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1) rut, n, 1 a: a track worn by a wheel or by habitual passage b: a groove in which something runs 2: a usual or fixed practice ; especially : a monotonous routine

2) rut, n, 1: an annually recurrent state of sexual excitement in the male deer ; broadly : sexual excitement in a mammal especially when periodic  2: the period during which rut normally occurs —often used with the

One of the joys of learning a new language is the acquired ability to rediscover your own native language.  Often this is a pleasure that I feel in passing moments that rarely account to much more than trivial knowledge in my own mind.  I am to emotionally stable and impatient to be poetic.  If there is a story inside of me to tell, I have yet to find it, and writing for the sake of writing has never been my thing.  But I can still appreciate the discover of new forces of power within old words.

I have been in a rut of one kind, but sadly not the other.  Before I looked up the word, as many people had been using it around me, I had a vague sense of what it meant.  I thought I knew the word in the idiomatic sense of “being stuck in a rut,” but I was missing a very key point.  In my mind, I had visions of the groove in the ground (even though it seemed more like a ditch than a narrow channel to me) and the sense of being stuck in it.  Well, actually, the idea of being stuck in the rut came out of the idiomatic phrase, though I always associated a rut as being something one gets stuck in.  There is an element of action within the definition of a rut that makes being in one so much more perilous.   Read the first definition again: “a track worn by a wheel or by habitual passage.”  There is a necessary action for the rut to exist.  It must be worn into existance.  How is this done?  Does one actively seek to make ruts?  No.  There is typically not a conscious effort to dig out a rut.  That would be “digging,” a different verb altogether.  “Wearing” simply occurs (here’s the kicker) “by habitual” means.  It is repetitive and takes time. 

A rut, in the figurative sense, does not occur overnight.  Waking up one morning and not feeling chipper does not mean a person is in a rut.  They are having a bad day.  These things happen.  A rut is when, drawing from the secondary definition, a “usual or fixed practice” becomes “a monotonous routine.”   This is where I am at.  My life here has become a static fixture of getting up, doing little, and going to sleep.  I am hardly active (although I can tag that one more to the fact that winter is making it more and more reasonable to stay inside and curl up in bed) and I am starting to worry that if I don’t change my habitual passage, I’m never going to get anywhere. 

My inspirational thought for the day comes from Capt. Jean-Luc Picard.  One of my other simple pleasures in life is stumbling across a Star Trek TNG re-run that was written by whoever on their staff was so engrossed with philosophical questioning.  There were two doozies on this episode.  The first was the time-traveler’s parodox, that is, if they go back in time and somehow change history, then their timeline might be altered and affect their existence.  This was brushed off by another question, that being, how do you make a decision in a dilemma, that is, a choice with two options, neither desirable.  The premise they set up made it so that with one choice, a terrible event would happen, but with the other choice, an even worse event could happen.  The decision is made in favor of the risk.

“To try or not to try. To take a risk or play it safe. Your arguments have reminded me how precious the right to choose is. And because I’ve never been one to play it safe, I choose to try.” 

Damn right, Jean-Luc. 

I need to get out of my rut.  Maybe into a rut (see definition 2).  But I need to do something.

I need to try.

Funniest thing I’ve read all week.

“Soft cheese asphyxiation” is the 2nd leading cause of death among intellectuals, after “Drinking with Christopher Hitchens.”

~ Stephen Colbert, I am America (And so Can You!)

Blog Canibalism or Blog Incest…?

This quote was written for a blog on www.huffingtonpost.com by Richard Schiff of The West Wing fame.  It is a very well put thought.

“If you are like me our most powerful epiphanies find us after their effect could have been put to good use. We are often too late with our brilliance. We are on time delay. The only instant gratification comes in the form of potato chips. The rest will find us by surprise somewhere down the road maybe as we sleep and dream of other things.”

I feel like that often, followed by the inevitable pain in my shins that come from kicking myself.  Just a reminder for that lofty ideal of awareness in the moment.  Never stop striving for it.

Writing to myself.

I didn’t know how long it was going to take me before I was overcome with the urge to post another entry here, but it turns out that it was less than 24 hours.  This, however, is less proof that I really have something to say, and more that I just have nothing better to do with my time. 

Today was a fairly terrible day that consisted of pacing, staring at a computer screen, trying to make follow-up phone calls for applications and resumes I had sent in, and being overwhelmed with the sense that I’m really just meandering through life right now.  I tried to pick up Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion again, since I had put it aside for the better part of the last week in favor of Millionaer, but that didn’t seem to help my mood for some reason.  This passage might be why:

“Man, it is true, can, by combination, surmount all his real enemies and become master of the whole animal creation: But he does not immediately raise up to himself imaginary enemies, the demons of his fancy, who haunt him with superstitious terrors and blast every enjoyment of life?  His pleasure, as he imagines, becomes in their eyes a crime: His food and repose give them umbrage and offence; his very sleep and dreams furnish new materials to anxious fear: And even death, his refuge from every other ill, presents only the dread of endless and innumerable woes.  Nor does the wolf molest more the timid flock than superstition does the anxious breast of wretched mortals.”                      ~ Dialogues, Part X

Rather uplifting reading, huh?  The point Hume was making at the time was that individuals often succumb to the irrational and imaginary fears of their mind.  In the face of external challenges and enemies, mankind has the ability to find the strength needed to overcome, but may still be destroyed by the demons and humours that too often define our weakest moments.  The context of this was as a counterpoint to the idea that man knows a deity exists, because one can be reasoned to exist through cause and effect, and that everything appears to be designed after a greater model.  Thus, man exists, therefore was created by a similar, but more perfect model.  Hume challenged that if human grace and kindness were created by a divine model, where was the kindness that would allow a creation to destroy itself by inherent and seemingly natural causes.  It’s a delicate way of saying, “if God exists, why do bad things still happen.” 

Actually, in that same part is another great passage that puts it sublimely:

“Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able?  then he is impotent.  Is he able, but not willing?  then is he malevolent.  Is he both able and willing?  whence then is evil?”  (And you thought Rabbi Kushner was making an original point…)

I felt today the way Hume describe above, caught up with the demons of my fancy.  I have put out resumes, and heard nothing.  I keep searching, but there seems to be little out there for me.  My dad is now starting to put pressure on me to go to a hiring agency and sign up with them.  But that wouldn’t do me any good, as it would still be leading me nowhere I want to go.  Besides, if I’m going to allow myself to get a crappy temp job, I might as well do it in a place that I want to live.  Let me move to Boston, find a roommate, live cheaply, be closer to the opportunities I want, and if I need to, get a crap job to survive.  I just feel like somehow, finding a job to have a job seems like giving up.  I don’t want to surrender my life. 

But maybe I already have, because I’m not really living right now.  Then does that leave me with two options?  Shrug my shoulders and accept things as they are, or pick up my life and take a huge risk and see what happens.

Great Scott

There is a great, trippy scene in the third chapter of the Back to the Future trilogy, after Doc Brown finds the Delorean in its cavernous hiding place, where he himself had placed it some 70 years before (that’s the trippy part), the two time-travelers break it out, clean it up, and after a few new tires are placed on it, get it running again.  All the dust and decay of an extended hibernation couldn’t stop the ol’ tin can from taking Marty back in time to face his destiny.

That thinly veiled metaphor is what I hope will happen to my blog.  My life is in a rut.  I really don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m heading, but time doesn’t seem to want to slow down so I can get out a map and figure it all out.  Consequently, I really don’t have a focus for my writing.  I would like for there to be one, as aimless ramblings don’t really amount to much, and I’m not one for keeping a diary for the sake of keeping a diary.  I don’t even know if I believe I am important enough to have something to say.  One could make the argument that because I belong to the human race, that makes me important enough to have an opinion.  The other side of that argument is, of course, that stupid people tell themselves that in order to validate their lives.

I want to validate my life in a real way.  And so maybe that should be my blog’s focus: my efforts at validating myself, to myself.  My best friend once told me she didn’t know if I would ever allow myself a shot at happiness, at going after what I want.  I am where I am right now, and perhaps that is proof enough that she wasn’t being too overly dramatic when she said this. 

My record here is of my progress – narcissistic, vain, and likely futile though it may be - toward finding my balance, my acceptance, and my peace about myself.  Or whatever else I decide to write about.  Man, that’s almost existential.

Back to the Future.

The Project According to Dan

I’ve decided to focus this update around what my role on the team was during this project.  Following my second-day, evening meltdown, I had a one-on-one meeting with Derek, as everyone else had the night before.  I felt compelled to explain to him my reservations about the project, namely that I had never really worked with kids before (although I did have the experience of once being a kid – some may argue I was born 40, but that’s a different topic), and that I wasn’t entirely sure what difference our team could make in two months.  Not to mention I was concerned that we would be lacking the one thing kids really need: consistency.  After two months, we’d be gone, and then what?  At the time we figured there would be another team following us, sure, but just when we were getting comfortable with the kids and (more importantly) they were getting comfortable with us, we’d be leaving.  He listened to me and told me that above everything else, kids just want attention and to be heard.  So, he asked that I just try and give them my focus when they were here and do what I could for them. 

I appreciated what he said, and while honest, valid and helpful, that was the only real training I would receive for the rest of the project.

There were a number of programs that we were asked to help facilitate at the club.  These programs were funded by grants that had been applied for and given to the club, so each of them had to be run.  My team paired off and was assigned at least one, maybe two, programs to be involved with.  I was teamed with Mike, and the two of us were put with a program called Passport to Manhood.  Control your laughter for just one moment, as it gets better.  So, P2M, as I came to abbreviate it, was designed for 11-14 year old boys, and led the group through activities and discussions that would focus on the various challenges of adolescence for boys.  These topics ranged from making responsible choices, to resolving conflicts with authority, to relationships with girls, to fatherhood.  Again, my only training for this program came from a teacher’s manual that had handouts and activities for each topic.  That and the fact that I seem to have navigated adolescence more or less successfully.   And, it needs to be said that there were few 11 – 14 year olds actually within the program.  The average age of kids in the class were 8-10. 

(As a side note, I was also put in charge of preparing an ACT Prep program for high schoolers.  I prepared a handout of strategies for answering ACT questions, practice tests for the different subjects, and fliers to promote this program in the schools.  I was told to have things on hand if anyone asked, because this was going to be a “upon request” type of program.  I never once had anyone ask for help preparing for the ACT.  By the end of the project, I had forgotten about it completely.  So, this will be the last time I bring it up.)

The first day of P2M, Mike and I watched one of the two regular staff members, Jordan (who is Chick’s grandson), run the program.  But this to him was asking the boys if they thought Carmello Anthony would ever do drugs (to which all children, unless they are trying to be “funny,” will answer no) then letting them play flag football.  We were both puzzled by this lax attitude toward the program, when it had been stressed to us that these programs needed to be run fully and completely – especially since they had been given thousands of dollars in grant money to run it.

When Mike and I were finally able to look at the manual, we were shocked to see what the lesson was supposed to be.  It had nothing to do with drugs, but about making good choices.  Somewhere the message got mixed along the way.  We asked Jordan how he prepared for each session, twice a week, he said he didn’t really.  He looked through the book 15 minutes beforehand, made up a few questions, then let the boys go to rec. 

So, there we were, being teamed up in a program that wasn’t actually being run. 

Mike and I had no choice but to jump in right away.  I don’t want to make it seem like we felt we had to undermine Jordan, or that we felt compelled to save the program, but it was apparent that Jordan wasn’t going to run the program the way it was meant to be run.  And all of my team had been told that part of the reason for falling enrollment rates were staff-related issues.  So, even by preparing at a minimal level, an hour a week, it was inevitable that we were going to take control of the program away from Jordan.  We attempted to discuss our preparation plans with him and get him on board, but it was clear that he was content to let us take over.  So we did.

We prepared a “Code of Conduct” for the boys to develop as the program advanced.  At the end of each week, they would come up with a new code to live by based upon the lessons of the week.  For the most part they were really good at doing this, and over the course of the project we developed a code that even I would be proud to live by.  But the boys were hesitant to participate every step of the way.  First, they were just too young for some of the material.  We had to water down all the discussions so that a 9 year old would be able to understand and willing to discuss topics like how cigarette and alcohol ads try to manipulate a person into buying their products.  Second, they had been conditioned to believe that every program at the club was rec.  Each day, before starting, we would be asked in the pleading manner of children if today we’d be going into the gym.  Some of the younger boys, one in particular, named Talon, told me point blank that he did think we should talk about the “drugs and alcohol stuff,” and that the boys would be happier if we went and played football.  Or kickball.  Or jump rope.  Anything to keep from actually having to go through our program. 

When we talked to Derek about the difficulties we were facing, he encouraged us to just keep doing what we were doing.  Eventually something would break.  Well, something did break, when the last two weeks we were there, we had more outbursts from restless boys than ever before.  It got to the point where we had to begin threatening to take away rec time if only to get the boys to listen.  So, in the end, I became the disciplinarian teacher with a subject that no one wanted to listen to. 

Or at least that’s how it felt by the end.  I don’t blame the boys in the club.  Again, they were too young for some of the material and activities, and they were just being boys at their age.  I feel like I wasn’t as creative as I needed to be to get the success that I had hoped for.  While there were some major moments of pride for me, like when we had a lengthy and mature discussion on why men should respect women, and that by the end, the boys were no longer asking right off if we were having gym instead of P2M, more often than not, it felt like I was beating my head against a brick wall.  I never really knew what that expression felt like before this project.  Now I do.  And I have much more respect for people who willingly go into these careers and do make strides teaching children.  Or I think they are that much crazier, I haven’t really decided.

I need to make it clear that I am venting right now.  90% of the time, I was not ready to walk away from this program, but I wanted to emphasize the challenges that I faced during the two months there.

Because as tough as I had it sometimes and as frustrating as it was to successfully complete my program, compared to some of my teammates, I was lucky. 

Settle in, folks. This is going to be a long update…

My team had its debriefing for our second phase project today, which means that we are officially done with our experience in Pine Ridge, SD.  And yet, I have maybe two updates about the entire project, not because I was lacking internet access or because I was lazy, but because this project was so frustrating/ stressful/ infuriating, that I made the conscious decision NOT to post about it.  Anything I said would have been remarkably critical, and I didn’t want there to be a chance that people who shouldn’t be reading it (namely, the woman in charge of our project) could.  Allow me to explain…

This project began with enthusiasm and excitement for my entire team.  From day 1 of learning about it, we had been told that we were one of the few teams even considered for the project, because the higher-ups felt our team’s dynamics would suit the project.  This was a high-profile project.  We would be working on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation at the SuAnne Big Crow Boys and Girls Club.  Non-natives working with and teaching Native children, Lakota Sioux to be precise.  We were warned: people in places well above our regional offices would be watching us to see how a team would work in such an environment.  We were, in essence, the prototype team for NCCC going into Reservations.  We felt honored and pleased by the distinction, but little did we know what lay ahead (cue foreboding music with lightning).

The drive to South Dakota was nice, but a bit harrowing at times.  Because of winter weather, we had to take the scenic route through south through Utah, through Colorado, then north through Nebraska and to South Dakota.  For anyone who has traveled this route before (as I am sure many of you who read this have), you might recognize that this takes us through the Rocky Mountains in the heart of ski country, like Vail, CO.  And it was there that, looking back, it seemed the mountains were trying to tell us to turn back; go no further; danger ahead.  Snow swirled around us, wind blew our 15 passenger van to both sides of the road, grey clouds descended and veiled our vision – the worst winter weather I had ever seen.  Yet we made it through, and once we passed Denver, it was smooth driving the rest of the way. 

We arrived on a Thursday, and were awkwardly met by our first supervisor and the Programs Director for the club, Derek.  Derek is not a Native.  He lives in Nebraska and was a teacher for many years at Red Cloud School, the Jesuit school down the road from the club.  A nice man.  A smart man.  Just a bit socially awkward.  We got a brief tour of the club from him, and then were introduced to the club’s Executive Director, Chick.  Now, ”Chick” is a nickname for Leatrice Big Crow, the mother of the deceased girl, after whom the club is named.  The fact that there is such a strong family connection within the club becomes important, so stay with me.

The first night was enjoyable.  Chick and her family (who we later found out were actually part of the staff) prepared us a meal of Indian Tacos, which are different only in that they are made with frybread instead of tortillas (frybread could be a post of its own), she said a prayer for us and we had a smudging ceremony to rid any ill-spirits from us so that our experience could be a positive one.  Now, having gone to university near a Reservation, I am aware of smudging and have done this before.  I was grateful that they were taking that kind of interest in us being there.  But, no amount of burning sage was going to shield us from the experience we were about to have.

The next day was our “orientation.”  Because such a big deal had been made about our project being within a different culture, none of us wanted to speak out of turn about anything, so we largely sat and listened to Chick talk about the club and the Reservation.  We learned about SuAnne and her fame in Pine Ridge and her tragic death that was the impetus for this club.  Chick talked about the poverty on the Rez, which she called “emotional poverty” rather than “material poverty.”  We even were told that if the spirts were right with us, we might be allowed to perform a sweat lodge (they weren’t, I guess, we didn’t).  Some of this was interesting, some was bizarre, some was uncomfortable, but who were we to judge the situation on the first real day. 

We were then taken into a different room of the club, which they call the “Incentive Room.”  Incentive for who or what, we’re not really sure.  We were led into this room, which initially strikes you as a very nice room, but very out of place for a Boys and Girls Club.  It looked like a living room: long sofa in the middle facing an entertainment center with a sizable tv, a fireplace to one side, still decorated for Christmas (mind you it was the 8th of February), and fashionable light fixtures.  Then we started to notice the decor: plaques for various awards, medallions, trophies, glass-enclosed jerseys and jackets from national basketball tournaments, a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a teenage girl…it hits you suddenly.  We were standing in the room that had been devoted and dedicated to the accomplishments of SuAnne while she was alive.  I don’t mean any disrespect by my description.  SuAnne must have been a remarkable and talented girl.  But for myself and my team, this was an uncomfortable moment.  Especially when Chick played our orientation video, which was a collection of home video of SuAnne, the majority of which dealt with her basketball accomplishments.  Imagine sitting in a room with the a mother watching a highlight reel of her deceased daughter, on what turned out to be the day before the 16th anniversary of the day she died, surrounded by the artifacts of that life.  What do you say?  How do you react?  How do you not feel uncomfortable? 

That was the only training we were to receive for the length of the project.  Following this day’s orientation, I had a brief, but acute, panic attack.  We still had no idea what we were supposed to do at this club, as no one had yet explained to us why we were needed and how we would be used.  I had never worked with children before in this type of environment, I didn’t know what to do or how I was going to do it, so I did the only thing I could think to do – I flipped out.  My team helped me out and talked me down and were very understanding.  They gave me the night to collect myself, while they had to work late (teen social nights lasted until 11:00pm, every other Friday - of course our first night was one of them).  I am still grateful for how understanding and supportive my team was for me that night.

While I never again felt that way and was fine for the rest of the project, it turns out I panicked far too soon.   

Home again.

For those avid readers of this site, you’ll recognize that it has been nearly two months since my last post of any substance.  This is because my team’s second project in Pine Ridge, SD was so…dysfunctional, that I didn’t want to post anything about it until it had run its course.  There were eye that I didn’t want stumbling across anything I would write while they still controlled my fate.  But, as of approximately 2pm today, I am now safely back in Sacramento where I am free to illuminate you all of the happenings in my life.

So, in short, I am back.  Prepare yourself for the emotional ride of your life as within a few days, I will give to you the summary of the last two months of my life.  Or as I like to call it:

“Chick on a Hot Tin Roof, or How 13 Functional Adults Got Stuck In a Dysfunctional Boys & Girls Club and Learned to Binge Eat Their Emotions”

MLK Day – A day on, not a day off…

And now, the continuation of our last post…

Ashley and I successfully busted a CAP at Ocean Springs High School, just a few miles down the road from our site.  Just as a reminder, by CAP, I mean fulfilled our duties as Corps Ambassadors, i.e. recruiting.  I had called the career counselor and set up the event before break and had expected that we’d talk to a class and have an information table at lunch.  But, when we got there, the school’s office seemed chaotic, even for a high school.  As the counselor would explain to us, we scheduled our trip on the first day back after their winter break.  So, we walked right into one of the busiest and craziest days of the year.  Needless to say, there were teachers willing to have their classes disturbed on this day, so we began our event with a nice long conversation with the career counselor, who was really into our program.  She had a lot of interesting questions and was enthusiastic on passing on our program as an option to her students.  After a tour of the school, she set us up with our table in the cafeteria (which amounted to nothing, because what high school-er actually pays attention to those things).  Afterward, she must have been impressed by the two of us, because she invited us back for the next morning and set up a pair of classes to be available to us for a presentation.  Bringing Tori with us as a kind of live visual-aid, we presented to this class for a solid half-hour, even getting a few students about as interested as you can make a 17 year old at 7:30 in the morning.  All-in-all it was a success. 

After a full week of kitchen duty, the weekend arrived.  Another team down the road, in Bay St. Louis, MS, invited us over for their town’s monthly festival, called Second Saturday.  Before Katrina, this town was apparently one of the most artistic and liberal in the country, a little enclave for successful artists.  These days, like most towns around here, the focus is rebuilding and trying to bring people back.  The only locals are those people who had nowhere else to go, or simply were too old and settled to really want to relocate.   But they still have their Second Saturday’s to keep their spirits up.  Live music, extended hours for restaurants and coffee shops, browsing through art galleries and a little dancing with my podmates from back in Sacramento.  It was a fun time, but we really got their too late to enjoy all of the festivities.  That’s what you get for having Saturday workdays.  But, if you ever want to hear some good rants about the problems with our government, go to a town that is full of liberal, independent, free-thinking artists and catch them on a party night when the beer is flowing freely…

Since arriving in Biloxi, I had been trying to set up a CAPping event at a home game of the Mississippi Sea Wolves, the local ECHL hockey team.  I was often given the run-around, but a corps member on team Silver 7 (stationed in Pascagoula, MS) found success and made a deal with the Sea Wolves, that if they were able to bring at least 20 people to the game, they would let us have an informational table and discount our tickets $2.  Silver 7’s CAPpers sent out an e-mail asking if any teams would be interested in going.  You don’t have to ask me twice to go to a hockey game.  And we were not disappointed by these teams.  The visiting team was the Florida Everblades (feeling so clever…), and they reminded me why I enjoy junior league hockey so much.  No less than one minute and thirty three seconds into the game was the first fight.  I had never seen a hockey fight start like this one did.  The two players were chewing at each other for a few seconds before they dropped their gloves, but once they decided they wanted to go, their equipment hit the ice.  They then skated around each other until both were in the center-ice face off circle.  This dance took at least 30 seconds, all the while the three refs were watching and corralling the players.  Not once did they interfere or stop the players from fighting; they just let it happened as though it were inevitable.  The fight was sloppy as neither player had a good grip on the other’s jersey; they just danced with each other until one of them fell.  But this whole charade took at least two minutes from start to finish.  The rest of the hockey game was exciting.  The Sea Wolves won 4-3, much to the chagrin of my Floridian teammates, Becky and Sarah, and Ashley had a great time and really got into the game, despite never seeing a hockey game ever before in her life.  Hockey in Mississippi – still an abomination in my opinion, but a good time none-the-less.

So, what else is there to write about…hmmm…hmmm…oh yeah.  Just one week ago, our team learned what our Phase 2 project will be.  From early February until the end of March, we will be stationed in about as different a location as one can find from Gulf coast Mississippi: South Dakota!

We’ll be living and working at a Boys and Girls Club in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.  The tribe we’ll be working for/ with are the Oglala Lakota Sioux.  Our job will be to organize and facilitate after school programs for 13-21 year-olds on the reservation, so this is our education project for the year, and we are all really excited for this unique opportunity.  Briefly, the Pine Ridge Reservation is one of the poorest areas in the nation.  There are high incidents of alcoholism, unemployment, teen pregnancy, gang activities, and school drop-outs.  We’ll be working within a framework of an already developed program that includes tutoring and classes that focus on seeking jobs, alternatives to violence and gangs, and life choices beyond high school.  To be sure, this is an intense project that we all agree will likely be the most difficult of our year.  But, again, none of us would have it any other way.

Unfortunately, there’s not much more I can say about the project, because we don’t yet know the information.  When we learn more, I’ll pass on the information to all of you.  For now, we’re wrapping up here in Biloxi.  Only three more days of work for us here.  Friday morning, early, we’ll be flying out of New Orleans back to Sacramento for a week of transition.  So, you know, just one of those typical, living-in-three-states-in-the-course-of-a-fortnight kind of times in my life.  Rock!

Saturday morning thoughts

I’m doing two things that I haven’t done in far too long: listening to Frampton Comes Alive and updating my blog.

It’s amazing how relative time really is.  Over the holidays, I had a 10 day break that felt very much like 10 days at times.  I’ve been back in Biloxi for 17 days since then, and it hardly feels like a week has gone by.  It is a cold, wet and rainy Saturday down here.  The chill in last night’s air was a bit too much to be really comfortable tucked into my sleeping bag, but since I was able to sleep in past 7 am for the first time since being back, I got over it.  Still, I prefer this weather to the alternative that I could be experiencing back home.  (That statement will become ironic, shortly.)

My flights back down here were uneventful, which, during holiday traveling, is akin to wonderful.  I met back up with my team when they picked me and Ashley up from the airport, and we all went into New Orleans for lunch.  By mid-afternoon the next day, we were back at ULM to find that two nights before they had had a deep-freeze and that some of the PVC pipes in the bathroom had frozen and cracked.  So, work began back up for us immediately after I shut off the water in the bathrooms.  You can add “replacing PVC piping” to the resumes of a few of my teammates now.

The first full week of work, I was assigned to kitchen duty with Becky and Randi.  Our responsibilities were to cook breakfast and dinner for the team and any volunteers staying with us – an easy task because there were no volunteers staying with us, made difficult only because there hadn’t been a delivery of food since before the week of 130 college students, ie. before break.  So, the first three days were improvised breakfasts and dinners that were subsidized with regular trips to the grocery store.  We survived to Thursday morning when the food was finally delivered.  The rest of the week was a cakewalk.  

One of the benefits (sometimes headache) of Kitchen Crew is the afternoon pause.  Since lunches are provided by the Salvation Army, there is little for K.C. to do after breakfast clean-up and before dinner prep aside from tidying up.  The day is fragmented further because we all only work 8 hours a day, but the day starts earlier for breakfast prep and ends later for dinner clean-up.  Sometimes we were able to fit in an afternoon nap with our free-time, but Caitlin doesn’t like us just lounging about during business hours.  So what should be down time turns into a scavenger hunt as we look for things to keep us occupied.  Our should-be siesta is also good for running PT.  Since we had to start work so early, K.C. is unable to do PT with the team at 5:30.  So, we had to do it on our own.  I took the time to go on some long distance runs around the city and explore. 

Biloxi has an interesting history.  It was once the capital of the entire French province of Louisiana, from 1721-1722, just before it was permanently moved to New Orleans.  Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, moved here during his twilight years and owned a beachfront home.  He was not a citizen of the United States at this time, his citizenship having been revoked because of that whole “treason” thing he was involved with.  And, a fact that I discovered on one of my runs during this week, Biloxi is the hometown to Barq’s root beer.  In fact, ULM is only about 100 yards away from the original site of Barq’s bottling company from 1899.  The building still stands and can be seen from the fire pit in our backyard.  It looks as though it was converted into a historic/ tourist site, but seems not to have been touched since Katrina.  A shame. 

Also on my runs during K.C. week, I went through the commercial district/ historic downtown of Biloxi.  It is a three-block stretch of road that is lined with historic buildings, many at least 100 years old, that have been restored since the storm, newly repaired sidewalks with brickwork, and well-maintained landscaping.  It’s a lovely section to the town in contrast to the many run-down homes still dotting the area.  The only thing is, there are no people walking around, no cars driving through, in short, no life to the place, because there are no businesses in these buildings.  Most are empty.  Aside from a few real estate agencies, a used-bookstore, and a branch office for the Church of Scientology, there isn’t much there.  It’s a pretty telling sign of where the city is at for their recovery.  There isn’t much money circulating for small businesses right now; what people earn or save they put toward rebuilding their houses.  But many people are unemployed, because the businesses they worked for before the storm haven’t come back yet.  Or they simply aren’t coming back.  If it wasn’t for the casinos, it is doubtful that there would be any outside money coming into this city.  It leaves a sort of a catch-22, in my view: the businesses won’t start to come back until the people here have money to spend, and the people won’t have money to spend until they can gain regular employment at the businesses.  One way or the other, this is a slow process that won’t improve overnight.  In some ways, these cities on the Gulf coast are still on life support, barely hanging on to existence. 

I have to wrap this entry up here and go find lunch (hooray food!).  Hopefully the rain has stopped for the time being.  Our propane heater has taken some of the chill out of our bunkhouse, but I doubt it’s done the same for the outside world. 

I still have a lot to report: Ashley and my first CAPping event, Bay St. Louis, the Mississippi Sea Wolves hockey game, and oh yeah, the location of Red 1’s next project!  Stay tuned!