we saw that...

wet bank guide featured in los angeles times

wet bank guide

Folse is leading an online charge to encourage expatriates to return to New Orleans.

"The more people who come back, who value the city for what it was and what it is, the more difficult it will be for them to wrest it from us," Folse said.

Watching the catastrophe of Katrina unfold last August, "I felt an overwhelming need to come here and plant my flag and buy a house, and try and save New Orleans," said Folse, who tests computer software for a national bank that lets him telecommute. "Admittedly it sounds grandiose and self-serving. But I felt I had to come here and be part of it."

He arrived in the city on Memorial Day and moved to the Mid-City neighborhood, much of which flooded after Katrina. The family found a home that was spared water damage.

Folse immediately joined his neighborhood association and was named chairman of the group's volunteer housing committee. The group is working to set up a community development corporation that would give residents a say in the fate of the neighborhood's blighted properties and historical buildings, and would work to attract businesses to the area.

Let me say that I'm grateful you find your way here to read what I have to say. Never the less, I also grateful I had the opportunity to tell my story to a wider audience, to perhaps convice a few more ex-pats or lingering and uncertain evacuees that its time to recommit to the city. Apparently our story seems interesting to people outside New Orleans, as I am also being interviewd by NPR and the Times-Picayune has taken an interest in myself and my fellow travelers on the long road home. If this blog and these stories lead even one more family back home, all the time I have invested here will have been worthwhile.