Snip from an article by John Schwartz in the NYT:
When the floodwaters receded, the yard was a moonscape of cracked mud and debris; the shrubs in front were bleached gray by salt water. Three-foot-high drifts of muck fouled the interior, and the scummy waterline was just four inches from the first-floor ceiling.
In a city that still seems largely stuck in the mud, this nearly restored home represents 11 months of sweat-drenched labor by its owners, Artie Folse and Tonja Osborne, two of a multitude of New Orleans residents who never stopped pushing ahead.
From the earliest weeks after the storm, Mr. Folse and Ms. Osborne defied the conventional wisdom that little could be accomplished in the city, and overcame the doubts and worries even of their own families. Their efforts, observed since last winter by a reporter for The New York Times, were born of an urge to rebuild that is as primal as the force that pushes grass up through cracks in a sidewalk. Rather than wait for advice, direction or help from the city, the state or the federal governments, Mr. Folse and Ms. Osborne simply got to work.
Link. Photo: Lee Celano/NYT.
