The Day Time Stood Still

The Day Time Stood Still
Close-up of the town Katrina Memorial.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Update!

Check out the photos added to "House Party"--they increase the post's cuteness 100-fold.


Also, take a look at the marathon post--nothin' like a sweaty marathoner!


Finally, as a year-end treat, here is a photo montage of the past nine months on the Coast. Enjoy!


I single-handedly hold up the state welcome sign on my first trip to Alabama.







Dormant Mardi Gras float in Ocean Springs awaiting 2008's festivities (in which I will FINALLY get to participate!!)




Leah & Dal in The FEMA Hilton (aka my house before it was finished)







The Hair Cut!!! SOOO short!!






Can you say line-dancing? With awful posture no less...







Leah accompanies Kate's interpretation of "Old Latin ballroom dancer woos unsuspecting young thing whilst kneeling in a Mash t-shirt" (performance art on our front porch)






Horseshoe crab on the Carolina shore during Thanksgiving--thanks Dad!




My Sistah et Moi tickling the ivories at our Grandma's over Christmas


A Merry 2008 to all and to all a GOOD NIGHT.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Last but not Least

Although this weekend was my last here at the Mish, it many ways it was similar to all the others I’ve spent here. I woke up at 7 this morning to see off the volunteers who have toiled all week to bring Gulf Coast families that much closer to reclaiming their homes. This week’s group, from Pennsylvania Dutch country, had left behind bags of gently used work clothes and sleeping bags, which I hauled over to the food pantry at the office. Then at 7:45 a friend picked me up and we drove to a nearby Habitat for Humanity site, where we spent the morning installing windows and nailing down tar paper alongside the soon-to-be homeowner Miss Laverna and her granddaughters. Picture all of us humming along to Christmas carols on the radio as we sweat in the 75 degree, 90% humidity air—utterly disorienting for a native Midwesterner!

At noon I headed back home for leftovers from last night’s staff Christmas dinner, then spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning the house for the long-term volunteers who will replace me in January. As I write this, I am dog-sitting for some Floridians stationed at the local Air Force base; tonight we’ll all get together for some more good food and a few games of bean-bag toss, an Ohio favorite imported to the Coast by volunteers from Cincinnati. Tomorrow morning will find me worshipping at an Episcopal church, since there are no UCC congregations down here, and after church I’ll head back to the office to help put together Christmas baskets for our clients. Then I’ll try to catch a few hours of the Bears game and work on some lesson prep for the ESL class I teach to local Spanish-speakers—part of my new job helping to open a Latino community center next year—before welcoming this coming week’s group of volunteers from Texas.

Looking back on these past 9 months, I realize how often I’ve been swept away by the enthusiasm and grace volunteers bring to their work; how much I’ve learned about client casework and the realities of low-income and homeless living; how surprised I’ve been by the peculiarities of, and my own preconceptions about, the South—and most of all, how much I’ve learned about faith. Thinking about the moments of transformation I’ve witnessed—when a client’s needs are met beyond all their expectations, or when tears well up in a volunteer’s eyes as he or she reflects on a week of service—I can’t help but know that God is here laboring through the hands and hearts of our staff and volunteers, and working in the hearts and minds of our clients, homeowners, and local community members as well. It has been an absolute joy and privilege for me to be a part of this, and I will miss it deeply.
Your prayers and good wishes for the people of the Gulf Coast over the holiday season and into a new year filled with uncertainty—and hope—are truly appreciated.

Wishing you a Christmas of joy and a year of rebirth and rebuilding in the new Christ Child (after all, Jesus was a carpenter!),
Leah

She Did It, Folks!

As some of you may know, I have been training for a marathon for the last, oh, eternity...I mean, 6 months. Last Saturday, in Huntsville, AL, I ran it.

Before: After:


My roommate and my mom don't think I look any worse for wear... but let me tell you, it took 3 days of recovery just to be able to walk without bowing my legs out like a pregnant lady (thanks to The Sister for that image). It became a very serious game to avoid the slightest unnecessary use of any and all affected muscles--like Hot Lava, but painful. Ouch.

It was, of course, totally worth it--and although around mile 18 I was yelling "This SUCKS!!" to innocent bystanders and grouching at my sister* to meet me with SOME kind of sustenance at the next aid station, 30 minutes after the race was over I began planning when I would be able to do another marathon and strategizing about how to trim down my time. Given the lamentable state of my joints post-race, however, I think I'll stick to half-marathons and 10Ks from now on.

Interesting Marathon Factoids:

-The guy who ran the first marathon back in ancient Greece ran only 24 miles, and then dropped dead. When they held the first modern marathon in the 19th century, the sadistic Brits added the last 2.2 miles we now know and love (aka THE worst part of the race, where you want nothing more than to STOP. RUNNING. NOW. NOW!!!!). The reason? They wanted to end at a nice little castle in the area, which happened to be 26.2 miles from the start instead of the original 24. Stupid Brits.

-Best running outfit: Mr. Incredible (a runner dressed as the movie character in spandex and mask and gloves--really!)

-Best marathon t-shirt slogan: "18 weeks ago I thought this was a good idea."

-Best bystander: blonde woman in a dirndl playing "You Are My Sunshine" and 80s rock anthems on an accordion, on roller skates. I kid you not.

Training for the race helped me realize that I have a stubborn (masochistic?) streak that pushes me to finish my given mileage no matter how hard it is or how much I think I can't do it--this is empowering, but not if it makes you almost collapse during mile 7 of a training run when it's 85 degrees out and 90% humidity and you're scouring the sidewalk for change so you can buy an orange at the grocery store on your route because you forgot to eat something halfway through your run.

Therefore, I also learned how to take care of my body during training and how to establish a training rhythm, which is a very satisfying process. Conditioning your body to do something insane shows you just how incredible these fleshly vessels are. And the calf muscle defintion--good heavens!!!

After the race I was on a constant emotional high for the next week. (Omnipresent Christmas chocolate may also have contributed to this state of euphoria.) What a cool unexpected perk of nearly running yourself to death!

*Special thanks, ETERNAL sisterly thanks, go to my Wonderful Sister, without whose diligent and enthusiastic presence at every other aid station with food, drinks, encouragement, and concern, I .simply. would not have made it. She is an incredible person and I cannot imagine anyone else with whom I would rather have shared this experience. It was a team effort!!

Monday, October 29, 2007

House Party




Q: What do you do with an antsy 7-year-old who's just spilled glitter all over your desk in an attempt to glamourize your marathon training plan?

A: Take him on a field trip.





OPERATION "KEEP A 7-YR-OLD OCCUPIED":

Agents:
-Leah (aka Volunteer Coordinator)
and
-Number Five, Leah's sidekick (aka 7-year-old son of our Community Empowerment Advocate)
Mission:
Document "after" photos of Ms. Pat's house (90+ year old client with a heart of gold and some rad sunglasses)

Equipment:
-2 digital cameras (for documentation)
-Oreo crisp snack pack (for nourishment)

Mission Background:
Ms. Pat's house, when we began working on it in July, was covered in moldery old siding and graced by grimy, fungus-infested awnings. A crew of teenagers from my hometown (Chitown holla!) came in and destroyed the old siding. Folks from Michigan scoured down the awnings with pressure hoses, bleach, and scrapers, then painted them. Another group reattached the awnings and installed new flooring and cabinets, and a final group painted the whole house and trimmed out the windows and floors. Contractors installed appliances, hooked up the electricity, and connected the plumbing to the refurbished kitchen and bath.

Mission Report:
Number Five and I entered the target by means of a lock box on the front door, taking care to keep the new floors clean. We snapped several photos of the inside and outside of the house, attracting the attention of Ms. Pat (who is currently living across the street) in the process. We spoke with Ms. Pat about her new house. Analysis: homeowner is on Cloud 9 and should be moving in next week.
We exited the premises and Number Five, a budding combination lock prodigy, locked up the house and replaced the keys in the lockbox with no help from the person 3 and 2/7 times his age. Did I mention he made videos of our excursion? And figured out that people have to
As LisafMh of feministmormonhousewives.org would say, "Color me impressed."

Post-Mission Status Report:
Contractor has been called in to address remaining minor electrical inspection details; 7-year-old has new career prospects in locksmithing, or perhaps AV tech support. And we spent ample time inspecting bayou critters and playing at the park on the way home. Client gets her house back, I get my "after" photos, Number Five spins himself sick on the merry-go-round--everyone's happy.


The End.

A Little Piece of Heaven

Last Thursday was a little piece of heaven. I told a work crew, whom I was dropping off at their site in the AM, that I would pick them up around twelve to bring them back to their trailers for lunch. "Oh, hey,” they said, “Steve [a homeowner client on another site] invited us all over for gumbo, why don't you just take us over there and join us!"

“Well, okay.” Big grin.

It was a perfect fall day (the first, really, we'd had at that point--crisp in the morning and warm and sunny by noon), and the whole crew of drywall-dust-smudged volunteers, plus some hangers-on (me) sat around on plastic chairs underneath the house* eating homemade gumbo, Steve's hospitality spread out before us like an expansive picnic blanket.

Steve is what I like to think of as the best-possible-scenario client--unlike many of our clients who are elderly, disabled, working multiple jobs or unable to face the strain of 2+ years of hurricane aftermath, he is physical & emotionally able to work on his house with our volunteers as they replace siding, put in new flooring, trim out windows, etc. One night he stayed up past dark with a spotlight trained on the floor of a tiny closet as he pieced together leftover bits of laminate flooring, determined not to waste any usable material. Our volunteers, who are (understandably) disappointed when homeowners can't, or don't, come to visit their work-in-progress homes on a regular basis, are thrilled with people like Steve. When a homeowner makes an appearance, checking in once or twice a day--or, even better, works side-by-side with the volunteers--it becomes an infinitely more personal and meaningful experience. Suddenly it's not just a house they're working on, but a home. Big difference.

As his 90-something-year-old mother, Miss Sarah, made sure everyone had enough to eat (and more), and his dogs, Stinky and Belle, begged for Halloween-themed cookie crumbs, I chatted with a family friend who works at a local casino. She told me how she's living with Steve and his mother right now because she can't find affordable rent, and how the ladies who come into the spa where she works routinely marvel at the "cheap," $3,000-a-month rent for condos down here. “If I were paying that much for rent, I wouldn’t be able to eat!” she exclaimed. Good thing she has friends like Steve.

I don't know if it was the weather, the food, or the fellowship that made me the happiest--but it just felt like a taste of kingdom come. Houseless and kitchen-less, a regular guy lays out a simple feast on his front lawn for a group of strangers who have come, in the face of so much injustice, to help him recapture a little “just”-ness in his life.

Tell me this place ain't somethin' to behold.

*Steve's house is raised up on stilts in compliance with FEMA flood regulations.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Christmas in October

My good friend Rachael has come down to the Coast to volunteer for 2 months--she sold her car, broke her lease on her apartment, and rode a bus over 900 miles to get here! She has one of the toughest jobs at our non-profit--she works directly with clients giving out food, clothing, bus passes, hygiene kits, sack lunches, and other necessities, which means that she deals on a daily basis with desperate situations, hopelessness, heartache, substance abuse & mental health issues, and abrasive attitudes. She's really been a godsend--we'd be tearing out our hair if it weren't for all she does as the "gatekeeper" of our organization!

Rachael is also my role model for green-ness--environmental stewardship--and this year she's crafted a beautiful Christmas letter to send out to her family and friends in preparation for the holiday season. Read on, and check out the Green Xmas tips on the post below! --Leah

"Let me be one of the first to wish you “Merry Christmas 2007!” Yes, I know that you’re probably sifting through Halloween candy as you read this and, at best, envisioning the turkey and mashed potatoes that await you in several weeks. Christmas probably isn’t the first thing on your mind. But as you head into the upcoming holiday season, I wanted to share a few thoughts with you that might help to enlighten and enrich your Christmas experience this year.

The amazing book I read earlier this year Serve God, Save the Planet by Matthew Sleeth really challenged me to evaluate my habits and lifestyle in relationship to my faith. I came to fully understand why eco-stewardship is such a crucial part of following Jesus’ call to love our neighbors. Furthermore, Sleeth’s book helped to open my eyes to my multitudes of blessings and reminded me of the Bible’s position on giving to those in need and fighting for justice for the weak and oppressed. Being on the Gulf Coast has humbled me immensely and allowed me to understand the importance of the little things I take for granted on a daily basis.

As Christians we are oftentimes inundated with portraits of the poor and told how lucky we are to have things as simple as food, clothing, and shelter. Yet, though Jesus reminds us that the poor are among us, we are insulated enough not to really have to confront that fact, at least on a regular basis. In the hustle and bustle of our daily lives we are not often conscious of the suffering our brothers and sisters are enduring all around us. When we are hungry, we head to the fridge. When we are cold, we grab a sweater. When we are tired, we climb into bed. Too often it is easy to forget how all around us people struggle to secure even one of these basic needs every single day.

So where do my Christmas tidings fit into all of this? Well, as I began to understand the breadth of my many gifts, I started to assess the nature of holiday gift giving in general. I began to ask myself, “What do I really need for Christmas this year?” And while visions of proverbial “sugar plums” danced through my head, I quickly recognized that while I certainly would love a new camera or cute winter sweater, there was nothing I could say I truly needed. The images of the people I served daily here in Mississippi began to fill my mind, and before I knew it I was rid of those silly dancing sugar plums.

Christmas is a holiday commemorating the greatest gift we could ever receive: the love and grace of Jesus Christ. We give gifts each year to symbolize this gift and those that the Magi joyfully brought to the baby Jesus. Giving gifts to one another as a sign of love, joy, and peace is a wonderful part of our contemporary Christmas tradition. Yet, I had to ask myself, “Do I really need a new bath set or gift card to commemorate the birth of my savior?” Furthermore, when there are those who hope to fill the bellies of their crying babies, soothe their aching feet, or find a respite from the cold on Christmas Day, isn’t there a better way to honor and celebrate His life and teachings?

So, this year, in honor of Jesus’ birthday, I have a different kind of Christmas list for all of you. I would like food, clothing, and shelter for those who need it. How can you do that? Well, each week we turn away hundreds of people who need help with the basic necessities of life because there simply aren’t enough resources for them. Instead of buying me a present this Christmas, you have a wonderful opportunity to honor Jesus and his call to love your brothers and sisters in the Gulf Coast region by making a gift to the organizations where I work*. The joy and relief you can provide for them is far better than any present you could ever buy for me!

Furthermore, I lovingly challenge you to evaluate your own holiday gift giving. I know I certainly have drawers full of gifts I have barely touched. Are there people in your life that are so difficult to buy for you always end up just resorting to something impersonal or unnecessary? Think instead of donating to a charity that means something to them! Do you have items you could give to a mission in your area? Do you have a free Saturday to volunteer your time? The best gift we could ever receive was Jesus’ unfailing love. In turn, the best gift we can ever give is to love our neighbors, each and every one: especially the ones it is easy to forget about it amidst the chaos of our contemporary commercial Christmas.

…with tidings of comfort and joy… --Rachael"

Christmas in October--Go Green!

Tips for a Green and Socially-Responsible Holiday Season
Festive & easy ideas by my good friend Rachael, my green heroine!!

1. Recycle your tree
Did you know that you actually can purchase a live Christmas tree that can be replanted post-holiday season? If you’re not into living trees then you can still purchase a cut tree, but make sure to take the extra step of recycling it instead of sticking it out with the trash! Go to Earth911.org to research recycling programs near you! (It’s also a great resource for recycling needs of all kinds…)

2. Minimize wrapping and packaging
Think of all the paper, bags, boxes, and ribbons you throw away every year! If nothing else, look for recycled wrapping paper. Think about cutting back on tissue paper and trimmings. Get creative with packaging; try layering a gift bag with several gifts instead of splitting presents into individual parts. And do your environment and your pocketbook a favor and unwrap carefully so you can reuse it next year!

3. Give non-tangibles
The best way to reduce wasted packaging is to reduce what is being packaged! Instead of bulky gifts think about treating a friend or loved one to dinner, a night at the theater, a car wash, or an evening of free babysitting!

4. Buy local
Make Christmas merrier for families and small businesses in your area by patronizing local stores and restaurants. Keep this in mind when you’re stocking the fridge for holiday parties, too! Food and travel are actually bigger waste contributors during the holidays than paper waste. Remember that the average meal travels 1500 miles to get to your plate. Be a good neighbor in more than one way and shop locally!

5. Upgrade to LED lighting
LED lights use only about 10% of the energy of incandescent bulbs and last so much longer. They also emit much less heat which makes them safer to hang on the tree next to your ornaments. And once you hang your LEDs, remember to turn them off when you’re out of the house or in bed for the night.

6. BYOSB (Bring Your Own Shopping Bag!)
Have you "sprung" yet for those inexpensive, reusable grocery shopping bags? If not, this is a perfect time to do it! Keep them in your car and bring them along when you run out to get ingredients for a party snack or head to the mall for your next round of gifts. Some stores even give you a discount for bringing your own bag! (And if you forget, save disposable bags too and reuse them to tote gifts to a party!)

7. Shop online
If you know what you want, cut out the middle man and buy direct from the warehouse. This cuts back on unnecessary packaging and delivery to wholesalers and retail stores as well as your excess time and gas going to the mall.

8. Be fair and buy fair
When you’re shopping, look for fair trade certified products. Fair trade certification means that producers and laborers are ensured a fair price and labor conditions. Remember this: money is power. Every time you give a company money you empower them to continue the practices they have in place. How about empowering companies committed to justice and equity this Christmas season? Check out http://transfairusa.org/

9. Do your research
Co-op America has a “Responsible Shopper” webpage where you can learn about the social and environmental impact of major corporations. Go to http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/rs/ and decide for yourself which companies deserve your support this holiday season.

10. Remember to reduce, reuse, recycle…and relish in green holiday cheer!

Thursday, October 25, 2007

(Life After) Death & Taxes

An interesting post about the messed-up tax structure in Mississippi, our current gubernatorial race (bizaaaarre--see the NYTimes article entitled "In Mississippi, Democrat Runs in G.O.P. Lane," : http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/us/10governor.html?_r=1&ei=5018&en=25841aa8d8ef109a&ex=1192680000&partner=BRITANNICA&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin ),
and the reasons behind our dubious distinction as #1 in the country for poverty levels. See also my comment in response--the poster brings up some interesting info, I think, but is way off-base on a couple of points.

"Only in Mississippi...."

Thanks for the link go to The Sister. :)

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Where Have You Been All My Life, Fall???

The great state of Mississippi finally got a touch of fall weather in the middle of this past week. This statement requires some qualification, of course--we're talking mid-80s as the high every day, with mornings brisk enough for a long-sleeved shirt if you're so inclined (which I'm not). People here wear t-shirts and shorts on Halloween, not long-johns under their costumes like where I grew up (this fact considerably improves the look of the midriff-baring Princess Jasmine combo).
Nevertheless, there's a breeze in the air and the humidity has taken a vacation to the tropics; later-blooming goldenrod is flowering all over the wild spots in the highway medians and ditches; the butterflies that folks up north have said goodbye to are flitting in between the wall frames going up on new houses being built on the beach, and hummingbirds are attacking my car when I pull up to a stop sign too close to their feeding ground (those buggers are territorial!). I've come to feel a surprising affection for the scruffy sycamore, the only tree that shows signs (albeit brown and yellow signs, not the festive red-orange-gold kind) of jumping on the fall bandwagon. It seems to have filled out all at once in a drunken foliate spree, then woken up the next morning to regret its profligate ways and promptly shed its leaves like half-eaten canapes that have been left out all night. Sycamore, you rascal!

The other way I know fall has arrived? The construction supers at the Habitat for Humanity house I worked on this morning had labeled all the interior walls and their future locations on the subfloor according to the Patriots and Colts football teams: "Hey, where's Randy Moss? Let's get him up here right next to Tom Brady and pound a few nails into him. Then we'll work on Peyton."

Ah, Fall.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Hungry for Debt Cancellation

I signed up for a fast 6 weeks ago in solidarity with Rev. David Duncombe of the UCC, who is undertaking a 21-day fast for debt relief for countries whose debt was not forgiven at the G8 conference. Rev. Duncombe is using this time to meet with lawmakers in Washington, D.C. to garner support for HR 2634, the Jubilee 2007 Act. This act would alleviate the debt of countries not covered in the 2005 G8 debt cancellation agreement but which are still in desperate need of debt forgiveness. The stranglehold of interest and debt payments that industrialized countries and international financial institutions (like IMF and World Bank) hold over the heads of developing countries effectivley stifles any chance they have of combating poverty and injustice in a meaningful way. Many other factors (some internal, like corruption and poor environmental stewardship; some external, like international trade and ag policies) need to change for extreme poverty to be halved by 2015, as stated in the G8's Millenium Development Goals; but continuing to exact interest and principle payments on meaningless, crippling loans which prevent developing countries from even beginning to address extreme poverty and its root causes does not help. So I've been fasting for 6 consecutive Thursdays, starting on Sept. 6 and ending tomorrow; and I've committed to repeatedly contact my Congressional representatives in an effort to pass HR 2634. The money I save from not consuming meals was sent to Heifer Project International ( http://www.heifer.org/) to help a poverty-stricken family become agriculturally sustainable, financially independent, and healthier with a gift of bees whose honey they will harvest and sell.

If you want to know why I'm doing it, here's a short explanation: http://www.jubileeusa.org/home/front-page-news/cdffeatures.html You can also link to more info about debt relief on the Jubilee website.

Fasting is--well, an interesting experience. For those of you interested in the specifics, I am not eating any solid food on the days that I fast--just liquids (water, juice, sports drinks, hot chocolate, soy milk, tea, etc.), from the time I wake up until the time I fall asleep. At first it gives you a sort of light, floaty feeling--you're zipping about and getting things done efficiently--and there's a sense that you're cleansing your body (until you drink three cups of fake powder chai tea....). But by the afternoon, around 5pm or so, I start to crash and feel a complete lack of energy and concentration. If I can keep myself busy, like teaching ESL class or hanging out drinking some juice at a friends' house while they eat a homecooked crab cakes dinner (sigh...)--then I'm fine. But if there's nothing external to do, I lay on the couch watching DVDs and barely moving, and I head for bed at 7:30 or 8. So obviously the key is staying buzzzzzy.

I find what I miss the most is not actually the taste of food or the sensation of having a full stomach, but the texture of food, the solidness of it as I chew. After your first dozen cups of microwaved apple juice, you just want to bite into a waffle or a granola bar or pudding or.... anything substantial.

Other than that--it's not bad. Friends feel guilty for eating in front of me, but it's a choice I've made. I went to visit a friend in the hospital a few weeks ago and was jokingly commiserating about how we were both on liquid diets--but she pointed out how completely different it was because hers was doctor-enforced and mine was voluntarily. It's true, and her comment was a reminder of just how disparate real hunger is compared to one day of fasting. But just a taste of that (no pun intended)--just a short time of self-imposed deprivation, is good to remind you what millions of your fellow humans go through daily. Just a taste.

Monday, September 3, 2007

Je jure mon allégeance...

I was driving back from dropping off a friend at the New Orleans airport the other day around 5:30 am, listening to the Ragin' Cajun, 100.3 FM. It was still dark out as I cut through the city on the 610, and suddenly the station changed from your typical Zydeco-Cajun mix of accordion-laced down-homey tunes, sung in accented French, to a recording of several voices intoning cyclic chants about God, Jesus, and "le Saint Esprit." It took me a few listens to realize (being the non-Catholic that I am) that it was a congregation praying the Rosary.... in Cajun French. Weird.

Folks who have learned "Parisian" French in a sterile academic setting often find Cajun French understandable, but barely. I like to think of it as the difference between a Boston Brahmin's clean, starched-collar elocution and the bouncing, rollicking twang of a native Texan. There is something sort of buoyant about the way Cajun words drop into the mouth and tumble around, in the process smoothing away some of the sharper, more precise corners that indicate that certain "raffinement" particular to textbook French. (Montrealites (Montréalais??) sound like this to me as well--probably just my American ears' inability to hear the nuances between the two.)

The repetitive nature of the Rosary was oddly calming as I powered through narrow lanes and sharp curves, zoomed up off of an energy drink (since I'd been awake from 3am on...). I spent so many miles listening to Cajun Catholics pray that I can now say the Hail Mary in French. I have no idea how to say it in English, but since I only go to Mass when I'm in France, I guess it doesn't really matter.

The strangest part about this was crossing the I-10 Twinspan going east as the sun was rising. As the clock ticked over to 6am, an instrumental version of the national anthem struck up. Then, in a moment of bizarre cognitive dissonance, my ears filled with the sound of the Pledge of Allegiance being transmitted over the airwaves in French. I wondered if this expression of patriotism was an intentional embrace of what the United States did for the foremothers and forefathers of today's Cajuns--it was, after all, this country which welcomed the Acadian refugees when the British kicked them out of Canada. Given the long-term, deliberate persecution of French-speaking Louisianans, however, and the systematic repression of pretty much any other minority group wanting to preserve their language and cultural heritage in this country (Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, some dialect speakers, indigenous Spanish communities...), it's quite ironic that the local Cajun radio station broadcasts a Pledge of Allegiance to the government in a language which they were forbidden to speak by that very same government.

Oh, the complexities of United States history.


PS: A belated happy Indigenous People's Day (known to most of us as Columbus Day), by the way. I refer to it as the former because I'd rather celebrate the immense diversity of this land's native cultures than the man who massacred thousands of Arawak Indians in the interest of expanding Spain's imperial grasp.

Monday, August 27, 2007

2 Years and Counting...

Two years after Hurricane Katrina, life on the Gulf Coast has become a strange mix of the outwardly normal interspliced with the inwardly fragile. Storms forming in the Gulf loom over every casual conversation about the weather; a mundane review of a staff hurricane preparedness plan causes faces to cloud and shoulders to slump as coworkers relive the pain of Katrina’s chaotic aftermath. Though they faithfully show up for work, poor sleep and depression plague everyone from the cashier at the food mart down the street to Miss Gina, the woman holding together the local soup kitchen with her two hands. School-aged children cower in closets when afternoon thunder rolls on the Gulf; Miss Clara, an elderly client, blows out another year’s candles with a fervent wish not to spend her next birthday in a trailer seeping formaldehyde. There’s a sense that we are all teetering on the edge of a delicate balance between the routine and the heart-stopping.

Thankfully, physical progress continues to scramble determinedly along, thanks largely to volunteer groups like the ones that have come to serve at the organization where I work. One by one, damaged houses come back to life, as signs of recovery crop up like the morning glories in the vacant lots now dotting the city. Traffic lights have been restored on the main drag, and the bridge at the west end of Highway 90 reopened in June. Thanks to the labors of our volunteers, Miss Clara will be back in her house by Christmas instead of sometime next year. But the deepest damage wreaked by the storm—perhaps less immediately evident, but no less insidious—is that inflicted upon the spirits of those who bore the wrath of Katrina and who fight, every day, the battle of reconstructing entire lives from next to nothing. As much effort and energy as it takes to re-shingle tattered roofs, install new cabinets, repair rotten siding and replace buckled flooring, these tasks are all readily tackled with the abundance of volunteer sweat and enthusiasm which we are so blessed to have. A far more elusive commission for our community remains that of our organization's post-Katrina slogan: Rebuilding Lives, Rebuilding Hope.

As the two-year anniversary approaches, we are all called to reflect on how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go, and what role each of us—you and I—might play in the continued effort to accomplish our mission. As welcome as physical labor and material and financial donations continue to be, taking the time to establish an exchange with local school kids*, or to write a letter of solidarity to the local paper (www.sunherald.com); calling your senators, then representatives, to ask them to push hurricane recovery funding through Congress; saying a simple prayer for the physical and spiritual recovery of the Gulf Coast—these are gifts just as valuable as a nail pounded in a two-by-four. Let the Coast know you have not forgotten them—or us, I should say, because in a way I have become a part of the community here, and I feel called to remain in Mississippi past the end of my volunteer term and to keep working for a just recovery. So I, along with the rest of the Coast, ask for your ongoing prayers and support, as we continue to Rebuild Lives and Rebuild Hope.

*http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/ms/district_profile/9/ ; http://www.lbsd.k12.ms.us/ ; http://www.gulfportschools.org/index2.html ; www.biloxischools.net ; http://www.harrison.k12.ms.us/Default.aspx?tabid=135 ; http://www.ossd.k12.ms.us/

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

And..... We're Back!

As I have been reminded/chastised by more than one person in the last few weeks (and I am surprised and grateful that this many people care!), I have not been posting regularly as of late. This is due to a combination of extreme busyness at work, being out of town on several weekends, having guests/friends come to visit, and being in a general funk about writing. As faithful readers out there may remember, my first post was called "Waiting for the Rain"--and I am here to say that the drought is over!

What kicked me back into gear today was a small thing, despite the pre-existing weight of some very rich experiences bearing down on me and just crying out to be dissected and processed. In fact, it was a very ordinary, everyday object that most of us probably don't even consciously notice. My zeal for blogging was reignited by a mailbox.


For the past few weeks, our agency has been supplying volunteers to the local coordination center, which orchestrates the relief efforts of the dozen+ organizations doing rebuilding work in our immediate community. The coordination center has been utilizing our volunteers (amongst others) to conduct site-by-site surveys of the area's neighborhoods in order to determine the condition of the buildings on each lot, who owns them, and where the owners are in the recovery process. This information helps to direct the center's outreach efforts and rehab initiatives, and generally allows everyone to gauge the community's progress on the monumental path to recovery. It's hot, long work, but it can be very rewarding because it gives volunteers the opportunity to interact with local residents in a meaningful way--in responding to the survey questions, residents will often spend 15 or 20 minutes, or longer, reliving the hurricane and its aftermath and simply sharing their incredible, emotional stories with the volunteers. Those administering the survey encounter gratefulness, anger, hope, despair, friendliness, slamming doors, the peculiar love/hate relationship with FEMA, and the inevitable Chatty Cathy (or Carl).


On our post-lunch surveying run, however, we encountered none of the above. We were driving north of the tracks, attempting to find a bit of a street that had suddenly stopped on the south side of the tracks and was supposed to pick up several blocks down on the other side. We finally found the street, but all it took was a once-over to realize that it was nothing but a string of empty lots, each one so overgrown that they ran together into one long, unruly field. Apparently they hadn't been touched in years, or maybe decades; there was little hope of finding any of the addresses we'd been given to check off our list, 342-360 Saratoga. As I was executing a 3-point turn to head over to the next grid square on our survey maps, a volunteer in the back seat said, "Yep, there's 342--we're in the right place. No houses, though." I turned to ask how he knew which lot we were on, and saw a black metal mailbox almost buried in vegetation, stubbornly bent at a gravity-defying angle. The metallic stickers on its side announced that it was, in fact, #342. The fact that this used to be a house, a home--an entire life--suddenly hit me in the gut, going deeper than the constant, wearying deluge of statistics and stories, zeroing in on the place where you finally get it. Oof. This entire street used to be populated, lively; there was a lone, defiant mailbox with a clearly printed address to prove it right in front of us. Across the street, I could suddenly make out an empty dog kennel with the door hanging open. Traces of whole lives. Where are these people now? Down the block awaiting the funds to rebuild? Moved away to a fresh start? Dead?



Destroyer of records and pillager of essential papers, Katrina hit hard in this data-obsessed country, where you don't really exist unless you have an address. Those powerful little numbers give you someplace to receive mail and bills; they enable you to get a library card or a driver's license, file for taxes or apply for a new social security card; they mean you can vote as a citizen of the United States and indicate where you can do so; they tell the power company which transformer to repair when the lights go out and the customer service lady at the waste management company where your garbage gets picked up; they even allow the pizza delivery people to find you. My housemate and I just recently got an official address for our longterm volunteer house and spent a quarter of an hour screwing plastic numbers onto our gable end, thus declaring our newfound legitimacy to the world; I suddenly felt safer because an ambulance or a fire truck would now know how to get to us in an emergency.

An address puts you on the map, literally and figuratively--if there had been no mailbox, no address on that lot today, we would not have been able to officially mark off Lot #432 as "vacant/abandoned" on our survey grid. That was what was so depressing about it, I suppose--today, instead of being the emblem that facilitates so many daily tasks and validates an entire existence, those numerals were a death knell, proof positive that what once existed so definitively, no longer does. Today, those numbers were the embodiment of all that has been lost here on the Coast.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Learning to Receive

I've learned in the course of my travels that you often have to set aside your own preconceptions of "the way things are" in order to pay respect to, and gain appreciation for, your host's cultural traditions. You know, "When in Rome..." Usually this is a no-brainer for me--my openness to other ways of doing things has led me to many adventures and unfamiliar undertakings, everything from eating eel at a French-Japanese wedding to wearing the South Asian equivalent of Hammer pants to conform to conservative Indian mores. But one area of custom and cultural obeisance never fails to put my knickers in a twist: Hospitality. I was raised to offer to pay for a dinner or some other excursion or event when you are a guest in someone else's home, as a way of saying thank you; but in a lot of other cultures, this is the opposite of the norm. I once stayed with a Turkish college student in Istanbul (who had probably as much spending money as I did--zip) who paid for all my meals, all my museum visits, all my transportation, all the tea I drank and all the backgammon games I played, and even bought me a souvenir trinket I'd been admiring. When I asked, for the second or third time, to pay for a meal as my way of saying thanks, she looked me directly in the eyes and said, with a pained expression on her face, "STOP! You are shaming me." What I thought of as courteous offers were, in fact, insinuations that she and her family didn't have enough of a sense of honor to show the proper care and respect due to guests.

This same principle--the inverse of what I know--applies whether you're talking Turkish peasants or Istanbul urbanites, Varanasi schoolteachers or Delhi socialites, Lousiana ranchers or Gulf Coast dockworkers. And it means that I as an outsider have to swallow my own ingrained cultural patterns, rethink my definitions of "generosity" and "hospitality," and give up the power I'm used to having as an equal contributor. I hate that indebted feeling--it takes some serious reconditioning for me to accept, in its totality, being a guest.

In fact, it seems to me that the whole guest-host relationship is about power--my inclination as a white American woman is to assert my independence by showing that I can take care of myself (financially and otherwise) and that I won't be sugar-daddied, especially by men my own age. I'm used to being in power, or at least sharing power, and when I can't I chafe against what I see as being constrained to a very limited, passive, female role. This is, in part, why I find myself wanting to rebel so hard against the "Southern gentleman" type down here, the man who tries to pay for everything, all the time, no exceptions--and who looks at you like you're cross-eyed if you even think of trying to pick up the tab. It's like you're insulting his mother--come to think of it, you are, because you're implying that she didn't raise him right. Now, I'm not sure I could ever be that unequal of a partner, in terms of finances or power, in a longterm relationship--but as a short-term resident of the South, I am having to learn to accept the intensity of the "chivalry" here. (As an aside, let us note that chivalry as a way of life went out either with the Crusades or the pistol duels of the 19th century, depending on whom you ask, but either way it is long gone.)
Really it's a matter of becoming vulnerable enough, trusting enough, to let someone else make the decisions for you; but I tend to see the "imbalance" in this dynamic in terms of what I can't give or repay, not in terms of what I am allowing others to give to me. Something to work on.

The other aspect of this hospitality conundrum is something I often witness workcampers butting up against--accepting gifts from those you have come to help. One pastor from Connecticut who volunteered here told me how frustrated he had been when, as a young man leading a work group at our organization, he and his crew had stocked the empty pantry of the homeowner whose kitchen they'd been rehabbing as a house-warming present, only to find on their last day of work that she had used every last pickle slice and potato chip to make them a huge farewell lunch. "That food was supposed go to her," he had lamented at the time; "it wasn't supposed to be used on us!" As he later put it, he learned some grace-filled lessons about hospitality and generosity that week. I'm reminded of the parable of the Widow's Mite: the fact that the homeowner gave all she had, even though she had so little, amplified the magnitude of her gesture so that it was able to embody the sense of gratitude she felt for the work that had transformed her daily existence. In response, the workers had to learn to give up the control they'd had of the situation all week and, in a Christ-inspired role reversal, let the receiver become the giver, and vice-versa.

Another example from earlier this year: each week for 1o weeks straight my good friend Lucious cooked a massive feast for the volunteers who had come to work on his house. Each week he bought 30 or 40 steaks; he slow-cooked 3 racks of ribs; he boiled, fried, and grilled several pounds of huge Gulf shrimp; he fried up tons of flaky catfish; he roasted heaps of chicken wings and legs; he boiled snappy blue crabs; he whipped up endless batches of onion rings, waffle fries, tater tots, potato salad, etc. etc. Even though he claimed to have an "in" at local butcher and seafood shops (which he probably does, since he's been in the restaurant business for years), it still cost him a small fortune to prepare all that deliciousness; not to mention to do it ten times. And not only was each such undertaking financially burdensome, but it was time-consuming as well: he would start the day before by smoldering an entire section of tree trunk in a burn barrel to make the coals for his grill. Come the morning of the day of, he would spend hours slicing and chopping and roasting and boiling in the hot sun in order to feed his crew (and half the neighborhood). And he consistently met with a withering look of disdain all offers of reimbursement.

Often volunteers expressed consternation about this: "Why does Lucious spend all this time and money on us, when it would be better spent buying supplies or paying for labor to rehab his house?" It's for the same reason he doesn't think twice about buying workcampers a radio or renting a Port-O-Potty for their convenience: it's his way of saying "thank you."

Once again, it's about power--or rather, the lack of power you feel when you have been forced to cram yourself and your wife and your granddaughters into an unsanitary FEMA trailer for over 20 months, the helplessness you feel when even though you are the family provider, you can't get together enough resources or time to restore your family's home to a condition that's fit for living. I can't imagine the humility it takes to allow someone to help you rebuild your life and do for you what you cannot do for yourself, day after day after day. How vulnerable and indebted you would feel... and how badly you would want to restore the balance between you and your helpers, even in a symbolic way. Lucious responded to our doing for him what he couldn't do for himself by doing for us what we couldn't do for ourselves--preparing a soul food-seafood feast and treating us to a good dose of Southern Hospitality. Which means put your billfolds away, shut your mouths and "eat you some shrimp, Boo!" A delicious lesson to learn.

Monday, June 11, 2007

The 3 Stooges

I must have a sign on my forehead, invisible to me but blatantly obvious to everyone around me, that says: "Please, give me animals to care for!! Preferably difficult cases!! And give them over to me for several days in a row, since clearly I have nothing else to do!!"
Because after the Infamous Kitten Incident (see Attack of the Kitties, May 6 post), I have once again ended up with multiple, domesticated (arguably) creatures under my wings--and this time it's dogs. A Whole Lotta Dog, to be precise.
It happened like this. My friend's father passed away unexpectedly, and she called me up from work and asked if I would be willing to dog- and house-sit while she and her husband went home to Florida to be with her family. We had only known each other for a period of several weeks, and the sum total of our interactions amounted to:

1.5 softball games and
.5 cornhole/grillout parties.

But she asked me because, as she put it, "I trust you." (This is one of those blessed moments in your life when you realize you must be doing something right.) I said yes, of course, even though I had never met her dogs--I am, by definition, a dog person, and I figured it couldn't be too taxing.

This is how I ended up dogsitting Merlin, Maverick, and Samson, otherwise known as The Three Stooges. (Points if you get the name reference for the first two--my friend's husband is in the Air Force, if that helps.)

Merlin and Maverick are black German shepherds, and Samson is, appropriately, a giant black and white Newfoundland. As mentioned above, this amounts to A Whole Lotta Dog. Although they are full grown, they are still in the teenage stage developmentally, and, as their owners put it, they are "really stupid" (they haven't trashed the house yet, so as far as I'm concerned, they're not all that dumb). Merlin and Maverick, who are brothers, were produced through some importunate breeding and thus are not considered high-quality dogs in a lineage sense, but in my opinion they're still some good-looking animals. Samson was an orphaned puppy being fostered by my friend's former boss when he decided he could no longer keep a steadily growing giant; my friend, having grown up with Newfs, took him on as a charity case and fell in love. He is the slowest of the three, but quite affectionate. All of them are nuts about tennis balls, shoes, and licking me in the face to wake me up in the morning. A more effective alarm clock I have yet to find.
I've been dogsitting since Thursday night (this will be night 5), and I have to say, despite the thick black and white hairs showing up in everything I own (including some I discovered between the keys of my laptop when I opened it this morning at work), it has its merits. First of all, as I said before, I am a dog person, and my family dog (a cute if somewhat aloof beagle named Belle) died in March. So it was high time I got some doggy TLC! Secondly, as I noted, these are some surprisingly beautiful animals, and once they warm up to you, they are all fun and games and let's-jump-on-Leah-because-we've-forgotten-we're-not-puppy-sized-anymore! (We just played a round of that and now the couch is vibrating because they are all panting in synch.) It's a fascinating process to discover the dynamics among the three of them and to learn their personalities. And you know, it's nice to have someone, or someones, to come home to. Even if they slobber. (In your armpit.) It gives your life a little more sense of purpose to be caring for other creatures, whether human or animal.
I'll try to take some pictures over the next few days to post here--particularly if I can capture that quizzical "What is it? WHAT IS IT??!!" look that they pull off so well anytime a doorbell rings on TV or I move more than a quarter of an inch from my seat.

Here's to lazy summer days sitting in a hammock with a beer and a saliva-covered tennis ball and the blue sky and three canine companions to keep you busy.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Opening Day

Today is opening day of the 2007 Atlantic Hurricane Season. How I wish we were talking about a sports team here...






Right now I'm not feeling too anxious about the season, but that's because I've never lived through the terror that is a Katrina or a Camille. They're predicting a ragin' season this year, but they predicted that last year as well and we had a vewwy vewwy qwiii-et season. *knocks on wood*

The better part of this week has been devoted to making hurricane evacuation plans, buying hurricane clips and plywood to cover our windows, and holding discussions about stockpiling our food pantry. Wasn't too freaked out until I thought about getting the interns I'm supervising in New Orleans out of there in case of a storm, and the fact that I won't be there in the city to help them.

Your prayers/good vibes for a quiet season are appreciated.

Here's hopin' that the only hurricanes we encounter this year are the kind that come in a glass with a little paper umbrella!

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Summer is...

the wall of heat inside my ovenlike car
overcome
by the sharp wave of cold that drenches my insides
when I bite into a pink sour lemon sno-ball.

With the doors flung ajar
I sit with my legs hanging out like a clumsy colt's
and let the breeze blow through, straight from the brassy blue sky.

crunch suck melt slurp ahhhhh.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Trivia

My sister (who visited last weekend--see "The Fecund Gulf") "tagged" me, which means she wants to know seven things about me that most blog readers don’t. So you get to hear them too. (ps I knew all of her 7 posted things on her blog, CrashOctopus.com--somewhere I am getting major sibling points!!)

1. I'm a nomad--I was born in Texas, grew up in Illinois, went to school in Boston and France, and have been to a good dozen other countries and 40-some states (Alabama being the latest--see the post titled Stars Fell On... on April 17). I also lived in New Orleans for a summer and now have ended up in Mississippi. It's sort of like that roulette rhyme: 'Round and 'round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows!
2. I was super-picky about the food I would eat when I was little; I ate nothing green except peas. The veggies I would eat consisted of corn, potatoes (okay, those are both starches), peas, and cooked carrots (never raw, horrors!!) with ketchup on them. Now I eat everything from alligator to rattlesnake to liver to rutabaga to spinach to borscht... my, how times have changed.
3. I used to play the piano. Key words, "used to." As in, no longer.
4. I am allergic to kitties. But not the ones I fostered, mysteriously enough...
5. I saw the movie The Notebook last night for the first time and I cried. I am a sucker for a good love story--not the sappy kind, but the kind that is a testament to the kind of love "that plants the fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds."
6. Eating whole pints of Blue Bell Ice Cream & watching YouTube videos of West Wing montages, Avril Lavigne music videos, and the guy who can play all of the original Mario Brothers soundtrack on the piano are my guilty pleasures. Okay, maybe not so guilty... I thoroughly enjoy them.
7. I like bats. There goes one now! (I think a colony lives in the live oaks in my front yard.)

Now I'm supposed to go "tag" 7 other bloggers... yeah, I know, hmm, 2 other bloggers, one of which already tagged me. But here's the link to the other blogger, my godsister Alison, who is now *it*! http://www.bluishorange.com/

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

The Fecund Gulf

"O God, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.

Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
it is teeming with countless creatures,
living things both small and great.

There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it."
--Psalm 104:24-25



Last weekend my sister came to visit (hurrah for lovely sisters who sacrifice their time and their money to come and see you--and as a birthday present, no less!) and it was fantastically refreshing. We ate too much, we slept in (a little), we got sunburned and bug-bitten. And we got to have those great long conversations where you find you don't have to explain yourself because all the ground work is already laid--you've known each other for so long, learned each other's habits, passions, mannerisms and endearing and/or annoying idiosyncrasies, and so the person you're talking to already gets it, gets you. It's like jumping right back into the middle of a book you haven't picked up in five months, and not having to go back and reread to catch yourself up because you know the story so well. And to think we used to fight about who crossed the invisible line in the back seat of the car...

The other thing we did last weekend was Nature. We saw and experienced so much wildlife that I told The Sis we should be getting our own Discovery Channel show. Here's a little taste:

Saturday we went to the beach armed with cameras and sunscreen and wandered out onto a dock with some kind of shorebirds perched on the end, hoping to get a shot or two (The Sister is a photographer, amongst other things).

While she was on her belly stalking these two smidgeons of birds--who, seemingly incapable of flying far enough to get safely back to shore, just kept edging closer and closer to the end of the dock until they had nowhere else to go--I was experimenting with the effect of my shadow on a school of tiny fish swimming against the current like iridescent grains of rice. Suddenly a great, beautiful heron flew almost directly over our heads. The Sister was trying to follow it with her camera as it passed us, when, lo and behold, a second heron as magnificent as the first came in to land about twenty feet away from us on our dock. Yes, we were laying low, and yes, we weren't really moving, but I was awed that such a normally skittish bird (the same species that takes off from the pond I run by in the mornings if I so much as breathe wrong) would choose to stay this close to humans. The heron (a great blue) just stood there for 10 or 15 minutes, unperturbedly grooming itself, inspecting us, and scanning the horizon for... what? Its partner? Food? Do herons just sit and veg out sometimes with no purpose other than to stand there lookin' good?

The highlight of the visit in terms of comedy was definitely the "heron pretends to be dog by scratching itself with long clawed feet" routine.


I'm a romantic, I freely admit it--but in the tradition of Native spirituality, it felt like the Heron Spirit had deigned to pay us a visit. It felt pretty special.


Next The Sister tried wading out into the water to snap a few photos of a bosomy pelican napping on a pier piling. It didn't seem to feel too enthusiastic about posing; but I got some good shots of my sister realizing she was knee-deep in saltwater holding a battery-operated device!

As she waded back out of the water, we were approached by another form of wildlife: a 2-year-old gabbling incoherently about the little crabs in the reeds--or something. Lest you think he is a little behind developmentally in terms of learning to speak intelligibly, we learned from his grandparents that he is learning to speak English and Portuguese--we just felt dumb compared to a little kid who could tell whole stories about marauding airplanes and spies in two different languages (albeit at the same time).

Later that afternoon we took it into our heads to go crabbing, an adventure which started out at the marina bait shop with a lesson from an elderly black lady who taught us how to tie a lead string onto a crabbing net like she'd been doing it her whole life--which, come to think of it, she probably has; another lady we met later that afternoon was crabbing for "groceries," as she put it. This is one way people put food on their tables down here.

Then off to the grocery store for a pack of chicken necks, one of which we tied to the sweet spot in the middle of the crab net and lowered off of the public pier (see The Pier). When lowered to the bottom, the upper ring of the net collapses flat onto the lower ring, leaving the bait innocently lying on the ocean floor, free to tantalize passing crustaceans. Every 20 minutes or so (we were told), you pull the net up and see what you've captured. Easy enough, we figured--we'll have caught enough in a few hours to give us both a few boiled crabs for dinner, no problem. Heck, let's invite the neighbors!

Four hours later, grand total of caught creatures (drumroll, please):

-1 one-clawed, midget crab too small to keep.
-1 shrimp. Which fell through the net.

Dinner was a DiGiorno's frozen pizza from Winn Dixie.

* * *


I should mention some more, well, impressive denizens of the Gulf we encountered at the Pier. A whole family was fishing and crabbing at the very end of the pier, and amidst the shrieks and laughter and the sound of aluminum can tabs snapping open, we heard a pre-teen voice squeal "It's a dolphin! Look, a DOLphin!!!!" It was, in fact, 3 dolphins (species unclear)--a mother and a baby swimming cheek-to-cheek, so to speak, and a third animal (Dad? Mom's BFF? Godparent?) swimming a distance away. They came within, what, a quarter of a mile of the pier? and then moved back out again, staying in the area for quite a while. We saw them from the bay bridge the next day, as well; because they stayed in the same place for two days running, and because the mother and baby were swimming so close together, we hypothesized that Momma had just had the baby and was sticking in a sheltered spot to help it get used to swimming on its own. I'd never seen a dolphin in the bay before--I'm sure it happens all the time, but all the same, the cetacean sighting along with the heron visit conspired to make me feel we were having an enchanted day, despite the crab fiasco! (I've since been informed, by the way, that crabbing at the public pier probably did it--it's overcrabbed. Next time, The Sis and I will be heading out to the Gulf to a less popular spot to get us some crawly critters for dinnah.)

The next day we borrowed a friend's kayak and hit the wetlands. I am proud to say that it took us almost no time at all before we were smoothly gliding through the water, paddles synchronized in a glowing example of sibling solidarity... well, minus the numerous times I though The Sister needed some help turning and I added my own back-paddling or braking, thus throwing off her careful calculations about how much reverse thrust would be needed to bank a turn. I couldn't resist--I was just trying to help!
But seriously, we executed some sweet maneuvers, including reverse paddling and three-point turns, and we only got stuck once--in someone's front yard! I was unaware that private individuals have docks leading from their houses out into the wetlands, and that, even if you are inadvertently intruding into their "lawn," they will wave enthusiastically and walk all the way to the end of their dock laden with Cokes and cups of ice to cool you down from the hot hot sun. Now THAT is Southern Hospitality!

Aside from mastering the art of the kayak--which can be really euphoric when you get a good, coordinated pace going and find yourself slicing cleanly through the water--the rest of the experience was rather Alice-in-Wonderland. Kayaks sit so low in the water that you end up at eye-level with the reeds and the mud, and the red-winged blackbirds squawking at you that you're invading their territory are actually perched menacingly close above your head, so that you feel they may indeed have the upper hand and it would be best not to incur their wrath. This circumstance also allows you to drift in close enough to observe the minuscule crabs burrowing into the mud anchored by the waving grasses of this water-prairie. At times, the blackbirds and the great blue heron which buzzed our watery foxhole (the same which starred in yesterday's dockside drama??) actually made me feel I was traveling through a rolling Illinois grassland.
The labyrinthine* channels leading off of the main waterway are so precise that you wonder if they weren't laid out by humans hands. Every twist and turn as you navigate their meandering corridors is a surprise; once we turned a corner a bit too quickly and surprised an alligator out of its nest, right into the water beside us. Alligators move fast, so fast that my sister missed the whole thing because my head was in her way (I was sitting in the front). This capacity for speed, coupled with the fact that we were now sitting in a very low-slung plastic shell (which no longer seemed very sturdy) in opaque brown water concealing the whereabouts of a creature whose bite PSI** can be comparable to that of having a small pick-up truck dropped on you evoked a response that can be best summarized by the word:
PADDLE!!!!

We saw neither hide nor claw of this superb predator after it slipped into the water, fortunately--just a whole lot of fish jumping and flopping out of the water (trying to escape alligators?? Trying to grab an insectual snack?), a small <--- green heron (they're about 18 inches in body length), and a whole lot of boaters destroying the wetlands by going so fast through the main channel that their wake violently slammed the fragile reed-laced mud, thus carelessly washing away vital habitat. I felt like painting a gigantic NO WAKE sign in red letters on white plywood and installing it in a prominent location in the marina, perhaps under cover of nightfall in some sort of eco-guerilla action--hmmm, it's dark out now...where do we keep the spray paint?

This intimate tour of an unfamiliar ecosystem was like getting to peer at a Caravaggio up close; maybe beforehand you had a vague notion that the painting was a masterpiece, but you had never really looked at it that carefully. I'd heard how magnificent and ecologically vital the wetlands are; but now, I've stood nose-to-nose with the brushstrokes and discovered for myself this magical world teeming with incredible life, an entire network of organisms that, from afar, only looks like a lot of grass and water--pretty, but unanimated. Ah, how very artful is Mother Nature!


*awesome word, no?

Monday, May 14, 2007

1 dead in attic

Some days, it hits you harder than others. Like the days when you just happen to glance up as you drive to the post office to buy 2 cent stamps because you neglected to mail something important before the rate increase, and a two-story metal skeleton sprouting through the tree tops claws across your vision with its twisted, naked steel beams. Or the days when you're driving a couple of volunteers to work sites along the Gulf Coast highway, and for no apparent reason you start to count the number of barren lots marked only by empty metal signs and weeds and you lose count after 50. You get good at guessing what used to be in a particular spot, places where formerly lively establishments have been rendered bleakly anonymous but for a telltale row of gas pumps, a half-legible Olive Garden sign, or a set of front porch steps leading nowhere.

A few nights ago a volunteer group asked me to lead them on a "tour" of the town--it was already pitch black, so the only place I could think to go that was well-lit (besides the casinos, of course) was the local Katrina memorial, where a stark granite wall marks the height of the storm surge, and a collage made from artifacts locals found in the wreckage of their homes sits under floodlights. It's continuously illuminated in a way that reminds me of a war monument or the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In a way it's both, I guess--350 some people died in the storm, and almost 20 months after she hit they still haven't identified all the bodies.


We walked around the memorial, peering at Little League trophies and battered silverware and rosaries and a silver "Most Likely To Be Missed" plaque from a high school class circa 1970; we then crossed the street over to our van, which was parked in the shadow of a multi-storied apartment complex that looks perfectly normal until you realize that the entire first floor has been erased.



Once back in our vehicle, we drove a few blocks east to an Episcopal church just off the water; like a cow carcass set upon by piranhas, the structure was picked completely clean by the immense wall of water that swept the coast that day. The surrounding property is one big mess of debris and brush, fallen trees and stubborn stumps and prickly, crackly vegetation, and out of it rise the rusted, dully red legs of a giant spidery sculpture, obscenely splayed like a tragicomic parody of the fiery orange Calder Flamingo in downtown Chicago. These metal beams are all that's left of a once graceful sanctuary built in 1969 after Hurricane Camille destroyed the original church building in 1969--talk about bad luck. Its congregation had chosen to rebuild in the same spot that first time because they were inspired, I suppose, by its proximity to water, that holiest of elements. This time, not without heavy hearts, they're relocating north of the interstate, a good 3 or 4 miles away.


It's in those moments--when you find yourself scrambling over the implacable rubble of a church, or when you notice that that piece of plastic ground into the dirt next to you as you cut across someone's lawn is an orphaned hairbrush, barely recognizable; when you feel the sky go grey and the wind pick up and the lightning dance a little jig across the tree tops and you're reminded in no uncertain terms that you now live in Hurricane Country; when you read a heart-wrenching Chris Rose* column about New Orleans struggling to revive itself after the storm and it socks you in the solar plexus because it is so real and because you know that so many houses sit empty, still--that's when you know, in your bones, why you're down here.



PS. A huge THANK YOU to all who participated in last Saturday's nation-wide Stamp Out Hunger US Postal Service food drive! Our food pantry was the recipient of over two mail trucks full of cans and dry goods, and although our caseworker was a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of food--I don't think any of us had ever seen so many cans of potted meat--we were all thrilled to have so much food to distribute to our clients. Well done postal customers!!


*Chris Rose is a stellar Times-Picayune columnist who returned to the city literally hours after the storm to report on the devastation and whose writings acted as a lifeline for many exiled New Orleanians longing for news of home in Katrina's aftermath. A book of his collected post-Katrina columns, 1 dead in attic, is phenomenal; it is a must-read for anybody who wants to understand (as much as it is possible for someone who didn't live through it) what the city and the people that love her went through. http://www.chrisrosebooks.com/

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Attack of the Kitties!

Yesterday a delegation of workcampers talking in baby voices knocked on my door at 7am. I couldn't figure out why they were leading a troupe of small children over to my trailer on a Saturday morning (a belated Easter egg hunt?), but I rolled out of my bed/shelf (watch your head!), threw on some clothes and peeked out from behind my door into the blinding sunlight. They offered profuse apologies for waking me up early on my day off (let's face it, I don't have days off; pretending otherwise is just setting myself up for disappointment), then handed me a basket of cats. 4 mewling kittens, to be exact, black as coal dust, and outrageously eager to escape their yellow plastic laundry container-turned-conveyance.

The workcampers were late to catch their flight in New Orleans--what a parting gift!--, so into the trailer came the kittens, out came all my books from the cardboard box they'd been inhabiting for the last 2 months, into the box went the kittens, off of the rack came my towel, onto the towel went the kitties, and, kittens contained, over to the workcamper trailers I went to find their mama, whom the workcampers informed me was not doing well.
Indeed, she was sprawled, unable to move, next to a tupperware container full of milk; her mouth was dribbling reddish fluid into the milk, creating little pink coagulations that drifted aimlessly across the milk's white surface. Using rubber gloves from the volunteer trailer kitchen, I put her in the yellow laundry basket with a handtowel for comfort and trucked her over to my RV so I could keep an eye on her.

Next I thought it would be smart to pile all the cats involved into my car and drive three blocks to the animal shelter billboard advertising free spaying and neutering that I pass on my daily run (it pays to be observant--this is also how I know where the thrift store is, how much gas prices change overnight [a lot], and where to find SkiDoos for rent--in the abandoned parking lot next to the cemetery). I called the posted number, called another number, and got a nice lady on the phone who told me how to concoct a little number I like to call Kitten Ambrosia: 4 oz. evaporated milk + 4 oz. Karo syrup + 4 oz. water + an egg yolk (sorry vegans) = kitty bliss. I made a quick run to the grocery store (thank God the Food Tiger is open at 7:30am) for the ingredients, a baby bottle--which the store clerk, bless her heart, thought was for a "bouncing baby girl", which I most emphatically informed here it was NOT; but in a spirit of goodwill she wished me an early Happy Mothers Day anyway--some flea ointment, a litter box, litter, and scooper; and then I went home and got down to business.

Sad to say, Mama Cat expired while I was doctoring her babies. I'm not overly sentimental about animals, but I like to think that once she saw someone caring for her kittens--once they stopped screeching with every millimeter of their tiny feline larynxes at the indignity of not being fed every hour, on the hour, and started eating--she felt like she could depart this world for the great pet cemetery in the sky. Ignominiously, I had to put her in a plastic bag and dispose of her in the trash bin, because animal control doesn't work on the weekends (since rabid raccoons decide to invade your garage only on weekdays?? Right). I said a little blessing over her strangely limp, heavy body, and then went back to ministering to her offspring. Which, it turns out, is a full-time job.

Let's just say that--after flea meds; flea spray; slow-motion warm-water tail-to-nose dips designed to make fleas head upwards yelling "Abandon ship!" so that when they reach the nose-up end you can pick them off with a pair of tweezers, which is insanely frustrating and doesn't work; whipping up Chef Leah's new feline specialty a couple dozen (okay, two, but it feels like twenty) times a day; bottle feeding four messy drinkers who can only lap insanely small amounts of liquid, IN SLOW MOTION; spilling most of the Kitty Ambrosia on my favorite gym shorts; doing three loads of hot-water, bleach-added laundry to get kitty diarrhea off of my shirts, towels, you name it; waking up for early morning feedings; being treated to Kitty Concertos of Lament every time I want to take a shower, eat, or do anything not involving my new best friends; and acquiring a disturbing paranoia which produces phantom sensations of fleas crawling all over my body even when there is manifestly nothing there--I understand why people drown motherless kittens. I would never be able to bring myself to do it, but I see the point. Kittens were made to be raised by cats, not by people (least of all by people allergic to cats. Achoo).

But as my sister says, there is no better feeling than having 4 little feline motors curled up on your lap, purring in sync. And it's pretty cute when, crying like banshees, they frantically claw the front of your shirt and make skyward supplications with their little paws in an effort to nuzzle under your chin. Turns out that sometimes, that neurotic meowing isn't just about getting you to prepare another bottle of Liquid Kitty Crack, stat--sometimes, they just want a little lovin'. Awwww.


PS. Kitten cuteness notwithstanding, tomorrow morning they go to the nearest no-kill shelter. I'd love to adopt them, but a 7am-7pm job and the brand new carpet in the modular house I'm moving into say, emphatically, "NO."

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

MSNBC article

One of today's front page MSNBC.com stories is about the complete and utter lack of affordable, workforce, and/or subsidized housing on the Gulf Coast. http://risingfromruin.msnbc.com/2007/05/rentals.html
" 'Rental Katrina victims are essentially the most powerless group of all in
trying to fashion a recovery,' says Reilly Morse, an attorney with Mississippi
Center for Justice, which advocates for racial and economic justice along the
coast. 'They have to depend entirely on landowners and land developers to make
something happen.'
The loss was staggering. In a state where nearly 30 percent of the residents are renters, 72,116 renter-occupied units were damaged or destroyed by Katrina, according to Gov. Haley Barbour’s office."

The rebuilding I'm involved with is all homeowner properties, but the direct service and emergency assistance that our organization provides serves hundreds of non-homeowners who, though they may have secured a local job, are struggling to find a place to live. The massive destruction of rental properties has caused rents on the housing that is still available to shoot through the roof, and the demolition or neglect of public housing (*ahem*, HUD!!) and other low-income housing options leaves people with little choice but to live on the streets or move away to an prohibitively expensive commute or a new locale where they have no job and know no one. The icing on the cake is the epidemic of NIMBYism--Not In My Backyard attitudes--that has hit the Gulf Coast. One local city council even went so far as to pass a resolution barring all projects funded by income tax credits (shelters, affordable or public housing, prisons, etc.), because, as one city official put it, they don't want "those kind of people" moving in. Please just come right out and call it what it is--ethnic and socioeconomic cleansing.

How do you support a service-industry workforce, like the one we have here at the Coast's many casinos, without some kind of accessible, affordable housing??

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

A SnoBall in... May.

May 1st here on the Gulf Coast and it feels like mid-summer at home. I drove a workcamper over to the next town to meet up with her crew on their worksite, and walking into the bedroom they were working on was like walking into a completely new house. Last Friday the room was so crammed with stuff--dark furniture, a water bed, piles and piles of papers and mementos and knicknacks, the result of the hoarding that comes from nearly losing all your possessions and never wanting to get rid of the things that made it through the storm with you--that you couldn't tell what color the walls were. Now everything is cleared out, the walls shine with a bright white coat of primer, and trimming, door moulding, and light fixtures are going up. I swear, seeing something so unexpectedly transformed like that is like Christmas in... May. Not the perfect analogy if you are from up North, but remember, this is a hot, July-like May we're talking about!

And then I took the back roads--bursting with lilac, jasmine, and a zillion other flowers--over to my friend Lucious' house to drop off a cooler of his we'd used last week to transport some frozen Gulf shrimp (mmmm). On the way back to the office I decided it was so hot and I was so parched that nothing but a snoball could quench my thirst and cool me off. For those of you who haven't ventured this far south during hot months, a snoball is like a snocone, but better--the ice is crushed finer and the choice of flavors is nearly infinite. My snocone purveyor of choice in these parts is Cospo's Snoballs--and boy do they do it right. A dollar gets you an overflowing mound of finely crushed ice (the key to a good snoball is crushing the ice on site), saturated but not drowned by a syrup of your choice, including, I kid you not, Ninja Turtle. For a child of the 80s, it does not get any better than this.

Roll down the windows, turn up the country, put your pedal to the metal on the highway along the Gulf and you got yourself a little slice of heaven.

Monday, April 30, 2007

The Pier

One of my favorite spots around these parts so far is the public pier on the bay near my trailer. I biked down there after work today to watch the fish jump and the sun set and the near-full moon rise. Sea gulls were squawking and fighting over the morsels tossed to them by a man shrimping closer in to shore; a family was fishing down at the end of the dock. I looked up at one point, idly pausing from writing my thoughts in my journal (thanks, Duck!), and happened to spot the king of birds--a great blue heron wading in the reeds. He waded, stood; waded, stood; then flew up to alight on the pier where the shrimper had been a few moments ago. His progress from pier to pier was contemplative, unhurried; eventually he made his way over towards the backwater pond where I usually see him during my morning jogs. He'd been absent this morning, and it was comforting to spy him out on the bay, a missing part of my landscape familiarly restored.

I know you're wishing I'd taken a picture, but some things are infinitely better in person.