Waist Deep In The Big Muddy

The end of August beginning of September is always such a weird time. Five years ago I was packing up and moving to New York from Providence. It had been a fun yet stressful last summer in our college town and we were all ready to move on. All our cars were on their last legs and we'd had our fill of noise rock, minimum wage, and partying with the Rob Zombie fans next door. We sold off our old slutty party dresses to the pre-college kids and Emilie sold her ancient copy of Moby Dick and got a car, or was it a truck? Kath and I were headed to Brooklyn but Emilie was going to drive down to New Orleans to live with a bunch of our friends who were already there. She'd shipped her boxes down already and was all packed up to take the rest. Then Hurricane Katrina hit and our New Orleans friends luckily escaped but Emilie was homeless and her previously shipped boxes were lost. While none of our friends knew the sadness of losing years and years of memories there was a home and some art lost and for Emilie there was a future she'd been picturing for quite a while. Two months after Katrina, Emilie and our friend Lindsay who had been living there pre-hurricane made an expedition to New Orleans to survey the damage. Emilie documented what was left and they both had a wild Halloween complete with Mardi Gras beads.
A week or so ago I heard some audio recordings on NPR that were from New Orleans during the hurricane. The guy who was recording was already afraid that the US would forget what had happened there in a month or two. It made me think of Emilie's photos and want to share them with you all. Emilie now lives in Pittsburgh where she is working on movie sets and still making amazing art. You can check out more of her work here http://www.emiliebc.com/ .