Reflections on Service

City Park - in retrospect, this was our token "make the city prettier" project - cool, but not greatly didactic. It got us out of the French Quarter, and let us get messy and sweaty and really work together as teams. Maybe, in two years or so, I can talk about the effect our labors had on erosion prevention and soil deposition in the lagoon - we'll see.

Parkway Partners - this was physically the most exhausting, to be sure. It was also a much needed reboot of our expectations - so much of the language we've been using to describe service has been city- or population-wide, and this project was to work with one gardener on one piece of land, 10 feet long by 12 feet wide. The experience hammered home the importance of scale - 12 volunteers, 2 days, and 120 square feet of land improved. This is what our labor is worth; this is how much we can do; these are our limitations.

But to counter that, at the same time we had a real sense of working in a network - the coordinator, Macon Fry the Garden Guy, helped give context for this project. Jorge sells his flowers at his church, and Phillip, whose garden is right behind Jorge's and whose chickens Savannah made friends with, well, he sells at the Hollygrove Market, and so does Millie, we're going over to her house for canning tomorrow, and then she'll take the jellies and sauces across the river to that farmer's market, which is where Anna works, and... Suddenly there's a web of farmers and gardeners across the city, growing and selling food, and taking ownership of the land here, and we're a part of that. Meeting Macon, and being invited into his home and his perspective on the urban farming movement, was incredible.

St Margaret's Daughters - this was the most emotionally challenging, and I'm still not ready to analyze the experience. Once again, the scale was completely different, but crucial - we're working with the city's elderly, and the middle-aged care professionals, and the children of those nurses - a completely different subset of the NOLA population from the farmers. Suddenly the priorities are the lack of bingo funds and the renovation of the second and fifth floors, not food droughts and compost; but our conversations still go down the same paths. Food - where does it come from, and why isn't there more garlic in it? City government - why did Nagin get re-elected, anyway?

Rebuilding Together: New Orleans - this was probably the most fun. (And featured the best weather.) Laying down flooring, replacing siding, painting, caulking, and sanding - none of these were as back-breaking as trench-digging with Jorge and Macon, but the results were more tangible than talking with the residents of St. Margaret's. We knew precisely who we were helping, and why, and the work was well within our scope. We went home both days knowing exactly how much we'd accomplished, which was a great feeling.

So yes, I think we managed to "learn about the interdisciplinary history of the people and city of New Orleans." I think we're still working on building contexts and scale models and concept maps, but we're getting there. I think we're successfully building a body of written, visual, and video work in order to confront and discuss our own learning, and I think we are coming to understand our impact here in the city and our "situatedness," or where we fit into the system.

As for goal five, Students will collect and produce podcast interviews of Katrina survivors and their own reflections on the process of renewal and its promise and impact on several levels (individual, city-wide, state, and national), stay tuned - these should be posted any day now!