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In the summer of 2007 I volunteered with Americorps for two months; one month in Mississippi and one month in Maine. It was a life-changing experience, opening my eyes to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and showing me a broader slice of American culture.
The Student Conservation Association, the organization that coordinated the program, sent twenty of us to Pearlington, Mississippi. Together, we helped residents who were still rebuilding two years after the hurricane hit. We worked mainly in construction; hanging drywall, putting up siding, framing, and building decks. Over time, our crew became incredibly close.
I created this website to preserve the stirring memories garnered from the experience. Almost everyone on the crew had their own camera, so we managed to document all of our exploits together. After the trip, my friends mailed me CDs with their photos (online file transfer at their volume was not practical). I set up an automated process to reformat the pictures in various sizes and link them to their photographer and location. The site hosts more than 4 gigabytes of images.
An easy tagging tool allows members of the crew to tag images by the people within them. Visitors can thus sort pictures by their subjects, and even specify combinations of people they want to appear in pictures. The images are further organized by their location and photographer. The URL structure minimizes cruft by only including absolutely necessary information. For example, the page with all my information is http://pedialytesoapandwater.com/andrew and to view pictures of my friend Katie and me, the URL is a logical http://pedialytesoapandwater.com/andrew+katie.
The site has served as a kind of home base for our crew after we all split our different ways (we came from 14 different states). It has a complete password-protected directory of our crew, and members of the crew can post comments on images. Whenever I get nostalgic for the summer, all I have to do is log on and browse through the thousands of images hosted on the site.
Lastly, why is it called Pedialyte, Soap, and Water? That was our prescription for all ailments on the crew. Headache? Skinned Knee? Drink some Pedialyte, and wash up with soap and water!
http://pedialytesoapandwater.com