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!

Second verse, same as the first.

I am back in Biloxi.  Yesterday, I flew into New Orleans and made it to Camp Hope safely.  The drive today was enjoyable, as I was able to hear about all of my teammate’s respective breaks.  Tomorrow work starts up again, and I am looking forward to that.  I don’t exactly know what I’ll be doing this week, but that’s no great concern for me.

All I know is that tonight for dinner we’re having chili, and that sounds like the perfect dish for the weather here.  Winter followed me south…burrrrrrr!

Thoughts early on a New Year’s Day

This post seems a little out of place in my mind.  It really has nothing to do with my program, because I am back at my parent’s house in Michigan and not in Biloxi.  Looking outside, it is dark, white and snowing.  Yuck.  My last day in Michigan until August is going to be spent shoveling snow when I wake up.  Again, yuck.  It’s no longer 2007.  That year is over for those of us who subscribe to the Gregorian calendar.  If I were Chinese, I would laugh at that last sentence.  They last saw the 2ooo’s some 2000 years ago.  Actually, I’m not Chinese (obviously) but that still makes me laugh.  Time is funny that way, in that it is a man-made thing; it isn’t real.

But here I am, on the morning of New Year’s Day, 2008, and it feels very real to me.  My life keeps going forward, and I guess I just want to take stock of it right now, although that might be the wine talking (thank you Lisa!).  2007 was very interesting and very good to me.  I graduated college, I had the best summer job/ internship this summer at Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, MA, Katie was married and I reconnected with very important people, I joined a great organization when I stepped on the plane to Sacramento, and I met and became friends with wonderful people who I can gratefully call my teammates.  It was a blur.  How many more of my years will feel as though I’ve lived four or more lives? 

If I were to make a list of all the experiences I’ve already had in my life, I think even I would be shocked and impressed by it.  Yet I still feel like there’s something missing from all that I’ve done.  That life just isn’t quite what I expected it to be.  Are my expectations too high?  Unrealistic?  Am I one of those idealists who will become jaded with life because it is constantly disappointing me?  Am I already?  Is there anything I can do about it?

I feel like if there is a way for me to not be so jaded with the human experience, I am already doing it.  Being with my team, my Red 1, right now is refreshing for me.  AmeriCorps in general feels like the right thing for me to be involved with.  My teammates are, for the most part, positive in attitude and strong in their belief that people can make a difference in this world.  That things can be better and we can do something about it.  I am drawn to people like that, because by and large, I have a hard time believing that. 

In spite of everything good that has happened to me, 2007 will always be a shady year for me for that reason.  I always had the thought in the back of my head that life is pointless.  It’s a difficult thought to shake away, once it has entered your head.  And it brings me to my resolution for 2008: find meaning in everything worthwhile I do this year and beyond.  I know working with NCCC will help me with that, but I need to work on making myself see meaning in little things, everyday things. 

I need to smile more.  To laugh more.  To love more.  I need to remember that people are important too.

Everyone needs those things, but I want them for myself again.

2008 is going to be a lot of work for me.  These are not simple resolutions that can be fulfilled with a little bit of will power.  These are resolutions that need to be worked upon in the quiet moments of the day, everyday, inside myself.  They will be difficult, but then again, that is why they are worthwhile.

Happy New Year.  To a happy, safe, successful 2008 for one and all!