From the Director's Desk: Day 1

Four of us were originally placed with the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, but as with any large-scale project, there were a few snags. JJPL was not expecting us to show up on their doorstep this morning, but a few phone calls to Student Hurricane Network later and we joined our classmates at the Pro Bono Project for successions work. We've each been assigned two cases and have office space in a nice law firm downtown to work from.

The supervising attorney has only been with the agency for 18 months; she started shortly before Hurricane Katrina hit. Before we got down to our assignments, she shared her Katrina story with us. She told us about the two evacuations she and her family went through; the limited access to the city because of the flooding; the difficulty in finding clients and attorneys to represent them; the struggle to keep the office open and in one location; the loss of her home and the departure of her friends and professional colleagues for other locations; and the emotional toll that the storm has taken on the city and its residents.

I can remember exactly where I was on 9/11: I was a junior in college, on my way to Abnormal Psych, when my best friend (a New Yorker, no less) grabbed me and made me turn on CNN; we didn't move for hours. I can remember exactly where I was when Hurricane Katrina hit; I was a second-year law student at home, looking forward to my stack of cases printed out for the appellate brief. I grew up in Chicago, and while I'm headed for sunny, winter-free Texas after graduation, Chicago will always be my home.

I can't imagine what it would feel like to see the Loop flooded; to see Michigan Avenue damaged beyond recognition; to have thousands of people try to take shelter in Wrigley Field, to see Grant Park washed into Lake Michigan; to see the Palmer House boarded up. My heart would be broken if Goose Island were under water; if Lou Mitchell's and Miller's Pub never re-opened; if the Pilsen neighborhood was just washed away; if the Tribune Building or the Picasso were so damaged that they had to be torn down. It's my home; whenever I'm there, I slide back into the south-side Chicago accent (think the Superfans from SNL) that I inherited from my mom and grandma; I inevitably walk by the Marshall Field's clock on State Street (where my parents first met); and I know my favorite greasy spoon on Maxwell Street will always be waiting for me.

That's exactly what happened to New Orleans and to the people for whom it was home. We haven't been out to see any of the major damage in the Ninth Ward yet, but just driving into the city on I-10, it was hard to miss the collapsed roofs, the blown-out windows and piles of lumber that used to be houses. I wonder how many other people have just forgotten what it was like to watch the news in the days after the hurricane, and I wonder how different things would be if more people thought of the damage in terms of their own hometown.