A YEAR AGO TODAY

Front Steps of Lost Home, Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans 8/2006

all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

I am often at a loss for words and I look to photographs to express whatever it is....

Today I just find myself at a loss with really no words or pictures.

TRUTHINESS* MATTERS

Lone Tree near Slab, Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans 8/2006
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

New Orleans Mayor , Ray Nagin, states that New Orleans population stands at 240,000 inhabitants, roughly half of the city's pre-storm population. Independant groups place the current number at more like, 170,000..

* Political satirist , Stephen Colbert , on his TV show "The Colbert Report" , has coined the word "truthiness" , which means "truth unencumbered by the facts."

home is where the hatred is

House with Red Trim, 9th Ward, New Orleans 8/2006
House with Bent Metal Awnings , 9th Ward, New Orleans 8/2006
Gas Line in Back, 9th Ward, New Orleans 8/2006
Don't Tear Down, 9th Ward, New Orleans 8/2006
Pickup Truck under House, 9th Ward, New Orleans 8/2006
House with Brown Siding, 9th Ward, New Orleans 8/2006

all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

"Home is where the hatred is

Home is filled with pain

And it might not be such a bad idea,

if I never went home again'

GIL SCOTT-HERON

IT"S NEITHER ART OR NEWS

Pickup Truck in Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans 8/2006
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

To find beauty in things which are so sorrowful is sad.

NATURE DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE

Flooded Mansion , Metairie Club Gardens, Metairie LA 4/2006
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner


Metairie Club Gardens is an affluent section in a suburb of New Orleans. It flooded just like New Orleans East and the Lower 9th Ward! Nature can be an equal opportunity destroyer.

TO NOT BE FORGOTTEN

Newspaper Remnants on Street, New Orleans 5/2005
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

The New York Times , has for almost a year written about New Orleans and it's people! Thank you for not forgetting us.

An ANNIVERSARY APPROAHES

New Fence Section, Baton Rouge LA 6/2006

from the ongoing series Baton Rouge Blues

all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

The Katrina Year
A New Orleans Home Is Reborn, With Persistence

NEW ORLEANS — It no longer stinks at 7023 Fleur de Lis Drive.

There are plenty of awful smells in the ruined houses nearby — the ones still showing high waterlines and fluorescent orange door scrawls that announce whether corpses were found inside.

At No. 7023, though, the lawn is green with neatly trimmed centipede grass, and the flower beds burst with pansies, impatiens and marigolds. There is no mud inside or out, not a trace of a waterline, and the front door is, simply, white.

It looks as if the house had somehow been untouched by the waters that, one year ago, burst with fury through a breach just three blocks away in the 17th Street Canal and inundated the affluent Lakeview neighborhood. But in fact, there was no escape for this house, or for 134,000 others in New Orleans.

excerpt from The New York Times 8/23/06

By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: August 23, 2006

BLOOM WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED

Potted Plant on Car, New Orleans 11/2004
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

My father, whom I consider a wise man , has a saying : "Bloom where you are planted".
This I thought after reading about a displaced New Orleans family making a good go of
it in Utah.

WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS

House Remains after Hurricane, New Orleans 8/2006
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

Watching the two first acts of Spike Lee's documnetary last night about New Orleans and Hurrican Katrina broke my heart , opened old wounds and reminded me just how lucky I am compared to what so many New Orleanians suffered during and after Hurricane Katrina.

BLUE IS MY WORLD

Globe (downtown), Baton Rouge LA 7/2006
Blue Fencing with Tree, Baton Rouge LA 6/2006
Hanging Shells, Baton Rouge LA 7/2006
Fairhill Tree, Baton Rouge LA 8/2006

All images are from the ongoing series BATON ROUGE BLUES
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

I am repeatedly asked , "Are you moving back to New Orleans"?
I am not and as a result I am quite blue.

PEACE AT LAST, PEACE AT LAST.........

RC Body Shop, New Oreleans circa 1993
from the series Gone but not Forgotten
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

Ceasefire agreed for Monday

By Yara Bayoumy 1 hour, 16 minutes ago
BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary General
Kofi Annan' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Kofi Annan said Israeli and Lebanese leaders had agreed to a ceasefire at 0500 GMT on Monday to end a month-long war between
Israel' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Israel and Hizbollah guerrill
Israel, stepping up an offensive in southern Lebanon before the truce, said 19 of its soldiers were killed in clashes on Saturday and that five were declared missing in action after a helicopter was shot down.
The Jewish state's worst single day for military deaths in the war occurred as the
United Nations' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> United Nations prepared to send up to 15,000 troops to help enforce the ceasefire.
The Israeli YNET News Internet site quoted an official in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office as saying Israeli troops would start withdrawing from south Lebanon within a week or two when the U.N. force and the Lebanese army arrived in the area.
Olmert has backed a
U.N. Security Council' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> U.N. Security Council resolution passed on Friday that set out ceasefire terms. He was expected to ask his cabinet on Sunday to formally approve the resolution.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said his government unanimously approved the resolution on Saturday, and Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said his fighters would abide by it once Israeli forces also adhered to it.

LET LOVE RULE

Boarded Up Storefront, New Orlean 7/2006
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

Times-Picayune Photojournalist Arrested After Chase
Police Say John McCusker Tried To Get Cops To Shoot Him

NEW ORLEANS, LA (August 9, 2006) – New Orleans police today say that Times-Picayune staff photojournalist John McCusker, depressed over learning that he didn’t have enough insurance money to rebuild his home destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, was arrested Tuesday after a chase in which he tried to get police to shoot him to death.

The Times-Picayune on its Web site today quotes police commander James Arey, of the New Orleans police department’s SWAT and police negotiation team, as saying, "The individual is a really fine professional who was so depressed that he set out today to commit suicide by cop.”
McCusker will face criminal charges, police said, but is currently being held for psychiatric observation. WDSU-TV6 in New Orleans reports McCusker is facing charges of aggravated assault, hit-and-run, fleeing an officer, and other possible charges, but has not been charged with any of the more serious possible offenses that could have been filed for pinning the officer down with his car.

Arey also told the newspaper, “It was to the great credit of the police officers on this scene that they would not do what he wanted and kill him but instead apprehended him alive by Tasering him.”

“What happened to John is a microcosm of what’s happened to almost everyone in the city,” Times-Picayune director of photography Doug Parker told News Photographer magazine this morning. “Most people at the newspaper are having to deal with covering Katrina day-in and day-out, without a break, and many are having to deal with losing a home too. Some are now having to deal with their own self-doubts: is this going to happen to me too? Some live on the edge, others hold it more inside. It’s hard to say.”

McCusker returned to work on June 20 after taking a one-month leave of absence during which he spent the time away from the newspaper “sleeping off exhaustion and attending therapy sessions three times a week,” according to an article in the American Journalism Review by Mark Lisheron. McCusker’s family stayed in Alabama for four months while the photojournalist covered the aftermath of Katrina’s destruction of his hometown.

Parker says there's a way concerned friends and photojournalists who care about what's happened to McCusker can help. He told NPPA past president Alicia Wagner Calzada that "One way to help is through a fund called 'Friends of The Times-Picayune,' originally set up post-Katrina to help all employees here. To help John specifically, all people have to do is designation their donation to John. If they are donating by check, write John's name on the check's memo line and attach a Post-It note saying where the money should go. If donating online by Pay-Pal, there's a spot on the form where you can put comments. Put John's name in there. The 'Friends' fund promises that they will be careful to ensure that the money goes to John." The Fund Web site is at www.friendsofthetimespicayune.com.

Police said McCusker was seen driving erratically Tuesday evening and would not pull over for police; instead he drove away and was hitting parked cars. When he eventually stopped, the newspaper says, a police officer holding a gun knocked on the window of the driver's door and ordered McCusker out of the car. A second police officer was behind the car. McCusker rolled the window down and said several times, according to police, "Just kill me, get it over with, kill me.”

When the officer did not shoot, police say that McCusker put the car in reverse and pinned a police officer between the rear bumper of his car and the officer's cruiser. While pinned, the officer fired two shots at the tires of the car, but missed, and McCusker was able to drive away again. The officer suffered minor injuries.

With police following him, McCusker drove to St. Charles Avenue, knocking down signs as he drove. On Jefferson Ave. his car stopped on the median and police pulled him out of the car and handcuffed him while McCusker resisted. Police said they had to use a Taser on the photojournalist to subdue and cuff him, as he yelled obscenities at them and begged them to kill him.

Police officer Arey told the Times-Picayune that the incident is “one of many examples of the mental damage that Katrina has caused,” and that he “sees it all the time now.”
Parker said McCusker was on vacation this week and not working at the newspaper, “So it’s hard to say what may have happened yesterday, or this week, but he’s been dealing with the insurance all along, and where to rebuild, and whether there’s going to be enough insurance money to cover the home.” Parker said McCusker’s destroyed home was two blocks from the London Avenue canal breach. “It was one of the houses that was under water. They lost everything.”

Parker wrote to NPPA's past president, "Thanks to all of the photojournalism community for their thoughts and prayers. It is gratifying to know he has friends that extend beyond the newsroom."

McCusker, born and raised in New Orleans and in his mid-forties, has been at the paper twenty years or more and is an NPPA member. He’s married with three children in school.
“During the week of Katrina he covered ground zero, the floods, the misery of the people, all while dealing with the loss of his home,” Parker said. “He’s a music guy. An accomplished musician. He was writing a book on music, and he lost it all, his notes, the music, everything. They’ve been living in an apartment, and trying to figure out where to rebuild.” Many residents of New Orleans are still negotiating with insurance companies who claim that homes that were underwater were destroyed by flooding, not by Hurricane Katrina, and many didn’t have sufficient flood insurance.

(Editor's note: To donate to the Friends of The Times-Picayune Fund, click here).

OBSESSED with KATRINA

Soiled Mattress, New Orleans 8/2006
all reproduction rights reserved
Floor remnants of demolished House, New Orleans 8/2006
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner
Flag in Tree, New Orleans 8/2006
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner
Uprooted Pool, New Orleans 8/2006
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner
Sixty Fifty Two , New Orleans 8/2006
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

It is a matter of coming to terms with what has happened in and to New Orleans. There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about the city. It reminds me of not being able to forget or let go of an old flame, really just like an obsession.

all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner 2006

NoTxt Issue #3

Roger at Royal Ascot, 2006
from the seris UK
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

www.notxt.org

Agony of New Orleans, Through Spike Lee’s Eyes

Boy putting on Shoes, New Orleans 1998
from the series Perilous Pilgrimage
all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

Agony of New Orleans, Through Spike Lee’s Eyes

By FELICIA R. LEE

Published: August 3, 2006

NEW ORLEANS — From the beginning Spike Lee knew that Hurricane Katrina was a story he had to tell. Watching the first television images of floating bodies and of desperate people, mostly black, stranded on rooftops, he quickly realized he was witnessing a major historical moment. As those moments kept coming, he spent almost a year capturing the hurricane’s sorrowful consequences for a four-hour documentary, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” to be shown on HBO this month.


excerpt from The New York Times Friday August 4, 2006

PHOTOGRAPHS DO NOT BEND

Wedding Dress , Columbia Pictures Back Lot, L.A. CA 1999
from the series L.A. all reproduction rights reserved William Greiner

R A N D O M

A Compulsory Summer Group Exhibition

August 11 - August 26, 2006

Opening reception Friday, August 11 6-8PM

Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery

www.photographsdonotbend.com