Meet Lee.

Lee's going to be getting a new house built for her. I talked with her a little while this morning and hearing about her story made me think that it's one worth sharing with you all-- very worthwhile. She talked and I wrote and I hope what I came up with does some justice to this wonderfully strong and beautiful woman.




My name is Lee Brignone and I've lived in Mississippi for 16 years. I'm a widow and have one son. I worked as a contractor building houses. Before Hurricane Katrina came, I knew the storm was going to be a bad one. I took every wedding picture, every baby picture I had and packed them up. The night before the storm hit, both my husband and I were busy boarding up houses in Pass Christian until 11 at night. After that, my family and I left straight for Atlanta. I knew
the damage was going to be bad, but didn't know what I'd see when I returned home.

After the storm left, I thought things looked absolutely horrible. My house was gone. We followed a trail of our stuff-- my bathing suit top stuck high up in a tree, a shirt from our closet wrapped around a tree branch-- to try to find our house. I found one small chunk of a
wall, but everything else that made up my house was gone. The first wall of water that hit Pass Christian knocked everything down and then the second wall of water sucked everything back out into the Gulf—my house included. My family had to move into a FEMA camper. As soon as
my husband and I stepped inside, our eyes started burning. We thought that we would air out the trailer and maybe the situation would get better. Then the summer came. We had to close the windows and turn on the air conditioning. Three months in, the air conditioning running all the while, my husband got really sick. We were both tested for formaldehyde and it turns out that we had some of the highest levels of formaldehyde in the state. The government had our
trailer was removed and we were sent hotel after hotel. I said to my husband, 'We've got one choice left—we have to go live with my mom.' He said, 'Do we have to?'

After things settled down a little, I tried to rebuild my house. Both my husband and I were working very hard to rebuild other peoples' houses so we kept putting off building our own. It was difficult to save a nickel to put away because the prices for materials were going up, but the wages for labor were staying the same. Then my husband died. It was very sudden—he had a massive heart attack and he died in my arms. I gave him CPR for 25 minutes, but there was nothing to be done.

Attempting to rebuild my house has been nearly impossible. But I'm thankful for the help and am looking forward to working with the volunteers on my own house.

I'm a painting machine.

We've been doing a lot of painting recently... a nice worn leathery red-brown, a perky pastel yellow, a brilliant blue, an auto primer-looking grey, all in one turquoise house. Lou's new house was just started at the beginning of the month and it's already starting to look like a great new home. Lou is a character, a bachelor who grew up in New Orleans but has spent time on and off in Pass Christian since his folks had a vacation house here. He told us about how a buddy of his had a warehouse job so on weekends in the '70's, bunches of his friends would all get together for a party and weekend-long bonfire, made out of stacks and stacks of palates. 15 or 20 feet in the air, he said, the palates would be piled up and the conflagration wouldn't go out for days. Who knows if some of these measurements have been exaggerated as the years go by, but I wouldn't doubt that he threw some amazing parties. Since then, Lou's set himself up an auto mechanic business and spends his spare time restoring old cars.

Katrina wiped away both of Lou's houses--the one in New Orleans and the one here in Pass Christian. We've spent the week working on his new place. It's on stilts, like all of the new construction here is required to be--at least 16 feet in the air.

When we first met Lou, he definitely seemed like a nice, chatty guy, but he sort of poured out his whole story and told us that he was in Arkansas during Katrina and told his elderly dad that the storm wasn't going to be so bad and he'd be back soon. He tried to get in touch with his dad as soon as he could, and the cops and firefighters and everyone else told him that they checked the house and there was lots of damage, but that was the extent of it. A few weeks later, he went back to his house and was dragging junk out and found his father's body. Lou was saying that it's taken such a long time for him to finally start getting over these traumas and his friend Michelle (who gave up her day off to help out with the painting) said that she's so glad that Lou can start talking about this. It's so amazing for me to to hear stories like this because it gives me so much motivation to keep painting when I don't feel like painting anymore. For someone that has had so much difficulty in life, Lou is a sweet sweet guy who bought us McDonalds cheeseburgers for lunch. I had forgotten how disgustingly good those fries can be.

Our house, in the middle of the street.

Good morning, all! The sun is shining on another beautiful day here in Pass Christian, Mississippi. There's a little bitty farmer's/craft market set up across the way in the park and I started the day off right with some delicious, delicious bread and cheese. This place is by far the tiniest place I've ever been to, but it's growing on me in leaps and bounds. (Despite what the dates on my blog might imply, I've been done spring break for about a week, and have been here in 'The Pass' for going on four days now.)

Wanted to post my current address here, for your snail mailing pleasure. (But, really, the pleasure is all mine.)

Amy McIntosh
Americorps NCCC
c/o The Grey Hut
328 East 2nd Street
Pass Christian, Mississippi
39571

More details on the latest project to come soon.

And then I discovered how to work my own camera.

Hello, all. It's a fine evening here in Tucson, Arizona, the destination for my spring break activities. The days are warm, the desert is prickly, and the company is wonderful. Thanks for being such wonderful hosts, Fran and Jim!

Thanks to my techie Uncle Jim, I'm finally able to take the pictures off of my camera and put them somewhere useful, the computer. There's a few here of the desert, its flora, the little desert dwellers that end up at the Wilderness Rehabilitation Center in Tucson, and more.

Welcome to the beautiful Sonoran Desert, which is currently in bloom. Things that look scraggly and brown during the rest of the year are green and lush right now. Lush might be slightly misleading, considering that everything in desert is equipped with a coat of armor, but the flowers are beautiful and bring out the softer side of the cactus family.

Another view of the desert, with a view of the mountains in the distance. The saguaro cacti everywhere make the landscape look very alien. These ones are relative babies. In order to look like the cacti that are commonly drawn in Pictionary, the saguaro needs to grow arms. This process is a long one, and only after about 70 years will baby arms begin to sprout.

'Tis the season for baby bunnies at the Wildlife Rescue Center. Baby cottontails and jackrabbits fill up the shelf space at the center and makes the room seem like a little bunny apartment complex.

There's a big immigration dilemma/discussion/argument/conundrum in Arizona, so I thought I'd see if I couldn't get to the heart of the matter and make the trip across the border myself. Just kidding. It rather looks like I did from this picture, but this is the sorry current state of one of Fran's favorite hiking trails on the outskirts of Tucson. Private property is nibbling away at public land and the little 'trails' that are left are narrow, nearly vertical, and fenced in by barbed wire.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, stuck in McClellan again...

Good morning, West Coast. It's good to be back, drinking your soy milk and eating your food that doesn't consist of meat and more meat. Just a few days here at the good old base, taking care of some meetings and the like, and then it's time for Spring Break!

I thought I would make a tradition of a little photo recap of the project and post a few more pictures for you all to enjoy. There'll be more added soon, once I mooch them off my teammates.


We felt pretty dumb when we ended up in Eunice. And despite what the sign tells you, this is not a city. Well, it IS a city in the sense that St. Mary's City is a city... tiny, full of old stuff, and not much else. One Monday, one of our days off, a few of us decided to drive up to this really scenic hiking spot called Tunica Hills. We got some directions, packed some lunches, and were so excited about going. We unfortunately never made it there... we go stuck in the not-so-spectacular towns of Eunice and Ville Platte instead. There were some highlights however... we saw one fantastically old cash register, walked around a state park for a while, and were reminded that everything in Louisiana is closed on Mondays.


This is beautiful University Presbyterian, the church where our team lived for two months. This picture just barely shows the beginnings of the azalea bushes blooming like crazy and filling the front of the church with beautiful pinks and reds and whites. Big live oaks grow all around the property and make the whole place look very lovely.