How to Help the New Orleans Community

People have been emailing me, asking where to donate money to New Orleans. Having been a public school teacher for a decade, both in NYC and here in New Orleans, I have formed strong opinions about the benefits of creative expression in building confidence and providing an outlet for inner city youth.

SO.

Here are my first-thought suggestions, below. I will provide a permenant link to this page in my links column on this blog. I will also add to these when I can. Feel free to post comments with more suggestions of community-based organizations that may not otherwise be in the press. I know that I hve not even begun to include effective neighborhood community centers here, or sports or music based programs.

I have worked with YA/YA on an art project that included almost 100 portraits of incarcerated loved ones painted by elementary students at The Craig School in Treme. The work was a backdrop for a press conference held by Critical Resistance South. These Ya/Ya folks are good people.

Ashé is a group that takes in folks, mostly from the Central City area (my neighborhood) of Nola in order to help them find creative outlets for expression, no matter the age.

Café Reconcile rocks. They take in kids and teach them how to cook and then put them to work in a real café with EXCELLENT down home food here in Central City.

KIDsmARt is an organization that provides an arts school for afterschool. They take in kids from troubled backgrounds or creative kids in general, providing support and confidence building for the students. I have sent a creative, but troubled student down there (randomly, without following their usual protocol for admitting students) and they welcomed her with open arms. Her confidence has improved drastically and her talents are developing rapidly.

NOCCA is the school for super creative kids where Helen has popped in and out, helping kids learn that you do not have to be a technical genius to make excellent films. She was about to start helping out in film studies more consistently as a staff member before she left us. The school employs local artiststs to work with students, which I feel is a great, inspirational example for them. The need for this school here, in a city where creativity abounds, goes without saying. It is a wonderful place.

The Neighborhood Story Project started with the idea of sending public highschool students into their own neighborhoods to interview the community and put together books of writing, filled with interviews, about the distinct character of each. The importance of talking to neighbors and learning their histories and personalities is an invaluable lesson to youth of today, who are often isolated from these types of connections.

The New Orleans Kid Camera Project is a brilliant way for kids to process the visual trauma of living in New Orleans. The project began after Katrina, but the visual trauma started for these kids long before the storm, and I hope that this program continues to provide this forum for expression for children of our communities.








KID smART is a nonprofit 501 c.3 organization, created to teach positive life skills to children through the performing and visual arts. KID smART programs involve intensive, quality instruction by professional artists who have experience working with under-resourced children. Instruction is challenging and dynamic, allowing children to think in new ways, explore new mediums and investigate themselves and the world in which they live.

Café Reconcile

In 1996, under the leadership of the late Rev. Harry Tompson, S.J., a group of concerned people of faith gathered together to began a course of prayer, study, research, observation and dialogue regarding the witnessed challenges facing out-of-school youth in New Orleans. The newspapers, police reports, television news, research and personal experiences all pointed to a multitude of young lives spiraling into destructive and violent behaviors.

In an effort to stem that tide, to effect a glimmer of hope in the near-downtown community of Central City, this group of concerned and motivated people began the planning and research necessary to establish a safe and supportive place where at-risk youth could have the option of receiving the life, work and educational skills necessary to turn their lives on a productive path toward thriving and complete citizens of this city.

The New Orleans Kid Camera Project was created to address the psychological and emotional impacts of Hurricane Katrina on children returning home to New Orleans. Through the use of photography, creative writing and mixed media, children from flooded neighborhoods explore their environment and express themselves, their stories and feelings with their friends. This project provides a venue for growth and recovery. By teaching the children tangible skills and exposing them to new means of expression, we hope to empower them to impact their lives and environment.

YA/YA (Young Aspirations/Young Artists), Inc. is a non-profit arts and social service organization whose mission is to provide educational experiences and opportunities that empower artistically talented inner-city youth to be professionally self-sufficient through creative self-expression.

Since it's founding in 1988, the YA/YA studio-gallery has provided young artists who have limited access to educational resources and career opportunities the chance to apprentice with professional artists, create public artworks, design merchandise, serve as cultural ambassadors, work as project managers, and mentor others in the arts.

YA/YA has received extensive media exposure with features in Fortune, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Elle Décor, and ArtNews, as well as MTV's House of Style, Sesame Street, and NBC's Today show.

In 2002, YA/YA was a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show as a recipient of the Angel Network "Use Your Life Award."

Ashé is a gathering place for emerging and established artists to present, create and collaborate in giving life to their art. For those who felt compelled to choose more mainstream existence at earlier points in their lives, Ashé is a reclaiming harbor that welcomes them with open arms. Ashé is a magnetic force that first attracts and then activates the artistic, creative and entrepreneurial possibilities available in our community.

We work to involve the entire community, from children to elders, in our planning and creative efforts. We celebrate the life and cultural traditions of the community, and then we immortalize them in our art. Storytelling, poetry, music, dance, photography, and visual art all are a part of the work we do to revive the possibility and vision of a true " Renaissance on the Boulevard." Our name ASHÉ - a Yoruban word that translates closely to AMEN - So let it be done - The ability to make things happen, bears testimony to our commitment and intention to accomplish our goals.







The New Orleans Center for Creative Arts|Riverfront is a world-class educational institution that has been changing the lives of young people since 1973. Every year, this pre-professional arts training center provides intensive instruction in dance, media arts, music (classical, jazz, vocal), theatre arts (drama, musical theatre, theatre design), visual arts, and creative writing, to students from public, private, and parochial schools across Louisiana through schoolday, after-school, weekend, and summer sessions.

Taken by the Tide

My husband's (Billy Sothern) writing appears in the New York Times Op Ed section Wednesday. This piece talks about the toll Helen's death has taken on his heart and his morale and resolve to fight for this city.

Here's the link: Taken by the Tide, Billy Sothern

Taken by the Tide

Michael Kupperman

By BILLY SOTHERN

Published: January 10, 2007

New Orleans

IN one 24-hour period last week in New Orleans, now a small city of 200,000, six people were murdered. Last year’s total of 161 murders probably made New Orleans the deadliest city in the United States by a significant margin. I suppose it was only a matter of time before the violence touched my life directly.

Last Thursday morning I received a call from my friend Kittee. “I have awful news,” she said, and then, very quickly: “Someone broke into Paul and Helen’s house. Helen was shot and killed. Paul was holding Baby Francis and was shot three times. He’s still alive. Francis is O.K.”

Paul Gailiunas — Dr. Paul, I call him — had been my physician for several years at the Little Doctors Clinic, a health center for poor people that he founded in Treme, one of America’s oldest black neighborhoods.

I had started to see Paul after my previous doctor mocked one of my colleagues about our work representing people on Louisiana’s death row. When I met Paul through a friend, I asked him directly, “Are you in favor of the death penalty?” He responded, with a smile, “Eh, I’m Canadian,” clearly feeling that was answer enough.

And it was, coming from the founder of our local chapter of Food Not Bombs and the front man for the Troublemakers (a band whose songs celebrate Emma Goldman and the idea of universal health care) in such a lighthearted tone that it would scarcely have alienated the most ardent conservative.

Helen Hill was Paul’s perfect match — a kind and generous woman who made award-winning animated films and taught art and filmmaking to children, adults, anyone who was interested. She’d spent much of the last year restoring reels of 16-millimeter film on which she had drawn by hand, and which had been damaged when their house took four feet of water during Hurricane Katrina.

She had a new film under way, inspired by discarded hand-sewn dresses, made by an elderly New Orleanian, which Helen had found in the trash after the woman’s death. The film interwove the story of the old woman and her dresses with Helen’s own flood-torn life, which took her, Paul and Francis to Columbia, S.C. — Helen’s hometown, where she will be buried today — for almost a year.

Helen had longed to return to New Orleans, despite Paul’s concern that crime and potential hurricanes made it too dangerous for their family. So Helen campaigned, sending Paul’s friends in New Orleans blank postcards, addressed to Paul, for us to write and mail to him. In mine, I pleaded with Paul — “We need you” — the way I do with anyone who is thinking about leaving, coming to, or even just visiting New Orleans. After what I am sure was a flood of similar cards, Paul relented.

I saw Paul and the baby a day after their return to the city, at a parade on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Francis had on a little railroad conductor’s hat, a T-shirt depicting a cartoon love affair between red beans and rice (the New Orleans Monday lunch classic), and a little sign pinned to his back, in Helen’s hand: “New Orleans Native. I Got Back Yesterday!”

The day of the anniversary was solemn but optimistic. Everyone still had a can-do attitude. Paul, for one, could help make the city’s people well and improve health care for the poor. Helen could make art depicting the city’s life. Others could rebuild schools, demand better levees, reconstruct their homes. It still felt as if our grassroots efforts, along with some real help from a government finally forced to make good on its obligations, could create a more just, fair and safe city. It might have been naïve, but it really seemed possible.

After wandering this beautiful, falling-over city the afternoon after Helen’s murder, forcing myself to remember why I love it here so much, I came back to my garden and picked flowers, those hardy few that had weathered the recent cold. I put them in a vase, wrote out the verses to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Dirge Without Music” — “I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground / So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind” — and drove to the couple’s house, which my wife and I had recently visited for Helen’s open studio. On the steps leading up to their old shotgun house I set down the poem and the vase, just feet from where Paul had been found by the police, shot, bleeding, holding his baby.

On the way home, I stopped at my neighborhood bar to try to eat something. A picture of Paul and Helen, followed by one of the baby, appeared on the television in the corner. Oh, my God. The bartender was kind. She asked me whether I knew them, and talked to me about her fears living with her new baby in a city with no functional schools, no real plan for redevelopment, and spotty or nonexistent basic services. The TV news switched to a weather report: torrential downpours were expected to dump half a foot of rain overnight.

I drove home in the twilight and arrived uneasy and restless. Remembering the coming rain, I resolved to make myself useful to my block by digging out a sewer so backed up that the street — on high ground by New Orleans standards — floods at even the hint of rain. I had done this many times before, having realized that my innumerable calls to the city were in vain.

I pried up the 100-pound cast iron cover with a shovel and then shimmied it from side to side until I had the two-by-four sewer open. It was full to the top with debris. I shoveled out the leaves, dirt, Popeye’s cups and other garbage until the small brick rectangle was as clean as it was a century ago, when New Orleans first created this drainage system.

Then I set to work on clearing the cylindrical drain — about as wide as a hubcap, at the bottom corner of the cleaned-out basin — so that the rain could find its way into the city’s sewers, away from our houses, cars and belongings. I got down with a small shovel and burrowed through the muck until it seemed to open at the other side. Reaching in, though, I could feel that beyond the drain lay more dirt and leaves, packed hard.

Indeed, it became clear to me that the whole sewer line running beneath the street was solid with waste, impenetrable to arms and shovels — that my street would flood again that night. The problem, I realized, is bigger than me.

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Billy Sothern, a lawyer, is the author of the forthcoming “Down in New Orleans: Reflections on a Drowned City.”

On to South Carolina

If you cannot see the magical tree sculpture, I will fix it when I come back from the funeral- probably, realistically, on Friday.

Update from Elijah

Sorry so late:

Hello dear friends of Helen and Paul,

This e-mail is to everyone in Helen's address book. I presume you all know
the sad, sad news about Helen Hill. I know how much you loved her. She was
a brilliant, incredibly sweet person whose life was a fantastic work of art.
The best place to get all your information on the funeral is the website
Cristin set up at Helenhill.org.

I know some of you are very, very close friends and I'm sorry we can't get
you all in touch with Paul. And with everything so crazy I may even forget
to pass on messages. So please send a card if you can't come to Columbia.
He's going to really need his friends and your thoughts over the next months
and years.

ADDRESS CHANGE! the Dunbar Funeral Home is on 3926 Devine St. Columbia, SC
29205 phone: 803-771-7990, not on the Gervais street address I wrote in an
earlier e-mail. The visitation will be 7-9 on Tuesday. Bring a photo or
picture or piece of art by or for Helen to put up on a board.

FILM SCREENING! There will be a screening of Helen's films at the
Nickelodeon Theater in columbia from 11 am to noon and then again from noon
to 1pm on Wednesday. I suggest you try to go to the first one and wait for
the second if it's too crowded.

Nickelodeon website:

http://www.nickelodeon.org/

937 Main St.

map: http://www.nickelodeon.org/theatre_directions.php

Check the website for the funeral information.

You can contribute to a zine for Helen. Here's the note from Lecie:

Dear friends and family of Helen,

Because of Helen's love for homemade zines, Trixy had the wonderful idea of
putting together a memorial zine where people can share stories of Helen and
images by/for/about Helen for Paul, Francis, and all of us to be able to
enjoy. Our guiding idea was of a testament for Francis to pick up in years
to come for glimpses of his superhuman mom, and we wanted to create a venue
for everyone to be able to share their stories.

I know it's been hard for many of us to find words about this unthinkable
loss, except for the onslaught of memories of Helen's life.

So my sister Katie and I will be assembling this IN THE NEXT TWO DAYS! I
was hoping to get this done before I leave for South Carolina, to be able to
distribute at Helen's funeral. I would also love to send copies to all of
you who send me your addresses. If anyone can't get this to me in such a
short time frame, I will definitely create an addendum!

Just send whatever fragments you have - text in an email, a scan of a
picture, whatever you want to send. WE ESPECIALLY NEED STORIES ABOUT HELEN.
These don't have to be complete works. Please send entries to me at
leciewilliams@yahoo.com. Also, please forward this on to anyone you know
who isn't on my addressee list.

The deadline for inclusion for Helen's funeral edition will be Monday,
January 8, early evening.

Love to all,
Lecie Williams

Also Cory, Paul's brother-in-law, is making a slide show for Francis of his
family You can send him photos of Helen or anything to...
cory.amy@gmail.com.

If you are a musician or performer who would like to perform one of Paul's
songs to her or one of the songs Helen wrote at the funeral, call me as soon
as possible.

Will and Janet will help people find a place to stay. Their number is (803)
779-9903. We should be able to get everyone at least a floor to crash on.

Condolence notes, letters and flowers are appreciated. I think the best
thing to write is happy memories of Helen. We want to remember everything
we can about her. And we want to have material for Francis Pop to look at
someday. She was such a complex, fascinating person.

Send them to:

Becky Lewis (Helen's mom)
1432 Medway Road
Columbia, SC 29205
(803) 343-2437

This is the link for donating to Doctors without Borders in the memory of
Helen
Hill. People need to put her name in the appropriate boxes and the family
will see the gifts.

https://www.kintera.org/site/apps/ka/sd/donorcustom.asp?c=foIJKQMFF&b=99839&
kntaw3112=5A39711AED4A4FD9A60CE

850F171E23B

You can also call 888-392-0392.

There will probably be other charities and such set up in Helen's memory
over the next few weeks. If you have thoughts or want to help with this,
feel free to contact me or Helen's sister-in-law, Brett at
bretthill100@yahoo.com

Feel free to e-mail or call my cell phone at (323) 708-3726. Try calling me
again if I don't get back to you on something.

Please pass this e-mail along. I'm having trouble including all the e-mail
addresses I've been getting.

So much love,

Elijah

Magical Tree Sculpture for Helen

Here is a coloring page that I created for my art students. In the middle of it is a magical tree with wysteria-like flower clusters that blooms at night in the middle of a swamp. I think that Helen would like a magical tree scultpure.

Double-click on the picture and you will see it enlarged.

This should help those welder/sculpture artists who have contacted me. As soon as I have an idea of how many people baseline will hang objects, we will have a better idea of the size needed.

Feel free to print out and color...

Also:

I need volunteers in different cities to gather ornaments to send in one bulk mailing. The address to which these ornaments are to be mailed is still being figured out (my house is right on the street and packages, er, have a habit of walking away).

Please email me with any questions:

nikkipage@gmail.com

Been in Transit

I was traveling all day yesterday to get back to town, so I could not respond to any of the lovely people offering to weld and contribute to the sculpture memorial...

I will be responding to all emails today and posting more specific info re: film screenings in Columbia nad the location of the funeral, the sculpture, etc.

Memorial Sculpture for Helen, Paul and Francis Pop

Photos by me, August 29, 2006

Calling all friends of Helen, Paul and Francis Pop:


I am looking for a welder who is willing to weld a big old rebar tree, with lots of branches in order to create a solid base sculpture. Then, I am looking for those who would create weather-resistant ornamants or "leaves", wind catchers, etc. to place upon this tree.

Then, I would like to have a gathering to create a beautiful collaborative memorial not just for Helen, but for the loss of a great family that contributed to the public well-being of New Orleans both through medicine, art and pure, loving spirit.

Ideas for the location include the neutral ground of N. Rampart or City Park. I would like this to be a very public dedication.

Any voluteers?

Please comment here, so people see who is involved AND email me (nikkipage@gmail.com) so that I can organize the event.

Any takers?

Also:


Updates and more writings of tribute:

The Enough is Enough march will be held on Thursday; the planning meeting will be held Sunday.

There will be screening of Helen's films tomorrow night at The Sound Cafe, 7 p.m.

From Billy:

Helen's funeral is on Weds. at 2 pm at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Columbia, SC. There will be a visitation on Tuesday from 7 to 9 pm at the Dunbar Funeral Divine Street Chapel, also in Columbia. The march in New Orleans to City Hall is on Thursday, January 11. The planning meeting, at which "Marigny-Bywater residents and ALL concerned New Orleanians" are welcome, is at the Sound Cafe at 2700 Chartres Street on Sunday at 1 pm.

From bonadona

hello and goodbye im sure you would not have ever remembered me but you came to csssa and taught me how to make a puppet. you taught all of us how to make a puppet. at first honestly i thought it was kind of boring. and this may seem corny but when i saw how much you loved your work and how much you wanted us to love our work i saw that. i respected that. thank you.

From traveling mermaid:

What a beautiful tribute. My sympathies to you and their friends & families.

From the Times Pic

Marigny victims worked to leave mark on city

Saturday, January 06, 2007

By Brendan McCarthy

After the flood, Helen Hill ached to return to her adopted city.

Her husband, Paul Gailiunas, resisted. The storm had destroyed the health clinic he co-founded in the Treme neighborhood to serve the city's poor. Gailiunas, a doctor, fretted about the quality of the air and water, and of life in general, for the couple and their baby son, Francis. Hill's parents in South Carolina, where the couple had retreated in exile, worried, too. They had seen the destruction on television.

"But she had New Orleans in her heart and imagination," her stepfather, Kevin Lewis, said Friday, a day after Hill was shot dead and her husband wounded inside their Marigny home. "She was idealistic. She wanted her family and her creative life fulfilled here."

Without telling Gailiunas, Hill recruited her friends in New Orleans to help put the hard sell on her husband. She mailed them dozens of self-addressed postcards telling them to mail them back to Gailiunas, calling him back home.

It worked: They returned on Aug. 28, settling into half of a white double shotgun home in Faubourg Marigny, on higher ground than their flooded home in Mid-City.

That decision proved fatal. Four months later, shortly before 6 a.m. Thursday, Hill died of a gunshot to the neck inside her home, where police would also find her husband, shot three times, clutching 2-year-old Francis near the couple's front door.

On Friday, as the couple's home turned into a spontaneous memorial and a gathering place for grieving friends, Gailiunas had taken the baby to a safe, quiet place out of the city, friends and family said. Meanwhile, new details emerged in the killing.

Officers had been working a bizarre burglary call at a bed-and-breakfast nearby when they heard loud noises -- apparently, the gunshots -- and soon got a call from dispatch. Four officers bolted out of the bed-and-breakfast toward the couple's home, said the owner of the guest house, who asked that his name not be used.

New Orleans police confirmed the nearby investigation, in which officers responded to reports of an armed man breaking into the bed-and-breakfast and knocking on guests' doors. The gunman apparently fled after a guest heard knocking in an interior hallway and opened her door to see a man with a gun standing in the hall, said the co-owner of the guest house. But detectives don't know if the incident is linked to the shooting, said Lt. Joe Meisch, commander of the homicide division.

Grieving friends

As police worked to unravel the mystery, the couple's wide circle of friends wept and traded stories of their electric personalities and commitment to their community. As the afternoon wore on, the crowd in front of their home grew, as did the memorial in front of the porch.

Emmy O'Dwyer sat on the stoop, weeping and trading stories about Hill. O'Dwyer, who taught Francis at Abeona House, a preschool on Oak Street, showed pictures of a smiling mother holding a grinning baby in overalls and a brimmed hat. The photo had been taken just a week ago at an Oak Street cafe, O'Dwyer said. "They were just larger than life, spirited, colorful, just naturally happy, which is so rare," O'Dwyer said, "to find people just happy living each day."

Hill wore thrift store garb and made experimental films, a craft she sought to share with other women, holding "film-making bees" in which they made rudimentary films, said one friend who wept in front of Hill's impromptu memorial Friday. Gailiunas sang songs about love and leftist politics in a solo act called Ukulele Against the Machine. Both reveled in the funky Marigny arts community.

They didn't drink, didn't smoke and didn't eat meat or dairy products. They had a pet, a pot-bellied pig named Rosie, always a hit with the children they often invited to their home.

Hill hailed from Columbia, S.C., but had a unique accent that reflected the wide-ranging cities she had lived in, friends said. Gailiunas grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the couple lived for several years before settling in New Orleans.

They met in the late 1980s at Harvard College, where they lived in the same dormitory. Hill graduated in 1992 and moved to New Orleans briefly with her boyfriend -- and Gailiunas, then just her friend. The boyfriend was Gailiunas' roommate, her stepfather said. Shortly, Gailiunas became the boyfriend.

"It was New Orleans that cooked this engagement," her stepfather said.

They fell deeply in love, friends and family said. She called him Paulie, he called her Helinka.

She went to graduate school in California while he attended medical school in Halifax. Gailiunas wrote her love letters and songs.

At their South Carolina wedding in 1996, he sang his vows while strumming a guitar, bringing his guests to tears.

"When she had to say her vows, she just went tongue-tied," said her stepfather, who officiated at the ceremony. "We were all waiting, rooting for it to happen."

After she wept through the ceremony, the couple rode into the wedding reception on a rusty tandem bicycle borrowed from Hill's grandfather.

Choosing New Orleans

In 2001, they moved to New Orleans, the latest young, idealistic and very-much-in-love couple in town.

They lived in Mid-City, at Cleveland and Clark streets, and became block celebrities; partly because they had a pig, partly because of their outgoing nature and open houses.

"It kills me, because they could have lived anywhere they wanted," said former neighbor Gary Cruise. "He was a doctor, and she was an artist. But they chose to live in New Orleans, because they felt they could have an impact."

In one memorable instance, Cruise said the couple had a birthday party for Rosie the pig that was fit for a finicky 5-year-old. The couple rented a carnival cotton candy machine and fed dozens of adults and children.

"They must have invited half the neighborhood," Cruise recalled. "I tell you, their house was never boring. They had an eclectic group of friends."

Reaching out

They started serving their community right away. They ran Food Not Bombs New Orleans, gathering discarded goods at Whole Foods and organizing meal runs to feed the homeless.

Hill started a film co-op, the New Orleans Film Collective, just as she had done in Halifax. She gave free film seminars and helped promote a sense of community among artistic strangers.

"She was exemplary in every way," said Robert Thompson, owner of a Mid-City coffee shop that hosted Hill's annual cinema workshop.

She made do-it-yourself film shorts with simple materials, whatever she had around at the time. Some shorts featured clay characters, paper cutouts, colored paper. "She was creative, artistic and thrived in this environment," friend and former neighbor Bart Everson said. "She wanted to be in this city."

In 2004, Hill won a prestigious $35,000 Rockefeller Media Fellowship, which she decided to use to complete a film project called "The Florestine Collection."

The inspiration came while she was shopping in a thrift store, where she stumbled onto a set of dresses patched together from mismatched fabrics. She fell in love with them, friend Rene Broussard said, and bought every one she could find. Then she set out to find the seamstress, a blind woman in her 90s who made the dresses for money, and started documenting her life.

Also in 2004, Gailiunas helped open Little Doctors Neighborhood Clinic on Esplanade in Treme. The family practice was run on a sliding-fee scale based on a patient's income.

"He was giving poor people the one-on-one attention that they wouldn't get even if they were rich," said patient Billy Sothern, 30. "Paul was a doctor who would spend extra time with you. He was calming."

Coming home

Just before the flood, Gailiunas' and Hill's careers and personal lives began to blossom. They welcomed a baby, Francis Pop, on whom they doted endlessly, friends said.

Then the hurricane hit and their Mid-City home was destroyed. They lost "90 percent of their stuff," according to an interview Hill gave to the Los Angeles Daily News in September 2006.

Their apartment in the 2400 block of North Rampart Street seemed to fit their personalities: It's in an artsy, diverse community, with enough space for Hill's art and to house a growing toddler and a pet pig. It has bars on the windows.

In marking their return to New Orleans, the couple opened their home during "Open Studio Days," an arts festival in which homes double as galleries.

Gailiunas had started working for Daughters of Charity Health Center in Bywater, another community-based clinic that turned no one away.

Growing memorial

By late Friday, the crowd outside the couple's home had grown to more than 20 people, most dropping off flowers, pictures and handwritten notes at the memorial on the front steps.

Charles Cannon, a writer and teacher who lives nearby, walked by with his child in a stroller.

Just an acquaintance of the couple, he recalled meeting them a couple of years ago. They had marched together in Krewe du Jieux, a subkrewe of the satirical Krewe du Vieux, the first parade of Carnival. He was struck, he said, by their particular brand of genuine liberalism, their sincere embracing of a duty to help others.

"You're exactly the kind of people I want to move to New Orleans and start a family," Cannon recalled telling them.

Another woman who identified herself only as a neighbor dropped off a note on the couple's porch, calling Hill an angel and applauding "the love and joy you brought into this dark world."

Standing in front of the porch, she seethed with anger at the unknown attacker.

"They would never do it," the woman said, "but they should have answered the door with a gun."

. . . . . . .

Staff writer Walt Philbin contributed to this report.

Brendan McCarthy can be reached at bmccarthy@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3301.

Nola.com photo

Paul Gailiunas (seen here on guitar during a performance at the Louisiana Music Factory) performs with his band the Troublemakers.-nola.com

Listen to the Troublemakers, Paul Gailiunas' band

Goodbye Paul and Francis, Helen

from Helenhill.org

Update from my husband Billy, who has been helping Paul and his family:

Francis, Paul and both his and Helen's family will be leaving New Orleans today to bring Helen back to So. Carolina, where they will hold a funeral (though details are not yet solid regarding the time, size and place). Until then, Paul is resting with Francis.
Various ways of holding a memorial service or event are being discussed; more to come.

What I know for sure is that there will be an Enough is Enough! demonstration march, beginning at the Sound Cafe on Sunday. Please come.

More links about Helen:

MetaFilter

Apophenia

picture by Kara van Malssen

More pictures, Films and Contributions

Pictures from Nola.com/Times Pic below. The last in the series may be too distressting to look at. For me, I see it as a great act of caring and kindness for Paul and Francis.






The Barckoopers wrote:

Hi, another sick with grief friend here. I lived in the flat below Paul and Helen for three years in Halifax (Canada) and they are both very dear to me (as I'm sure many of you understand all too well). I'm desperately trying to get a message to Paul, to let him know we love him. I just heard from them three days ago, too, so I am really struggling to even believe this. If any of you are speaking with any of their family, or Sherry and Bergen, or anyone, please mention (if you can) that Becka and Jim send every ounce of their love. Thank you.
- Becka Barker

My husband, Billy has been over to the place where the families are, helping in whatever way possible. He is relaying your message.

Polly said:

Helen was my friend, mento and hero back in high school. I loved her calm, peaceful demeanor and love for the world around her. I am shattered that the world she loved so much has taken her from us. Godspeed dear friend, you will be with me for all time.



Police urge witnesses to help them solve crimes/Paul Murphy reports

City's film community mourns loss of friend and colleague/Paul Murphy reports

Tributes to Helen Hill

from www.helenhill.org

Helen

wide eyed innocent
describes her so completely
joyful, happy, sweet, always smiling Helen
she was so happy to get back here...
when i saw her last Mardi Gras
they had a postcard campaign for folks to vote
should they come back or not?
they opened their hearts and arms to this city
they had so much to give
but not her life, why? what good is that?
life is so precious, so sweet,
so well used by some, like Helen,
so poorly understood by others,
like her killer, like all killers
they won't read this tribute
they wouldn't understand it

Helen, i loved you
i loved your innocence, your spirit
infectious happiness in your smile
fly away, Helen
we will gather together
we will try to take care
of your family

ze'
(anonymous)

rainerfloo said:

Helen touched all of us in Halifax who knew her - she was wonderful. This is absolutely sickening.

editorb said:

I am sick with grief. I'm not ready to say goodbye.




Cristin says:

some of her friends from calarts and such are setting up a website in her memory.

We'll be making a photo album, links to her films, as well as memories and comments.

the website is helenhill.org

Please send photos, comments, memories, etc to memory [at] helenhill [dot] org
to contribute pictures and writing to the memorial.

From me:

People are placing notes to her, pictures and flowers, as a testament to her spirit, love and energy, on her steps.

Below are some more pictures found around, as I cannot access my stock due to the fact that I am away from Nola, here in Maine.

Film Still taken from ROX #90: FAT
@ rox.com


photo from nola.com

Goodbye, Dear Helen Hill

Today, at 5:30 this morning, a dear friend, Helen Hill, was murdered in her home in Marigny. Her house was broken into and she and her husband were both shot. Their two year old baby was there. Paul, the father survived the shooting. The baby is ok, safe with friends right now.

There will be a memorial for her tonight.

Please, everyone, pray, think thoughts of strength -whatever it is you do- for this family.

Kittie makes fun with Helen as they clean up
her flooded home in Mid-City

Both pictures are from Kittee Burns' livejournal website.

This from a post I put up on October 7, 2006

Helen Hill Open Studio

Today is New Orleans Art For Art's Sake, a day for people to walk around town checking out what is going on in galleries and artist's studios.

We went to Helen's studio today, where I made a playdough mermaid with her baby Francis and checked out her current project. Helen makes animated films and started the New Orleans Film Collective (cannot find a website).

A tiny picture from one of her films

She is making a film inspired by a bunch of flooded dresses handsewn by an ancient New Orleanian who recently passed away. She threads her own flooded story into that of this amazingly creative seamstress, named Floristine, through an examination of these dresses and imagining the woman's life.

It is called The Florestine Collection, and I cannot wait to see it completed! The story board is great.

Links about Helen Hill:
Atlantic Film-makers Cooperative
Program for Media Artists
Best of New Orleans

Bonfires!

Tonight, Billy and are going up the river to catch the annual lighting of the bonfires. We have never done this so we are very excited.


Every Christmas eve night folks from Lutcher to Gramercy light up HUGE wooden structures at 7 p.m. sharp. There were 120 fire permits issued this year and each fire is spaced about a block apart.

There are many theories as to the meaning of this tradition started by the Acadians forever ago.

Practical:
-the fires serve as a guiding light for those who are traveling to Christmas Eve mass along the river, as a good fog usually kicks up off the river at night...

Does anyone else think it is a little strange to light
the way to mass by burning the little baby Jesus up?*

Practical-ish:
- the fires light the way for Papa Noel on Christmas Eve

FYI:

Papa Noel's pirogue is pulled by alligators in bayou country

Spiritual:
-the tradition is a relic left over from the ritual of burning the yule log on the night of the
winter solstice.





*I got that picture from a motorcycle website.
**picture from www.louisianagreetings.com

Friend Picture IV

Ana

Friend-Picture III

Jane Maysey

Friend-Picture II

I am posting friend pics for the holidays, and I am attempting to put up those that capture some common expressions of character...

Ruthie Monday XXXIII

She likes to sleep at our feet.

Friend-Picture

Thinking about friends right about now, it being the holidays and all...

Family Resemblance

My sister keeps talking about how much her daughter, Violet looks like me. I have been promising her that I would post some baby pictures of myself next to those of Violet (taken by her Mom) for comparison...here they are:

Family photos:

Jess, Manna and Violet

Dad, Ma and Moi

Wee Violet

Me

Me, again

Vi

Vi

Me...

And here a few for the future...

Don't Shoot and Drive

I don't recommend this technique, but look at that gate! Had to tweak the photo as it was not of the highest quality since I was whizzing along and shooting from the hip without (of course!) taking my eyes off the road...very stupid, I know, I know.

Monster Trucks on the Road

Has anybody else been seeing monster trucks on the road in Metairie? I sure have. This is the second one -the first scared the living be-jees-ums outta me when it shot four feet of flames out of the gate-door right over my hood. Couldn't take the kamikaze shot when that happened.

I think I would have lost my eyebrows but for the windshield, no exaggeration.

Ruthie Monday XXXII