L.A. Times: "Pioneer Spirit of the Lower 9"

   CREDIT: Kirk McKoy/L.A. Times

PHOTO: Plastic snow man in a Lower Ninth Ward lot.

The Los Angeles Times has consistently done a great job of documenting life after Katrina in the Lower Ninth Ward. As part of the paper’s “An American Moment” series, the Times’ Peter H. King tells what he sees in “Pioneer spirit in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward”:

“It might seem a daunting landscape, but not to Miss Gertie: ‘To me those houses are like flowers popping up in a garden. There's just a few of us now. But there will soon be a beautiful garden. Oh, yes.'

This wasn't supposed to happen. The Lower 9th Ward had been written off by most of the politicians and urban policy experts who after Katrina set out to engineer a new New Orleans."

Read the full piece here.