New Orleans, Louisiana | Saturday, Dec. 16 to Dec. 23, 2006 | Service Trip

It was late August 2005 that Hurricane Katrina rattled through the Gulf Coast, beginning a series of destructive events in New Orleans, one of the many great U.S. cultural centers. Americans were touched and flooded the entire region, offering services and products. Thousands of displaced Louisianians were brought all the way to my Philadelphia neighborhood near Temple University. I spent a great deal of time there, acting as roving security, an untrained 20-something in a condemned school-turned-evacuee-shelter stuffed with too many suffering and desperate people.

(Photos courtesy of my talented friend Neal Santos)

More than a year later, I was presented with the opportunity to do more. With a few friends, I flew to New Orleans to help Common Ground Relief, an organization that had been helping to clean up from the aftermath of Katrina. Racial and socioeconomic politics were alive and the Lower Ninth Ward seemed it was days after the end of war, not a year after a category 3 hurricane. I slept in an abandoned classroom, ate military surplus corned beef hash and took cold showers to rid my skin of asbestos and the debris of poverty and rage and one of the deadliest storms in modern American history.

Tennessee and KY | Tues., Aug. 15 to Aug. 20, 2006 | Greg Babbitt and Mike Butler

Puerto Rico | July 2006 | Vacation

White River, SD | Thurs., May 11 to May 17, 2006 | Service Immersion

Read my reflections on my first jaunt there, during spring 2006 with a volunteer group, here.

Laredo, Texas | Sat., March 5 to March 12, 2006 | Alt. Spring Break

Montana Road Trip | Monday, June 20 to July 1, 2005 | Michael Butler

Mepkin Abbey | Monday, June 13 to June 17, 2005| Moncks Corner, SC

I spent a week at the historic Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery.