Perhaps Dean knew New Orleans couldn’t put up another fight. Perhaps the challenge simply was not there. After all, what could another hurricane destroy?

Two years after Katrina, the majority of houses still have the somber spray paint markings of the rescue crews seeking the unfortunate victims. Traces of Katrina’s victims are still piled on sidewalks — color-bled photo albums and waterlogged mattresses among them. Whole neighborhoods are still missing from their residual cement foundations, waiting futilely to be rebuilt.

My father and I were relieved when Hurricane Dean headed west, far South of the Crescent City, where we called home for about a week. We were there to see for ourselves and we were there to lend our hammering ability to Habitat for Humanity.

“Try not to let this city we call New Orleans break your heart every day,” Terry Cooney, a Katrina Red Cross first responder, said, “because it will when you look at the conundrum that these people are in.”

Now one of Habitat for Humanity’s house leaders, Cooney works six days a week. He helps lead up to 750 volunteers a day build more than 40 houses in five different designs on an eight-acre plot in the Upper Ninth Ward.

In a completed home Cooney showed me what he called his “habitattoo,” a fleur de lit made of 16 penny framing nails.

“The folks who founded habitat for humanity got it right!” he exclaimed. “There’s no reason why we can’t build affordable housing for those people who really truly need it.”

This plot, sprouting brightly painted, one-level, 1,200-square-foot Habitat Homes, is named the Musicians Village, built mainly by volunteers from around the country for the New Orleans musicians who lost homes in the hurricane.

One volunteer, Danielle Painton, drove 17 hours from Pennsylvania to help build, with her new husband, Gabriel, on the last three days of their honeymoon.

“For that week that you get married, you just get gifts,” Painton said. “I mean, people giving money and gifts. It’s just like you, you, you. It’s just so easy to get caught up on how important you are.

“I think that this being part of our honeymoon is awesome, because for all that giving that people did, you get to kinda like give it back a little bit. The money that we got from the wedding is the money that we’re spending being able to do this. We’re kind of taking that and using it for good instead of blowing it on something silly.”

It is not just the Paintons who have sacrificed to be here. So many people from so many states are giving their weeks off from work or their summer vacation to help in the simplest way — with their hands.

“It’s just so cool to be in a place where everyone here genuinely cares so much,” Painton said. “Like, I’m almost getting choked up talking about it. It just makes you feel so good. Like, there’s hope!”

So New Orleans may break your heart, but if you take a look at the construction going on, the dedication of each volunteer, you’ll see exactly what Painton saw: a future for New Orleans. It is a place for some of the survivors to take root, something that has not been provided until now.

Being The Musicians Village, most of the occupants will be music-makers. I was fortunate enough to work with one musician, an upright base player who is receiving one of the houses on the block. His name is Nobu Ozaki and he is within days of moving in with his 10-year-old son.

Explaining why he returned to Louisiana, Ozaki said, “I grew up in Tokyo. Being Japanese and being accepted as a New Orleans jazz musician means so much to me that I just couldn’t do it in Portland or St. Louis. So I just decided to come back. They needed musicians.”

As a way of staying in New Orleans, Ozaki applied for a Habitat house. He had to pass a credit check, present his tax returns and prove that he is a currently working musician. This, as he explained, is very difficult, as musicians are mainly paid in cash.

After meeting Habitat’s requirements he was given a choice of providing the down payment or working 350 hours in the same community he will join. A year later, Ozaki has put in more than 250 hours of work on the Musicians Village.

“Sweat equity,” as he describes it. And isn’t that the truth?

We all sweat — quite a bit, in fact — for his equity and others. But it was well worth it.

I personally got to work right next to Nobu, Danielle, Gabe, Terry and my father on three houses at the end of Bartholomew Street for two days in the sweltering heat. Each volunteer had his or her own reason for being there, but everyone came together in the perverse conditions.

We nailed up sheeting and Tyvek, put in windows and framed them all professionally. No one said so, but I know that at the end of the week, we all stepped back and thought, I hope with the “next one,” the houses on Bartholomew will prove to be dignified adversaries.”

May each Habitat House be blessed.

(For more information, visit www.nolamusiciansvillage.org)

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