From Chris Rose of theTimes Picayune:
The Memory Boxes are remembrances of Hurricane Katrina made by
students at the Martin Luther King Jr. School for Science and
Technology in the Lower 9th Ward — still the only school that has
opened in that beleaguered neighborhood, almost three years after the
storm.They are story boxes, each with
its own narrative, almost like time capsules. They are 2 feet by 2
feet, and generally decorated with paint, clay figurines and faces,
shapes and objects made from wire or cut out from paper plates, and
random indigenous accessories such as Spanish moss and Carnival beads.But it is the narratives written on note paper or painted inside these boxes that hit home hardest.
“I lost my trust,” one of the displays says. “I lost my faith. I lost my confidence. I lost my dad.”
It’s a far cry from the Dr. Seuss exhibit, to be sure.
Those words were written by a third-grader. For folks around here who
insist that everyone should just move on from this thing — and their
numbers seem to be growing — try telling that to this kid.