From Ray In The Comments

In the comments to my Sere Street post:

Ray said...

First, Grandmere, you were not inept, you did great that day. I was watching. Sometimes I had to get out of your way you were going so fast.

Second, as Karen pointed out in my blog comments, sometimes even though we don't get a family back into their house, our gutting it does help the rest of the neighborhood. A gutted house is less of a health hazard, less likely to harbor rodents, less of a blight on the neighborhood, and it makes it easier for those people who did move back in next door to live next to it and to feel better about their neighborhood.

Remember the neighbors who bought us all that fried chicken? They knew the chances of that house being reoccupied were slim, but they still could not stop heaping praise on us for what a wonderful thing we were doing.

We did good work there that day, and though it may not have the exact miraculous happy ending that we imagined in our heads, life seldom does. Good works are little micro things that nudge the world in the right direction a few inches at a time, and as a group we gave it a good shove back onto the path.

I want to share with you what has been my favorite quote since I moved back here. I first read it on a big banner at Ye Olde College Inn, an Uptown eatery that was destroyed by the flood and rebuilt and which still has the best oyster po-boy on earth. It's Teddy Roosevelt, but it could be anybody who has worked in New Orleans:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. "

You did good. You should be proud. This city will come back.

Ray, cher, thank you for your kind words. We knew that day that the house we worked on probably was not salvageable. It was riddled with termites, for one thing. It's true. The next-door neighbors were grateful for our work, very grateful, and that, in itself, is reason enough to have done the work.

I want to cry, not so much for that house, but for the whole city, my home town, still the home of my heart. I know New Orleans will recover and be more beautiful than ever, despite the abuse and neglect she has suffered since the great tragedy. You can't kill the spirit of the people of the city.