We were surrounded by a maze of folding tables, chairs, and couches draped in kente cloth. In the center of the room sat a four-by-four-foot metal cage that had been used by a search and rescue team to airlift people from the roofs of inundated houses after Katrina. Every inch of the wall space around us was occupied, covered with artwork depicting the storm’s ravages, and with Omar’s photos. On one wall hung a large tarp affixed with handwritten accounts by survivors and aid workers: Triaging a nursing home patient who handed me a wet plastic grocery store bag & said “This is everything I have left.”
An excerpt from "Book of the Living: The house museums of New Orleans" in the December 2022 issue of Harper's.
That last sentence is so unutterably sad that I wanted to preserve it here in the blog, because it is emblematic of so many crises happening around the world in the aftermath of floods, tidal waves, wildfires, earthquakes, and war zones.
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