What Does Green Living Mean to You?

NEW ORLEANS, LA--What does living green mean to you? Ask Gloria Guy, of the lower ninth ward in New Orleans. She would tell you it means family; it means community; it means hope when hope is lost; it just means living—period.

     She has a five bedroom house painted sunshine yellow—where she is raising her eight grandchildren. She loves this place—it is home. It is the center of her family’s universe.

     Flash back to August 2005—as Gloria wakes to the horror of her home—her city—her family dying in the great flood that should never have happened. There were people standing on roof tops—for days—waiting for help; dead bodies floating by. Apocalyptic scenes so surreal they must be from some movie. But, this was not a movie. Gloria and two of her sons cut a hole in the roof of their home and floated on the current, hopping from one roof top to another, where they waited nine long hours to be rescued by boat and taken to the Super Dome.

     Life today is bitter-sweet. She never could have imagined, through the devastation and heartbreak of those horrible days, that life could be good again—let alone “green”.

     Thanks to the Make it Right foundation (MIR)—a non-profit organization created to help re-build this devastated area—Gloria and many of her neighbors are not only enjoying living in new, cutting-edge-designed, green homes, but also enjoying the sense of community and connection that was all but lost in Katrina. MIR was created with the support of actor Brad Pitt, architect Bill McDonough and many in the architectural community who took on the challenge to re-build the lower ninth ward in a truly sustainable way. Read more about their journey at www.MakeitRightnola.org .

     In addition to the LEED platinum homes, Gloria and her neighbors are enjoying the re-building of their community through sharing community gardens, a playground (that the architects call social infrastructure) and a community “resource depot” with a compost area, plant propagation station, rain gardens and more.

     On a larger scale, community improvements also include restoration of a marsh area that once was a living cypress forest and could have lowered the storm surge by at least one to two feet had it been healthy. You see, a healthy marsh eco-system is like a sponge. It filters the water and in times of surge can absorb and hold many times its normal levels of water. Instead, the barren brackish water full of dead stumps held back nothing and ushered in misery.

     It seems that through disasters and tragedies often comes the solution that years of thinking and planning could not bring about. Tragedy has a way of galvanizing people to take action when it is needed—NOW.

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