SUBMISSION DATE: MARCH 2006

VOLUNTEER: unknown

NOTES: During the week of the 12th we had several volunteers come into New Orleans to gut homes on their Spring Breaks. Since we were short on housing, the Sheraton Hotel generously donated 10 doubles for our volunteers.

Each evening we had a meeting to discuss our day and to answer any questions volunteers had. It was during one of those meetings that many volunteers shared their thoughts with us.

We are not sure who wrote this, but I was personally moved by this journal entry.

.....Breaking & entering? Dinner party? Selling insurance?

There are many ways to (enter) into someone's home. But there are few precedents for our formal invitation today, for crossing a threshold feeling the owner's presence everywhere, splattered around, and the owner's absence. I'm not sure we knew what we were doing, collecting the remnants of a life and inner world drastically strewn together.

We tried to both to imagine and not to judge, to treat the smear of personal possessions like garbage and there to remember their things were also precious.

We tried to work lightheartedly and to get on with it.

Author Unknown
2006 Spring Break Volunteer