't contain it, so it explodes. There was foam everywhere, but no piano."

Photo By Graham Lienhart

Art finds a way, even if the medium of paint and canvas must be replaced with mud and wood siding. Horizontal floodwater lines accompany images that could be considered a throwback to cave paintings or modern art, depending on your mood.

'No way out'
There's a "For sale by owner" sign in Smetherman's front yard, along with almost every other house on her block -- some of which still haven't been gutted. She doesn't know what she's going to do next about her property. She'd like to sell it but isn't holding her breath.

Calling herself one of the lucky ones, Smetherman says she understands that poor people need help and asks people to understand that everyone in New Orleans needs help.

Troy Sawyer (www.myspace.com/chromatic4ever), a trumpet player and proud soon-to-be homeowner in the Upper Ninth Ward, is appreciative of his "hand up." While spending two months in New York, a place he could get paying work, Sawyer heard about Musicians Village on CNN. He submitted his application and returned to New Orleans after being accepted; he doesn't know which house will be his, but he's at the work site to begin accumulating the 350 hours of sweat-equity required by Habitat for Humanity.

Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis came up with the concept of Musicians Village as a way to help musicians return to the city (visit www.habitat-nola.org). The development will consist of 81 Habitat-constructed homes for displaced musicians. The centerpiece will be the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music. Plans call for building at least 150 other homes in the surrounding neighborhood. The idea of bringing music back to New Orleans is so popular that now the entire area, including the Crossroads Baptist project, is referred to as Musicians Village.

Sawyer's musical partner, a sax player, is still living in Brooklyn but will move back to live with Sawyer once his home is finished. They'll split the mortgage payment and continue to collaborate on music while scrounging for work.

"New Orleans is coming back slowly but surely," Sawyer says. "This is home for me. I felt I needed to give back because New Orleans has given me so much. New Orleans has a rich culture. New Orleans is about music and food and partying."

Photo By Graham Lienhart

Residents of New Orleans sometimes have a macabre sense of humor about their situation, living in the midst of destruction and decay, as reflected in this makeshift band formed of recovered instruments with part of a drum kit used to announce "Musician City" in the Upper Ninth Ward.

Many of the Cincinnati volunteers received invitations from the homeowners to return.

"They were all very interested in talking to us and very appreciative of what we were doing," says volunteer Antoinette Graham of Westwood. "They were inviting us to come back to stay at their house, saying, 'Make sure you stop by. You can stay with us if you need a place to stay.' The people I met were in such great positions now. They had suffered much but they're still excited about the future."

Everyone in New Orleans has a Katrina story to tell, and most share willingly. As one of two reservist volunteers in the Superdome assisting National Guard troops when Katrina blew through Aug. 29, 2005, Willoz has some harrowing tales to tell about ferrying bedridden patients from inundated hospitals and unexpectedly meeting up with a Navy SEAL team after dark. They were equipped with night-vision goggles, and Willoz suspects they were searching for snipers.

"At first being down on the field at the Superdome was kinda neat," he says. "But after it was squishy and soaked with urine, it wasn't. There were no bathrooms, so you went to squat in a corner. It's what you had to do.

"The strong survived. Elderly people died of heat exhaustion. People committed suicide by going up to the top level and jumping into the seats."

Willoz says he wasn't aware the canals had broken until he saw shrimp in the water. He was surprised, but that experience paled in comparison to what he witnessed at a loading dock.

"I saw something on TV that I never thought I'd see in real life," Willoz says. "A lieutenant colonel was using triage tabs and marking the people coming in. In a regular environment, you treat everyone. In that situation, you only treat the people you can with the supplies you have."

The experience gave him a new appreciation for what the doctors and nurses at the Veterans Hospital and Memorial Medical Center faced while he and his fellow reservist were evacuating patients via boat from second-story windows.

"Don't judge so quickly," Willoz says, referring to the doctor and two nurses charged with second-degree murder for administering lethal drugs to four patients. "You can't pass blanket judgment on people like that. Imagine being in a dark room with no windows, no electricity, no water, no medicine, no way out and you're terminally ill."

He says he never entered the hospitals he evacuated, where temperatures climbed to over 100 degrees, so he can't speak to the actual conditions. But he knew the only people they were able to evacuate were the ones who could be moved -- and some couldn't be moved.

Talking about the events related to Katrina is how Willoz educates people about "what really happened." He'd also like to see the recovery effort, planning for future storms and future disaster response policies address the truth, not politics. A self-titled conservative, he finds himself questioning the wisdom and decisions made by those members of the political party he usually supports.

The winds, tidal surges and rain of Katrina might be gone, but she still looms large, haunting and taunting the people of Louisiana and causing them no end of grief day after day. While it might seem to an outsider that residents of the "Come as you are, leave different" state must be partly nuts for trying live under those conditions, Graham found them inspiring.

"I think (everyone) should know the people there are optimistic," she says. "Their spirits are still positive. They survived a lot, but they're willing to work to get their lives back to normal. These are people who aren't looking for a handout. They aren't looking for pity or charity. They are in a position where they could use some help."