Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Back to Work

Well, the big news is that I have found some work for the next few weeks to pay the bills. I've also signed up for several volunteering days, but that won't happen for a couple weeks yet. I'll be doing admin stuff for The Daughters of Charity. Pay is not great, but it should cover my expenses while I am here, which is all it needs to do. I am happy that the outlet for my work will be a charitable institution. Is it still charity if you are working for $10/hr, but are trained for work that pays $30+/hr? Man, just yesterday I saw a job solicitation that fits my experience very closely, and pays $110K! I gotta admit, the $$ had me tempted for a little bit...
Katrina destruction
Anyway, time also catchup on some back story also:
I took lots of photos out of my window while driving into New Orleans, and made a collage from some of them. I left the angles all skewed, cause I think it reflects the haphazard and slightly disorienting nature of my experience, trying to take it all while steering straight. It's all so clearly money-driven. The casinos and hotels and tourist attractions are all fine, but sooo many homes and outlying neighborhoods still languish is a state of neglect. It seems to me that most of the surface problems here are simple to solve, but there is just not the money to make it happen. It's pretty clear the city doesn't have the funds either. Just two examples from yesterday - I saw a City Hall Annex condemned, and a huge city golf course that used to compose the northern half of City Park just utterly abandoned.
DichotomyTreasure Bay Casino
Now, I am tired and will go get some rest. Maybe it's the 25 miles I've biked over the past couple days, maybe all the mental effort of all the setup operations I've been doing here, maybe still leftover from Monday night/Tuesday morning. Doesn't matter - gotta be at work at 8am tomorrow!

P.S - you may notice ads on my blog page now. Just an experiment - I'll get a kickback from Google when people click on them. If they get too obnoxious, I'll get rid of them. If you have the time, stick it to the man and click on them...

4 comments:

Cambodave said...

Good luck my friend. We are thinking of playing bball again. That will be not fun...

David&Esperanza said...

Here we are after two days of work and you are almost a native of New Orleans and we finally got to see your blog update!!

Hope you are getting to know the city, its people, and enjoying it.

Daniel Hartmann & Andrea Rogers said...

Hey dude!
New Orleans is one place Andrea & I never got to while we lived in the south...I regret that - would have liked to see it - warts & all.

How's your first week of work been?

This Sunday we are expecting 1 foot of snow in Boston. Work will not be canceled on Monday morning. Gonna break out the old shovel. :)

Nathan Bouldin and Tina Sanchez said...

Well well! Getting arty wit yo bad self! I love it.

--T.