Katrina in New Orleans

My Obama

2009-01-20T20:30:00.003-06:00

This morning when Simon woke me up at seven, I had the same feeling I did on the morning it snowed. I felt like I had to get out of bed or else I'd miss something.

My descriptive powers elude me. And anyways, I spent most of the day trying to record lectures for my online class in audio files, which is not worth describing (although it is amusing, I guess--how I was trying to figure out whether to "sound smart" or just like me... I went with me). But before the file-recording, I baked Michelle Obama's shortbread cookies (mine had pine nuts instead of almonds on top) and took them to the Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church, where the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association meetings are, and where many in the neighborhood gathered to watch CNN's streaming projected on a big screen.

I took this video of the moment when Obama took the oath of office (sorry for the wobbly/shifty camera work--I am new with my Flip video camera). The people I kept coming back to are Charles Allen, our neighborhood association president, and Kathy Muse, who is my neighbor.

New Year, Old Blog

2009-01-05T15:37:00.003-06:00

It's obvious: I've given up on this blog.

I thought I'd try to retire it in some sort of official way, but allowing it to peter out over time seemed somehow more appropriate--in keeping with the way the nation has handled New Orleans, post-Katrina.

Part of me feels like I can't just STOP writing on this blog altogether, but the other part of me is all, "Girl, you crazy. Your job is madness and you don't have TIME to blog, and anyway, you give yourself guilt trips about it, so what's the use in pretending you are a 'real blogger'?"

I'm not a "real blogger."

I am, however, someone who finds that writing things down is an act of thinking--a helpful one at that--and in light of that, I thought I'd post this "To Do List" for the New Year. These are not resolutions, but just things I'd like to accomplish. Sometime.

--Install a raingarden to deal with drainage problems at our new house (Simon had to give me a piggy back to the door on Saturday because of the "moat.")

--Garden more.

--Sort out my feelings about my job (and be proactive about what comes next.)

--Survive the retention process in one piece (if not with my job still intact).

--Teach a successful "Early College" course at Rabouin High School (which I've just read is a struggling school, indeed).

--Make more time for creative endeavors.

--Endeavor, creatively.

--Sort out how and what I want to write about Holy Cross.

--Be more active in my neighborhood association.

--Be kind as all getout to my students and coworkers.

--Whine less.

--Walk more.

--Sort out what to do with this blog.

--Forgive myself for being less than perfect.

One reason I haven't been writing is that I am really HOME now. Our house is beautiful and makes me feel heart-whole. The things that have been giving me pain (which are usually the things that drive me to write) are work-related these days, and the public airing of my teaching grievances seems to be a bad idea. I guess I could find ways of writing through the problems I am having, but part of the problem I am having is that my students seem to be more confrontational these days, and I have already heard from one supervisor that a student read some entry on my blog and complained. (This act is representative of a larger problem I'm seeing: the student-as-customer and teacher-as-customer-service-agent ethos. Don't get me started.)

Hmm... it looks like maybe I do need to write about my work.

Bottom line: happy new year. I'll write or I won't and I am going to be okay with either choice, dammit.

Word.

To close: a picture of our home in NOLA snow...

Our New Garden and Other Fall Delights

2008-10-10T12:56:00.011-05:00

First of all, I know I haven't written lately, and there's a good reason for it: work. Because I am a writing teacher, I spend a LOT of time responding to student writing. When school is in session, the notion of doing any other kind of writing seems both absurd and an incredible burden.

Of course, life has kept on happening, and I don't want the cobwebs of this blog to grow too thick. So I thought I'd post some pictures of progress at our new home in Holy Cross.

We hired some neighbors to plant us a garden. Lisa and Paul are "La La Landscaping," and they are as kooky as their company-name implies. Lisa is a ball of happy energy. She flits. She giggles. She has an idea to create "high heeled gardening shoes" that will make weeding a less-backbreaking chore. She says the queens in the Quarter would love her idea.

Her boyfriend and business-partner, Paul, is her exact opposite. He rarely speaks, and when he does it's a mumble. He weeds slowly and methodically, getting even the most hidden seeds, a cigarette drips smoke all the while. He tells Lisa she shouldn't tell everyone about her shoe idea or someone might steal it. He also doesn't drink a drop, but he makes persimmon wine and he's promised to show me how.

Here's the house when the first group of plants went in.

Paul and Lisa planted zinnias, cosmos, ornamental peppers, rudbeckia, Mexican sunflowers, artemesia, butterfly weed, and jungle red hibiscus in the bed along the south side of the house. Simon and I have gradually been adding a Mississippi driftwood border, and I've been reading a lot about Louisiana gardening and getting excited about plants. I read that red hibiscus (also known as "red shield" or "jungle red" hibiscus) is and endangered plant, but I'm not sure I believe it. Lisa says when the plants flower, the blooms are the same color as the maroon foliage, and you can take the blooms and boil them to make hibiscus tea. Cosmos (the white flower whose foliage looks like dill weed) are scrappy buggers with paper-thin blooms. I'm not sure they're my favorite. I like the zinnias most of all. I cut several and made a lovely centerpiece for our dining room table.

The overall design of our garden is a bit more chaotic than I think I would have chosen. I had in mind several "levels" of plantings. Maybe some gold lantana or artemesia at the front, then some purple Mexican petunias in the middle and the red hibiscus at the back--like that. But Lisa and Paul gave us a ridiculously good deal for all the work they did, and they didn't use any gross chemicals (they even used eucalyptus mulch instead of cypress mulch). And I like the way the garden doesn't look too landscaped or like it belongs in a cul-de-sac in some Driftwood Manor place in everytown USA.

Here's the red hibiscus and butterfly weed when it was first planted. I'll have to take some "after" pictures this weekend.

A cosmos flower:

This morning I saw that a Monarch butterfly had landed on our butterfly weed. I read that the monarchs stop through here in early fall on their migratory path to Brazil.

The cats love the garden. Well, they like to pee in it. And our cat-harem has grown. Not only do we now have Miss Stripeypants hiding out in the backyard, but we also have three feral kittens (not hers) who we're trying to socialize. It's not working. Next up is trapping and neutering...

Here's Miss Stripeypants (who is very possibly, in fact, Mister Stripeypants), looking worried. She won't let me anywhere near her, although she comes running whenever she hears me come out onto the back deck:

This is Big Man (also known to Simon as "White Stockings"), Carrot Soup (the orange and white one), and Peebo (the black scaredy-cat in the background). They're not all that healthy, but they're getting better with more food and water...

In other house-news: a group of volunteers came to help us remove our Katrina-graffiti. Now there's no "1 DOA" next to our door. I miss the big white "0"s, but our home looks more like our home now, and that is a good thing. We used a product called "Graffiti Off" (or something like that) to scrub the spray paint from the vinyl siding. Earlier, Simon had tried to buy spray paint to match the siding, and he wound up making the "D" in "DOA" very defined. The volunteers also painted our front doors "cranberry bog," which I like a lot (I'll have to remember to photograph that, too). The whole house looks very "fall like" in its color-scheme. One day we'll peel the vinyl siding off and paint the wood, but for now it's looking better every day.

Oh: the appraisal got done without any major problems (since the volunteers helped us). The appraiser had been a real jerk the first time he showed up. He didn't get our of his car and essentially turned his nose up at our exterior. This time, he came inside, where he applauded the many choices I'd agonized over. ("So many custom features!") I was such a proud homeowner!

Now we are waiting for the refinancing paperwork to go through so we can start paying a monthly note that's more comfortable for us. We're still paying the construction loan rate, which is high, and I had thought we'd get a really good rate--maybe even the 5.4% George Soros proposed to help with the bailout--but it looks like the rates for 30 year fixed rates haven't gone down. Oh, well. At least we should get it down to 6%.

There's so, so much more to write about, but I need to get back to work, and I wanted this to be a happy-post, and a lot of the other stuff isn't as happy, so...

Well, happy weekend, anyway!

"Blogging from the Classroom"

2008-10-01T10:12:00.002-05:00

Here's an interesting piece on blogs by teachers. I don't know if I mentioned that my own blog was read by the parent of one of my summer students... I learned that she felt I had written inappropriately about her daughter from one of my colleagues. He'd had to deal with her wrath after her daughter didn't pass my course. I believe he said she called him an "f-ing a-hole."

Anyways, I have felt very conflicted about writing about teaching, but lately I have felt that it is an important subject, and I have even thought of publicizing my blog to my students and colleagues. I'd love to hear your thoughts, Mom, on whether you think expanding beyond hurricanes to address the classroom is wise or foolish...

When Tired Meets Mad

2008-09-18T22:54:00.002-05:00

I have lots to write about and lots to say, but I'm exhausted. Spent the day loading and unloading debris from our renovation--debris the contractor should have disposed of but left in the name of preservation. Yeah, thanks for the mountain of termite-eaten hollow-board, dude.

Anyways, I can't write now because I really am exhausted, but I wanted to post a link to the Voice of the Wetlands site. Community activist Karen Gadbois posted a link to it on her Twitter account, and the sentiments expressed on the site are the same I've been hearing everywhere: IF WE DO NOT DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE WETLANDS NOW, COASTAL LOUISIANA IS IN REALLY BIG TROUBLE. And that, my family and friends in less threatened locales, spells trouble for you, too. (And not just because you'll have to hear from me about it.)

Gawd, I really have been asked a kabillion times, "Why do you STAY there?" to which I am forced to respond with the same romantic B.S. you have already heard (the people, the music, the culture, the food) and have likely grown tired of hearing. Because these comprise a good portion of my personal reasons for being here.

But that is really beside the point.

The point is that we are not asking our fellow Americans (and the world, sure, yes, the world) to save our wetlands and our hurricane protection systems because we are dumb enough to think that our reasons for wanting to live here are also yours. We know they are not.

But when you ask us this question, "How can you LIVE there?" you ask the wrong one. We feel the same sense of "What the F?!?"--the same dumbfounded incredulousness about your living where you do.

Last week I had a conversation with my friend Bill Loehfelm lately about making Why Coastal Louisiana Matters cards. They'd fit in your wallet, and we'd be able to pull them out whenever people ask that question: "Why do you LIVE there?"

When we got asked that question, we wouldn't have to blubber on about the sentimental crap that allows folks to tightfist their cash--to think, "Why should I save their asses just so they can eat and hang with their 'community' when I can take my vacation elsewhere?"

We'd be able to answer that question in terms that would impress you.

First on the "Why you should save our asses' list": we supply 30% of your gas and oil. You get our coffee and sugar because of our ports, too. As Bill put it, try living a day without gas, coffee, or sugar. Then we'll see how much people care about restoring our wetlands.

Okay, so I really AM exhausted, which evidently inspires ranting...

When I am not so tired, I will beef up this list. And then, when I have more money (and less important things to handle than actually dealing with the impacts of storms that would not have impacted us do terribly had our wetlands not been squandered--had our federal levees held)--I will make that "Why You Should Shut Up Talking and Save Our Asses, Already" card.

Really: good night. I promise to post a non-rant post soon. It really was a long and very eventful week, and I want to process it on the page and share with you, dear readers, even if I am mad at you sometimes for not understanding why we matter--really matter--and not just to our damn selves.

To prove that I love you anyways: big hug from my house (whose address is a heckuva lot closer to the Gulf than it was just a week ago.)

After We've Recovered from the Toxic Gumbo...

2008-09-11T16:16:00.005-05:00

When I opened an email whose subject was "Electricity?" today, I realized I hadn't updated my blog since we'd been home. So here I go, back...

The drive back to New Orleans seemed interminable, although it was uneventful in comparison with the one on the way out. I saw several Louisiana families on both I-85/65 and I-10 who were also headed home. They looked tired, as I am sure I did. My cat Ray was so "over" the car ride that he jammed himself between a box and the rear passenger window and stared ahead so resolutely and pathetically--without sleeping or blinking--that I worried he was dead.

When I got to Mississippi, the adrenaline had worn off, and I was just f-ing ready to get home. I was tired of listening to Elizabeth Gilbert talk about how spiritually enlightened she was (I'd promised to finish Eat, Pray, Love, and could only manage to do it via audiobook), I was tired of eating gummy bears and drinking Diet Mountain Dew, and I was even tired of texting Twitter updates (which are now appearing in the margins of my blog). So I smoked cigarettes to stay awake, even though I am really and truly one of those "social smokers" that real smokers can't stand, and I reset the cruise control for 77mph. Poor Ray thought there was a fire, and he let out a howl to rival even the most feral and in-heat of cats, so I motored along with both the A/C on and the front windows cracked.

My favorite part of the drive home is always when I make it over the top if the I-10 "high rise" in New Orleans East. You can't see the city until then, and so you climb and climb up this artificial hill (it's the only stationary bridge over the Industrial Canal), and then once you get to the top, there is the whole bowl of New Orleans all spread out before you. To the south, the lights on the Crescent City Connection dip and rise like Christmas lights strung between porch posts, and when the sun is setting--as it was when I drove in on Sunday--the Mississippi River undulates pink and orange and blue-Gulf-gray. I can remember seeing that view for the first time almost eleven years ago, how both my brother and I were like, "Holy shit," and my heart beat fast.

This time, I had a similar reaction, only my body wouldn't stop. My heart raced. My fingers tingled. I started to sweat from even my forearms, and I was sure I was about to either throw up or faint. The Franklin exit comes up quickly, so I begged my body to cooperate until I could exit the interstate. I drove the speed limit. I hung on.

At the bottom of the exit ramp, things felt better for a moment, and the cats, aware of the sudden stillness, started up with their cries. I had to get home. Had to had to.

On Franklin I saw dead tree limbs that'd been cleared from the road and piled onto the neutral ground. There was a power line down across from the home of a family who was all out gathered on the porch, the steps packed with sisters braiding brothers' hair. It was a typical Sunday picture, nothing much had changed.

When I finally got to the Judge Seaber (sp?) bridge, I looked left toward the back of town and saw the same canal walls that'd been on TV so much. The water'd gone down. On the lower-9 side of the bridge, I saw that Brad Pitt's houses had survived without a lick of damage--not a single solar panel was blown out. On Tennessee Street I took the potholes slow. I saw a big tree down just before Reynes. It'd already been cut up and its thick middle removed from the street. I passed by empty houses whose destruction was familiar, who had no new scars to show for Gustav. This made me sad for some reason.

As I passed the now-abandoned Holy Cross practice field, I saw black tar paper in peeled-back curls atop some of the old school buildings. I couldn't remember if this was new damage or old.

I turned onto Deslonde and saw that the CFLs on our front stoop were on. I was so shaky and vomitous-feeling when I pulled up by the house that I remember being very methodical: a) put in park; b) cut off ignition; c) open door; d) place one foot and then the other on the ground; e) retrieve cat carrier; f) go inside. Simon was unloading the back of his truck (he'd left an hour before me because his truck only goes 60), and Mr. Taylor was there, smiling, being our neighbor.

"How you derrin'?" he asked (this means "How you doin'," but people say "derrin" here).

"Oh, my nerves are shot," I said, the words falling out of me like I was drooling tacks.

"I'm tha same way," he said. "The same way."

I said to Simon, as low as I could, "I'm sick. I'll be inside." Then I went to the bathroom, stripped down naked, dry heaved, and took a cold shower.

I lay in bed for an hour before I felt better. Then Simon and I ate carry-out Mona's at our dining room table, only I didn't eat mine because it tasted sour and bad, like the hummus had been frozen and thawed too many times, the salad dressed in stale vinegar. We guessed their power had gone out, too.

I cracked open a beer from the freezer, and then took to the task of washing the few moldy spots that had grown in the fridge during the week we'd been without power. It was nothing, nothing, so bad as it was after Katrina, when the dried-up rice grains of coffin-fly carcasses peppered the refrigerator seals, when we had to have a group of roaming Scientologists help us carry the whole affair to the curb.

After dinner, Simon brought in more of our stuff: our art work, my wedding dress, the contents of our file cabinets, the new rug we'd bought at IKEA. I wanted Simon to take the boards off the windows and doors because it felt like we were living in a box, but there was too much else to do, and I was worthless for carrying stuff.

At one point, Simon came in and told me to come outside, he had to show me something. There, a tiny orange and white kitten was curled up on the sidewalk, cushioned by our ridiculous weeds. There were two more, Simon said, and a mama and dad-cat, too.

Later, Simon came in to tell me that he'd seen Mr. Washington from across the street. Mr. Washington said he'd gone up to stay at his house in Shreveport for the storm, but he'd been home already for days. "You seen that movie, that 'Alice in Wonderland'?" he asked Simon. "What's that the girl says in it? 'No place like home'?" Simon nodded and Mr. Washington went on, "I took that shit serious."

I guess that's really the best way to put it, too, isn't it? Here in New Orleans, we take this home shit serious.

And so--thank God--now we are home.

Still, on Monday I felt empty and all shook up. I "taught" if you can call it that, but it felt like I was tripping over thinking, over picking up chalk, over talking about "the importance of description in fiction writing." I put my writing workshop students to work on a craft exercise in "showing versus telling," and I asked them to use their five senses to show readers their evacuation experience. One student described the sight of "clouds moving faster than cars," another, the discomfort of her foot being "wedged between the gear shift and a crock pot." I shared the sound of "love bugs banging against the radiator" (a detail I don't remember, really, from my own evacuation, but I had to offer something, and there are the love bugs now--the love bugs everywhere, like there were ladybugs when I lived in Ohio and fireflies when I was growing up in Georgia, only lovebugs lack the charm of either, save their name.) There was, of course, lots of "sweaty skin sticking to the seat."

Later in the day I started to feel a bit more human. My friend Kim came by my office to bring me a copy of the textbook we'd worked on all summer. I flipped through it and felt vaguely proud, vaguely remembering that we were concerned about textbooks once. I told her about how sick I'd felt when I came home the night before. She said it was probably some weird form of relief, of release. As in, I'd seen the city, finally--all okay like I'd been told it was. But then there it really was, and all the stress I'd been holding in all week came flooding out. It was toxic, that stress, and so it made me sick. Sick like I'd eaten a bowl of "toxic gumbo".

On Monday night, after my Intro to the Short Story and Novel class (which went wonderfully, thank you bejesus), I went to the Parkview to have a beer with some of my school comrades. We shared stories of this storm. AC and Bill had gotten eaten by ticks while hiking in Tennessee. Jenni had begged her way into an overpriced hotel after 18 hours of driving. Joseph and Amanda had weathered the storm in Baton Rouge, which turned out to be a mistake, and so they returned to New Orleans on Thursday to sit in the still heat of their own home, at the very least. We all talked about watching TV, about how the reporters got their geography wrong, how someone actually, for real, used that blasted Katrina-phrase again: "toxic gumbo." Then we laughed some and seemed generally glad to be home again (although we all seemed still to be doing a bit of sleep-walking, to be grinding our teeth).

I slept for ten hours Monday night, and on Tuesday and Wednesday I began--slowly--to feel human again.

Now I am sitting in my office, and outside the winds of Hurricane Ike--still two days from Texas--are whipping the leaves of the banana trees so they look like raggedy combs. I know that at home the wind chime is making so much noise that all the cats--Carrot Soup, White Stockings, Sammo, and the still-intact, still-kicking Miss Stripeypants are all huddled beneath the porch. I read on Jeff Master's weather blog that Ike will have surge bigger than Katrina's, and that there's already 5 feet of surge in the Industrial Canal.

But tonight I can't look at no stinkin' flooding in no stinkin' canal.

Tonight I will go to the neighborhood association meeting. Then I have a Ben and Jerry's ice cream cake party to attend at Markey's bar. Then I think I might just keep it going at Vaughn's, since I'm feeling like me again, finally, and since I am home, dammit, and since I, too, take that shit serious.

Heading Home...

2008-09-07T07:41:00.002-05:00

Here's another piece in the Times-Pic on the nightmarish evacuation and re-entry that some experienced, and yet another from WWL-TV on the concerns of our clown/mayor that residents may not leave (should we be asked to) in advance of Ike.

We head home today. As we hug the necks of our hosts, we will hope not to see them again any time soon--not because we don't love them, but because we need Ike to leave us alone.

Preparing to Return to Our Home of Uncertainty...

2008-09-06T11:10:00.007-05:00

Yesterday our good friend Adam called from Holy Cross. He was standing outside our house, where he confirmed the reports of several other friends: all is well. There were several cars on the street, and the drone of a generator provided the afternoon soundtrack. Mr. Taylor sent a hello to us from his porch, where he was seeking relief from the heat in his home. Was there anything we could bring him when we returned from Atlanta, Simon asked (via Adam)?

"Yeah. A generator and a case of Heinekken."

"That could get expensive," Simon said. "How about we bring you one or the other?"

"Okay, then bring me a generator so I can keep my Heinekken cold."

Yes, the power was--and is still--out in our neighborhood. In other areas, electricity has been coming on fast. On Twitter, a friend posted, "all sitting in the dark and stuff and woof! The power comes on."

I remember how that happened all the time when we returned after Katrina. We'd be just settling in to have no power for several hours (again), and then it'd startle us when it returned.

Being home right after that storm (I feel like I can't call it "The Storm" anymore, now that there's Gustav) had an adventure-ness to it. We cooked on our Coleman stove with the doors and windows open. We drove to friends' houses to take showers. We talked about where we'd been, who we'd lost, and how we hoped the city would move on. At night, when the power went out, we emerged from our houses onto our stoops and watched the moon turn slate rooftops silver. Or at least this is how my memory colors it now, and that's probably just because this time around I am much less enthused about returning to the outages, to the heat, and to the iffy future.

In Atlanta I've been playing Auntie Sarah. Auntie Sarah has the mojo when it comes to her nephew. She sings him R&B songs about "nekkid time" when she changes his diaper. She puts his ass to sleep, like pronto. Auntie Sarah loves being Auntie Sarah. She'll miss it when she goes back to New Orleans tomorrow.

I've also been trolling the internet for any kind of useful news and finding none. Nola.com has posted an "Entergy updates" page which tell me nothing specific about my neighborhood. Today it says that all of Orleans Parish should have power by tomorrow, but it said the same thing of Saturday two days ago. I hope Adam will return to Holy Cross to give me updates.

In the meantime I have gotten a message from my employer that reports that they are "excited" that power has been restored to the UNO campus, and then, "You must report to work at 8 a.m. on Monday, September 8th." Is it too much to expect my employer to acknowledge our not having power yet--too much to ask the Chancellor to express some gratitude for my returning without A/C, hot water, or refrigeration? Or am I being a whiner?

Also in the meantime: Hurricane Ike watching. New Orleans is now in Ike's "Cone of Uncertainty" (or "Cone of Error"). I feel like that would be a better name for this blog: "Blog of Uncertainty," especially now that I am realizing that I'm writing in a post-K and post-G era, not just a post-K one.

I worry that folks won't evacuate if we stay this way--in the path of Ike--after having had such a hard time evacuating for Gustav. Here, in fact, is an editorial about what many see as a botched evacuation: http://www.nola.com/living/index.ssf/2008/09/the_next_time_my_family_will_s.html

...The girl from across the street just came over. Her cat died last night and she wants to see ours... My next post may be from New Orleans, my home of uncertainty.

The Evacuation Continues...

2008-09-04T21:45:00.004-05:00

We are still here (living in my parents' basement in Atlanta). The cats are pissed. We are homesick and bored. And yet... none of this is as bad as sitting in a hot house with no power. We did that for many, many days after we returned from our Katrina evacuation, and we were "fine" with it then (relatively speaking), but then we'd been living in my parents' basement for six weeks then. So much was different then.

Yes, the power is still out at home. Here, we've been eating a lot, drinking nice cold beers, giving love to our nephew, and generally being spoiled while we wait. Because we've had friends check on the house, we really don't feel any sense of urgency to get back, although I have begun to feel the homesickness creep in, big time, especially as our friends who live Uptown start to return and report their happy homecomings via Facebook.

I don't have any faith that we will have power any time soon, and both Simon and I are feeling that our having moved to the other side of the Industrial Canal has everything to do with it. We are geographically separated from the city. In fact, our geographic neighbors are the residents of St. Bernard Parish, where power is also entirely out, and where the parish president has called the lack of electricity the biggest obstacle to recovery. Entergy has acknowledged (see first link) that geographic isolation is a big problem in restoring electricity. So as you might imagine, we are not at all encouraged to learn that St. Bernard is not promised power until September 15th.

Tomorrow: generator shopping.

We DO NOT have "generator money" budgeted, and so we'll pull from our savings in order to buy what we imagine will become a necessary, uh, "appliance" in our Lower Ninth Ward home. Our employers are expecting us to return to work on Monday, and we don't know how we can do so (sanely--since it promises to be a very challenging return) without having a good hot shower and a cool room to sleep in. I know people do this, but

Lest you think we're a bunch of whiners, may I remind you that New Orleans averages temps in the mid-nineties this time of year--and humidity levels are darn near the same. Thank goodness, then, for the cool(ish) Atlanta September, and for my parents' willingness to put up with us... Thank you five million times, Mom. Thank you.

On Relief and Not Being Ready for "Re-Entry"

2008-09-02T22:54:00.004-05:00

About five beers in, and after hearing at least a dozen erroneous references to "levee overtopping in the Lower Ninth Ward" by reporters on CNN, I cooked up some evacuation steaks, had a silent dinner with my family, and went to bed before nine-thirty. I slept for twelve hours, woke up, slept long enough to have a dream about struggling to synchronize swim, and got up, feeling much, much, more human today.

By now it's clear that the city avoided the worst. We still don't know exactly what has happened to our house, but we feel largely relieved about the impact Gustav had on New Orleans. Simon says he hopes the only result is that the wind pulled down the dead limbs from our backyard live oak--the ones that have been tangled up in themselves ever since Katrina. I joked that I hoped it mowed our lawn, too.

We have heard from several friends, and it seems that this storm has inspired a lot of writing... from Ken Foster, another resident of Holy Cross, comes this story in the St. Louis Beacon. Two friends blogged: Tara Jill Ciccarone began this Gustav-blog (from the city, itself), and our neighbor Ariane (who's pictured helping us board up in a previous entry) posted these thoughts on her friend's blog. In fact, there's a whole wonderful network of New Orleans bloggers, many of whom have been sending regular and blessedly accurate accounts via Twitter. I learned about this Gustav-related entry from another New Orleans blogger via those Twitter posts...

I've been grateful for the comments from some BBC-viewers on this blog. I love my mom, and all, but it's much easier to devote time to the sometimes-difficult task of writing when it's more than just your mom reading. So thank you for the well-wishes, all!

Today we have heard this good news from a friend who stayed:

"All -

I made a trip down to Holy Cross this morning (stayed in town during the storm) and am happy to report that the neighbor is in good shape.

Some limbs down, a lot of leaves and debris. But no trees fell on houses.

The only damage I saw was a collapsed house in the 4900 block of Burgundy - it had been framed but was not clad. There was another in the 700 block of Flood which had been framed and not clad and collapsed. Another house in the 700 block of Flood - a cottage near the corner of Burgundy on a big lot - looked like the side wall had fallen

I checked on the houses of Greta Gladney, PRC, Sarah Debacher and Simon hand, Ken Foster, David Whaley, Ann Schexsnyder, Katie and Jason, Rashida Ferdinand, John Washington, Emil Dumesnil, MArna, David Fields, Kevin Mercadel and did not see problems anywhere."

The mayor has asked that no one return yet, and while I hear from our friend Terrence (via text message) that he's "going crazy" and "can't wait to go home," we feel very much like we can wait on the re-entry. The prospect of returning to a house with no power or air-conditioning is bad enough, but we also have to unpack our belongings, re-hang our art, and re-enter our real lives. We're not ready to do any of this right now. We both feel like yesterday was a week ago, and two days ago, a lifetime. And--like someone who's lived a lifetime--we feel tired, tired, tired. We want rocking chairs and beers. We want more time to recover (emotionally) from the evacuation, even though we evidently will not need to repair any real physical damage. Luckily neither Simon nor I have to return to work until Monday. Luckily we have a comfortable and free place to stay. So we plan to take at least another day to repair our fragile nerves before making the trek back home.

Today I stayed away from the internet and the TV, which helped. I spent time holding and rocking my six-month-old nephew. I napped with my cats. I allowed myself to believe that we were a-okay because I really, really needed to feel that way for a moment. And then, when I logged on and learned from Stephanie that we really are, I was mightily relieved.

Off to bed. I'm not setting no stinkin' alarm. I'll re-enter this evacuation phase when my body and dreaming head are good and ready. Until then, good night...

Water in the Industrial Canal

2008-09-01T10:11:00.003-05:00

http://www.wwltv.com/video/?nvid=278017&shu=1

This video is taken at the Claiborne Avenue bridge, looking north. (The bridge you see that's down is the Florida Avenue bridge).

We don't have a gate to protect the canal as they do at London Ave, 17th Street, Harvey, etc. When their gates go down, there's less area to relieve water pressure in the Industrial Canal. Also, as I have said before, the fact that the useless debacle that is the MR-GO has yet to be closed (even after congressional approval, and THREE YEARS after its surge took the lives of hundreds of New Orleans residents) makes residents currently living near the Industrial Canal (unforgivably) vulnerable to excessive flooding.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but one does have to wonder: if the residents of the Lower and Upper Ninth wards (north of St. Claude) were not lower-middle class black Americans, but were instead wealthy white Uptowners, would the sense of urgency be greater? Would the work move more quickly?

If you examine the areas of concentrated recovery efforts so far, post-K (and I should find a graphic to support this, as I'm sure there is one), you'll find that the Corps' recovery efforts have been focused not on the most vulnerable areas first, but on the areas where the wealth is. (God Bless America.)

Just so you know, I live where the wealth is. Mine's not a wealthy neighborhood (far from it... the construction of the Industrial Canal effectively guaranteed that by cutting Holy Cross off), but as with all areas in New Orleans, the concentration of wealth is greater the closer you get to the river. Simon and I live on high ground, next to a secure earthen levee. My house did not flood in either Betsy or Camille--storms that led to deaths in the "back-of-town" side of the Lower Ninth Ward. So we knew to expect some flooding from Gustav...

It really is better that I stay away from the TV. The national guys don't seem to know the difference between the east and west sides of the canal. Our local boys, thank goodness, do. This local info (from www.wwltv.com) makes me feel a little better:

"Waves are crashing over the Industrial Canal walls in the direction of the Ninth Ward. The walls are holding solid at this time and the water going over the walls is not flooding homes. An Army Corps spokesperson said they expect the walls to hold."

My mom has returned from the store with beer. Simon is tearing apart the truck, looking for our toiletries. I'm going to have a beer and shower, in whatever order is convenient to more news and information-prowling...

New Post from Fellow NOLA Blogger

2008-09-01T09:56:00.001-05:00

Here: http://liprapslament-theline.blogspot.com/2008/09/wwl-live-feed-is-here-thanks-mr-clio.html

Video of Water in the Industrial Canal

2008-09-01T09:52:00.002-05:00

"The biggest problem we are having at the moment," according to Nagin, is here: http://www.wwltv.com/video/?nvid=57429&live=yes

Oh, no.

2008-09-01T09:20:00.002-05:00

We live near here. The waterway that runs perpendicular to the Mississippi River is the Industrial Canal.

I have just heard (on FOX 8 news, of all places) that the surge is overtopping the Industrial Canal levee walls. Evidently it's on the western side, which means folks in the Upper Ninth Ward will be getting water.

Our improved levee on the east side is holding. I think.

I need to be careful not to allow the TV news-folks get me all worked up... Especially since I am on essentially no sleep.

This Really IS Deja-Vu...

2008-09-01T09:13:00.002-05:00

I didn't sleep but an hour or so. The cats were busy establishing their territory in my parents' basement. Simon is passed out. I have been watching TV with my dad, and I am relieved to learn that things don't seem as bad as had been predicted.

But then again, we had a moment like this after Katrina. We thought we'd dodged the bullet. So no celebrating until tomorrow, when we can be sure the levees have held. Let's hope that the Industrial Canal can weather the barge-beating, too (talk about deja-vu):
http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf/2008/09/hold_please.html

Here's the link to WWL 870 a.m. Click on "Listen Live." It's got way better coverage than CNN or the Weather Channel, although I will admit that I do like me some Anderson Cooper, especially when he's all windblown and standing on Chartres Street in the Quarter, next to landmarks I know. And who can resist the hilarity of Jim Cantore in his blue parka, screaming even in the thinnest of breezes.

14 Hours Later

2008-09-01T01:52:00.003-05:00

It's 2:39 a.m. and we have just arrived in Atlanta after a fourteen hour trip (ordinarily I make the trip in seven hours). The four cats are prowling around in my parents' basement, smelling everything, poufing up. I am having a glass of red wine, although GAWD I wanted a cold, cold beer, and then I remembered that you can't buy alcohol on Sunday in this godforsaken state. The wine is making my teeth feel chalky.

I'm on edge.

Yesterday seems like a week ago. After the trip to the Northshore to pick up our dining table and after the boarding up, I gave several interviews to the BBC. Simon was annoyed with me, I think. Here he was--securing yard debris, putting stuff in the attic and taking memorabilia and files down, and here I was--yakking about what it's like to be evacuating. I was asked twice if it all felt "a bit like deja vu," which I guess is a logical question, to which the presumptive answer is "yes."

But the answer is no. This time didn't feel anything like last time, or the time before that (Ivan), or the time before that (Dennis), or the time before that (Iris), or the time before that (Georges). I've lived in New Orleans for ten years, but none of the evacuations has ever felt this... this... BAD. In my interviews, I remembered to mention the failure of the federal levees as the reason for the devastation wrought by Katrina. And that failure (and its aftermath--the fodder for this blog) is what makes this time feel so different.

Also, I am a homeowner and not a renter this time. I mean, I don't guess that ownership is the real difference--it's more the process of finding our home; Of working through the long renovation process; Of eating (or not eating), sleeping (or not sleeping), and breathing (or smoking) that house for months upon months and then moving in, and then having to leave.

Last night, after our friends left our very short and not all that relaxing "clean out the 'fridge" BBQ, Simon and I packed in earnest. I packed enough clothes for a six-week stay. I made sure to bring interviewing clothes, just in case I'd have to find a new job. I packed art, photos, journals, letters, and my wedding dress. Then I showered and checked in with the 1:00 am update, and there was the technicolor swirl on the screen. There was the grimmest of predictions: 21 feet of storm surge; catastrophic flooding.

I was waiting for a BBC interview that would air on their live morning program, but I was so spent and emotionally overwrought that Simon thought I should turn off the phone. When he asked me if I was okay, I started to cry, hard and snotty. "We're going to lose our house," I said. Then I turned off my phone. Then I turned it back on.

We slept. I woke at seven. I was worried about getting out. On the news they were talking contraflow. They showed pictures of the I-10, blocked for miles and miles. Then the Dawn Brown said it was important to get a move on before the weather conditions started to deteriorate.

Down the street, Tasha was packing her truck on her own. Her son Ejean played a tie whistle on the stairs. She kept yelling at him. She asked us for rope. Simon said he'd leave some if we had any left. It was already 11:30 by then. I'd already had another hard cry. "I think we're going to lose our house," I told Simon. He nodded and then hugged and shushed me.

I kept thinking of more things I wanted to bring. Outside our pile grew: next to my car was the pile that had to stay dry. In Simon's was the stuff that could get rained on. The sky was turning gray already, and there was a stiff breeze. I worried. How stiff could the breeze get without lifting our roof off? Simon wanted to put more things in the attic, but I had too many windblown movie images in my head--of roof tiles flaking off like fish scales. We compromised and moved things to high shelves in our closets. I made signs that read, "Hand Family Caravan" and taped them to our rear windows so people would know not to separate us if we got into a wrong lane in the contraflow.
The cats were the hardest part. The last time we took Ray--our post-Katrina kitty--on a trip in the car, he pushed himself against the cage so hard that he rubbed of patches of fur and bloodied his tiny nose. I put him in a harness. The effect was paralyzing. He sort of sat there on the bed, looking worried, wondering what that harness meant. Anna went relatively cheerfully into her carrier. Both Sammo and Georgie required heartbreaking pushing and prying. (Later we gave them breaks, although stressed out animals, I've discovered, do not want to eat, drink, or use the bathroom. They want to sit on your lap and be reassured.)
And then we had to leave Miss Stripeypants, Sammo's sidekick. She's a feral cat who's part of the SPCA's "Catch and Release Program," which we figured out on account of two things: her notched ear and her running away even after we've just fed her fancy organic cat food (peas and duck, Miss Stripeypants! Peas. And. Duck.)

I'd bought a 16-pound bag of Friskies. I opened the top and put it on top of a cabinet on our raised porch. I measured the water line from Katrina to make sure it was high enough. Then I left two big bowls of fresh water and opened several small bottles of water that I figured she could tip over to drink if she needed to. She eyed me warily from under the porch. I blew her a kiss and moved on.

As we drove away, Tasha approached. She wanted to know where we were going. "To hell," I joked (as anyone in New Orleans knows that evacuating is its own special kind of hell.) When I told her we were really going to my parents' house, she said, "Oh, mother! Well that really is hell!" Ejean in the background looked like he might feel the same. He looked worried--like why is my mom packing everything, everything, everything and letting it get so late and leaving me here on the steps with this damn whistle when I know very well what's going on even if I was only two during Katrina? She told us to be careful. She said, "I hope it doesn't flood this time." I told her there was some extra rope on the side steps. She thanked us and we left.

The streets were empty. When we got to Franklin and I-10, the traffic I'd seen the day before was gone. We stopped to ask a cop if we should go that way. We wanted to get to I-10, but we'd heard they weren't letting anyone go on to I-10 past I-12. The map indicated that we'd get forced on to I-59, heading north. The cop shrugged. We decided to follow Mark's route. He'd headed up Causeway, then to highway 190 to I-12 to I-10 east. He reported it was smooth sailing. It sort of was.

There was, in fact, a lot of traffic that came in strange bursts apropos of nothing. There were no accidents to inspire rubbernecking or anything; you'd just be going 60 miles-per-hour one minute and then 15 the next. When it was slow I texted friends. "Dear Friends," I wrote. "Simon and I are creeping toward ATL with cats and wedding pics in tow. We hope to return to NOLA soon. In the meantime, please keep in touch, wherever you may be... XOXO SARAH." Jenn texted back that she'd been 15 hours en route to Birmingham, where she and her four dogs were not "hot and deeelerious" in a cramped hotel room. Dave took 12 to get to Arkansas. Adam and Ashley were in St. Petersburg, Florida. Scott and family: Memphis.

We (the Hand Family Caravan) mostly listened to WWL-AM 870 and called each other. On the radio, people called in all day to bitch about "contraband" (contraflow). Those who'd taken the route we very nearly did--I-59--were in "a parking lot." You could hear the frustration and anger. The southbound lanes were empty, but no one was moving. The exits had been closed. There was no place to use the bathroom or to get gas or a cold drink. Later, a woman from Uptown called to say that "someone should be held accountable" for the fact that she'd been in her car for thirteen hours and hadn't made it to Hattiesburg yet. Simon called me and asked if I'd heard the reports of gridlock on I-59 and we thanked our lucky stars we'd not gone that way. "We're charmed," he said. I wouldn't call fourteen hours for a seven hour trip a "charmed" journey, but we are here and safe, and even if I can't sleep and have wine-tooth, I am grateful we have a place to go.

Tomorrow we will watch TV, which is probably not a good idea, but what else can we do now that we are here and not there and our home is weathering the storm (we hope... we hope...) and our city is taking another sucker-punch to the gut (we hope not). In intend to stay sane. I was a rotten mess sometimes after Katrina...

(Also, I'll add some pictures to this post.)

Thank you to the readers who heard me on the BBC and who have offered support and wellwishes, by the way. Thank you for helping me to stay motivated to write about all of this, too... (We'll see how long THAT lasts!)

Boarding up...

2008-08-30T22:53:00.004-05:00

Our dear, dear neighbor Ariane Wiltse, and her friend Beau helped us board up the house this afternoon.

This is our house, waiting for what our clown of a mayor has called "The Mother of All Storms." Tomorrow we will leave her behind, and I am so, so sad about it. Also, I have realized that we will likely be gone for a long time. There's this, too: because we are separated from the city by the St. Claude and Claiborne Avenue Bridges, and because there is likely to be very bad damage in St. Bernard Parish to our east (and perhaps again to New Orleans East), we will probably not be allowed to come home for a long time.

Must not allow this all to sink in. Will keep moving and moving and then will sleep. Tomorrow we will leave as early as we can, but we also do not want to be driving zombies. We will be in our cars for a very, very long time. And I will have four very unhappy cats with me.

There is more to be said, but I am very, very tired, and now I have to pack in earnest. I've been sorting and getting ready in that sorting way, but not in a, "Let's do this" fashion, and now I need to. I will try to blog tomorrow. It will likely be from my parents' house in Atlanta.

P.S. Screw spellcheck.

If You Are Panicking...

2008-08-30T17:31:00.002-05:00

We have been getting a lot of calls today. It seems many of you want to hear our plans. The problem is that our plans may not coincide with yours.

Yes, we are still waiting. Here's why:

We have already missed the window of opportunity for leaving without having to encounter massive traffic. (When I drove back from the Northshore, bumper-to-bumper evacuation traffic began at Franklin on the I-10/610 merge.)

We are not ready. Simon had to teach yesterday and we were unable to board up. We are boarding up now and clearing the yard. I have all of our papers together and I will pack this evening. We will then watch the latest coordinates at 7:00 and then make a decision about leaving. We will leave in the middle of the night--as in 3:00 a.m.-ish--if we decide that we do, indeed, need to leave.

We are not stupid. We are not irresponsible. We will leave if we think it best, and we will leave in time to avoid the possibility of being stopped by bad weather.

We understand there may have been a better way to deal with this Gustav-fucker. We understand that our plans may not comfort you. We are sorry that you are panicking. (Watching TV--the explosive graphics, well-chosen stories of heartache and fear, the use of extreme TV-lingo--it can inspire panic. It's why we are keeping it off until another storm update is to be aired.) Your panic, however, does not help us right now.

So please, please, please, know that we will take care of ourselves. We will call you with our plans--plans you may not approve of, but that will nonetheless be the result of a lot of thought and careful consideration.

In the meantime, please do not call to express your disapproval of our plans. Being here, knowing that we may lose our home, living through this again, and trying to do what we need to in order to be safe--and sane--is harder than I can express in words. Having to answer the phone--to stop boarding up, packing, assessing, and dealing with this--in order to provide you comfort does not help us. At. All.

Saturday Afternoon (Three Days Pre-Gustav)

2008-08-30T12:38:00.003-05:00

I feel better when I am not watching television. I also feel better when I am not at the grocery store.

We just returned from Rouse's on the lakefront. The store looked closed. Crews were putting corrugated metal on the windows, but one door was open. Inside people looked as confused as I felt--like they didn't know whether to stay or go, whether to get more water or less, whether this is all some cruel joke, coming on the heels of the third anniversary of Katrina.

In the meat department they were knocking prices down by 50%, and everyone's hoarding instincts seemed to be kicking in. Because we still haven't decided if we will stay or go, we were preparing for both staying and going. We bought eight filet mignon steaks, two punds of ground buffalo, and two whole chickens.

Then Simon's brother called, and he seemed worried. Simon told him we were probably leaving, which confused me. I was loading more beer in the cart.

I had to leave. I cried in the parking lot. My mom called. I pulled it together and promised her we will be safe.

On the way home, driving through the Lower Ninth Ward on the back-of-town side, we passed the Katrina memorial and I felt just awful. When we pulled up, we saw that our across the street neighbors were leaving. I think they must have hated us--us bringing in the ice, the steaks, the beer. I hated us.

Now I am watching the mayor on TV and everything feels more serious than it did last night and yesterday. Gustav is a cat-4. My friends Amanda and Joseph called. Last night we planned to get together, to BBQ. But the 4 has Amanda worried, and she says they are leaving. Simon and I have agreed we will leave tomorrow morning if we have to, or even as late as Sunday night. We are hesitating, which I have never done before, because we have four cats who will suffer on the drive, and make us suffer, too. We are not stupid. We know how dangerous the storm is. We will be safe. We need time to batten down.

In the midst of all this, I can't believe that I am about to drive to the Northshore to pick up our dining table, but I am. It will not be insured in the furniture-maker's house, and we are--thank God--heavily insured. This feels like crazy-making. I have to get out before contra-flow begins and traffic gets bad. Simon is staying to board up and secure yard items. He has just come home after getting air in the truck's tires. I have to go... will try to write more and describe everything later.

The Crazy Before the Storm: Or, Go, Go GO!"

2008-08-27T22:10:00.011-05:00

Yesterday morning I got up early. I walked along the levee, where dragonflies divebombed crazily, aiming at nothing in particular, it seemed, as though drunk on the heat.

Even before we moved to Holy Cross, I'd planned to take these morning walks on the levee. Having access to greenspace in our clustered-up city is such a rare thing, and the path along the Mississippi is just one block from our new home--a fact that made me giddy. I looked forward to morning walks on the levee. Yesterday, after Simon woke me, I contemplated staying in bed until eight, but contemplating and then giving myself permission to simply stay there is a problem of mine. So I forced myself out of bed and into the company of the Mississippi River and the dragonflies.

I was trying to make my head quiet while I walked, trying to wring the storm out--both the last storm and now this Gustav-fucker. Coming from a hairy-armpitted mother and growing up in the company of many women who are interested in what my mother's guru-like friend would call "woo-woo" stuff, I've had a fair amount of exposure to the notion of meditating, but I've never had the discipline--or even the inclination, really--to commit to doing it at all, much less regularly. You're supposed to choose a word--a word that you can go to when the outside pushes in. A word that will re-center you and keep you focused on, well, nothing. Words like "peace" or "calm" would be good ones, I supposed.

I told myself I would try these words. I would attempt to focus on repeating them instead of on cursing the dog-walker who neglected to pick up after their dog. Peace... peace...

But then at 8:00 am, the Naval base across the river piped out its morning reveillion (?) , and next came the national anthem. With no breeze to lift these and carry them away from me, I heard them both as if I was there, myself. And then "peace" became "war." So I tried "calm." As in, "before the storm." That didn't work.

What if I picked my own focusing word? "Go" seemed like a good choice. Go: such a proactive, positive word, so tidy and round and uplifting, even. Go... go... go...

But the outside had, by then, already pushed its way in. And try as I might to focus on the present, on placing my feet one in front of another on the gravelled levee path, on breathing the air, on flowing with the river, I couldn't do it. I started thinking about having to "go" away--about having to evacuate. As in, "Go, go, GO!" As in run like hell.

And then I thought of MR-GO ("Mister Go"), also known as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.

Here is a description of the MR-GO from the US Army Corps of Engineers website.

"The Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MRGO) is a 36-foot deep, 500-foot bottom width, man-made waterway authorized by the River and Harbor Act of 1956 and the Water Resources Development Acts of 1976, 1986 and 1996. The MR-GO extends from the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal to the 38-foot depth contour in the Gulf of Mexico. Construction of the channel began in 1958 and the channel was completed in 1968. The channel was dredged through shallow bays, coastal marshes and cypress swamps. Its construction was authorized by Congress to provide an emergency outlet from the Mississippi River in the interest of National defense and general commerce and to provide a safer and shorter route between the Port of New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico."

Many outside of New Orleans are not aware that the now nearly-unused MR-GO was responsible for much of the widespread and devastating flooding in New Orleans East, the Lower Ninth Ward, and St. Bernard Parish. Not only has its creation resulted in saltwater intrusions that have devastated wetlands (our natural defense from storms), but it also acted as a pressurized funnel for storm surge from Katrina. The MR-GO has not only not served its intended purpose, then; it also contributed to the deaths of hundreds of residents in the areas impacted by Katrina's surge, including a man who lived in my now-home.

As I walked back to my house, I started to get a bit of that crazy-feeling I had three years ago--the one I got when I was in the Chicago airport and--bam--it hit me that this Katrina-thing was really happening. I showered, made breakfast, watched the latest weather update, felt crazy again, fed the cats--including Mister (or Missus) Stripey-Pants, whom we believe to be a pre-K kitty on his/her umpteenth life--and went to work, where I tried to actually work. Mostly, though, I clicked back and forth between http://www.nola.com/ and http://www.wunderground.com/.

In my fiction writing workshop, I made an assignment which would be due the Wednesday after Labor Day, "Assuming, of course, that we're here." My students laughed when I said that, but not in a ha-ha way. They--we--laughed nervously. We didn't look at each other. We looked at out notebooks and doodled. We looked at their hands. I told them that if we had to evacuate, I would be happy to teach online. I didn't tell them that I would be happy to do it largely because a) if Gustav makes a direct hit, my home will probably flood, but I will have to keep in paying my mortgage, which means that b) I will HAVE to keep teaching, whether I like it or not.

Later, I and two of my colleagues had a meeting with the director of distance learning at UNO. We were discussing ways to streamline the process of administering tests in our online classes, which inevitably led to references to "The Katrina Semester," when anyone with access to a computer (and a shred of mental stability) was forced to teach online. Inevitably Gustav came up, and the new director--a lovely woman from Florida who has somehow avoided ever evacuating for a hurricane--asked if she really needed to make evacuation plans. The pre-K three of us looked at each other, incredulously: uh, YEAH! We gave her a list of areas to call for hotel reservations. We told her to remember to bring more than three days worth of clothing. We talked about Last Time. Mike had been living in Chalmette. He lost everything. Laura and I both survived with little to no damage.

Then, Laura said, "Sarah, didn't you just move to the Lower Ninth Ward?" When I told her that I did, and that I was afraid of what could happen because the Corps has yet to close MR-GO, Mike emitted a sound that sounded to me like a cross between, "Good luck" (as in, "Good luck ever getting the Corps to do ANYTHING) and "Oh, fuck."

After my meeting, a student of mine from my workshop dropped by to tell me that there is a vacant apartment downstairs from them where Simon and I can stay if we don't want to evacuate, but don't want to stay in the Lower Ninth Ward. I thanked her but said it was more likely that we'd drive to Atlanta. I asked what her plans were. She said she and her husband would drive to Chicago--an 18-hour drive--to stay with friends. I told her they could come to Atlanta, instead, if she didn't want to drive 18-hours away. We exchanged numbers.

Afterwards I spent too long looking at storm graphics again. Then, I made the mistake of reading this:

"If Gustav heads into southeast Louisiana, scientists and engineers agree that large swaths of the region could be at great risk of flooding from even a moderate storm surge, especially neighborhoods near the Industrial Canal and on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish.

More than $2 billion in repairs and improvements made to the system since Katrina cracked it open three years ago have strengthened some weak spots. In particular, floodgates on three New Orleans outfall canals -- two of which broke through their floodwalls causing catastrophic flooding during Katrina -- should protect neighborhoods from surges flowing through Lake Pontchartrain. And new levees are giving protection to the Company Canal and Harvey Canal north of Lapalco Boulevard.

But almost $13 billion in work remains to be done before the region is protected from a 100-year storm -- about the size of Hurricane Rita -- and that means much of the hurricane protection system remains at risk.

In many cases, there's nothing that can be done to beef up inadequate flood defenses if Gustav strikes early next week. East of the Mississippi River, for example, the system's Achilles heel remains the Industrial Canal area, where $695 million worth of structures are planned at the confluence of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet. But that work, still being designed, won't start to provide any storm surge protection until this time next year.

Despite some higher Intracoastal Canal levees and new armoring against erosion, communities all around the Industrial Canal remain exposed to the potential for major flooding" (italic mine).

I live one block from the Industrial Canal.

On my way home from work, I felt stupid for offering to take in my student in. While 18 hours is a long way to drive, at least she has a place to go. There will be people who don't--a lot of them in my neighborhood. What will the Taylors do? I know that last time they stayed with a family in Wyoming, but Mrs. Taylor said it was "too dry" for her, and she missed the south terribly. We could take them.

Or what about UNO's international students? This summer, a student of mine from Nicaragua wrote a paper on the inadequacy of the University of New Orleans' evacuation plan--about its failure to address international students' needs. She described the scene after Katrina, the "panic" felt by students who had only limited English speaking and comprehension skills and who were ultimately left to fend for themselves. Her paper pinpointed problems in the current plan. That plan offers to evacuate students who have nowhere to go by bus to a shelter outside the evacuation zone. There:

"Students can expect to share an open gym floor without cots in a nonairconditioned building with extremely limited resources. Working bathrooms will be available but could become disabled. At the offcampus evacuation site, water and prepackaged
military meals, Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), will be supplied in limited quantities." (See UNO's Student Housing Campus Evacuation Plan.)

When my student called to find out more about what international students should do to get on the bus, she learned that it would take just 50 students to safety. There are 750 international students attending UNO. I should take those students, I thought. Who else could I save?

As I was crossing the Claiborne Avenue bridge, getting a glimpse of some of the Make It Right (or "Brad Pitt") houses--several of which now boast solar panels and are nearly finished--my mother called. She told me she thought Gustav was just going to blow away--not blow us away, but just break up and stay away from us, altogether. She said she didn't know what it was--maybe her "mother's intuition"--but that she just didn't feel like this was going to be All That Bad. I said I wished I shared her feeling. Then, I launched into a rant against the Corps and against MR-GO. I was raging, which probably scared my mom more than it did me. I hadn't realized how angry I was--how angry I am.

When I got home, I did as the paper told me: I placed a dated newspaper on the floor and started taking pictures. The newspaper will allow us to prove to the insurance company that the pictures are post-K, as those bastards the insurance companies will evidently give us hell about paying for repairs if we can't prove the home has been repaired since Katrina.

Later, as I made dinner, I watched the neighborhood emerge for sunset. Mr Taylor was having a Heineken and a cigarette on the porch. Damone swerved down the block on his "Whipstick" scooter. No one seemed to be freaking out like I was--which may not necessarily be a good thing, but at least it made me feel better. The sky was a crazy-beautiful pink/purple/orange, and it made me feel better, too.

After we ate, Simon and I walked up to the levee to watch the sky turn colors and to imagine a lifetime of sunsets on the levee. I brought a cup of wine and worked on smiling. A group of young boys talked to the National Guardsmen who were parked on the levee--still here helping out after Katrina--and we overheard the Guardsmen ask the boys about what they were going to do for Gustav. They didn't seem to know.

This morning, I got up to walk along the levee again. Screw mind-clearing; I just walked. I walked past my neighbor's house, where a truck had arrived with a load of sheetrock. Adolf renovated one house already, and now he is close to finished with his second--the one that he and his wife will move in to when it's done. It's a huge a beautiful home, and I was happy to see the sheetrock, as that always signals that you're getting close to done. I hope he does not have to do it again. I hope we don't.

When I got to school, I took a picture of the sign I walk past every day. Someone in the department put it up, I am sure. Today it was both funnier and meaner than ever before:

Later, at the beginning-of-the-semester faculty meeting, everyone was talking about the uncanny echoes of three years ago. That meeting had been held the Friday before Katrina's landfall. Three days later it was the way it was--the way it now is. Tomorrow's department party is cancelled. One colleague, whose husband directs a suicide hotline, says they will leave tomorrow. I didn't hear from anyone else yet.

Just a moment ago, the man who has been making our dining room table sent an email. He said we will need to pick up the table by Saturday if we want to guarantee that our table will be safe. We don't have room for it, sadly. We will need to take people, instead.

When to Open a $70 Bottle of Wine

2008-08-26T22:22:00.002-05:00

We have plywood.

After he got out of school, Simon called from the Home Depot. I measured the windows and doors. An hour later he unloaded the wood while I made dinner and listened to WWOZ broadcasting from Denver, where the Democratic National Convention is in full-swing. On the radio one of the local DJs said, "So it's what, 20-to-eight in New Orleans? That means people are cookin'." I was cooking. I smiled. "Just so you know, people, we ARE aware of the weather reports, of Gustav. We hope the music can take you away from your worry."

When Simon and I sat down at the kitchen island, I asked him if he wanted to have a seventy-dollar bottle of wine for dinner. The wine was given to me by a friend upon the publication of her novel (it was that way around because I'd helped her find the agent who sold her book) several years ago. The wine is pre-K stuff, which means there's a good chance it's turned, but somehow I've just kept hanging on to it, not drinking it after we returned to New Orleans after the storm, not drinking it after we got married, not drinking it when we closed on our house, after we moved in. I don't know what we've been waiting for...

"I figured we should drink it now," I explained, "in case we can't toast our new house when the dining table arrives."

Simon considered it. "Let's wait."

I did not tell Simon what I'd thought earlier--that it's a good thing our dining table is not ready yet, since everything in our house might be gone if Gustav makes a direct hit. The dining table--a custom piece that my parents are giving us as a gift and that's being made by a Northshore furniture maker who made one for Rashida in her This Old House-house--is made from boards taken from walls we removed during the renovation.

Once upon a time, the boards floated down the Mississippi River on a barge. The barge was deconstructed and turned into our house some 100 years ago. In 1927, after the devastating Mississippi River floods of that year (our house flooded because the even-then buffoonish city officials decided to blow the levees downriver in order to spare the upper-crusties in the Garden District), the owner papered the barge board using issues of the New Orleans Tribune. (One story reported, "President Coolidge urged to visit New Orleans." It seems even then the government was relying on the "personal responsibility" of its own victims to heal the devastation wrought by poor leadership.) The man who is making our table reports that the wood is likely "first growth virgin pine" from Natchez (I think he said this was in Tennessee, not Mississippi).

One day we hope to have meals atop those boards. We hope to look out our window and see the big ships go by (the ones that make US commerce possible; the ones that rely on our New Orleans ports and our New Orleans workers).

I am therefore grateful to Simon for keeping me from opening the $70 wine, because it needs that table.

I am also grateful to Bob Breck of Fox 8 New Orleans for reminding me (with one of his trademark turkey gobbles and a girlish hoot) not to "hyperventilate" over this Gustav.

I think I'll go to bed.

And I'm supposed to TEACH through this worry?

2008-08-26T12:35:00.002-05:00

Another Weather Underground blog entry (from a smart weather-guy type) reports this:

"For those of us in the central Gulf Coast region, the long range forecast for Gustav is looking eerily like Katrina's track in 2005. The GFDL (the currently favored model as far as it's reliability) has a long range position for Gustav on Sunday morning near 28.2N 88.6W or about 150 miles due south of Biloxi MS and SSE of New Orleans, LA as a category 4 hurricane.

For that reason, I would warn folks, as the Hurricane Centers forecasters are, that the long range models are prone to large errors. There is little doubt that those forecast tracks will change with each new run of the models. Especially given the current left hand turn expected and then the forecast right turn toward the northwest. There are simply too many variables to be focusing on a long range position. Having said that, if you live on the Gulf Coast, you should be prepared for storms this time of year. Don't wait til you have one on your door step."

I just watched the news, and the local guys were telling us to "review our plans." I plan to leave the very moment it looks like we need to. I and my husband and our our cats. We'll head to Atlanta, hopefully for three days of TV and drinking and a little catching up with the nephew and nothing more.

I want to stop worrying so I can work now.

Plywood and Other Preparations

2008-08-26T10:26:00.004-05:00

I wasn't here when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. I was in the bucolic mountains of Burlington, Vermont, at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. I'd gone to sort out my troubled relationship with writing, and for ten days I managed to be convinced by the intensity of the event, the beauty of the setting, and the isolation from, well, everything outside of it, that sorting out my on-again, off-again affair with writing was The Most Important Thing in my life at the time.

Clearly things changed.

I can't remember now if it was Saturday or Sunday when I got a little pink slip in my Bread Loaf mailbox directing me to call Simon. I remember worrying that something had happened--maybe to my parents, maybe to his--and feeling actually relieved when he told me it was a hurricane evacuation, instead. I'd been through two of those (Georges in 1998 and Ivan in 2004). Both were a hassle, but in the end, actually kind of fun. A hurricane evacuation, I thought (relieved), I could handle.

But when I went to the basement of one of the Bread Loaf campus's buildings to check my email, I read the doomsday reports. I saw the projections. I eyed the storm's forecast cone, by then menacingly focused on New Orleans.

And then I got all quiet and stunned. While the rest of the Loafers celebrated the conference's end (the resident poet pressing himself to young admirers at the final night's dance, the basement boys having their frat-like farewell kegger), I wandered around in a daze, saying, "What the fuck" to anyone who would listen.

I spent the final afternoon--the one when some of my friends headed to a swimming hole for a dip--on the phone with a representative from Delta. My flight to New Orleans was cancelled. I would have to fly to Atlanta, where Simon would meet me with a truck full of cat carriers and file-boxes, with my dad's hand-me-down guitar and Simon's shell-shocked brother, who'd been in town for his vacation.

Because I was already in what I can only describe as an alternate universe--this pretty-fied place that seemed to me to be a postcard come to life--none of it really felt real, somehow. Maybe it was because I had no access to radio or TV that I couldn't quite believe what was happening (ordinarily, I'd be glued to every forecast from a storm's birth, eight days out). I don't know. I just remember that I didn't really feel like it WAS happening until I got to some airport (was it O'Hare?) and ordered an egg-and-cheese biscuit and sat down in front of CNN. When I saw the images of the evacuation--of the miles and miles of cars and cars, none of them really moving, of the people boarding up and spray painting their dares on the plywood (Go Home Katrina!), of the many Weather Channel correspondents who'd stationed themselves around the city--I started to cry. I remember everyone was watching the TV, and everyone looked worried. I was really afraid.

This weekend, when Fay's remnants mussed our hair as we stood with friends outside Lucy's Retired Surfer Bar, celebrating the publication of our dear friend Bill Loehfelm's novel, a few of us talked about that time. We're close to three years out, now, and of course those milestones bring the memories out, big time. Even though we all know it, know it, it still seems surreal, even now. We were zombies, all of us, in those days. Or robots. We were going through it because we had to, but none of us processed it in our hearts until it really punched us at some odd point, typically one that occurred in front of a TV.

It's the TV, now, that has me worried. That and a post from the Weather Underground blog of Jeff Masters:

"The track forecast for GustavThe models are in good agreement on the 1-3 day track of Gustav, and we can be confident that Gustav will turn west and pass south of Cuba after a close encounter with the southwest peninsula of Haiti. The trough of low pressure currently exiting the U.S. East Coast and pulling Gustav northwest is expected to move off to the east, allowing a ridge of high pressure to build in and force Gustav due west or slightly south of due west. After three days, there is more divergence in the models. The ECMWF and NOGAPS models foresee a landfall in the Cancun/Cozumel region on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, followed by a second Mexican landfall south of Brownsville, Texas, early next week. This solution assumes the trough of low pressure moving across the Midwest U.S. late this week will not be strong enough to turn Gustav to the north. The other models predict that this trough will be strong enough to turn Gustav northward, and foresee a landfall on the Gulf Coast between the Florida Panhandle and Texas border 6-8 days from now. The GFDL is the fastest, bringing Gustav to New Orleans on Sunday afternoon. This is a plausible forecast, but at this point, virtually any point along the Gulf Coast has a roughly equal chance of a direct hit by Gustav.Which set of model should we trust? I plotted up the errors for some of the computer model forecasts made during Fay. While Fay was over Hispaniola and Cuba, the GFDL model made the best track forecasts, among the four main models used by NHC: GFS, GFDL, NOGAPS, and UKMET. This makes me more inclined to trust the GFDL model's forecasts for Gustav, since Fay and Gustav are similar storms."

Yesterday, when I first read about the storm--when it first got its name--I checked out some comments on Nola.com. They made me feel ill. (Mom, don't read them.)

I am going out to gas up the cars. This afternoon we will get plywood.

In terms of steeling myself for what may happen... for preparing myself mentally for the possibility that Gustav could be yet another "big one" for New Orleans? I just can't go there. We just moved in to our new home!

Nope. Not going there.

I will say that I could really go for being someplace pretty and isolated from everything. And I could go for not having to deal with an evacuation.

Mom, your prayers would be good right now...

Why Did the Egret Cross the Road?

2008-08-21T11:07:00.004-05:00

After two weeks of genuine vacationing, Simon and I returned home on Sunday evening. We had two cars instead of one this time, since we were transporting furniture we'd bought (or were given) in Atlanta. I drove my dad's old Subaru station wagon--with no A/C--and while the lack of air conditioning may have been all right in Asheville, NC (where we spent a week of our trip), it was SO not okay in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. We stopped several times so I could wring out my shirt, and the misery of it all was compounded by sporadic heavy rains and no radio, whatsoever. I sang a lot of songs I remembered from my nerdy choir days, and I ate gummy worms and pork cracklins in order to stave off sleep and boredom. Ah, road trips!

Our vacation, itself, was lovely. In Atlanta, we spent lots of time with family, and specifically with my nephew, Damien, who has grown like a weed. He now does cute little-person things. He laughs, for one, (and not just when he has gas), and he grabs things. Babies. Ain't they grand?

Parents Paul and Aalia appear to be doing well, although Paul seems to think that Damien is much more evolved than he really is. One night, he mentioned that Damien was going to get a "big ego" from all the love and attention he was getting. So of course we attributed any of his typical-baby behavior to his colossal "ego" from then on. I think Paul is more frustrated than anything by the fact that babies can't be controlled--and by the fact that they also can't communicate their needs. Babies. Uh, ain't they grand?

We visited Simon's brother, Tom, and sister-in-law, Brandi, at their new home just outside of Asheville, NC, too. They've bought a cute, albeit cookie-cutter, home on a ridge in the "town" of Candler. Their home overlooks Hominy Creek, and Tom has built a wonderful deck by the creek, where we enjoyed sunsets and summer ales. Both Tom and Brandi appear to be taking to "country life" fabulously. Tom has set up a woodworking shop in the basement, where he turns bowls, and where he constructed the kitchen butcher-block island we inaugurated on our trip. Brandi will be teaching hip-hop dance classes at the Asheville ballet; she's even been asked to choreograph a hip-hop version of the battle-scene in The Nutcracker. She and I had some really nice evenings on the deck, talking marriage and family and other 30-something matters. (Though I should mention that Brandi has yet to reach the 30-year milestone!) I was reminded of how wonderful it was to have them here in New Orleans, and I miss them terribly now that we are back.

I can't say much about their new hometown of Candler. It's got a single "strip" on which some pretty darn good fried chicken gets served, and down which many a mullet-wearing mountain-man cruises in his beat-up truck. It stands in stark contrast to Asheville, where Subarus are as common as hoopdies are in New Orleans, and where the Friday-night activity is a city-sanctioned "drum circle" where hippies, old and young, gather to do the chicken dance (a la Grateful Dead concerts) and beat bongos. My favorite joke from our time in Asheville: the HBO program, "The Wire" is planning a sequel, "The Wire: Asheville." At the end of the first season, a waitress at Tupelo Honey gets undertipped. At the end of season two, someone gets turned away from the drum circle.

The best thing about Asheville is the access to the outdoors. There are some really incredible hikes--along rivers, to waterfalls--all within an hour's drive, and the weather was cool enough that we didn't sweat, but warm enough that we could swim. I wanted to walk every day, and I now find my heart aching for access to that kind of outdoor-space here in NOLA. Our new home boasts access to the Mississippi River levee, which thrills me, but it's no hike alone in the woods. In fact, there are not many opportunities to enjoy the outdoors here in New Orleans, and having been a child of canoers and hikers, being in the mountains of NC reminded me of just how important that time outside really is to me.

Okay, I'll admit it: there was even a moment when I thought, "I could live here." Well, it was more like, "We should live here." My family is close to Asheville, and Simon's siblings are all now close to Asheville. And then here we are, far, far away. And, of course, not only are we far from family, but we are living where we live.

When we drove in on Sunday, in fact, I was sad. I never feel that way. I mean, sometimes I feel mad, as in, "c'mon, people, let's fix these damn roads," or, "folks, cut it out with the littering, already." But on Sunday I felt sad, heavy-style. As in, "How the hell are we ever going to raise a child here?" As in, "When will our city even be un-broken?" I wanted to cry.

Then, of course, we got home and I saw my cats and our backyard, and Mr. Washington and Mr. Taylor waved hello, and the sun was setting in a saturated-pink kind of way, and Simon and I unloaded furniture and did a bit of nesting and it all felt good again.

Still, I will admit to feeling more than a little tired right now. When we were away, I read about the latest city-wide scandal, and I found myself crying rather than being pissed off. At the liberal arts faculty meeting on Monday, the chancellor talked about post-Katrina numbers and recovery (or the lack, thereof,) and I didn't feel my usual surge of commitment--my typical sense of resolve to stay, to dig in, and to make it all better. When I drove home from work that afternoon, I saw a contractor peeing in someone's yard, and I had to stop my car to let an egret cross the road. I wanted to kill the contractor, and I wanted to save the bird. What were they doing here? What am I doing here?

Last night, as Simon and I were eating dinner and watching women's platform diving on television, I told him what I'd read online about Tropical Storm Fay: there's a path that has it heading back out into the Gulf and then perhaps right back in toward us. I realized as I talked about it that I was almost mad at Simon--and at myself--for being where we are. Now, on top of living and working in this mess, we have to go out and get plywood? We have to prepare for the possibility of its happening again?

Yes, I knew this when we returned. I knew when we bought the house here in New Orleans that we were putting down roots in a hurricane-prone city. But knowing and really experiencing that reality are two entirely different beasts. And I simply cannot fathom doing the past three years all over again. I have lost nearly ten pounds from stress (which, yes, probably puts me at a healthier weight, but I don't think stress is ever a good way to lose weight, and besides, my clothes don't fit.) Keeping on as things are already seems overwhelming... what if things got worse again? Do I have it in me to repeat this process? And, more importantly, will we even be able to recover now that we are not only emotionally committed, but financially invested in this city, as well? I don't know... I really don't know.

So, the important thing is that we pray (or whatever) like hell that Fay stays away. In the meantime, we need to deal with the drainage-problems we're having. We need to put another coat of poly on the cork tile in the shower (the contractor didn't do a thorough job, and now we're seeing signs of rot). We need to hire someone to mow our jungle, to put up a fence. And I need to quit this oh-woe-is-me blogging and do some "real" writing and some genuine school-prep.

In the meantime, I have promised to post pictures of the house, and my dad gave me a camera-cable so I can upload those pics. So, here, Mom and co., is the guest bathroom, where you will bathe in our wonderful clawfoot tub... Enjoy!

Generally Speaking: or, Why I've Not Posted Lately

2008-07-22T13:18:00.002-05:00

I have been meaning to post more pictures of our wonderful new house, but I haven't because a) I couldn't find the box with the new batteries (and I didn't want to spend money on more), b) I've been savoring every moment of free time (and blogging hasn't felt savory to me lately), and c) I've been busy as all getout with the summer semester (and my students and their work have been monopolizing my time).

I've now entered the very last week of classes, which means my students are panicking--and that they are submitting revisions, galore, and wanting me to turn them around and grade them, like, pronto.

Two weeks ago, I spent an ENTIRE weekend grading over 50 essays, only to have approximately half of my students drop the course (due to poor grades) WITHOUT coming by to pick up their essays--with their abundant (and dare I say, rich) comments I had so labored over. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; my students have never been shy about admitting that grades are more important to them than the mere satisfaction of learning. Still, I'm not ashamed to admit that it hurts my feelings to have put so much time and effort into providing useful feedback, only to have my feedback ignored.

Summer semesters are always tough. Not only do we have to accomplish so much work in so little time (writing --and for me, grading--five essays and at least one revision in just eight weeks), but the students who enroll in summer classes often do so for the wrong reasons. They are students who want to simply get freshman comp "out of the way." Or worse: they are students whose advisers have somehow managed to counsel them toward a degree, leaving this class until last. So, generally speaking, my summer students are weaker writers than those who take comp in the regular semester. And generally speaking, they are precisely the students who should not enroll in such a difficult class with so little time in which to learn so much.

So I have been having conferences like crazy, grading like crazy, and also working on the new freshman comp textbook like crazy. And guess how I feel?

Thankfully, the end is in sight. I can't wait for a real break--two weeks without work--but we have a trip planned that I am actually kind of dreading. I want to see everyone, and all (my parents, bro, sister-in-law, nephew, and all of my in-laws), but I want them all to come here. I feel as if I haven't had any time to simply "nest"--and nesting is all I want to do. Simon's boxes are all unpacked, and he's been dutifully working at getting us a security system, weeding the side yard, and attending the neighborhood association meetings, but I still have several boxes that need unpacking, one of which had better have in it my very favorite pair of teacher-ly jeans (the dark and wide-legged fancy kind). Sigh.

There have been interesting and wonderful moments over this past month, of course. We've had friends over to play cards and Cranium on the back porch. We watched the fireworks on the levee on the Fourth (and then just walked right down the hill to our home). We've cooked our first meal, watched our first movie, and read the paper every morning on the stools at our new island. We've met more neighbors (and received a bottle of holy water from one). Generally speaking, we've been loving life in our new home. I just want some time to really be in our new home before school begins all over again.

Anyways, I am posting largely because I just wanted to get a blip up on the screen that says: I'm alive. I'm well. And I haven't forgotten about this sloppy blog.

I hope to be able to post more regularly soon... Until then: back to grading!

We're IN!

2008-06-24T11:08:00.007-05:00

On the 11th of June, several of our dearest friends came to our house to brave a storm of cat hair and dust. We packed the U-Haul, and, in the midst of still-ongoing last-minute contractor repairs, moved in to our new home in Holy Cross.

I thought I'd get goosebumps typing it, but it's all been such a blur, and the first week, especially, was so chaotic that I am just relieved and a bit tired, even. Simon said of our now-official home-ownership, "It'll never be finished, will it?" and it certainly feels that way. Today he is off buying a stud finder so we can hang curtains. I'll be unpacking clothes and books. This weekend we plan to deliver barge board to a furniture-maker on the Northshore who will make us a dining table, and we are crossing our fingers that we will have enough money to afford a new fence.

No, it'll never be "over," but I am loving the initial nesting, at least. My favorite room is the kitchen, which shouldn't surprise me, since I spent forever and ever designing it. My biggest dilemmas (after the layout, which I drew and redrew at least a dozen times) were whether to install matching upper and lower cabinets. I don't generally like upper cabinets, but I'd seen a couple of kitchens where the uppers were white and lowers were wood, and I really liked it. The uppers from the place where we got the lowers were crazy-expensive, though, so we had some IKEA cabinets delivered, which, even with the additional cost of delivery, saved us a lot of money.

I also agonized over appliances. I've just never considered myself a "stainless" kind of girl--too bourgeoisie--but the white appliances were all textured and generally less attractive, and I am not going to lie about wanting everything to look good (and last long). Because our countertops are black, I didn't want the high-contrast of white, either, so stainless it was. (We did get all Energystar appliances--and we had some serious sticker-shock, but we are sickly in love with our appliances. Gawd, we're so old. Or yuppy-fied. Or American. Whatever it is, we're it.)

Anyways, if you are at all interested in hearing/talking about any or all of our layout and design choices, I am happy, happy, happy to discuss every last decision--and to hear advice for ways to improve. I researched every little thing, all of it, and I could have continued to do it for ages...

...Here's the other side of the kitchen (plus cat Ray):
The hoosier on the left is an antique from England, complete with menus for the 1930's British homemaker. How does this sound for a "Plain Winter Day Menu Dinner": Cold beef; Tomato Sauce; Mashed potatoes; West riding pudding"? Breakfast, anyone? "Porridge; Potted meat on toast, breakfast sausage; toast; lemon marmalade." Mmmm. Potted meat. Simon says no one eats potted meat, really, just like hardly anyone actually eats SPAM, but we have both gotten a kick out of these Brit-ahem-feasts, and I am happy we bought the hoosier for pantry-space, too.

I want to take pictures of every room in the house, but this is the only one that is really unpacked and clutter-free. All the rest are filled with boxes. I'll post more pictures as we settle more. And I will write more about what it's like to live down here, one block from the levee, on a quiet cul-de-sac, with my wonderful neighbors and a sense that things can--and are--getting better. (Hint: it's wonderful.)

As Promised: Happy Post with Pictures of Progress

2008-06-01T21:34:00.011-05:00

Here they are: happy pictures of progress.

The kitchen. Sink's in. Countertops are done (but covered in cardboard). IKEA uppers are installed. Walls are STILL not painted green. (We are getting the impression that they're trying to avoid/ignore that we asked for "Serengeti Plain" green. Will ask tomorrow, as this neutral-stuff is nice for some, but lacks life in my book.)

The sink and faucet (Kohler Smartdivide Langlade cast iron sink and Delta Talbot faucet.) The house across the street on the right is painted the same green we want our walls to be. In fact, we used that house as our "inspiration." The black countertops mimic their screens. Our white sink and upper cabinets: their trim. Our wooden cabinets, their doors. I suppose this may sound like an odd way to approach kitchen design, but I like the idea of bringing outside views in, and so there you go. (We will NOT be bringing the dumpster view inside, and can't WAIT for it to be gone gone gone.)

This is the guest room door, as seen from the kitchen (the dark brown is exposed bargeboard, the grey to the left is the plaster covering the brick chimney). Most of our doors are lifeless new ones, but we have reused old ones when possible, and I asked that they be sanded but left unpainted. When they sanded, the workers left the original paint in the "grooves," and I really love how it came out. The trim is Sherwin William's Extra White, and I think it will all look really wonderful once it's cleaned up (they do scrape all the out-of-the-lines painting on transom windows, right?)
Here I'm not so sure I like the unfinished look as well. This is the mantel in the guest bedroom. I'm thinking it could look nice if I clean up the sanding a little and then paint the plywood in the middle the same color as the trim. I'd REALLY like to get one of those pretty wrought-iron screen-thingies to cover the center part, but money ain't gonna let that happen. I don't know what the heck will happen with the hearth... I can't tell what it's made of, or what it was meant to look like. This is where a preservation-person would be helpful.

Here's the mantel and door in the master bedroom. I still love the color we chose for the walls (SW's Waterscape). Since this mantel isn't a particularly nice one (it lacks the pretty flower-thingy and all that detail), I'm thinking I'll ask them to paint it the trim color. I definitely want to get one of those iron screens in here. (I'll have to find a picture). No one else seems to be a fan of the leftover wallpaper on the chimney, but I love it and have asked them to leave it. I'll try to clean up the torn edges so they're a little less jagged, but I just love it. I guess I like elements of the house that tell a story of its past.

The guest bathroom, which I once thought was the smallest bathroom ever, now looks much, much better and bigger with the tub and toilet in. The tub will have a shower kit attachment soon. Here's a question: should I use a clear vinyl curtain that hangs inside the tub, alone (which would allow you to see through to the rear wall) or cover it with a fabric one that hangs outside? I've always thought the fabric ones hide the tub and make the whole operation seem like a giant shower curtain on legs rather than a clawfoot tub with a shower-attachment, but I have strange design notions (like painting everything practically the same color... I'm already thinking I'd like this bathroom to be a more lively something.)

It's hard to believe that the tub you see above is the same one you see below...
Finally, here is the dining room, with our Pottery Barn "Cassandra" chandelier and a lonely IKEA Ogla chair. Once we have a dining table, we'll lower the chandelier, but there was some bad news, so most furniture may have to wait... You can see the wood ceilings we exposed here. I love them. I worried they'd be too dark or "lodgy," but the 12-foot ceilings seem to have taken care of that.

Okay, so the bad news: we've run out of money. This means that we will be living in our beautiful home with sofas and beds, but no tables or chairs. Who needs tables or chairs, though, right?

Tomorrow the refrigerator arrives, the time-painting gets finished, and I continue avoiding packing by spending lots of time on the phone with insurance agents, security companies (any recommendations?) and the person who will hopefully refinance our construction loan for one with a better rate (now that we're moving in and all.)

Happy post! Good night!

Bring on the truck

2008-05-31T15:29:00.003-05:00

I spent a lot of the end of this week on the phone--with insurers, with the contractor, with the power company, with the sewage and water board. I think I was choosing to ignore all the nitty-gritty details of moving, and now here they are, demanding to be taken care of.

In addition to having our services switched on and ironing out the paperwork from last week's theft, we also need to pack, of course, and I've gotten next to nothing done in that department.

In fact, I've found myself just really really TIRED this week. Since I've always had a bit of an iron deficiency, I surmised that I was feeling this way because I needed a burger and some greens. But after eating both, I still felt like sleeping for a week. And so I've been doing a lot of wasting time and sitting around (when I'm not on the phone, which I guess still qualifies as sitting around.)

I think part of what is making me feel so overwhelmed is that I've lived in my current place for some eight years, and I have collected a lot of stuff. I wouldn't say I'm a pack rat, but I like to keep mementos, pictures, papers, and other little items that bring back memories. All of this stuff has to be packed, and since I really need to sort through it, neither my mom nor Simon can help me get it done. It's all me.

So I've been slowly going through boxes and boxes of all I've collected during the past eight years--papers from graduate school, letters from old boyfriends--and as I've been doing it, I've been indulging in memories of my past. This has meant that it's been hard to get rid of even the tiniest of scraps of things: a bar napkin with some nonsensical scrawl on it, for instance.

I found one of these yesterday. It was a Camel Cigarettes cocktail napkin from the Funky Butt, and it read, "I'm afraid I may know everything already." I'd dated it January something-th, 2003. When I wrote it, I was bartending at the Funky Butt, and I was still with my then-boyfriend, Will. We were having a tough time, as Will had realized that New Orleans wasn't his city and he'd decided to move back to New York to pursue a career in film editing.

I remember talking about his leaving really openly. I was just CONVINCED that New Orleans could seduce him as it had me if only he'd let himself fall in love with this city. So I told my co-workers, my friends, my classmates--everyone--about his moving to New York, and I asked them all to help me convince him to stay. I knew it wouldn't work. But still.

Anyway, when I said "I'm afraid I may know everything already," (was it to a friend? a coworker? a patron?) I think I was talking about our impending breakup. It was an amicable enough one; we had both realized that Place was important to us--and we had fallen for two very different places. But our amicable breakup made me feel all of a sudden very adult. I really did have a sense that I'd found My Self, my Home. I knew Who I Was and Where I Wanted To Be, and knowing it made me feel both comforted and sad. Here I was. Here I would be. Here, here, here. What then?

What am I trying to say?

I guess I am trying to say that leaving this house is harder than I thought it would be. It feels like I'm closing an important chapter in my life. One might think that marriage would have felt like the "end" of this chapter, but my taurus-side has always made be feel very attached to things I can touch--a house, a cat, a letter from an ex-boyfriend, a ceramic frog I bought at a flea market in college that I stuck my hairbrushes in (this Simon recently threw away after it broke, and I fell into a melancholy for an entire day.) And so this chapter is one that's been housed not just in this city, but at this address.

I guess that's it: I've been going through my letters--through all of these things I've collected in this house-- and in doing so, I've realized just how different my life has become during the time I've lived at this address, and I can see just how different it will be, and I guess it has made me sad (even though the way I see it being in the future is happy enough, and all). I just wish I knew why I was sad, 'cause I don't want to be thinking about exes and deaths and lost kitties. I want to be thinking about landscaping and furniture and levee walks.

I mean, I really don't want to go back to relive the past eight years. They've been largely erratic ones, particularly those that were pre-Simon. But still... Oh, I don't know. Does everyone have this feeling when you're on the cusp of a big change? Do we all ache for a past that isn't even really ache-worthy? Or is it ache-worthy? Seriously, does everyone feel this way, or is it just me, because I feel like I have some big-time big-change blues.

I really am overjoyed to be moving (if you've been reading my blog, you know this). But I have never been good with transitions and in-between times. I get sad. I romanticize the past. I have make hyperbolic predictions about the future (He'll regret leaving me!) I indulge in self-pity and cheeseburgers. I put off packing. I Google ex-boyfriends. I blog.

What am I saying here?

I haven't a clue, y'all. I just know that I do not like this moving-crap. Not when someone else is doing it, and not when I am. I say bring on the truck and let's just get it done.

______

Up next: a happy post filled with pictures of progress. Promise.

Bad(ish) and Good Endings

2008-05-28T13:50:00.007-05:00

After the agonizingly-long and sleepless, post-copper-theft weekend, I managed to get in touch with our insurance agent, who a) scolded me for thinking that our theft would be covered once we lived in our home before he b) LISTENED to me explain that we do NOT live in our copper-thefted home, after which he c) declared all flippantly (like, duh) that of course we have builder's risk insurance, it's just not with his agency (Allstate) which we were supposed to have known.

Why we should have known this, I have no clue. We never received any policy or paperwork indicating that we had a BR policy (which is why I've been losing sleep and poring over our settlement documents.) I learned today, though, that Zurich is the only Builder's Risk provider who doesn't require that the owner sign the policy (agent and lender is okay), and our BR insurer is--you guessed it--Zurich.

So I filed the claim smoothly enough (no one has seemed to suspect that I have stolen the copper my dang self, which evidently has happened to many others, including my agent--twice), and then this morning the adjuster called to tell me that we have a $1,000 deductible.

Now, $1,000 may not sound like much money to some, but it is a big fat lot to me and my husband. Since we cannot move in, we will need to continue paying rent, as well, which brings the damage up into a range that, well, made me cry.

Actually, the $1,000 made me cry. The copper theft made me cry. My parents leaving this morning made me cry. None of these teary-episodes has lasted long, but I can tell that my heart-center is off, and I am ready for that to end.

Often, my solution for bouts of self-pity or pseudo-woe is to funnel said sadness into anger.

Ah, anger! So much beefier. So much more satisfying.

So today I am mad at our contractor, whose workers left a pick-axe on the rear deck (what they're using a pick-axe for, I have no clue) that the copper-thieves used to pry open the door. He also has posted a big ol' sign on the front of our house which, along with the electrician's sign, the big, caboose-red dumpster, and the weeds that look like something out of the Rocky Horrow Picture Show, all scream "HOUSE UNDER RENOVATION! NOBODY'S HOME!"

I sent an email asking that the signs be removed, but nothin' doin'. So our nighttime "security system"--a car parked outside, a battery-powered Coleman lantern on, and Latino music blaring (tinnily) from our shower radio--will have to do until the dang project gets done. Yes, I could weed the yard my dang self. But it's in the contract. And it's hot. And we're paying a ton o' money for this. And I need to pack. And I am feeling whiny and sorry for myself and in the mood to blame. So there.

Yesterday, though, I learned some very bad news, indeed. My dad and I were in Lowe's (I was buying watertight containers to house photos and important things) when I got a call from one of our immediate neighbors. I had called her to tell her about our theft, but she'd been out of town.

Since she'd returned, she'd learned that ours was one of THREE copper thefts in our little tucked-away part of Holy Cross in just this past week. Another more dangerous theft occurred when the brother of one of our crime committee's co-chairs had his truck stolen and was hit by his own truck in the process of the theft. He'd been hospitalized. Another neighbor, she reported, had had his home broken into EIGHT TIMES in as many months. She told me that members of the crime committee were meeting with the Fifth District. I hope something reassuring came from that meeting. Scratch that. I hope that something productive and meaningful came from it. (What's reassuring to the NOPD and we residents are often two very different things.)

Hearing about the spike in thefts scares me--especially because the summer in New Orleans leads to lethargy in the daytime followed by stir-craziness at night. Heat can bring out the worst in people, and I am afraid of the long summer not just because of the rapid approach of hurricane season, but because of the inevitable uptick in crime.

Still, I can't wait to move. Can't wait. (Did I mention that Simon woke up to six gunshots right outside our door last week? One of the shots fired poked a hole in the roof of our next door neighbor's house. We have suspected them of on-the-side drug dealing, and it appears they pissed off someone whose territory they'd encroached upon. So, b-dang b-dang: warning shots. They've been packing their things yesterday and today, and I am so, so, so ready to follow suit.)

Ah, how wonderful my city must sound!

Well, I never said it was all good. It's just that I love it so.

Let's end with something good, though. Because in spite of all this bad stuff, I had a really wonderful time with my parents. My mom and I packed books (well, she packed while I took on the unenviable task of sorting and agonizing over what to keep and what to get rid of), my dad took my old computers to the Green Project for recycling. We ate lots of good food. We walked along the levee. We laughed a lot. We made fun of my cats, who seem to be loving the moving-process, what with all the new surfaces they get to call their own by sleeping on/climbing in. We talked about how wonderful it will be once we really HAVE moved, when my parents will be able to walk down the street to see the sunset (or my dad to dream of putting a boat on the Mississippi, which, BTW, I have said is NOT allowed and have promised to thwart via a slingshot-pelting with stinging buckmoth caterpillars). In spite of the theft-whatnot, we had a wonderful time, and I miss them already.

So, here--oh happy ending!--is a picture of Anna taking a "break from packing". Oh, how I wish I could have the same attitude toward the moving process as my cats!

When a Cat-Lady Goes Dog...

2008-05-26T16:02:00.007-05:00

It's been too long (again). Sometimes blogging feels a bit burdensome, actually, and I think it's partly because I don't know who my readers are (with the exception of my ever-faithful mother and a few friends), and most of my readers don't comment. I'm not guilt-tripping here. I'm just sayin'. Sometimes it feels good to get a little chatter started. And knowing you're being heard can make all the difference when it comes to deciding whether or not to even open your mouth in the first place.

Anyways...

We'd planned to move this weekend, and it looked as though it'd be possible. My parents had arrived to help us pack up the old house, and the new one was moving along wonderfully. Progress.

The countertops are in (and I love my black matte laminate, thank you very much--especially the gentle curve the carpenter put in to compensate for the bumped-out sink cabinet beneath the giant window). The drawer hardware has been installed (cheap and lovely, thanks to Target.)

The lighting fixtures and ceiling fans have been installed, the closet shelves, built, and the appliances, ordered and delivered. All that was left to do was the plumbing trim, a second coat of poly put on the floors, and finishing-up painting...

And then, we got robbed.

Yes, Saturday morning, we got a call from our dear neighbors, Earnest and Donna Taylor, who said they'd just chased off three teens on bikes who'd been in the backyard.

I couldn't imagine what they'd be doing. I mean, what kind of bike-riding can you get done in our yard? You can't steal a washer and dryer on a bike, right? I thanked the Taylors and my parents and I piled in the car to head down, 'though we were in no hurry.

When we got there, it was clear that the rear french doors had been forced open. There were pry marks and the doors were open. But all the tools appeared to be on site, and our brand-new appliances were still sitting, untouched, in their boxes. I called the contractor, just to be safe, and he headed down. While I waited, I called the police. Even though we didn't see anything missing, it was obvious the door would have to be replaced (and that dang door was expensive as all getout, in spite of its ugliness.)

While I was on the phone, I saw three guys on bikes, like the ones Mr. Taylor described. They were headed towards us from the levee (my dad and I were on the stoop, getting some blessed Mississippi River breeze), but when they saw me step out onto the stoop, they turned around and left. I don't mean to be all, "Guilty as charged!" (insert ridiculously jump-to-conclusion-ish red-faced expression here), but it was obvious that these were the fellas Mr. Taylor had seen, and they had that "up to no good" look about them (there I go again with the sounding like a paranoid oldie...)

The National Guard arrived quickly and asked for a description. (I remember when this, in itself, was remarkable: the National Guard arriving. It was so... so... novel back then. Now, it's just regular, and, in fact, I fear, necessary.)

It's hard to believe this is the second time I've given a perp-description on Deslonde (the first was back when we saw three very, very young boys stealing VCRs and sports equipment from the Holy Cross school, way back when we were contracted to buy 701), but it is, and both times, the guardsmen began by asking, "African-American" with a sort of knowing nod, as if it were a foregone conclusion. Then: "Hairstyle?"

I don't know why I felt so self-conscious, and almost bad describing the guys (well, yes I do--it's the guilt of privilege and the curse of empathy: I feel bad for everyone--especially young kids desperate enough to rip off copper piping) but I had tried to memorize what I could (from a block away), and so I felt pretty good about my description: all three were very dark-skinned. One wore a white "wifebeater" tanktop, the other two, black baggy T-shirts, and all three wore long jean shorts. At least one of them had embroidered patterns on bottom of their shorts. Their bikes were painted black, and one had neon green accents.

Mr. Taylor's description was more vague (I love me some Mr. Taylor, BTW. To him, they really are just your average "teens up to no good," but to me, there was still a panicky newness to the way I felt, this sense that I really had to be specific and particular--and I suspect our different reactions/attitudes/perhaps even perceptions come from our differences in age and experience). Still, it was clear we'd seen the same kids, and when I'd seen them, they had likely come back to finish what they started.

"What they started," I later learned, after the Guard took off "in pursuit" and the contractor showed up, was a rather expert copper-theft job. The perp/perps had gone into the attic and stolen at least 30 feet of copper piping from the HVAC unit. Those who I've talked to since then have said we should be grateful they had the good sense and copper-pipe-thieving expertise to turn off the water before they went to town on our pipes. Otherwise, they could have flooded our home.

Today I went up to the attic to photograph the damage, but I realized I was photographing absence more than presence, and I didn't know what I was looking at. The damage to the underside of the house was more obvious. (See hanging pipe, below... its angle hinges at an incomplete cut.)

These pictures I am meant to submit to the insurance company, I think. I don't know, really. But I Googled copper theft and "builders risk insurance" and did what I was told.

Back to Saturday: I don't quite know how to describe how I felt all day. I was bummed and a little angry, but mostly there was this kind of resignation about it all, like, "Here it is," as if I knew it was coming but had been blocking it out, blissfully picking out lighting fixtures.

It was just so disappointing, I guess. My parents were in town to help us move, and here they were seeing this, one of the very worst sides of the New Orleans recovery, and one that I wish I could say was uncommon, but isn't. I wanted my parents to see how beautiful our home is and will be. I wanted them--and I guess, everyone--to see that it was possible to rebuild in This City and even in This Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood, since, after all, I have These Kick-Ass Neighbors and This Beautiful River, and Our Incredible City. And then this: here It was... the ugly underbelly, flopping us.

While we waited for the NOPD, my dad went up to the house to retrieve water and chairs, and my mom and I lay on the dining room floor and stared up at the new chandelier. Our "settling in" says a lot about what we expect from New Orleans' finest: I warned my parents that there was a better than even chance we'd be there all day. So my dad went to be practical and bring water while my mom did the good thing of lying on the floor with me and complimenting our 100-year old wooden ceilings, the Pottery Barn chandelier the electrician had just hung, the occasional breeze from the river. She kept saying how beautiful the house was. And it is. There's that, too, thank goodness.

Two hours later, the NOPD arrived. Officer 1972 was a wonderfully kind woman. She took my info, spoke to Mr. Taylor, and sat in the car filling out paperwork while my mom and I assembled IKEA dining chairs so we could sit. At one point she honked her horn and asked for my ID. "You know," she said, "I haven't been down this way since the storm. I mean, I've been on this side of the Canal, but I haven't been back here to Deslonde. It's nice. It's really nice."

I've always felt that way about our neighborhood. It's tucked away and beautiful, and it's also blessedly populated--mostly by good family people. It feels like a neighborhood that's loved by its residents, and it was that, more than anything, that drew us to Holy Cross, even if there were less people around to do the loving.

But after Saturday's incident, I felt f-ing pissed and targeted, and the area's vulnerability was what felt more evident than it's beauty. I felt as if I could see it in the way my parents must have, the way I suppose most do: it's got potential, sure, but it's all kinds of broken, and broke things are risky. What's to like about that?

I went inside and cried for a minute. Then, Mom and I sat on our newly-assembled IKEA "Ogla" chairs and waited for Crime Lab to show up.

The man from Crime Lab ACTUALLY DUSTED FOR FINGERPRINTS! Of course, we'd been so damn sure that no one would come, or that whatever officer who did come would scold us rather than trying to help that we'd all touched everything. (I have been scolded before after reporting an attempted break in. What on Earth is a young woman like me living in a place like this, I was asked. What could I possibly expect?)

Still, this guy made the effort, and I don't need to tell you that in Times Like These, going through the motions--however futile said motions may be--can provide good comfort. I don't mind admitting that the illusion of safety was something I needed right then. After all, one must keep moving, keep rolling with it, right? One must not freak out and put one's home on the market and move away. One must stay through this because one loves this place, dammit, enough to deal with it, right? And yes, all of it: one has to deal with all of this, yes.

This is what one tells one self, anyway, as one's local Crime Lab guy snaps on his blue rubber gloves and uses the finger-printing brush on one's brand-new door frame and fingerprints--one's own? someone else's?--develop, like a spreading stain, just exactly like they do on TV.

And by one, I mean me, of course. I tell myself this so I can stay here. And because I believe it.

Because I have to if I've got any chance of maintaining.

After the Crime Lab guy left, two detectives showed up, completing the TV-episodic quality of the morning-now-afternoon. They were all detective-like, too: one was handsome and young and he referred to the other man (who was stoic and quiet and old enough to be his dad) as hi partner. They wore streetclothes and showed up in an unmarked car. They were friendly (the young guy was more talkative than the other) but still appropropriately serious (which, by then, had begun to seem silly to me. It was PIPE, after all. It wasn't a keepsake or even a laptop. It was copper, people: copper.) Still, this copper-theft stuff has gotten bad, I learned. They'd been over on our street twice in as many days and they'd just that morning arrested two men for copper theft. The men were going to jail. They asked for times and names of the AC guy, the plumber, and the electrician. They interviewed Mr. Taylor. They said they'd be in touch. I'm not holding my breath.

The detectives, the NOPD officer, the Crime Lab guy--all of them said how beautiful our house was, and how important to protect it. They all shook their heads in disgust with the damage done by thieves who were clearly desperate (copper goes for $4/pound), and with the scrapyards who were taking their booty--most of it clearly new copper... copper that each and every homeowner in New Orleans trying to rebuild must, must, must have in order to, well, rebuild.

Anyways, it really was damn hot, and I was trying to put on a calm and confident face for my parents, but I just got madder and more worried as the day went on. How could we pay for the damage? How long would it set us back? We've been planning to move for over a year now, and then this--this lame sh*t is gonna stop us? Oh, HELL naw!

It had all been so very "deal, deal, deal with it"-like, that I didn't even think to call our insurer until late in the day. When I did, I learned that our Allstate agent had only opened a flood policy--NOT a Builder's Risk policy like we'd requested--and while I was flirting with breaking the f-down, I told myself (and my husband and parents) that there was No Way we could have gotten this loan without insurance (I still believe this.) So I submitted a "manual claim" that I hope will be sorted out once our lender comes back to the office, and I reminded myself that it was just copper piping, dammit.

Later that night, Simon and I tried to forget things by going to the Bayou Boogaloo in Mid-City. But once the sun set, I began to worry (I swear the sun's setting changes me in this way. I emote more. I worry more. It's uber mom-like and also werewolfy/vampirish, and very me). I worried because the guys who broke in to steal the copper from the attic had clearly SEEN our appliances, all five of them, sitting tidily in their unopened boxes. They'd surely be back, and a big ol' piece of plywood screwed over the back door would in no way stop them from getting our appliances once the neighbors were asleep.

We decided we needed to make the home appear occupied. So we parked Simon's truck by the house and left a battery-operated Coleman lantern and radio in the master bedroom. On night one, we chose Soft Rock. Night two, WWL talk radio. Tonight, the AM Latino station the workers chose to work to today. In the meantime, I haven't been sleeping. I've been reading and packing and obsessing over insurance, cursing Memorial Day. If we have to pay for the repairs... well, we CAN'T pay for them. We are, quite frankly, spent out, and we had thought we'd be moving this weekend... When I finally slept last night, I dreamt that I was late to teach my summer classes and that my students rebelled by refusing to take their exams.

At any rate, I feel like there should be more to say or feel or think about this--something conclusive--but I don't know what it is, and I am very much NOT looking forward to thinking about security fences or security systems, or, God forbid, getting a DOG. I want to go back to relying on my neighbors and on faith in the goodness of others. I want to stop "dealing" and get into "delving." I want to move, and I want it to be exactly the right move, and not at all scary, not one bit.

But since Saturday, I've been wired and tired from worry, and scared, as I get back to packing
my things, that I am preparing to move to house that may or may not be safer than this one, however "right" it may sometimes feel. And as I keep swatting my kitties away from the boxes they're taking so much pleasure in upending, I'm telling myself--and them (because we need it, dammit), that this cat lady will never, ever, as long as she can help it, go dog.

Oh, HELL Naw! ( Mom alert: explicit language!)

2008-05-07T23:18:00.006-05:00

Ah, yes: the end of the semester. It's always such a heady time. Combative students are all of a sudden compliant and friendly, even. They ask for their grade sweetly, gently, apologetically, sensing (not irrationally) that one misstep now could send their C- plummeting south to "D" territory.

But really.

It is a lame, lame, lamer-than lame time for any teacher--the end of the semester. Like your students, you can taste the sweet relief of a single day off... Just one! Or TWO! Or--OMG--THREE! And that promise makes focusing all the more difficult.

Compounding the mental stress of making it through intact is the real stress of getting beloved and struggling students through, intact. For composition teachers whose students have a proficiency exam to reckon with, the end of the semester is a terrible time, indeed, and yet we are expected to hold it all together for our kids--all however many of them--as if we are superhuman (or inhuman, really.) It's rough, and I don't want to hear any tiny violins because it is, dammit. It is.

So today I am in my office, staring at this pile, realizing how bad off some of my most beloved students are, when I hear a French teacher from down the hall cry, "What is my grade? What is my GRA-ADE?!" She was mocking her students, who, during finals, are less present on the faculty hallways--more focused, more determined, more on the ball than they have been (in spite of our many admonitions) but then, of course, simultaneously more concerned about their progress than they have been all semester. Another hall mate responded, "You'd better tell them or they may just shoot you!"

Her colleague was referring to a proposed Louisiana state bill that recently made it one step closer to passage. That bill, House Bill 199, would allow all Louisiana college students 21 and older to carry a concealed weapon to class. And, sadly--although not unexpectedly--there are many Louisiana (ahem) sportsmen who think this bill is sweet as sweetness can ever sweetly be. And I mean, there are many of them. It is vomitous.

I would like to go on the record, as a faculty member at a major Louisiana State University:

If this bill is passed, it will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for me to rationalize staying at my pathetically-salaried position. I would just come right out and say, "If this passes, I'm out of here," but we've got a mortgage to pay, and one must be real. Still... guns in the classroom?!?! And sanctioned by the proverbial principal? Pshaw! I just can't see how I could do it. How could I teach knowing that my students are packing? How could I do my job? How could I assess my students--give them the grades that the standards warrant--knowing what I know about their widespread inability to accept responsibility for that grade--knowing what I know about teacher-blame and teacher-targeting and the supposed "subjective" quality of writing assessment. (Don't get me started...)

I mean, my job is tough as fuck (and Mom, lord knows I try not to cuss on this blog, but fuck! My students carrying GUNS to class?! And my employer SANCTIONING IT?!?!? FUUUUUUCCCKKKK!!!)

Right now, I need sleep so that I can grade papers fairly, be supportive, and not see my students as potential killers as I award them the grades that they earned.

What I do know: we are one angry nation, and an angrier state, and an even more seriously angry city, and I see evidence of this anger in my students' responses to me (I have a file... trust me... it's scary.) And until I have seen evidence that my students are able to handle their anger rationally (fuck: I know I can't!) I just will. not. sleep. easy. knowing that Bill 199 is out there.

No way.

No how.

Another Boring Report

2008-05-04T17:30:00.009-05:00

It's a gorgeous day outside--crisp and sunny--but Simon and I are once again inside grading papers. The end, for me, is in sight. This week my students will take finals, which I'll likely spend next weekend grading. I'd wanted to go to Atlanta to see my nephew, who's growing up fast and without his auntie, but it looks like I'll be here preparing for our move.

We visited the house yesterday, and one of the most exciting changes had just begun: the floors are being refinished! The baseboards have gone up, and they are huge and beautiful--like the ones that were original to the home. In the master bathroom, the sink cabinet is in, and the ceeiling-stain problems have been fixed (the wood ceilings were releasing some kind of oil that bled through the paint). This week, the countertops go in, the kitchen will be painted, and our IKEA upper cabinets will get hung (I spent last weekend assembling them.) It looks as though we are still "on" for moving in June 1st, although we have heard bad things about the final step of getting an inspector to issue and occupancy certificate.

Anyways, here are some pictures of this week's progress:

This the family room, which will open onto the back porch. Half of the floor has been sanded.

This picture shows the beautiful wood grain. The width of the wood and its grain suggests it is heart pine. We've asked for a matte finish, as I can't stand super-shine.

The crew opened the shutters on one of the front windows, which allowed spectacular light to come in. We also discovered that we have a fully "interactable" house with stationary screens on the bottom half of the windows that allows us to open them in order to catch a breeze. (Simon's testing them out in what will become the study, below.)

Here's more of our master bathroom. The sink cabinet and sink are from IKEA. The baseboards have yet to be primed in this room, but you can see that the window has been sanded and prepped for painting. You can also see the very basic white floor tile that we chose. I love it.

I couldn't stand to post a master bathroom picture without adding another of our shower! Next week the glass guy will come to put up the partial enclosure.

Oh--and here is a view from the front room (which will be the dining room just off the kitchen.) The green house across the street is the inspiration for our kitchen-colors. They haven't gone up yet, but when they do, I'll post.

The grass at the end of the street is the levee, and when you walk up that hill, you see this:

All the house stuff has offered a sound excuse for our not attending Jazz Fest this year. It's the first year, I think, that I've not gone since I moved here in 1997. Today has been the hardest day to be away from it, what with the weather and all, but at $50 per ticket, plus food and booze, we just decided the $150 would be better spent on the house this year. I almost always value experience over things, but I've been so tired from the long and difficult semester that I didn't agonize over this one, in the least. We decided to buy the Jazz Fest poster--a wonderful image of Irma Thomas in a pant suit next to a live oak tree--so we'll have a souvenir from the only fest we've not attended.

In addition to the house progress, there are other happy things to report. I won the Excellence in Teaching Freshman Composition award this week, for one. I discovered a singer whose song, Cobrastyle, I've been dancing to, and the end of the semester really is just around the corner.

Still, I have been feeling the residual effects of this long semester, and I am just so dang tired. Yesterday I asked Simon if we could go out to buy a pair of pants that will fit my now size-6 waist, but when the only pair I liked was $150, we decided I could just "belt it" and work on fattening up over the summer. So my plan is to sleep, work on furnishing the house, and eat a lot of backyard BBQ. I will not be able to participate in the Greater New Orleans Writing Project, as I'd hoped to, since it would've meant a month of 14-hour days, but I'm too tired to feel bad about it.

I'm afraid this is a boring post, and I'm really very aware that I've not posted much of interest lately. Of course, my mom finds it all interesting, so here's to you, Mom!

The Best Shower EVAAAAHHH!

2008-04-22T15:36:00.007-05:00

I am not even going to pretend to write about meaningful stuff. I am up to my ears in schoolwork and grading, panicky (and panicking) students are knocking every hour on my office door, and I don't even want to get started on all of the stress that comes with the end of the semester.

Nope.

Better to share a happy thing: last week, the tilers came and tiled our master bath (which is the same room I was gutting in an earlier post), and this weekend, we saw the beautiful--and huge--results (a friend of ours said we'll have Romans lined up at our door.)

Our shower is massive and beautiful, although I will admit that this picture makes it look more cold than anything. Its got white subway tile, a chair-rail, and white marble at the outside edges. The floor is amazing. It's cork mosaic tile that we purchased from New Orleans Bamboo, and it looks like this:We used white grout to highlight the recycled wine corks' natural coloring. It's just beautiful. And since we can no longer afford the concrete kitchen countertops of our dreams (thanks in large part to this shower,) I am so glad that we will have this luxury. Once I add a little ceramic stool (for leg-shaving and luxuriating), some water-loving plants along the half-wall, and a sheet of that ridiculously expensive shower glass, I will be ready to move in to our bathroom.

Too bad the rest of the house isn't done. It is, however, sheetrocked, and our kitchen, cabinet-ed with cabinets that you just can't slam (Simon has been asking every one to try.) The wooden celings have a coat of laquer and are beautiful. The floors are slated to be refinished soon. And this weekend, we purchased a cast iron kitchen sink.

We did, in fact, decide to put the kitchen in the front, and it opens onto the dining room, which opens onto a lovely view of the outdoors. Here's the view from kitchen to dining:Also, we have a radiant barrier in our attic which Simon and a group of volunteers installed recently during the Historic Green event.

This week, Simon sanded and repainted the clawfoot tub we salvaged from the house. In cleaning the rust from the "claws," he uncovered metal appliques that read "2nd"--one on each leg. We have no idea what it means, but like the fact that its new home will be our second bathroom. (You can see the "before" of the tub in the background of the the gutting pic I linked to above. I'll post an after once it's in the house.)

So, word! Hooray for house-progress! Now: must make progress on grading papers...

A Whole Flippin' Month... Gone!

2008-04-10T16:01:00.002-05:00

It's hard for me to believe that it has been a month since I last wrote.

And yet...

When I think about the month that's gone by--and the month that's yet ahead, I wonder how the heck I ever find the time to write, at all.

First things first: my 4Cs paper presentation went really well. I didn't write the Real Deal until the morning of my presentation--and that after having written 10--TEN--other drafts that can be better described as "versions." I had so many false starts with the dang thing, and I think it largely came from not knowing my audience.

I mean, I had already presented at two other conferences, so I guess I should've had a sense of just how few people show up at a single session (when there are dozens going on at once), but somehow the fact that it was 4Cs--FOUR Cs!!--made me trembly and cross-eyed. I even had this hare-brained notion that the folks whose work I was quoting might attend my session.

P-shaw!

So anyway, I wrote several pretentious drafts where I was all "assessment is a rhetorical construct" (which it is), and all "let's examine the contextual influences that created the particular rhetorical construct during the post-Katrina semester in our writing classes at UNO." I was trying to be a smarty-pants (which is a term I like to use in talking about pretentious academic language with my students), and I was lost, lost, lost. I was up until 3:30 the night before, and then I got up at 7:00, sat down, and it just came out.

What happened contradicts what I tell my students about writing, in fact. I tell them that writing is not magic, it's craft. And yet, I struggled and struggled and struggled with that craft, only to discover that thew writing, itself, was a bit of magic. It really was.

Once I'm able to go back and look at the thing, I'll post it here. For now, though, I want to stay away from it for a while.

Finishing that conference has meant that a) I am sleeping better, and b) I am enjoying food again.

I suppose I haven't written since I travelled to Atlanta to meet my new nephew, Damien (who was then so tiny that I was afraid to hold him--at first). While I was there, I stepped on a scale and discovered that I have lost 8 pounds.

I know this is not a problem that anyone really likes to hear about. Oh, WAAAhh! You've lost weight! How terrible for you! I know.

But I have never given two turds about my weight and only noticed it this time because my clothes stopped fitting. And this is NOT cool because we cannot afford to buy new clothes for me.

Oh, the not-affording-bit. I'll just skip right over that reality of the house-renovating journey and move straight along to progress.

So so much has happened with the house. In fact, the paint is going up, the cabinets are going in, and "trimming" begins on April 21st. In short, it has all been happening so quickly that now I am worried about getting everything ready on time--about making hasty decisions in the interest of finishing and then regretting it.

In fact, Simon has said that we may be the first people in history whose contractor is waiting on us rather than the other way around. Our latest purchase: tile. And let me just tell you that the crap they got at the big box places is generally U-G-L-Y, and the other stuff elsewhere is so expensive we can't hang. We splurged on mosaic cork tile for the shower floor (made from recycled wine corks--if you go to the link, we are doing white grout like you see at the top right of the page). And the huge shower we have in the master bathroom will be lined with white subway tiles, divided at 4-feet by a chair rail that meets a half-wall at the end of the shower.

In fact, I am in love with the bathroom-stuff. At first we thought our massive 4x6 shower was a bit ridiculous (I am not kidding when I say it is just one foot each way smaller than the second full bathroom), but now I am thrilled because I plan to put a colorful bench on the far side, and then I plan to place plants along the half wall, so it's like indoor-outdoor bathroom. And the chair rail meets the half wall and it's cool.

This is boring to write about... Which must mean it is boring to read.

I have wanted to populate this blog with inspiring stories of the renovation. It is our New Orleans story right now, and I know that two of my three readers think we are hare-brained to move to the Lower Ninth Ward. But it has been hard to write about, somehow. I don't know how to describe it. It's just all nitty-gritty and I like stories.

So here's a story: we had a group of volunteers down at the house on March something or other. They were there to install a radiant barrier in the attic--which will act like "shade" in protecting the roof from that hot-sun heat. The volunteers were all from Common Ground, and they were a crunchy and wonderful lot. Altruistic wanderers who reminded me of so many backpackers and of so many of the people who are helping the city rebuild.

Anyways, that day, two visitors came by. The first was one of the families who'd been renting the house before the storm. Unfortunately, I was off getting BBQ for the volunteers, but Simon talked to them and he said they were very nice and happy to see someone taking care of the home. These folks told us that there was an elderly man who lived on the right side of he double. He stayed, and he died. I don't think they said how, and while I might've used my southern-social-self to ask gently what happened, Simon's British sensibility allows nothing of the sort.

So now we know that the "1 DOA" on the side meant what I was afraid it meant. That DOA is faded, faded, faded, and a big "0" covers it now, but I was sad to learn of the man's death, and of course I have been incredibly curious about his life.

That same day, the people who lived in the house way a long time ago came by, too. They are now residents of St. Bernard, and they left, like so many others did, during a period of "White Flight" back in the 70s(?) The woman talked about loving growing up there--about playing along the levee, about Hurricane Betsy, about how "back then" the neighborhood was "different" because back then there were no black people in the neighborhood.

This has been at the heart of what is hard for me about our move--and I have written about it before and plan to write an essay this summer about it: Holy Cross is right now in serious danger of becoming uber-gentrified--kind of like the Bywater-Marigny area that we are now fleeing in a very odd sort of reverse-gentrification. Simon and I want to live in an area where there's racial diversity. It really IS important to me. And so this white couple is fleeing the now-gentrified Marigny-Bywater for a more diverse neighborhood. But of course with every couple like us who moves down there, the risk of gentrification of that neighborhood grows.

At last year's Holy Cross Fourth of July BBQ, a resident told Simon how glad he was that we were moving down--partly, I think, because we have been so actively involved in the neighborhood--but he also said something along the lines of, "Let' s keep this area a secret."

I want to tell everyone and no one about our new favorite place in the whole wide world. And I'll write more about it soon...

For now, I have a kabillion papers to grade, and the Holy Cross n-hood meeting to attend. I promise to write before a month has passed--and to post pictures.

And the madness marches on...

2008-03-09T20:57:00.003-05:00

This past week was one of the most difficult of my teaching career. Not only was I informed by my supervisor that several of my students have decided to take their displeasure for the poor grades they've earned (key word: earned), and for my positively ridiculous habit of enforcing published course polices straight to the top (in one case by visiting the assistant dean of liberal arts to complain,) but then I also learned that a very dear former student of mine died.

Billie Faye Baker took freshman composition with me way back when I was a teaching assistant. To tell you the truth, I don't remember much of her presence in the classroom. I remember thinking she was bright. I remember worrying about her. She missed several classes. And she turned in a paper in which she divulged a very scary and dramatic personal story.

I remember being surprised by her openness in that essay, but pleased that she managed to write about her life without falling into sentimental generalities tacked on to a overwrought conclusion. There was no, "I learned the importance of family," or "I will cherish every moment of my life from now on" in her conclusion. In fact, I think I remember her saying something along the lines of, "I really hope I don't do something that stupid again, but I probably will." It was an "earned" conclusion--one that genuinely reflected the content that came before it. She understood what it meant to develop an idea. She did well.

I didn't hear from Billie. I didn't think about her.

But then a year or so later, she sent me an email. In it, she reminded me that I had encouraged her to write outside of class, and she said that she'd been doing just that (I've just discovered that I saved our correspondence, so now of course I am crying...) She was feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to make a "masterpiece" out of everything she wrote, and she asked if it was normal. She said she felt so overwhelmed by the pressure she placed on herself that she ended up simply giving up.

God, now that I re-read her emails and my responses, my advice to her feels so foreign. Now, I see my own struggles and self-doubt in her emails. She wrote, "I don't want to give up on writing, I just want to be able to enjoy it again."

Billie published several good pieces in Anti-Gravity magazine. She became one of my friends on Myspace. I was proud of her, and I was so pleased to see that she seemed to be succeeding at producing work, even if its production wasn't always a pleasure. Hearing from her and reconnecting with her as a fellow writer--rather than as "just" her teacher--helped me feel better about the career path I'd chosen.

When I heard about her death this week, it was just before I was headed to teach a class that was being observed by one of our department's champion teaching all-stars. I'd felt good about the class I'd planned--confident that what I'd put together would produce some good discussion about the learning objectives I'd planned. I wanted to talk about the importance of context in reading Huck Finn. It was going to rock.

Instead, I found myself crying before class, and when I got there, I felt as if I couldn't remember why I was there. What did context have to do with Huck Finn? With anything? I wrote some important historical whatnots on the board. I couldn't remember how to spell "Separate" (as in "but Equal.") I turned to pages that I'd marked for discussion, but I looked at them and didn't know what the heck it was I wanted to cover. My lips stuck to my teeth. I left the room to get some water. They stuck again. One of my students took mercy on me and gave me a bottle of water. I wanted to cancel class, to hide.

After class, I went back to my office and lost it. Then I ate a banana and graded eight literature essays that celebrated the "incredible imaginations" that the authors they'd analyzed had "caused readers to have." I cried some more. I went home, made fish tacos, and cried while Simon consoled me. "It was your first bad class," he said. "You're lucky."

"I know, but Billie died."

On Friday, I was feeling puffy and wrecked and wholly unequipped to face the class that has decided I am The Worst Teacher Ever. I thought about telling them of Billie's death, but worried they'd see it as a ploy to win their sympathy, so I kept it to myself. I taught what I thought was a good class. Then I visited my supervisor to discuss our correspondence related to a student who'd come to see her. I learned that student was not alone.

So, I cried.

I think I have cried more in this past week than I had in all of last year. I could no longer be mad at my students for hating me, I was just sad. How could they see me as the demon? Me?

Well, if I was going to be able to pull it together enough to get through this next week (which promises to be another rough one,) I needed to either a) get unsad, or b) get mad again. I teach better when I'm mad than when I'm sad. When I'm sad I can't think. When I'm mad, I'm on a mission.

So thank goodness for this piece that arrived in my inbox via a weekly email from the NCTE. In it, Ken Flowerday writes about teacher-blaming. It captures my thoughts and feelings about the attitudes of the public--and many of my current students--towards my work as a teacher, and describes "America’s increasing willingness to target teachers." Flowerday writes:

"We are not completely alone, I suppose. Lawyers and dumb blonde jokes were in fashion a few years ago, but these criticisms at least were veiled in humor. I am unable to name another group that is as openly and frequently criticized by people with no experience in the profession. The public assumes that because they once, long ago sat in desks that they know better than we how to do our jobs. The public doesn’t try to tell firefighters how to do their jobs. Or CPAs or air-traffic controllers. It’s become increasingly clear that the public mistrusts what I do."

At some point, I hope to have the time to write about being the target of a particularly venomous case of teacher-blame this semester. But because I need to stay focused on the goal of helping my students, I've decided to send myself off to bed and on toward a new work-week by reading through a folder of saved emails filed under "Student Praise." This is a paragraph from one of my favorites, and I am so glad that I have it to read now, since Billie's death and this very mad, bad beginning to the month of March has made getting through it seem nearly impossible:

"I know that this e-mail seems to be late and you might not even remember me, but it’s never too late to show my appreciation. You’ve been such a wonderful example of a great professor to all of your students. You weren’t dealing with us as an instructor, but as a great friend and an older sister who always stood up for us. You’ve been always there to help every student improving his/her writing process. Even though you were reading tons of essays every week, you’ve never showed any tire and always welcomed all our questions and concerns. You’ve always remembered us on every break and sent every one an email wishing us a good time, and supporting and challenging us to always believe in our selves, and that everyone got the potentials to pass no matter how challenging their personal obstacles are. Even those who wanted to drop the class, you’ve helped them all to figure out ways on how to improve their situation without needing to drop. You’ve used unique techniques that made the class more fun and forced the students to believe in their abilities and get motivated to do their best. Your way of teaching was so much different than all my previous English instructors. "

Now, you might read that and say, "some English teacher! Check out those errors!" But had you seen the amount of improvement I did, you'd know that email was as good as grammar-gold for this student.

I feel better already.

This is liking writing. This is what Billie meant.

Sweet dreams, Billie Faye Baker. And good night to all of my students--haters and lovers, alike.

Welcome to the world, Double "D"!

2008-03-03T09:14:00.004-06:00

Two things of note--both of which I only have time to mention briefly:

1) I'm an aunt! My brother and his wife had their baby, Damien (sp?) Azad, on Februrary 29th. Yep--he's a leap year baby! Here he is in my brother's arms:

2) Work on our house has begun in earnest. This pleases me to no end, especially because we have had to cut out my all-time-favorite activity in New Orleans: eating out. Once that house is done, we'll no longer be paying rent and the mortgage, which means we can eat delicious food again. Then maybe I will again be able to fit my clothes, which are fallin down on the way to class. You might think: why that's fabulous, but I care NOT about losing weight, and since stress is what's causing it, putting it back on will make me feel a whole lot better.

So much more to report, but no time, no time...

Cats and Dogs

2008-02-17T16:32:00.004-06:00

Me and Ray--my loaf of bread.

I am a cat person. Period. I have four cats, and I love them all (even Sammo, who doesn't appear to love me back.) I have always had cats. I've nursed them to health, through cases of feline AIDS and leukemia, and through scrawny almost-kitten-hood. I love cats, and because I have the Midas touch when it comes to felines, they love me.

So, I am a cat person, but on top of that, I am a hair anti-dog, primarily because 1) my dad was a dog-hater, 2) dogs scare me, and I don't like that they know it, 3) dogs smell, 4) dogs lick, 5) dogs beg, and 6) dogs bark. There are other reasons, too--like their neediness and the travel-challenges they pose. Plus, they don't live as long as cats, and I hate dying. Oh, and once, a pack of dogs very viciously killed one of my cats. This I very unfortunately heard and was tragically unable to prevent. Given this, I think a little dog-hating on my part can be understood.

Nevertheless, I would like to like dogs. I mean, who wants to be a hater? No one. Loving is so much easier. I would really, really like to love dogs.

But when I am trying my damndest to tackle a pile of papers, and when the dogs who belong to our new next-door neighbors--the guys we call "The Mean Gays" because they don't return a hello, steal our parking spaces, and on top of that took it upon themselves to have our tree butchered in a precise line that met their property--when those dogs bark at every little f-ing noise, well, I just pile on the dog-hate. My dog-hate is, in fact, right now a steaming poop-pile of wretched dog-hatred.

What's worse than the mean-gays' dogs? A hanger-on of a feral cat.

Yes, there's this big-balled orange tomcat that has adopted our house as the site of his lurky-lurk and his horny, feed-me/do-me howl. I have wondered if he is Ray's long-lost brother, but then I have decided that it is impossible because a) his head is the size of a basketball, and b) his howl channels hell. Ray is a tidy loaf of bread in his entirety, and his meow is a darling coo.

The Mr. Big Balls problem began when we were at my parents' house for the holidays. We asked our cat-sitters to put a bowl outside for our cat, Sammo. Said bowl attracted Big Balls. And although we have not fed the dude since our return, he has doggedly (ha!--doggedly!) hung on to his old haunt. That dude is howling up a storm today, and so at nearly every paragraph, I have been yelling "shutup" through the floor-furnace... and, of course, at the window toward the mean-gays' dogs.

For the record: I like gays, and even an occasional mean one (case in point: Joe from across the street.) I do not support name-calling, but it is, in fact, easier to call the three men "The Mean Gays" than "our neighbors" (of which there are several,) or "our gay neighbors" (since they're nearly all gay.) Hence "The Mean Gays."

Also for the record: I have met some notably exceptional dogs in my lifetime. Good dogs: non-humping/smelling/licking/begging ones. Those dogs have left an favorable impression on me. They've made me WANT to be a dog person. In fact, since we are moving right next to the Mississippi River levee soon, I have imagined myself walking a winner-of-a-dog of our own on the gravel path, all tail-wags and sunset.

However, it is dog experiences like today's bark-fest that prevent me from crossing over.

The highs and lows of this week's work...

2008-02-17T12:11:00.004-06:00

I have a pile of essays staring me down, and so I really can't--or shouldn't--be blogging.

But I feel as though I have been holed-up in my office for so long that blogging is more a release than a burden, right now. I told a friend and colleague of mine over happy hour drinks on Friday that I miss having an office-mate because I never talk to anyone but my students. That's not to say that conversations with students are a bad thing. (I had a number of particularly inspiring conversations with students this past week, in fact.) But I really do miss the comaraderie--the bouncing-off of ideas, the commiserating, the celebrating, the afternoon rants and silly song-making--that came with having a good friend to share an office with.

When I come home, I am so filled-up with ideas and experiences that I just offload them onto my husband, who doesn't seem to mind, but who is a teacher, too, for chrissakes, and so he could likely do without the piling-on of teacher-lore after he's had eight hours of the stuff, himself.

I was glad, then, to make a connection with a fellow comp-rhet fan (okay, so she's a bona fide scholar; I'm the mere fan.)

Daisy Pignetti is a PhD candidate who's from New Orleans and who's studying trauma theory. I emailed her to ask for her advice about my 4Cs paper topic, assessing writing after Katrina, and she sent me not only a helpful reply, but also a proverbial, "Girlfriend, don't I know it!" when I piled on a but about my busy-ness and academic-anxiety. I've really enjoyed reading her blog, and I am excited to get meet her next week, when she'll be in town for an alternative media-expo.

The "gist" of what I learned from her is that while there are lots of "big wigs" at the 4Cs conference, they are supportive and receptive people. In other words, ain't nobody going to go at my paper with a red pen. Phew!

Connecting with Daisy was but one bright spot in a crazy but rewarding week at work.

For starters, I ran my first transfer-proficiency exam workshops, which was super-challenging largely because the students a) resent having to take the test and b) expect me to "tell them how to pass it." These students are looking for yes/no answers: you may/may not use personal experience (ever); you should/shouldn't use contractions (ever); your thesis does/doesn't go at the end of the first paragraph (always); you must/mustn't deliver exactly five paragraphs (no more, no less.) In other words, they want from me precisely the kind of teaching I refuse to deliver: "teaching to the test".

I tried my best to prepare the students for the exam by explaining the criteria that all readers will be looking for (a clear thesis; fully-developed reasons in support of that thesis; effectively-organized paragraphs; relatively error-free prose that won't impede expressive reading or reading-for-meaning.) And I tried to emphasize the importance of appealing to readers who will be engaged in long and difficult grading sessions. "Donald Murray says it's best to assume that your readers are preoccupied--that you have to grab their attention and hang on to it at ever turn," I said. "They are not, in fact, preoccupied, but they are reading essay after essay on the same subject, so they will appreciate being rewarded for their attention." I tried to emphasize concrete details, clear (not "obfuscating-ly formal" prose,) and a fair and reasonable tone. But no matter how I tried to impress upon the students the nuanced-nature of writing for a variety of readers in a timed environmet in response to a "blind" prompt, they still wanted me to speak in platitudes.

"How many errors can we make?"

"Do they punish you for bad spelling like some teachers do?"

"Do they fail you if they disagree? I hate that."

Comments like these confirm my belief that these high-stakes assessment-mechanisms may be doing more harm than good... I did my best to be supportive and encouraging, but I still endured more than my fair share of eye-rolling and thinly-disguised harumph-ing. That was hard.

I also continued to work with a student whose hearing-impairment has challenged everything I know about teaching, but from whom I am learning so, so much. I would really like to write in detail about my work with this student, but I worry about privacy-issues. (How much should/can a teacher reveal on a blog--what's off limits? How can I share some of the challenges that come from interacting with/teaching these particular students without speaking in generalities or violating their privacy?) I spent two hours on Friday typing up a lengthy "report" that will likely be read by no one but me, and I realized that what I would really liek to do is record my one-on-one teaching with the student more my own future learning and writing. I don't know how a recording-device would impact our interactions, though.

There were some wonderful high points this week, both with that student and with my workshop-students. One of my favorite moments:

In workshop, we were reading a sample proficiency exam out loud. The topic of the essay was "gender role-learning and the family," and I had each student read a paragraph. We stopped after each paragraph and discussed it.

Well, we got to a big beefy man--a Marlboro-mannish-man who rarely smiled, spoke, or even seemed engaged. The paragraph he had to read began, "My parents always dressed me like a little princess..." It was supported with details of "frilly pink dresses and Barbie dolls", and as the guy read, we all laughed together. He even smiled, and it was one of those wonderful moments that reminded me of how much I love the interactions that occur in the classroom. It really does feel a lot like the magical moments I've had with music and performance. There's an electricty, a chemical something-or-other, and it's impossible to describe. As the protagonist of Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" says, "It's really something." (We discussed that story in my lit-class this week, and that last line drove my students crazy until we talked about the impossibility of "naming" some experiences with language.)

Anyway, afterwards, my manly-man student came up to me to ask a question. There were several students crowded around me, each begging for the kind of declarative, absolute-statements that I'd refused to deliver in workshop. As I was ending my conversation with one student--a student who'd asked what classes I teach--my Marlboro man said, "Well, I guess if we fail the test and have to take the class, at least we can take it with you." Another student said, "I know. She's not boring!" He said, "I actually kind of like writing in here."

I glowed. Glowed, glowed, glowed.

So it was easier for me to deal with not leaving my office until 6:30 on a Friday (and still having a huge essay-pile to contend with.) It was easier for me to feel good about my work even when I discovered we'd overdrawn our account for the first time (two months into mortgage + rent-paying at the same time.) It was easier to again look at the floor plans that keep begging for my attention and to say to them, "Later... later."

It is not, however, easier to dive in to the task of grading--which is undeniably one of the most difficult tasks of my job. Here I go...

Belated Mardi Gras Photo-Post

2008-02-12T17:27:00.000-06:00

A lovely couple, we are.

Here's the man who married us... along with some, uh, revelers.

Simon and a coworker (who was a Minister of Fun in the Zulu parade.)

Yes, that is my husband:

One of my favorite things about Mardi Gras: the marching bands.

Another favorite thing: seeing friends who I miss... and friends who dress up like Rainbow Brite.

And crossing Elysian Fields at Royal in a tutu, surrounded by a bunch of general weirdos and fun people: also fun.

Yes, I do love me some Mardi Gras. Now if I could just get back into my work-groove...

I can teach and I can gut, but I can't deal with City Hall.

2008-01-30T14:57:00.000-06:00

I think I have said before that I have been too busy to maintain my blog. If I have, I feel like saying to my old self, "You? Busy? P-Shaw!"

That's because I am forreal busier than I think I have EVER been. I even had to say NO to something that I probably should have said YES to because it was one of those things-that-look-good-on-your-CV-when-you're-up-for-retention. But you know, I'd like to actually be able to do what I'm doing really well, and if someone asked me to do one more thing, I think this house of cards might come a-tumbling.

The real kicker is my online writing class. I teach writing every summer online, but Johns Hopkins does a really excellent job of creating and providing excellent curriculum and teaching materials, and in my class this semester, I'm on my own. That means I am having to spend hours upon hours typing lectures, posting, organizing, deleting, moving, revising, responding, writing, revising, etc., etc.

Now, having said that, I should say that I am really happy to be taking on this challenge. UNO offers just this one online section of composition, and I think that's going to have to change. I remember the first time I taught an all-online comp class...

It was the fall after Katrina. The class was a mess. I think I may have ruined lives. Who knows? I can't remember a damn thing from that semester. That's not true. I can. But it was hard, hard, hard, and there were breakdowns to be had, and nails to drive over, and it was really hard to teach.

Wait a second... all of those things are still true.

Anyway, I think there are benefits to teaching online, and I am trying to kick some butt with it and then share my experience with my colleagues. I've already learned a lot, and I've got some fascinating students: a man from Iran now living in Houston, a basketball star, and a hearing-impaired woman whose writing challenges are formidable. Lucky for all of them, I like a challenge.

In most cases, anyway.

The kind of challenge I don't like? Attitude-y outbursts from freshman not yet ready to behave like college students. I am struggling with a couple of eye-rolling, neck-cocking, teeth-tsking students in my onsite comp class, and I have had to work HARD to keep my cool. I think part of the problem is that I look like I could be their friend, and I also don't "sound like a teacher." That means I don't "whom" and "consequently" in class. I speak in language my students can understand. (In fact, in student evaluations, they regularly compliment my ability to communicate ideas clearly.) But some students mistake that casual approach to teaching as weakness, and they try to assert their own control by acting out.

I have a second theory: that the students who act out and who practice teacher-targeting and blame-games do so because it's easier to blame me than to take responsibility for their own failures. Anyway, I am really finding my comp-class challenging. Hopefully things will get better.

In house news...

We gutted the house, which led to our discovering several things. A) We have 12-foot wooden-plank ceilings. Beautiful. B) It takes more than one dumpster to contain 1800 square footage of gutting whatnot. C) I love to tear sh*t up! I mean, I had no idea how much I was going to love tearing down the lowered ceilings, cutting wires, and pulling nails. I loved it. I got so sore I could hardly move, and my hands hurt for days, but no matter! Sine I've discovered I like this sort of thing so much, I've ordered some Soy-based paint remover, and next I will take on scraping the windows and the trim.

Also in house news...

We are stalled. FEMA put the home's damage assessment at 51.74%. If you had more than 50% damage, you are required to prove a bunch of un-provable stuff, or raise your house (which we can't afford.)

I had the pleasure of visiting City Hall this week in order to contest the damage assessment (which erroneously reported that our floors, windows, doors, and cabinets were all "100% damaged,") where I had the pleasure of speaking with a very condescending, patronizing, no-sense making jerk of a man who I just about eye-rolled and neck-cocked and teeth-tsked. It appears that the kinds of things they were "letting slide" are now being scrutinized. It also appears that this kind of thing will prevent a whole lot of people from rebuilding. And what I don't understand? Our house is in a National Historic District, and therefore supposedly exempt from being forced to raise, but somehow dude was not having it. So we don't know what to do...

And I don't have time to handle it. In fact, I have to put this thing away and do some grading if I am to stay on top of things. AND... Mardi Gras is approaching, and it feels too soon and all kinds of wrong. I bought a silly wig and stuff to wear, but I am NOT feeling it! Which is sad because Mardi Gras day is my favorite day of the whole year.

Anyways, I'm staying afloat. Love to all.

We Human Beings

2008-01-16T15:42:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, as I was having my morning coffee and getting ready to head to work, I heard a whole lotta cacophony at the neighbor's house next door. Someone had jumped their fence and was banging on their walls, calling out our neighbor's name. The guy looked a little seedy, so I rolled my eyes and added my cream.

I'm not sure what let me know "something's not right," what compelled me to look out the front window, but when I did, I saw this:

Folks were frantically banging on the house next door--the one where Miss Diane and her family lived before the storm, but I assured them that no one lived there. I was glad of it. I would have been tearing my hair out had my house been the one next to this raging fire. Our charming wooden houses, it seems, go up in mere minutes. The time stamp on my pictures tells me the first one was taken at 8:44 . I took this one at 8:46:
Mike, the guy who owns the forever-under-renovation house next door, told me that he'd just driven up when he saw the smoke seeping out of the roof's seams. He said he'd banged on the door and woke up "these Mexican guys" who he said he had to "fight to get 'em out" because they wanted to retrieve their passports. "F**k your passports, I tol' 'em. You gonna die."

As I took these pictures, I was just in awe. It happened so, so fast. These are from 8:54 and 8:55:

Here's the back of the house, where it started, once it was "over" at 9:05:

I don't know what I would have done had the fire been at our house.

Yes, I do. I would've been frantic, and I would've been crying, because I would've lost everything, just as the guys who were renting the space did.

When I went back in to get professional for work, I discovered that my coffee was still warm. It was that fast.

Evidently, the fire was electrical. And the Mexican workers who lived in the house were, in fact, Brazilian.

Before I left, I wrote my number and the number of the Hispanic Apostolate on a post-it, which I gave to one of the men. They all seemed pretty shocked. One of the firemen was following their instructions, searching for their passports. A guitar and two suitcases rested on the sidewalk. A Red Cross volunteer was filling out a case-study form, which I recognized from my own volunteer work as a case-worker for the Red Cross after Katrina.

When the hoses had again been stowed, I was able to leave, and on my way out, I saw two black women standing with the men. They looked like they were about my age. "You all right?" I asked. They were co-workers of some of the men--employees of the Best Western hotel. They'd come down as soon as they'd heard and were waiting for the Red Cross to finish so they could take the men to the hotel.

I explained that I'd given the men my number and the number of an aid agency for Hispanics and Latinos. That's when I learned they were from Brazil. (In retrospect, I should have known. I'd often hear them playing guitar and singing, and I remember saying to Simon once, "I think that's Portuguese.")

I asked if there was anything else I could do. I nodded to our little shoebox and said ruefully that I didn't think we had room to spare, but that I could ask around. Something told me that we were all these men had in the way of help: a neighbor who never spoke to them and a coworker whose position as a hotel employee virtually guaranteed that she wasn't in a position to help, either.

"Are any of them fluent in English?" I asked.

"He is," she said, nodding to the man I'd given my number. "I mean, he speaks pretty good English. They all understand, but he the only one who can really speak it."

We were both quiet.

"That'll make it hard for them," I said. "I mean, harder."

"Yeah."

"People don't seem to care much about the immigrants in town."

"I do," she said, smacking her lips against her gold teeth, disapprovingly. "They human beings."

"Yes, they are."

At work, I had that giddy electrical feeling that you get when something big has happened. It was dulled--or maybe "made achey" is a better way of putting it--by the knowledge that no one would much care if I told them about it. When I ran into a colleague who also lives down the street, he said, "That's too bad. I mean, the house wasn't a real historical gem or anything, but it'll be blighted." I found myself saying something I'd thought earlier but pushed down, deep down, 'cause I hated myself for it. "Yeah, it was as if everyone's home values on the block went up in flames, too." I hated myself again.

(In defense of my colleague, he did ask if the people who lived there were okay. And in defense of the vapid content of our conversation: I think it reflects both our cynicism when it comes to folks giving a shit about Hispanic workers, and about the concerns of our now super-gentrified neighborhood.)

When I got home yesterday, I got a message from the general manager of the hotel where three of the men worked. He'd been given my number and was trying to do something for them. He wanted to know if I knew of any resources.

I talked to Simon about his message before I called back. I didn't know of any resources. If the Red Cross couldn't help, what could I do? I worried that no one would care about a bunch of immigrant workers--that they'd blame them for the fire (as my deepest darkest bad-self had when I first learned of the nature of the fire.) I admitted to Simon that I'd given them the number for the Hispanic Apostolate only because I knew someone there would speak their language. But really, I knew that they'd likely NOT be able to help. After all, when I had served as a volunteer ESL teacher for the Apostolate, they'd been bemoaning the lack of resources and affordable housing available for Hispanic workers. And this was more than a year ago. Things had gotten worse, not better, for the expanding worker-population. What on earth could I do?

When I called Brian back, I felt helpless, and I said as much. He said the Red Cross had paid for three nights in the hotel, but that after that, the guys would be out in the cold. Did I know anywhere they could stay?

I thought about all the homeless who've been protesting on the local TV because their tent-city had been closed so that City Hall could repair its parking situation. I thought about UNITY (an aid organization for homeless,) who'd admitted it had begun to borrow money in order to pay for apartments it couldn't afford--about how they'd pleaded with landlords on TV, that they give people a break, a second chance.) I thought, "No."

What I said, thought, was that maybe we could contact the neighborhood association. Maybe I could ask around.

But I knew (again, deep down) that I couldn't do anything for them that the general manager of a hotel couldn't do. If a major corporation wasn't willing to forgo profits in order to house its employees until they could find homes, why would a landlord, who was but one person--whose insurance had doubled, who'd probably lost a lot, himself?

I suggested that it'd be helpful for him to 1) call the Red Cross and ask them to extend the vouchers, and 2) ask the men to make a list of their immediate needs. In the meantime, I would do the only thing I knew to do: I would email people; I would try to tell their story as convincingly as I could.

So, I posted on our neighborhood forum at Nola.com, and lo and behold, I got a response. One man emailed and said he had a temporary place that he could provide temporarily if the guys could find nothing else. Another suggested I establish a fund through a bank. Another emailed me and said he'd was collecting clothing and toiletries and would have something together by Friday. Another said he could donate clothing, too.

I'm waiting now to hear from the GM of the hotel. I feel hopeful, in the tiniest of senses--not because I think we really will be able to place these guys in a home, but because I learned that there are people out there who do, in fact, give two turds about a bunch of immigrant workers.

I feel good (ish) because I know that we're out there, and we're here: people who believe that, yes, They Human Beings!

The Resolution I'm Sticking To (so far!)

2008-01-10T12:56:00.000-06:00

There's one resolution I didn't list in my New Year's post that I have managed (10 days in) to stick to with aplomb. It's not to use ANY new shopping bags this year.

Simon and I have always kept a pile of used Whole Foods paper bags in the trunk, but I almost always forget to take them in to the store. Then when I am finally "up" for checkout and I realize I've forgotten them, I glance back and realize that the beleaguered mothers behind me will not appreciate waiting for me to dash to the car. So I'd reluctantly add another to my ever- growing collection.

Brandi had told us that they made great bags for packing away all of those homeless nick-knacks that are lying around when you're ready to move, so I'd forgiven myself of some of my guilt when I'd collect yet another bag.

Here's a Not-So-Whole-Foods story:

One day, Simon and I went to WF, recycled bags in tow. We sat down to eat lunch beforehand (a good idea, of course, if you arrive at WF hungry) and put our bags down on a nearby ledge. We forgot the bags (of course,) and when I went back to retrieve them, the cashier in the cafe said she'd THROWN THEM AWAY. Wha-WHAT?! They weren't greasy, or even wrinkled! When I asked why she threw them away, she explained it was company policy. We are free to recycle our bags, but they won't reuse them--presumably because of some sort of liability issue. Whole-dooky!

Anyways, we'd found other ways to reuse our bags. We have a canvas sleeve where you can put plastic bags and then pull one conveniently from the bottom for use as a lunch bag or poo-sac for kitty litter. We rinse Ziploc bags. I even wrapped our Christmas gifts in recycled Whole Foods bags this year.

But by far the best solution to our bag-consumption problem has been the Acme Reusable Shopping Bag that each of us got in our stocking this year.

These bags are strong and hold a lot. Plus, I can report that they are not ugly. But the best part about them is that they easily fold up into themselves for storage in a purse, glove compartment, or wherever. I ordered four more from http://www.reusablebags.com/, and since the new year began, I am proud to say that I have not brought home a SINGLE new bag. And I have done my fair share of shopping.

Another neato thing about sticking to this resolution and using my Acme bags is that I have become an accidental environmental evangelist at every shopping exchange. When I say, "No bag, please," and whip out my 2-inch-square Acme bag, unfold it, and then manage to load a heap o' groceries into it, inevitably people ask about it--and inevitably they say, "What a great idea!" I tell them it's my resolution--even apologizing for messing with their pattern if they seem surprised at all to be stopped short of reaching for a bag--and I can see that they think about the number of bags they send out in the world, the number they use, and just how easy it would be to change that habit. Ladies can even get some cutely patterned ones! Stylish and environmentally-responsible(er) consumption. Whoo-HOO!

Okay, so I learned at http://www.reusablebags.com/ that over one billion plastic bags are used per minute. That's just the plastic ones. And that's crazy. In Taiwan, they use 900 bags per consumer annually. (Dude!) And in Australia, the average is 326 per consumer. I don't know the per-consumer use in the US, but I'd imagine it's somewhere in between these two figures--and well into the completely gross range.

So: get yo' Acme bag!

And a Big Thanks goes out to Mom, a.k.a. Santa, for the Acme bags.

Vapid post on my day of consumption

2008-01-08T17:24:00.000-06:00

I don't want to jinx myself, but I do believe that I have emerged on the "well" side of this snotty funk that's been dragging me down since the fourth day of Christmas.

When we got back in townfrom our holiday in Atlanta, we went ahead and celebrated the New Year by going out, colds and all. (Actually, Simon wanted to stay in, but I pestered him into going out. then he got better quickly and I descended into sinusitis hell. I think that's what my mother would call Instant Karma!!!)

As it turns out, half the town had been sick over the holiday, and I am hoping that everyone, like me, will be well in time for next Monday's start of the spring semester.

I've been pretending to prepare for the semester by making a list of "things to do." On it:

1) Write a plagiarism contract

2) Compile handout on appropriate decorum for email

3) Compile handout on the purpose and practice of student-teacher conferences

4) Revise attendance policy and tardiness policy

5) Revise revisions policy

6) Clean office (bring in dustbuster and supplies)

7) File things

8) Get organized

9) Have margarita

I think the list is fairly doable, although it doesn't take into account any things-to-do related to my new responsibilities as an administrator, nor does it even touch the house-whatnot.

Oh, the house whatnot! The cabinet-choosing. The color-picking. The house-gutting. The mold-treating. The termite-killing. The landscaping. The tax-abatement-thingy-dealing. The lighting-plan making!

You get the idea...

Also on the roster of things to do: writing my paper for the 4Cs conference this April. Also: somehow getting up a website for the neighborhood association. And: I've gotten myself on another committee (which met last night) that's working on the Global Green Project, and I've promised to do some research on other environmentally-sustainable communities (kind of like co-ops or condo associations, but green.)

So since I have all of this to do, I figured today I'd go shopping!

The objective was to find some teacherly-clothing (meant to make me look as professorial as possible--p-shaw!), and to return our Bose iPod dock, which was a lovely gift we gave ourselves, but which was expensive and still sitting in a box.

Digression on the subject of iPods:
I have an iPod. When I got it, I was all "Yay! Now I can get rid of all of my CDs!" I have hundreds of CDs. I listen to maybe twenty of them. So I figured I'd download just the songs I like, and then get rid of the CDs, themselves. What I discovered was that it takes a long time to do that, and that it also requires additional organization (on iTunes), and that after all is said and done, you are still expected to save your files--on CDs. My attention-paying abilities don't allow me to listen to headphones as all of my students seem to do, and so essentially, I have this gizmo that has mabe three un-backed-up albums I've purchased on iTunes. These I listen to in my car. (Oh, and I do like some This American Life free podcasts.) What I'm getting at here is that this contraption seemed designed to streamline my music--and my life--and had I the time or the energy, I suppose it could. But, as with most things with a similar purpose and similar demands, my iPod has wound up feeling like another damn thing on my damned list. So I avoid it. (Interestingly, I don't buy much music anymore... I don't listen to as much, either. I hope this isn't a sign that I am becoming a stodgy ol' grownup.)

So, back to the shopping trip: I returned the docking station, and bought some made in China crapola shirts (because I was there and because I have a long list of things I have to do but will probably never do, and because I have no time to travel to some overpriced boutique on Magazine Street for American-made stuff where I can't also buy TP and Listerine in one fell swoop.)

Then, after my crap-buying, I had a lovely canteloupe and watermelon Bubble Tea from Frosty's Cafe. Next, I drove two strip malls down and bought a book at Barnes and Noble (rather than going to indie-bookstore for the same reason as crap-Chinese shirt-buying, see above.) Then, on the way home, I sang along to my thinly-populated iPod (if you can call my mucousy warble singing), thumbing my nose at the LSU SUV traffic crawling along on the outgoing side of the interstate.

Yes, it was a day.

Now, if only I could have managed to knock off something on my list.

Here's to the New Year...

2008-01-03T14:38:00.000-06:00

Because it's c-c-cold here in New Orleans, and because I've had a cold, I've not been relishing the first moments of 2008. In fact, I've been doing a whole lot of exactly what I'd resolved to do less of: watching TV. I've just turned off some Travel Channel show about Jack Osbourne's mission to lose weight and climb mountains. Before that was a Top Model marathon on VH1. Last night: Project Runway (which has not been nearly so much fun to watch without the fine company of my friends who've moved to California.)

Last night, it was so cold that I woke up with all four cats piled on top of me, and with my hand trumpeting my nose so I could breathe something other than ice-cold, throat-burning air. I bought a new alarm clock from Brookstone, and it projects the time and temperature onto the ceiling, so I was awake, watching the red LED-flash of the seconds ticking and the temperature dropping: 48, 43, 36. As you might imagine, these wonderfully-charming old New Orleans homes lose a bit of their charm in the few weeks of winter. I fell in and out of sleep. Dreamt Simon wanted a divorce. Dreamt my car wouldn't start. Woke up coughing green loveliness. I suppose I can be forgiven, then, for doing nothing but boobing around all day. Right?

I also have found myself needing a bit more time than usual to recover from the holidays. I can recall detailing an argument that occurred last year while we were visiting family in Atlanta, and I might do the same this year were the subject of the fight not so painful and this blog not so public. Anyway, it was one of those arguments that rocks your world--the family sort of fight that you will never forget (try as you might.) One day I may find the head-space and heart-space to write about it, but for now, it's just a big ol' painful stain on the exit of 2007. Good riddance, '07!

In fact, the rest of our holiday was quite nice. My sister-in-law's belly is growing splendidly and beautifully. I gathered with old friends, held a baby, sang carols with my mother, and cooked and ate lots of wonderful food. Christmas day, itself, was particularly wonderful. My mom (a.k.a. Santa) spoiled us wonderfully, my dad was in good, picture-taking spirits, and we "kids" enjoyed a trip to suburbia-land to see "Sweeney Todd." Simon and I cooked a wonderful butternut squash lasagna, and we popped English "crackers" which contained whistles and crowns that were used with mucho-hilarity. It was nice to spend time with family--especially since this is the last Christmas where we "kids" will still be kids: come February, I will be an aunt! I sort of hope that Christmas doesn't change once the kiddies come along, and yet, I am also excited about how another generation will influence changes to our current traditions.

Anyway, with the new year comes reflection, and of course, resolutions. Simon and I made one: to recycle. Once upon a time, we had city-wide recycling here in New Orleans, but curbside pickup of recyclables was yet another casualty of the storm. In thinking about our new neighborhood's commitment to becoming carbon neutral, I've realized that in fact, we do very little to help. Partly, I think, because simply making it through the day continues to be a bit of a struggle. How can one commit to being carbon-neutral when one is trying hard to staying mentally stable?

I learned from some friends that we can pay to have curbside pickup using Phoenix Recycling. It sucks that we have to pay for what should not be considered a "luxury," but I suppose we've become accustomed (or resigned, rather) to paying more to live here in New Orleans.

Speaking of paying more--we sent off our first mortgage payment, and soon I'll write a hefty check for property taxes on a house that's nowhere near livable. I'm trying not to get crazy about what I can't control (read: the contractor's work-pace,) but our living-expenses during the renovation will be triple what they are now. It's gonna be tough. As a result, Simon and I made resolution #2: to get through the renovation and the move. And by "getting through," we mean that we hope to fight as little as possible, and approach every decision (of the hundreds we'll be making) as a TEAM. Yes, Team DeBacHand is in full effect for 2008. Go team!

In my personal life, I've resolved the following:

1) To write more thank you letters. Ideally I'd resolve to simply "write more"--perhaps even to write some fiction, or try to publish some--but the writing that gives me the most pleasure comes in thanking people. This may sounds strange, but it's true. I love to say thank you, to write it, and to send that happy message out in the mail. Even a thank you email works wonders for my soul and makes me feel rosy. Maybe my real resolution should be simply, to thank others more often--in writing and in speech. I do have so many people to thank!

2) To be more productive. I have so many things I want to accomplish, and not accomplishing them makes me feel like crapola. So, I want to:

Write a kick-butt paper to present at four-C's.

Learn how to manage a website (for the HCNA).

Write more regularly for the Holy Cross newsletter and for http://www.helpholycross.org/, and

Get my teaching-portfolio in order.

3) In order to do that, I will need to watch less TV. I am embarrassed to admit that I need to resolve to watch less TV, but there you go. Even worse: I love to watch the kind of crap that people make fun of us Americans for watching (see above).

Realistically, if I am able to accomplish 1 and 3, 2 will follow. So, I will focus on turning off the TV and saying thank you. Hey--I'm doing well with turning off the TV (since I turned it off to write this!) Next, onto the thank you's...

Since you are likely not all that interested in reading my resolutions, I'll share that Simon and I went to the bonfires on Orleans Ave to ring in the New Year, that there is a very vocal and un-neutered orange cat howling under the piers, and that I found a piece of newspaper in our new/old house that's dated December 15, 1927. Also: last night I made a delicious but forgettable broccoli raab pasta, and tonight I'll cook stir fried veggies with tofu. Two days ago, I sorted through hundreds of CDs and came up with 100+ to sell in a yard sale. Oh, and I found some lovely lighting fixtures at IKEA that were gifted to us by my mother, and which are now sitting in storage, waiting for installation.

That's the report. Now, happy new year, dammit.

Sarah.

The First Casualty of This Holiday Season...

2007-12-19T19:46:00.000-06:00

Yes, folks, the first casualty of this holiday season--for me, at least--is not just my trim waistline (which is, thanks to teacherly/New Orleans-y anxiety-whatnot, rather trim,)--but also my regular-ish maintenance of my blog.

I did just post some pics from the HCNA party last week (see http://www.helpholycross.org/,) Mom, if you are aching to see a little something from NOLA-life (although I'll see you in a couple of days, so I guess blog-reading probably isn't tops on your list,) but generally, I have been away from my computer for two reasons: 1) sleep-getting, and 2) holiday shopping.

I guess I could add a little NOLA-related comment here: Simon and I just went to a holiday party in Gentilly where our friends own a 50's-style ranch--very small, very cute, and now, very high. They qualified for funds to raise their house and have placed a wonderful screened-in porch and workspace underneath the eight-foot-high cinderblock stilts that now support their house.

I want stilts!

But I've learned that because our home is in a National Historic District, it is exempt from the whole house-raising-bit. I may be wrong, but I think this means that we can't even qualify for the money that's available for house-raising.

Now, I know that maintaining the historic-fabric of our home is a Big Deal--and it's a deal we've entered knowingly--but I would like to think that it'd be just as historically significant at eight-feet-high as it is now at three. There may be some purists out there who would disagree, but I am guessing that the house was raised in 1928 (after the 1927 flood) because of flooding, and while it's true that this was some man-made flooding, wouldn't raising the home simply be a reflection of a response to the post-K reality? I know it would alter the house, but I think that alteration would reflect the cataclysmic change wrought by Katrina, no?

No?

Well, anyways, Happy Holidays, all! We're off to ATL for some rest, some family-time, and some IKEA-shopping (yes, I know that it is SO "not green," but YOU try furnishing an 1800 square foot house in a city with nary a piece of furniture in the second-hand stores--and on two teachers' salaries. Pshaw!)

Why couldn't I have been a MATH teacher (or something)?

2007-12-06T16:04:00.000-06:00

If I were a math teacher (or a teacher of some subject involving Scantrons or multiple-choice tests), the end of the semester would be a much easier thing.

But I am an English teacher, and so at the end of every semester, I amass a pile of portfolios of student-writing the likes of which you've never seen.

Seriously. The picture doesn't do it justice. Maybe I should have piled the folders for maximum effect.

Just so you know, each of those folders (and that box-top is full of 'em) contains five essays, three of which are "new" to me (revised essays). In order to be eligible to have a revision considered for an extra grade, my students have to write "letters of reflection" to explain what they changed and why. So I read those, too. I also read their final "author's letter," which addresses their semester-long journey.

My point is, I have a heap o' reading and grading to do, and it's hard! (I'm not even going to try to omit the whiny tone. I wanna whine, dammit!)

But it's not the quantity that makes it difficult.

Wait, yes it is.

I mean that it's not only the quantity that makes the end-of-semester grading throw-down so difficult. It's also that I have to give it a grade, and doing that to my students' work--well sometimes it just about breaks my heart.

I spend a lot of one-on-one time with my students. I meet with each and every one of them for at least three conferences each semester. During that time, I try to establish "professional boundaries," but inevitably, tears fall, confessions are made, and I wind up playing the role of therapist/parent/friend to my students in addition to my role of teacher.

I'm working on a paper about some of this, actually. Since the storm, the confessions have become darker and more depressing (as you might imagine), and my own mood has plummeted, too. Professionals in the field have published plenty of advice for what to do in situations like these. I think they refer to the teacher-behavior that comes from our empathy for our students as "affect." They say that we should maintain a professional distance--that we should nod and go, "That must be hard for you," but then, wha-domp, slap that D on there, anyhow. After all, a D is a D is a D. Can't nothing be done about that!

But a D is not "just a D". I know it and my students know it. A "D" can determine whether or not they hang on to their scholarship-money, which can determine whether or not they stay in school, which can determine, well, a damn lot.

So when I get to the end of the semester and I see (as I so often do) that my D students--the ones I've grown to care about so much--haven't managed to pull it together, I feel awful! How could I have better served them? What could I have done differently?

Given my workload--and the nature of living here (or anywhere, I guess)--I'm not sure there's much I can do differently. I'm doing all I can do. I'm giving them as much of me as I can afford to give (and then some.) So I need to forgive myself for their failure. (Clearly, this is easier said than done.)

Because I want to give my failing-students a heads-up (so they re-work their schedules), I try to tackle the high-risk portfolios first. When I first start into the pile, I have energy and hope. My blue pen has ink, I have coffee, it's all good.

But today, several folders in, I found that I was taking on waaaay too much guilt. I was writing really long evaluation letters explaining why students had gotten the grades they did. This shouldn't happen, though. Right? I mean, my students should be prepared for the grades they'll get, and I shouldn't feel so guilt-stricken.

(Right?)

Yes, it's at times like these that I wish that I were a math teacher... or something, anything, else.

Do students make these confessions to math teachers? I doubt it. (Unless they're trying to explain their absences.) Do math teachers struggle over awarding grades? Probably not. Stick that thing in a Scantron machine and let it determine the fate, right?

Oh, sigh...

Maybe going to the neighborhood association meeting will make me feel better. I hope so!

The Debate on the Make It Right Houses

2007-12-05T11:04:00.000-06:00

I've been reading some of the comments posted on nola.com in response to the prospective designs for the Make It Right houses.

I feel conflicted about the houses.

The poster that really gets it for me:

Many of the designs presented here seem too caught up in a "modern" aesthetic or a signature design flourish that really has nothing to do with being green. A little humility would go a long way toward improving them.

Here, a poster echoes my feelings about the "Escape House" (though with a bit more vitriol):

Insulting. What did these guys do, look at the wreckage after the storm and say, "Hey, let's make brand new houses that look like they were just hit by a hurricane and landed on their inhabitants car," just so we could relive all the memories? This is what I mean when I say architects are in it more for themselves that the people of N.O. They should be ashamed of themselves for even submitting this monstrosity.

Poster "deadguy" writes:

There's one thing that we need to keep in mind and as cliche as it may be "Form follows function." Most of the designs neglect to address the function that the houses, specifically the entry, have played in this community for the past 100 years. The front porch of a shotgun house is a stage; a place to see and be seen, to socialize. It must be readily accessible and visible from all sides.

He's right; I'm thinking of the house with the walled-in computerized BBQ in the Adjaye design.

"Stunola" writes:

The designs are evocative, but not of New Orleans.

Exactly.

Then again, I agree with poster "jhgator1":

As for the aesthetics, they are not for everyone. However, i am a firm believer that New Orleans needs a breath of fresh air from a design standpoint. Yes, you can honor the past, but when you start copying it, all you will wind up with is just that....a cheap copy. People need to be a little more open minded when it comes to designing a new New Orleans. This mentality seems to creep into everything we do here.
I'm sure this comment is something we've all heard before..."that isn't how we do things here", or "this is how it has always been done". That mentality is what is holding us back in New Orleans.

See? I'm conflicted.

I wouldn't call all of the homes a "miss," but I do wonder about the process that was referred to repeatedly in the press conference--the process of "listening" to the residents. From the MIR's Vision Statement:

Make It Right has had the good fortune of meeting many such resilient families throughout the process of helping to rebuild the neighborhood.

What happened at those meetings? Were residents asked what they liked about their former homes? What they'd like to see in new ones? What they'd like not to see? When I was walking through the containers at the site two days ago, I noticed that there was nothing on display to highlight the process. Given the appearance of these homes (and of their "sterile" interiors populated by prim settees and a preponderance of bookshelves), I just can't see the results of a good hard "listen" in the designs.

What bothers me (again) is that the designers seem so resolutely convinced that good design can be accomplished only by credentialed architects. But never have I lived in a design that more accurately reflected ME than when I was given the license to create. I wonder how the homes would look had the designers first solicited drawings and specs from the homeowners.

Wouldn't it be nice to know that the homeowners really did have a say in the creation of the homes' function AND aesthetic?

How did the creative/creation process really take place? I wish MIR had made that more clear.

Making It Right (at our house and in the Lower 9)

2007-12-04T13:15:00.000-06:00

I am oh-so proud to report that I have accomplished what I was afraid I'd never, ever accomplish: I've settled on a floorplan! As our historic consultant pointed out (during my long phase of obsessive floorplan-drawing), any shotgun house requires compromises in the floorplan, especially when you are trying to preserve the historic fabric of the home. Our compromise was that we couldn't get the kitchen in the back (where we'd initially wanted it) without creating a "useless" room up front (a "formal" dining room that would likely never get used.) So, the kitchen will be in the second room, dining in the first, a reading room/study will go next to the dining room, separated by a chimney, and the rear of the house (on the south side) will be comprised of a large "family room" with french doors onto the rear porch.

This weekend, we had an exciting meeting with Tracy Nelson (Gulf Coast Coordinator for Architecture for Humanity and a historic preservationist). We toured our home together and she schooled us in all kinds of interesting facts about our home. She thinks it's a great house (as does everyone who' s seen it, which makes us feel way better about making the sometimes-scary decision to buy in the Lower Ninth Ward). She oohed and aahed over its plaster walls (in the un-gutted right side,) its bead-board ceiling in the rear porch, which she said is likely original to the house, its ornate mantels and Eastlake doors, and the remnants of the wallpaper, which we discovered was backed by issues of the Times-Picayune dating back to 1927! Meeting with her made us realize just how lucky we are to own a house that's more than 100 years old, and made us think about doing right by the house in our renovation. So as we move forward, we will need to find ways of modernizing it to our standards that will simultaneously honor the home's history.

Speaking of homes and of "doing right," another exciting "visit" to our neighborhood this week came in the form of a press conference for Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation. The foundation hosted a party last night to celebrate the launching of The Pink Project, which Brad Pitt described as a sort of "social disobedience."

The Pink Project is comprised of 429 "base volumes" that are scattered throughout several blocks of the Lower Ninth Ward near the site of the levee breach. Those "case volumes" look like hot-pink boxes and upended-roofs, and their scattering is meant to represent the scattering of the lives and homes in the wake of the levee breach (which, I might mention, was the reason for the devastation of the Lower Ninth--not, as many seem to believe, the typical "flooding" one might associate with a hurricane. In other words, this was a manmade disaster, folks.) Between now and January 7th, a fundraising effort will take place, and as monies are raised, the homes will be "righted." Check Do check out the link at the bottom of this page. There, you can see just how interesting (and odd) this art installation is.

I walked around the site yesterday afternoon, and I ran into two national guardsmen, Sergeant James Clark and Specialist Caleb Christianson. Seargent Clark asked what the deal was with the pink stuff, and I tried my best to explain (and felt a little silly doing it.) When I'd finished, he said that he'd been stationed in the area in the days and weeks following the storm, and that the scattered structures reminded him a lot of what he'd seen then, "Only pink." (Then, Clark and Christianson confessed that they'd really come down because one of their peers had sent a picture of Angelina Jolie from his cellphone. Where could they find her, they wanted to know. Ah, yes...)

At the press conference, Brad Pitt acknowledged that people would probably be a bit, um, bemused by the choice of the color pink. He didn't choose it because of the "little pink houses" that John Mellancamp refers to (in his classic song about the un-attainability of the American Dream), nor did he choose it to represent a "pink elephant in the room" (the obvious destruction of the Lower Ninth Ward and its neglect at the hands of the republican administration.) He chose pink, he said, because it "screams the loudest."

And scream it does. When I first crossed the Claiborne Avenue Bridge, I was thrown by the sight of the hot pink structures where I'd become so accustomed to seeing overgrown green fields. It's an arresting sight, and I hope that it inspires folks to contribute so that families who've received so little assistance can, in fact, return.

Now, the houses, themselves--the real ones that have been designed by 13 architects--are not altogether "right" in my mind. All pay homage to the tradition of the New Orleans shotgun, but as I heard one architect say at the party last night, that comes more from the need to deal with the long and skinny shape of the lots than it does from any real tribute to the style.

Here, the MIR staff explains the philosophy that went into the homes' design:

Because local cultural influences gave rise to the pre-Katrina architecture so emblematic of the area, preserving that identity remains vital in reclaiming the spirit of the neighborhood. MIR’s goal is to join the history of this tradition with creative new architectural solutions mindful of environmental and personal safety concerns in order to encourage both the evolution of aesthetic distinctiveness and the conscientious awareness of natural surroundings.

I think some of the groups got a bit carried away with their, uh, "creative new architectural solutions." You can check out some of the other odd birds here.

This one is called The Escape House. Now, I may be wrond, but I don't think anyone wants to live in a house that looks quite literally broken like a stick (we've had enough of that, thank you). I also don't think anyone wants their home to perpetually remind them that they may need, one day, to "escape." Overall, it's just plain difficult to imagine some of these houses comprising the future landscape of New Orleans, but I am trying to have an open mind:

I asked a group of neighbors last night what they thought of the houses. "They're different," they said. I couldn't tell if they meant different-good or different-bad. When I asked, they said it was "all good."

"Anything to help us get out of these trailers," they said.

True that!

Still, as I wandered through the three shipping containers that had been set up to display the designs, I kept wondering why the architects had to move so darn far away from our architectural style. Why not do something off-the-wall with the "lacework" that adorns our homes? Why not give the house "shutter-wings"? It just seemed like they wanted so badly to make some sort of a design "statement," they'd forgotten we like our history, and we see our historic homes as representative of that history. A long and skinny house doesn't a shotgun make, and these homes ain't shotguns in any sense other than the long and skinny.

I did like this design, though. It's got our Easter-egg color going on, and looks closer to the traditional shotgun than any of the others did.

But did the designers of this interior really have our population in mind? The delicate settee and the wall of books smacks of wishful thinking more than it represents who we really are:

You know, I think the architects belong to the school of though that the head-dude subscribes to. When he (William McDonough) spoke at the press conference yesterday, he talked about how he lives in a house designed by Thomas Jefferson. "The only things listed on his tombstone are the things he designed," said McDonough. His boy T.J. "recorded his legacies--the things he left behind--not his activities." McDonough said that what we do fades while what we create lives on.

But doesn't this fly in the face of the whole "cradle to cradle" concept? I mean, shouldn't we be doing more and leaving behind less? I don't get it...

McDonough went on to talk about breaking design for the Make It Right houses "down to the molecule."

"Design" he said, "is the first symbol of human intention." (Wha-what?)

It represents "our intention toward each other as a species." (Hmmm.)

I felt as I listened (and as I've read more about The Team at Make It Right) as though these folks have become a bit bowled over by their philosophies, which was completely confirmed by this, which I read on the MIR site (regarding the Pink House Project):

The simple legibility of the pink monopoly house reassembled from smaller individual components intentionally focus attention onto the problematic of manageable scale, allowing the individual to physically participate within the installation in real time. Filmic concepts drive the narrative of the installation, framing the architectural development. The scenes within the assembly create emotive and informative storyboards containing specific perspective rich with history and memorialization...
The tangram serves as a conceptual overlay for Pink... The tangram is a Chinese dissection puzzle consisting of a square cut into five triangles, a square and a rhomboid, to be reassembled into different figures. These pieces, called tans, can be combined so as to form a great variety of other figures. Upon reassembly, multiple graphic identities emerge.
The idea of the tangram was translated into a three dimensional expression in Pink. At the installation's commencement, the individual components lay haphazard throughout the site. It is only over time and through donation that the cohesive volumes are reassembled. The overall cohesive form is a synthesized representation of traditional New Orleans housing typologies: the shotgun house and the Creole cottage.

Obviously, sorting through the pretentious language here is tough (and if this were a freshman essay, I would've told them to revise with a clearer sense of audience in mind). What is clear to me is that these guys are in love with an idea, and that they see the Make It Right project as an opportunity to make a statement.

Resident Valerie Schexnayder, who I ran into outside of her trailer yesterday, seemed to agree. She was appreciative of the project, but said, "They all got their statements." I could tell she was a woman tired of statements, (if not of her own, which she'd displayed on signs in front of her trailer.)

And that's what I saw the most of yesterday: a lot of interest in the statement, but a lot of confusion, too.

How, exactly, were these pink things going to help get folks home? And how on Earth was a house like this going to be someones Lower Ninth Ward home?

I guess what I'm saying is that it appears the hearts of Brad & co are in the right place, but there's just something about the "synthesized representations" of the prospective homes that was a little... insulting?

The computerized barbecue on the walled-in front yard of this house (we don't wall in our porches, people)... the blast-off aesthetic of the "escape house"... the rows and rows of books that each designer planted in their Jetsonian interiors... who did they think we were? Who do they think we are?

At the end of the day--even after a gleeful night filled with free wine and a performance by Jerry Lee Lewis, I couldn't help feeling like it was all a bit, well, wrong. I felt like the Make It Right project was--and is--a wonderful dose of hope. But it was someone else's hope, not ours, and I went home sad that we were once again being forced to take what we can get.

We did it!

2007-11-29T14:50:00.000-06:00

We bought a house!

Yes, we are now the proud owners of an 1800 square foot shotgun double in Holy Cross. Two afternoons ago, we met the sellers at the attorney's office and signed the next thirty years of our lives away. I signed and signed and signed until I got to the closing costs. Then, I signed and clenched my teeth. We could pay our rent for a year for what we paid in closing costs. And silly me, I thought those costs actually went toward the loan. Nooooooo. Gawd, that part was sickening.

In fact, I'm just really going to have to find ways of staying positive about money. The bid seems high, the loan seems high, the closing costs seem high, and until we are able to actually move into the house, our living expenses will be ridiculously high. As in 400% higher than they are now. So we need the contractor to work fast... and we've been told by everyone to go ahead and forget that idea.

But I want to stop thinking about all that negative stuff. I want to pick paint colors and furniture and fixtures. I want to landscape our backyard in my head. I want to swing on the imaginary swing I have hanging from the branch of our backyard's live oak tree. And most of all, I want to settled on a damn floor plan!

Simon's been making fun of me for pulling out the drawings I've made wherever I go. It is a little silly to ask so many people for opinions on floorplans, I guess. And the historic consultant we've hired to help manage the home-restoration thinks we need to hurry up and settle. But isn't the floorplan, like The Most Important Thing? I mean, we plan to live in this house forever, so we don't want to regret kitchen-placement, of all things.

I think I've already posted about this, which goes to show just how obsessed with floorplans I've become. But really, we need help deciding!

I know everyone wants to have these open floorplans these days, but I don't see why I'd want my kitchen to be in my living room. Kitchens are loud and messy, and living rooms are for reading and TV-watching. (My dad did point out, though, that we'd need to think about the arrival of kids, and in that sense, I guess having a kitchen-living combo would be good.)

Anyways, I'm going to shut up about that. But if anyone has a floorplan-issue related to your own house that you either love or hate, let me know. The consultant may push use to decide, but we can't afford to get this wrong.

I really just wanted to write to let folks know that we've bought the house and are now in the beginning stages of what promises to be an agonizingly long wait for the home's completion. (And I'm scared about money, too. But only parenthetically and only because I want to be able to furnish our home inexpensively and in an environmentally-sound way... that looks good.)

Back to meeting with my panicky students. Oh, the semester's end...

House Update

2007-11-26T22:07:00.001-06:00

When I dressed this morning, I chose gray wool slacks and a silk and Lycra fuchsia blouse under a black fitted corduroy blazer. I looked lovely and grown-up, and it was all for what was supposed to be our house-closing.

ALAS! We have NOT closed, due to a glitch that I think can safely be blamed on the loan processor. Evidently, we needed to secure our builder's risk insurance 24 hours before closing (we were ready to show up with the paper work). Did anyone tell us that was the case? Why, no!

So we met with the owner today to draw up a joke-uva hand-written extension on the contract. Lucky for us, the owner is really nice and very understanding.

Closing is now slated for the same time tomorrow, but I think this time I'll go in jeans and a t-shirt.

In other house news... the great obsession over floorplans continues. An awkward side-entry makes the third of four rooms in our shotgun nearly-useless, and so that room will be "borrowed from" to create a guest bathroom. The debate: whether the kitchen should go in the rear, separated by a hallway from the front dining and living areas, or whether the family room should go in the rear, separated by a hallway from the front kitchen and dining areas. In most shotgun houses, the front room is a "parlor" that no one really uses, which makes the second room the first "real" one--but that also means that second room feels almost too exposed for a kitchen.

Argh. Our contractor wants us to hurry up and decide, and I know this probably ISN'T a big deal, but it feels like The Biggest Of Deals. I'd be grateful for advice...

Whoops!

2007-11-18T18:05:00.000-06:00

Looks like I've neglected my blog... again. The problem? I've taken on too much, and am overextended.

I've agreed to be the website committee chair for the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, although I know next to nothing about websites. I guess in that sparsely-populated area, I am, right now, the big computery fish in their pond. HA!

So there's that. Then there's the Help Holy Cross blog, which I've promised to contribute to when I can. "When I can" feels like never, though, and I'm finding that the stories I'd like to cover can't get covered in a timely fashion because of other obligations...

Like house-buying, for instance, which has by now entered crazy-serious stage, wherein I meet with termite inspectors, structural engineers, call insurers, obsess over floorplans, email our loan officer daily, and generally feel like, "Holy kamoly, we are DOING THIS!"

Add to this: work. It's near the end of the semester, and so naturally my students are all collectively panicking. I don't ever want them to panic, but if they're going to, I don't know why they save it until the last minute--most of the students who are panicking now haven't gotten a non-panic-worthy grade so far this semester. I guess the whole revision-bit staves off panic until now. How can I make revision serve its purpose without its appearing to be a free pass to fail and then fix?

I guess it's too late now to talk about Waiting for Godot... is it?

I'd made that wonderful assignment. I'd had such a wonderful class. I was practically glowing with the idea of it, and then...

I couldn't get in. Nor could my students. I showed up more than an hour before ticket-issuing, got dutifully in line (a line that looked only marginally longer than the one I'd been in before--the one that got me in to see the play), and waited for an hour. Soon, a guy from Creativetime came over and said there was no way we'd be getting in. There were seats for 400, and that number had been reached a few folks before me.

Which doesn't explain how, when I decided to wait and got closer, I was told that there were only tickets for forty more people--and more than 80 people in front of me.

I checked out the "Gumbo Party" and noted that there was nowhere near 400 people in the reception, so something had to be up. A rumor began to circulate: there was a guest list, and we weren't on it. The woman behind me in line lived just a few blocks away and had lost her house; she wasn't on it. So who was?

When I saw Ann Pasternak, the director of Creativetime, apologizing to line-standers being turned away, I approached her. I told her that I thought she should know that a rumor was circulating that there was a "VIP list." She denied it, vehemently (and a little rudely, I might add). "The only people on our VIP list are national press, like the New Yorker and New York Times."

I had to wonder: if I were, say, the woman behind me in line and not myself, would she have brought up the New Yorker and New York Times?

She'd assumed that I cared about the national press--the same national press that swoops in whenever there's a "gumbo party" in the ghetto and calls it recovery. Bor-ring.

"I'm not accusing you of having a guest list," I explained. "I just thought you ought to know of the rumor."

She did explain that the actors had a guest list. Also, there was a list of organizations nearly a page long. I'm sure these volunteers managed to be VIPs, too (at least I hope so).

I explained that I'd built curriculum around the play. "Will you add an additional night, like last week's?" I asked.

"No," she said, again with the vehemence. "I'm at such a deficit with this project."

That's when I was like, "Okay, peace."

Deficit?! Sister wants to talk to someone who lives here about a deficit!?

Here's my real problem with her deficit:

Creativetime saw it more important to buy gallons of gumbo than to avoid said deficit. For the umpteenth time, people: we do not need you to feed us gumbo! Gumbo is expensive--all crabs and whatnot. Skip the freakin' gumbo!

Creativetime saw it more important to admit actor Isaiah Washington (of Gray's Anatomy and "fag"-mouthed fame) and his bevy of ladies to the play--on a VIP list--and to get his picture taken (for said national press) than to ensure locals were able to attend.

Creativetime also wanted so badly to appear to extend a hand to the communities that they prioritized free admission over widespread access (via additional performances). Free stuff is great--and many needed to take advantage of the free admission. Many more, however, didn't (Washington, for one) and could easily have "contributed" a few bones to ensure more widespread attendance.

Finally, Creativetime's Pasternak prioritized press coverage over public access. One might argue that they can't be blamed for that; after all, that same press coverage will keep their donors happy. But if their mission is genuine--and is geared toward providing access within the communities to site-specific art--those communities should have been priority number one, and I think there were better ways of handling the production than Pasternak's.

The truth is, I'm picking this bone because Ms. Pasternak was dismissive, and I think she was because she was making assumptions about who I am and what I value. Annoying.

The real, real truth is that I love, love, loved the play and think it needed to stay longer, and I am blaming Pasternak because she's an easy scapegoat for my cranky-crankness. I've been feeling this crankity-crankyness lots lately, and it's not Pasternak or some play that's doing it. It's the accumulation of it all.

So: I need a break, and I intend to take one. Happy Thanksgiving to all. You can read more pleasant and less self-absorbed whatnot at www.helpholycross.org.

Until I'm feeling more inspired AND have more time AND can cut it with the whining, I'm signing off (for a spell)...

Sarah

Preparing to wait (with my students) for Godot

2007-11-09T10:38:00.000-06:00

I've just come from the Friday morning writing lab meeting with some of my freshman composition students.

Today, I decided to spend the 50-minute lab preparing them for seeing the Gentilly-area production of "Waiting for Godot." I realized that while the production rocked me to the core, my students may not be quite so willing to give themselves over to the ambiguity of the play. In fact, I had this vision of my students giggling with each other, eye-rolling, and then leaving before the second act, all "What the heck was THAT?!"

Before class began, I wrote a quotation from a recently-published (August, 2006) piece in the New Yorker: "Beckett's work can lay a strong claim to universality: not everyone has a God, but who doesn't have a Godot?"

When the students arrived, a few launched into excuses: "What if I can't go? I mean, some of us have to work."

I had to restrain myself. I mean, do they THINK I don't know about having to work?! Have I taught them NOTHING about audience-awareness?

Anyway, I explained that their final writing assignment would be to write an evaluation of something--a play, a movie, a restaurant, a book, an exhibit, a festival, this class, etc.--and that those who attended the play would have a built-in subject at their disposal. Those who couldn't would evaluate something else.

"But is that fair?" Christy asked.

Obviously, the question was rhetorical. What she meant to say was, "That's not FAIR!" I do have to applaud her for having enough awareness of her audience--enough self-restraint--to forego reverting to a straight-up whine.

"We'll use our common experience to talk specifically about writing an evaluation of the play," I explained, "but the tasks those who attend the play will engage in when writing their evaluations are no different from the ones you'll engage in."

Christy seemed placated, if not sure that it was, in fact, "fair."

Then, I passed out the play's program (last week, I'd been lucky to get my hands on one, so I made copies to distribute to my students--I figured reading star Wendell Pierce's bio would help inspire the nay-sayers to attend).

The students read paragraphs from the program's "Introduction" by Anne Pasternak, the President and Artistic Director of Creative Time:

"Creative Time is proud to present a site-specific outdoor production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, directed by Christopher McElroen [my student called him "Chris Mac-E"] of the Classical Theatre of Harlem with artistic direction by Paul Chan. More than a play, the project has evolved into a collaboration between local residents, artists, and community leaders on the subject of waiting. St in an intersection of the Lower Ninth Ward and a front yard in Gentilly, this production allows Beckett's play to contextualize the unfolding story of New Orleans as a controversial and renewing city."

We then read aloud the "Synopsis and Production History of Waiting for Godot":

"Two tramps meet on the side of the road. The two men remember that they are supposed to wait under a tree for a man named Godot. It appears they do not remember this man very well, but they think he was going to give them an answer to a question they don't know."

We also read about the play's many prison-stagings and its 1993 staging in war-torn Sarajevo ("war-torn" meant something to them, but Sarajevo didn't.) We talked about the play's 2006 production in Harlem, where rather than on a country road, Vladimir and Estragon waited atop a roof over water--like New Orleanians waiting for rescue after the storm.

"How do you think the staging in Gentilly will 'contextualize' the play?" I asked. "What does 'contextualize' mean, anyway?"

"To put into context," a student offered.

I then directed their attention to the quotation on the board: "Beckett's work can lay a strong claim to universality: not everyone has a God, but who doesn't have a Godot?"

"So," I said,"two tramps wait in Gentilly for a man named Godot who never comes. They think he is going to give them an answer to a question they don't know. Within the context of New Orleans, now, who is Godot, and what kind of answer are the men hoping for"?

"He's FEMA."

"He's the Road Home."

"He's their neighbors."

"They're hoping for help."

"For relief."

"For security."

Me: "Yes! But who was Godot for the prisoners in San Quentin?"

"The parole board."

"And who could it be if the two men are simply on a plain old, ambiguous country road on a darkened stage, with a twig of a tree? Who else could Godot be?"

"God?"

"Whoever."

"Intermission."

Laughter.

"The point is, the 'universality' means that the play can mean something to anyone--to everyone, because we all wait for something."

We then talked about Beckett, who explained at one point in his career that he felt a bit like the young girl Carl Jung mentioned in a lecture Beckett once attended, who "had never really been born." Beckett, author Benjamin Kunkel explains in his New Yorker piece, "Sam I Am," "was willing to confide to people throughout his life that he considered himself a similar case. The notion of an incomplete birth seemed to explain something of his feeling of unreality--many a Beckett character seems uncertain whether he really exists."

"What's that all about?" I asked. "Seems pretty absurd to me."

"Is that what he means by 'We are all born mad'?" Felecia asked, referring to a quotation from the play included before Beckett's biography in the program.

"What do you think?"

"Like, it's madness that we're here 'cuz we don't know why we're here?"

"Maybe so. Why don't we know we're here?"

"Because we're human!" yelled Blake from the back of the room.

"Yup! We sure are," I said. We talked about how maybe Beckett felt uncertain about whether he really existed because here he was, a human, but he didn't know why. We didn't ask to be born, after all. And given that truth--that we ARE but don't know WHY--what do we do with ourselves?

"We wait!"

"For what?" I asked.

"For Godot!"

"What's Godot got to give us?"

"We don't know!"

At this point, the absurd seemed to have taken over class, and we all broke down into a bit of "What THE?!!" But to me, it felt like an epiphany--like here we were, talking about art, about ourselves, and my students WEREN'T lost. They GOT it, ambiguity at all, and it was universal. It just made sense.

We ended class by reading Jarvis DeBerry's column from the T-P. One of my students said, when we were through, "Damn, that was good!" And, of course, I--the writing teacher--had to keep myself from cartwheeling: to hear a student say, "Damn, that was good" to a piece of writing!

As the students left, I distributed copies of Paul Chan's artist-statement (which has some remarkable similarlities in content to Susan Sontag's writing on her staging in Sarajevo), and Mapquest copies of the play's location. As the students filed on by, eye-rolling Christy stopped to say that she really wanted to go to the play, that was "on call" for work tonight and would try to go, but that she didn't want to go by herself. So, I've promised to meet Christy here on campus and to go to the play together. And really, I just can't wait. For real.

I can't wait to see the play again (this time I will hopefully hold myself together a little better!) I can't wait to stand in line with my students--to talk, to eat with them. I can't wait to sit next to Allie, who asked if she could ask me questiosn if she didn't "get it." I can't wait to see how my studentsabsorb the play--to see what they take from it. I promise to report on the experience, and to share more about how this play has impacted my teaching in this final unit of my freshman comp class.

Since I know most of you (Mom!) can't see the play, I recommend you watch this multi-media presentation on Nola.com. It was compiled using images and sounds from the night Simon and I attended the play.

Waiting for Godot

2007-11-06T09:56:00.000-06:00

This weekend, Simon and I went down to the Lower Ninth Ward to see a wholly unique staging of Samuel Beckett's play, "Waiting for Godot," and I'm trying now to process the experience, which was--in a word--cathartic. (I like how Susan Sontag puts it in her piece reflecting on her 1993 staging of the play in Sarajevo: "In Sarajevo, as anywhere else, there are more than a few people who feel strengthened and consoled by having their sense of reality affirmed and transfigured by art."--Yes: what she said.)

I think I can recall reading the play (maybe in high school?). I recall its being boring, and wondering, Dear God, why we were being made to read such a thing!?

In it, nothing happens. Two men simply wait "for Godot." Who Godot is, or why they are waiting for him, you--and they--aren't exactly sure. You just know that you are waiting.

It's that wait that fuels the play's tension, and, like waiting, the tension you (and the characters) feel is fueled at times by promise, at times by fear, at times by frustration, exuberance, anger, dread.

You aren't even sure if what you're waiting for is, well, worth waiting for.

Still, waiting is what you do because waiting is, it seems, all there is to do.

That feeling of an interminable wait with only a very ambiguous promise at its end (if a promise, at all) is a lot like what it feels to live in New Orleans right now.

And so, when we went to see "Waiting for Godot" in a performance staged outdoors--at a street corner in an utterly devastated area of the Lower Ninth Ward--we felt as though the play were uniquely ours, in spite of its being written in France in the late 1940s.

I found the play so moving, in fact, that I cried my way through most of Vladimir's second-act soliloquy. As the fall evening breeze sent waves through the knee-high grasses that blanketed the scenery, as the ships blinked and groaned on the Industrial Canal that was the backdrop, as the sky overhead enveloped and mocked us, I cried and cried and cried. Frankly, it was a little embarrassing. But when the spirit moves you, right? You got to move.

VLADIMIR:

Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! (Pause. Vehemently.) Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? (Estragon says nothing.) It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflection, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is

clear. We are waiting for Godot to come—

We are waiting, and yet we don't know what the wait will bring, or even if it will bring any

reward.

We'd heard that there was a big turnout for the play, so we arrived at 6:00, only to discover that the line was already two blocks long. No matter.

We waited.

For two hours.

Gumbo was served (and now my question is why, Dear GAWD, always the GUMBO?) Cans of Deeps Woods OFF were distributed to protect our delicate skin from the vast swarms of evening mosquitoes come in from Bayou Bienvenue. The Rebirth Brass Band played. I drank wine from a screwtop bottle in a plastic cup, and waited.

Finally, we were seated. In front of me, Isaiah something-or-other (Dr. Burke from Gray's anatomy). He had with him beautiful women, and the whole lot of them got up too many times to pee. Hollywood.

But in spite of the play's being of super-high quality (with Equity actors, a Classical Theatre of Harlem director, and Paul Chan--another high-tech New Yorker--at the helm), it felt as though it were meant for, and bred in our city. It was, quite literally, The Most Moving Theatre Experience I Have Ever Had. I mean, I felt as though I were witnessing something wholly unique--something really special. It felt like ART and HISTORY, all in caps. Oh, Dear God, it was moving...

(David Cuthbert of the Times Picayune wrote an excellent review of the play that gets it right.)

This coming weekend, the play will again be staged, this time in Gentilly. I'm not sure how it can possibly match the intensity fueled by the backdrop of the Lower Ninth Ward (the levee and its infamous breach lurking in the background, both literally and heavily in our memories), but I look froward to seeing the play again. If I knew people who had the kind of money that would allow them to hop on a plane to come down for the performance, I would say DO IT. But I don't.

So I will tell you about that staging, too.

I'm taking my students to see it on Friday. Lordy, I hope they get it. I hope they don't think, as I once did, Dear God, why this play? I hope they can see how Paul Chan and Creative Time has made this play just exactly ours.

I plan to share with them his artist's statement, which I hope, hope, hope they can appreciate (even if they don't entirely get the play). It's clear that New Orleans moved artist Paul Chan, and I am incredibly grateful to him for envisioning the project and bringing it to New Orleans.

Here's an excerpt of Paul Chan's artist statement:

"What surprised me about seeing the city for the first time was that, from seeing what was
right in front of me, I still couldn't put together a complete picture of New Orleans. I
expected comparative contrasts but not wholesale contradictions. Some neighborhoods,
like the one around Tulane, seemed virtually untouched by Katrina. But in the Lower
Ninth Ward and parts of Gentilly, the barren landscape brooded in silence. The streets
were empty. There was still debris in lots where houses once stood. I didn’t hear a single
bird."

"I have seen landscapes scarred by disasters of all sorts. In Baghdad, I saw kids playing
soccer barefoot on a wide boulevard and around the concrete rubble that came from US
troops shelling the buildings near the Tigris River. I thought I saw the same kids playing
in the ghost town known as downtown Detroit on a side street during an enormous labor
demonstration in 1999—with shoes but no shirts. Life wants to live, even if it’s on
broken concrete."

"New Orleans was different. The streets were still, as if time had been swept away along
with the houses. Friends said the city now looks like the backdrop for a bleak science
fiction movie. Waiting for a ride to pick me up after visiting with some Common Ground
volunteers who were gutting houses in the Lower Ninth, I realized it didn’t look like a
movie set, but the stage for a play I have seen many times. It was unmistakable. The
empty road. The bare tree leaning precariously to one side with just enough leaves to
make it respectable. The silence. What’s more, there was a terrible symmetry between the
reality of New Orleans post-Katrina and the essence of this play, which expresses in stark
eloquence the cruel and funny things people do while they wait: for help, for food, for
hope. It was uncanny. Standing there at the intersection of North Prieur and Reynes, I
suddenly found myself in the middle of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot."

...

“'If you want to do this, you got to spend the dime, and you got to spend the time,'
someone said to me. The idea of staging Godot in New Orleans, of using the natural
collaborative process of producing a play with the necessary give and take of working on
the streets in order to reimagine how art—as the form freedom takes without the use of
force—can become the opening to enter and engage the myriad dimensions of life lived
in the midst of ruin, without succumbing to the easy graces of reducing it to either
knowledge or illustration of that life, began to take shape in a way that became
unpredictable, which is to say, new. It is fashionable today (still?) to claim that there is
nothing new beyond our horizon of art, that everything worth doing has been done. But
this seems to me an altogether specious claim, for it ignores the vast undiscovered
country of things that ought to be undone. In these great times, the terror of action and
inaction shapes the burden of history. Perhaps the task of art today is to remake this
burden anew by suspending the seemingly inexorable order of things (which gives the
burden its weight) for the potential of a clearing to take place, so that we can see and feel
what is in fact worthless, and what is in truth worth renewing.

Waiting for Godot has been staged on Broadway (in 1956), at a prison (San Quentin), and
in the middle of a war (during the Siege of Sarajevo, directed by Susan Sontag). It is a
simple story, told in two acts, about two tramps (we have other names for them today)
waiting for someone named Godot, who never comes. In New Orleans in 2007, Godot is
legion and it is not difficult to recognize the city through the play. Here, the burden of the
new is to realize the play through the city.

Paul Chan
June 2007
New York City"

So, my friends, if you have money to get here to see it, DO!!!!

Weekend pictures from Holy Cross

2007-10-28T21:03:00.001-05:00

When the weather is as positively perfect as it has been this weekend (dry, sunny, and in the seventies), Simon and I make our way to Holy Cross as often as we can. Yesterday we drove down to check in on our friend Mark, who's working on a home on the Jackson Barracks side of Holy Cross. While he and Simon talked shop, I swung on a swing set as the sunset.

Afterwards, we drove to our end of the neighborhood to see this lovely end to the day:

We met Mark for tapas at Mimi's in the Marigny, and watched from the balcony as a Halloween parade passed by on the street below. I was remembering two years ago, our first Halloween back, when the same parade occurred.

That year, the parade's Grand Marshall was dressed as "Katrina--That B*tch!" and the amicable and then very present National Guard joined in the fun.

We were losing power regularly back then, and just as the block party was really getting going, a transformer blew, and we were plunged into relative darkness--forced to toast Halloween by candlelight.

How odd that I am almost nostalgic for that time! Back when our hopes were still alive and the National Guard's presence felt like icing rather than necessity.

Our trips down to our future neighborhood are what give us hope, now. Today we took a camping table and some lawn chairs down to the levee to grade papers. We're both up to our ears in grading, as usual, and the task is never exactly fun. But, well, when you're setting looks like this, grading papers simply cannot suck:

That object on the horizon in the upper right is a massive freight ship--the kind of traffic we get to watch go by!

Later, we took a break from grading to walk down to the site of the Global Green Holy Cross Project. We noted that the material that we'll use for a radiant barrier in our attic covers all of the exterior walls on this house. That's some insulation!

Still, I hope that it begins to look a little less space-aged as it takes on more siding. In spite of its staying "true" to shotgun-style architecture (and energy-efficiency) in being a line of rooms (topped by another line), it's got some not-so-attractive features.

Like the hulking concrete whatnot with the metal antennae that supports the front roof. Uh, okay... That may have something "green" going for it, but we agreed that it's about as lovely as a pair of TV rabbit ears. Maybe we're just spoiled by some many lovely old New Orleans homes--like our own!

This week, we'll meet with the contractor, and hopefully finalize the layout and the financing. In the meantime, I'll be grading, and grading, and grading papers... so for now... Good night Holy Cross!

And now for some lighter fare...

2007-10-27T15:21:00.000-05:00

I've done it again.

I've neglected my blog for too long, and in the meantime, lots and lots has happened.

The problem: when so much has happened, the idea of writing about it overwhelms me.

For starters, Simon and I travelled to Atlanta to attend my brother's celebration of his marriage.

Also, the Holy Cross Planning Committee held a meeting and announced that our little cul-de-sac may one day become a through-street.

My oldest cat, Georgie, broke her paw.

And the house-buying has officially become a time-consuming, intimidating, paper-worky chore.

Because I don't particularly feel like delving into any of the above, I will instead share this picture of what may possibly be my second favorite sandwich of all time. It's a "BLT" made using a deep-fried softshell crab, Alan Benton's incredible Bacon, organic local lettuce, and buttery-crispy-soft-chewy bread. Oh, and a homemade aioli. Madness. Check out the fries, too. Them's some real fries, Belgian-style, in a paper cone. When I ate these goods, I thick with salt and happiness all day. You, too, can have one at Luke. The atmosphere is a bit too uptown for me, and not enough neighborhood-y. Also, the mini-ketchup is pretentious and wasteful.

But the sandwich...Also on my list of favorite sandwiches of all time:

1.) Cochon de lait po-boy (Walker's BBQ--at Jazz Fest)

2.) Vietnamese po-boy (Chargrilled chicken, with homemade mayo at Pho Tau Bay; the BEST fusion-food, IMO, EVER.)

3.) My mom's BLT (with Miracle Whip and peanut-butter; don't knock it until you've tried it!)--tied with Luke's BLT (for Mom's BLT's undeniably-strong nostalgia-factor).

4.) The fried shrimp po-boy with "Wow Sauce" from Verti Marte.

I have not yet had a burger worthy of listing here. I mean it. Some would say that Port of Call makes the best burgers, but I just don't get how a great burger can possibly be great if it is not accompanied by french fries. Impossible! Honestly, my favorite is probably Wendy's Jr. Cheeseburger Deluxe.

Anyway, I apologize to my vegetarian friends for this meat-heavy entry. Perhaps one reason I felt compelled to write it is that Simon and I have decided to cut pork out of our diet, and I am mourning BLTs. And the cochon de lait poboy...

We decided to cut out pork, and to cut down on our meat consumption in general because I learned that meat farming and corn-production are major contributors to our wetlands-loss. (I can't now find the original article where I read this.)

Any vegetarian readers eager to share a veggie sandwich recipe, by all means, do.

A Lovely Weekend

2007-10-15T21:22:00.000-05:00

There was lots to be happy about over the weekend, so I am trying to remember those things as another busy week at school begins.

Saturday was most memorable. Our dear friend Terrence had just moved back from Houston and he called to tell us on Friday. While I was down in Holy Cross at a website committee meeting (where I was somehow made chair of the committee !?!?! perhaps because my fellow members mistake having a blog with having a clue about the Web... sigh!), Simon picked up Terrence and brought him down to see what we hope will be our new house.

At the house, we met with members of the Emerging Green Builders--a group of young architects and environmental-y building people (I really MUST learn how to talk about this with some kind of authority)--who took a look at the house and gave us lots of advice about how to renovate in a way that would save energy (and money).

I'll have to admit, a lot of what was said kind of went in one ear and flew out the other. Because we are not in a position to handle the renovation on our own (and remain sane and married), we are asking our contractor to use affordable and sustainable measures as he renovates, and we are (perhaps naively) trusting that he will. Among the measures we'll take: following the recommendations of The Alliance for Affordable Energy (whenever feasible), including installing a radiant barrier in the attic, installing plenty of insulation, installing ceiling fans in order to avoid using "forced air" cooling whenever possible, and purchasing Energystar appliances.

The problem with all of this energy-stuff is, of course, that it costs money.

This, however, brings me to another happy lesson/moment from this weekend: I learned a lot more about the Lower Ninth Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement & Development (or CSED), largely via the website committee meeting and a bit of research. (As part of the website-building plan, Dave Macaulay and friends have donated the URL [which is a website address]and the design for www.zerocarbonnola.org. The website will largely be the platform for the CSED, which is good, especially since a Google of "CSED" brings up far too many other CSED's. I'm looking forward to helping with putting together a more effective website than the current one, www.holycrossneighborhood.org, which is a rather rudimentary site right now that doesn't do the work of the CSED--or the neighborhood--justice, but which will... soon... soon!)

In a nutshell, the CSED is committed to helping Holy Cross become the first carbon-neutral neighborhood in America. Yes, really. Now you may see why I get the goosebumps when I think about/talk about/write about my future home. To think this is happening in New Orleans!

Anyway, I learned a bit more about my neighborhood's environmental commitment, and then I learned a but more about my future home, and then, Terrence and I drove down to the Delery Street Playground and swung on an excellent, if rusty, swingset. The sun was setting and the weather was incredible. The humid air had taken leave for the weekend, and swinging through that cool air with my friend Terrence with me, well, all just felt FINE. Terrence seemed happy to be home (although we are worried, worried, worried about his schooling), and I felt wonderful and light as air. When I got a call from a friend asking what we were up to, I said, "Swinging!" and then I explained my take on swinging and also skipping: it's nearly impossible to be down if you are swinging, really swinging (none of that melancholy scrubbing a foot around and staring at the ground) or when you are skipping. Try it!

To top off this wonderful weekend, the Saints won their game against the Seahawks last night, and I ate four Dove dark chocolates, drank a glass of Malbec, and slept well. I even dreamt of swimming competetively, as I did when I was young, and in my dream, I was the same kick-butt backstroker as I was way back when.

Today I was back at school, and back to my house-head (I feel as thought All Things House run through my mind nearly constantly these days). In between classes, I drew potential floor plans for our double-to-single shotgun conversion, obsessed over financing details that sound Greek to me, and made other house-obsessive attempts to ignore the mounting pile of literature papers I have to grade. I really do not know how people work full time while renovating a home... (and being married).

Now, back to the grind...

This week and whatnot

2007-10-12T12:50:00.000-05:00

It has been an utterly exhausting week, and I have no one but myself to blame for that. Rather than ruining last weekend's house-buying excitement and gorge-fest with a slurry of paper-grading, I put it off. That meant that every minute of this week that I was not either in front of the class teaching, holding one-on-one conferences with my students, or getting some much-needed (but minimal) sleep, I was grading a student essay.

Luckily, I'd given them an assignment that produced some really wonderful writing.

The assignment asked students to inform a general academic audience of something they thought we should know. They were to choose a subject about which they already had a good deal of knowledge--one which wouldn't require the use of outside sources. In the early stages of generating topics, I had students coming to me and tearfully saying, "I don't know anything worth writing about."

My response: "P-SHAW!"

It is always a pleasure to explain to my writing students that the range of "worthy" subjects is limitless, and that in order to be worthy, it need not be lofty or weighty, a la Global Warming or Capital Punishment. I love watching the gears turn when I say that yes, they can write about the Plaquemines Parish Orange Festival or about their high school marching band (the topics of two of my favorite essays this time around.) And I love helping them craft essays-worth-reading from the material generated solely from what they already know.

So the content of the essays wasn't what exhausted me. What exhausted me were the sheer numbers of them that needed responses. I've worked and worked at developing methods to cut down on my response-time while also providing thoughtful, helpful comments, but inevitably I end up writing too much and spending too much time agonizing over how to strike just the right balance between praising what's good and giving 'em a necessary dose of tough love (read: this is good, but, well, this isn't.) I think what I find most difficult is that I want my students to understand not just what is wrong, but why it's wrong, and doing that succinctly is just plain difficult.

Another reason this week was so exhausting was that I held conferences with all of my composition students. I do this several times throughout the semester. One-on-one conferences with my students are the most productive aspect of my teaching, and my students seem to agree (nearly all of them mention them in their final evaluations of the course). But they are time-consuming and tiring.

Here's how my student-conferences work:

Several days before the conference, students hand in a paper. Before they do, I ask them to use out the handout on "Writing Standards" to award themselves a grade and to explain why they believe their paper deserves that grade. The self-evaluation is not an opportunity for them to convince me to give them that grade, and, in fact, I don't see their self-evaluation until the conference (when I have already responded and given the essays a grade based on my assessment.)

On the board, I write a list of items they need to bring to the conference: 1) A written self-evaluation of their most recently-submitted essay, 2) a draft of their current essay, and 3) a list of no more than three specific questions about their current essay. I find that making students come to the conferences with "homework" shows them that the conferences are not mere rap-sessions, but that they are, in fact, a vital part of the class, itself. (Back when I first started teaching, I met just once with my students, I didn't make conference assignments, and I took a much more casual approach to the time spent with them. As a result, I discovered my students didn't take them seriously, and that our time together was often chaotic and sometimes unproductive.)

At the beginning of each conference, I say hello and how are you and whatnot, and then I make the purpose of the conference clear: "The purpose of this conference is to discuss your last essay and to address any concerns you may have about your essay-in-progress." Announcing the purpose of the conference helps keep us on track and establishes a clear objective for our time together. It helps us get stuff done efficiently and effectively.

Then, with the student's previous, graded essay on the desk (between us), I ask them to get out their self-evaluation and tell me what grade they would give the essay and why. I have the Writing Standards taped to the desk (facing the student) to remind them that these are the criteria for their self-evaluation.

After they announce and explain their self-evaluation, I am able to assess their understanding of the criteria on the Writing Standards handout. Typically, they don't do very well with this the first time they meet ("I gave myself an A because I worked really hard") and so I point to the sheet and say, "Hmmm, I don't see 'A for Effort' here, so you're saying it's [insert criteria here]." When they admit that, well, they don't think their prose flows smoothly or that they have a clear thesis, I can then "lead them" to what I think is the correct assessment of their work by highlighting the language that most fits their work. While they are sometimes pretty bummed to discover that their work is, say, D-quality, instead, I am able to use the writing and grading standards to teach them what "development" really means. So I am able to use assessment not as a gate-keeping tool (which is how students typically perceive it), but as a teaching tool.

Anyways, I realize this likely does not interest many of you, dear readers, but I positively love holding conferences, in spite of just how tired I feel after having 30-something 15-minute conversations on similar subjects. There are typically tears from a few students, defiance from others (not surprisingly, the defiance usually comes from the less self-aware students), and a whole lotta epiphanies. It's pretty darn rewarding, is what I mean, so the exhaustion is a good kind. I finished my last conference an hour ago, and I feel, well, a little bit high from a week of learning more about my students and vice-versa. Whoo-hooo!

Also in happy news: I've been given a major vote of confidence by the Department via a new work assignment. I will now be the Coordinator of the Transfer Proficiency Exam. Because I am an unretained instructor, and a young-ish faculty member, being given this role means that they must see something in me. On the other hand, one could look at it and say, "Sounds to me like they're taking advantage of your non-retained status to pressure you to perform admin-work." I don't see it this way mostly because the offer was prefaced with a lengthy explanation of its not being a thinly-veiled "assignment," but a genuine offer. I took it. Because my primary interest with comp-rhet is assessment, coordinating one of the major assessment tools of our department will be a great learning experience for me. Now, if I could just decided whether or not I actually want to go for a PhD.

I met with the chair of the department about my interest in PhD programs two weeks ago, and he said that of course getting a PhD in a field that interests me would be a good thing, but that my interest in returning to UNO to out that PHD to work was risky. What if they didn't have an open line for a comp-rhet PhD when I was ready to return? How would I fare if I were then competing with a national pool of candidates for a similar position (especially if my degree were from an in-state school)?

He didn't say this, but I found myself wondering, "What if the school continues to go downhill in terms of enrollment and my instructorship is no longer available to me, either? Or worse, what if there's another urricane-hay and there's no Ew-Orleans-Nay to return to, at all?" Well, then I guess at least I'd have a degree that would make me an attractive candidate at other schools, especially since I haven't written a word of fiction in ages.

Oh, I am still right back where I was: not knowing what I want to do.

Complicating my confusion even more is my beloved Holy Cross. Last night was another Holy Cross Neighborhood Association meeting, and it was uplifting, as ever. I've volunteered to be on the website committee, and Simon and I will continue to work on the community garden. The more I get involved with the HCNA, the more that work feels like some of the most important work in my life. And if I am off getting a PhD for the next however-many-years, I won't be able to commit myself to the HCNA during this very-exciting time of rebuilding and change, change, change.

I guess that what is super-duper exhausting is this constant uncertainty. I'm always second-guessing myself in that big-picture way. I'm always feeling as though I'm doing too much, and then, of course, not nearly enough.

This week in my literature class, we were talking about Huck Finn and the impact of age on our ability to think freely and to be brave. Listening to my students, I realized that as we get older, we become less brave, not more. It's like we don't take the adventures--not because we don't think they aren't worthwhile, but because we are afraid that if we just embark, damn it, we are keenly aware of the potential for regret. What if we regret our choice? And then again, what if we regret our choice? It's paralyzing, this adulthood. I would like to return to the time when it was hope that informed my decisions instead of regret or fear.

Under Contract

2007-10-09T09:39:00.001-05:00

Our offer was accepted! We are now under contract to buy the house pictured below. We are THRILLED and can't wait for the financing to be secured, the inspections to (hopefully) go smoothly, and work to begin.

Meanwhile, I've been trying my darndest to focus on grading student essays, but I keep finding myself compulsively drawing floor plans for a shotgun double conversion (to a single). It's addictive. Shotguns make for rather odd living spaces, so it's a real challenge to find ways of creating the kind of open floor plan we want, while still allowing for the kinds of spaces and through-ways we need. If anyone out there has converted a double to a single and has advice, please let me know!

We don't know what will happen with our deposit on 717--the PRC house we're still under contract to buy. The PRC, like everyone else, seems to be overworked and understaffed, so we haven't heard back from them about our decision to move three doors down. We figured it was important to move ahead, anyway, lest we risk losing that gem. We hope that if we find a buyer for the house, we can retain at least a portion of our deposit.

So if you know anyone who'd be interested in a beautiful single with an open-floor plan, a master suite (one of two bedrooms), two bathrooms, a large backyard and off street parking, let us know. Not only would you be getting a wonderful historic home (with a great story--oh, and a 50-year-old bird-of-paradise bush!), you'd also be getting US as neighbors! And I have documented that house's progress every step of the way, so you'd get pictures of its progress, too.

Now: must. grade. papers.

A New New Home

2007-10-07T15:26:00.000-05:00

Simon and I just put in an offer on the double three doors down from our PRC-single shotgun. We had all kinds of advice--much of it conflicting--about whether to offer the full asking price or not. We heard that homeowners "never think they'll get their full asking price," so we should lowball. In cases where the prospective buyer has to get financing, though, we heard that a lowball offer may be risky; someone can always come along with cash and snatch it up... and we'd witnessed and heard about a lot of interest in that one house, so we know this was a big risk.

Ultimately, we decided that the right price was a fair one, and one that would get the house off the market and into our posession. Everyone who's seen this house has said that the house was, in fact, worth the asking price. So we offered that price, with an offer expiration of tomorrow at 5 pm, and we feel pretty darn confident that we will get it. Exciting!

The house is on a corner lot and gets lots of southern light. Today we were standing at the top of the levee and when we looked back down the street, we realized we could see our front window clear as day. So we'll be able to look out the window and watch the ships go by. It has a wonderful story, too; it was rolled back from the Industrial Canal when the Lock was put in, and its bargeboard construction tells us that it's been around since the late 1800's. It has lots of beautiful details like gingerbread trim and intact front window shutters. And it has a live oak tree in the backyard that will provide shade (in New Orleans, worth gold). I look up and see a perfect limb for a swing. Yay, swings!

Perhaps because we realized we were on the cusp of something really exciting--buying our first (and hopefully forever) home--Simon and I ate our way through the weekend. I'm talking, we ATE! We had Mexican at El Gato Negro on Friday, a BLT made with a deep-fried softshell crab at Luke for lunch yesterday, and roasted oysters, pickled mirliton and beets, deviled eggs, chicken and andouille gumbo, sweet potato bread pudding, and apple crisp at Cochon last night. Tonight: dinner at Bacchanal (where we were married). Now, if only I didn't have so many papers to grade...

Professional Crisis Numero Dos

2007-09-25T13:24:00.000-05:00

Lately, my professional life has been on my mind. In calling it a "professional" life, I make it sound as though I do, in fact, feel like a "pro" at what I do. But even in my sixth year of teaching, I find that I am ever the student, and that I am ever searching for new ways of learning and new ways of doing my work.

Somehow, having a professional "crisis" feels exactly like the right thing to do once one is a year past thirty, a year past married, and months away from buying a new home. Everything else is rolling merrily right on along, what can one have a crisis about then (okay, besides living in a hurricane-ravaged city!): why, one's "professional life."

Here's the issue: in 2004, I got my M.F.A. in Creative Writing. I did well. Wrote a collection of short stories. Got distinction. Was praised by my peers and professors. Became a finalist for a fancy new-writers award that all in the fiction writerly-know have heard of. Attended the prestigious Breadloaf Writers' Conference. I was on my way to becoming a Real Writer, and I was okay with it.

Enter professional crisis Number One.

After I earned my MFA (and in fact while I was in the process of seeking it), I began to have this gnawing feeling that I didn't really want to be A Writer in the sense of the word. I don't do well with unstructured time. I don't like being alone for hours on end. I hate criticism. I hate self-promotion and the idea of marketing my art.

Plus, while at Breadloaf, I witnessed a professional community at "work," and I hated it: most of the "real writers" wanted nothing to do with their students. (I mean, there were cocktail parties paid for with my dollars, but I--a mere paying student--was not welcome.) Also, many of the Real Writers seemed both self-consciously insecure and unabashedly self-important: a bad combination. I was at a conference that was meant to inspire me, but it had quite the opposite effect. In spite of my having a few inspiring moments, I felt mostly like I didn't belong--and like I didn't want to. And then, on the last day of the conference (where my workshopped story was about a hurricane that misses New Orleans)--well, Katrina hit.

Since then, writing fiction has seemed ridiculous to me. It's possible I am making this declaration as some kind of avoidance technique. I'm good at that. So, I'll say instead that I don't believe that it writing fiction (post-K) is ridiculous--it's just that it no longer feels "right" to me.

Now, add to that first professional crisis the fact that I had begun to do what was, to me, previously unthinkable: I'd begun teaching.

Coming from a long line of English teachers (Mom--how many generations are we?), and being an adolescent well into my early twenties, I'd always said (to myself and out loud): "I'll never teach." I mean, the idea of it! It would be, like, becoming my mother! The horror!

But then, I stepped into the classroom for the first time in the Fall of 2001. And I. fell. in. love.

I'm talking, it was some epiphany-type sh*t. I felt "at home" as a teacher in a way I'd never felt before. I have felt the same ever since.

In fact, this professional crisis of mine (crisis Number Two) has nothing to do with my not liking what I do. I love what I do. It has to do with wanting to do what I do, better. It has to do with what I want to do not being particularly valued by my Ph.D-having colleagues (and by lit-teachers, in general). And it has to do with discovering the field of Composition and Rhetoric.

Comp-Rhet is essentially a field that supports the study of writing and communication (composition and rhetoric). I like how Andrea Lunsford defines rhetoric: "Rhetoric is the art, practice, and study of human communication." Composition, then, has to do with the creation of those texts. I'm into learning more about how we create the texts that we use to communicate--and particularly in how the political and social influence of assessment (or grading) influences students' ability to learn how to more effectively compose texts.

I know: it sounds boring. It's not.

So I have been thinking about going to get my PhD in comp-rhet. This would be a no-brainer were it not for one major hitch: I am stuck on New Orleans.

I mean, my loyalty to this city (as you, Mom, and my other three readers know well) is DOg-Ged! And from what I've learned about the hiring process, one who has earned her PhD locally does not get hired in said city. So one needs to leave in order to come back. And I ain't leavin'!

Speaking of leaving... I've just realized that I am running late for a meeting on recruitment for the UNO English Department. Will finish this post when I return... (Insert Jeopardy music or other Muzak here)...

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Well that was depressing. Evidently the enrollment numbers aren't good, and that's making our Chair nervous. So we spent an hour discussing recruitment activities: site visits. Department parties with readings. An essay contest. A raffle. Perhaps this means that it's an even better time for me to go pursue a PhD?

Okay, so say I decide that it is time to get the PhD. The issue is that I should probably be pursuing research and study based on the best programs available, and not based on geographical location. Additionally, if I actually get this degree, there are probably only limited opportunities for its use here in New Orleans. And, for whatever reason, institutions really do like to hire graduates that come from far afield. (I'm not sure why that is. Clancy Ratcliff writes about this on her blog, and what she has to say makes a lot of sense to me. She also happens to be a new member of the ULL comp-rhet faculty; and she's rad).

Anyways, the tentative plan is to apply to ULL for PhD in comp-rhet. Problem: I want to be candid about owning a house and having a husband in New Orleans, which will mean I will need to be candid about needing a teaching and coursework schedule that will allow me to finish my onsite study as quickly as possible. This will likely not make me attractive to them. Problem two: going to ULL may not make me an attractive candidate for hiring committees in New Orleans once I am done.

So what is a girl who wants to change career-gears, but who is, as I've said Dog-Ged-Dly attached to her city to do? And why do academic hiring committees--and particularly those in the comparatively low-paying field of English--make geographic location into such a taboo subject? What's with the need to hire from afar? Also, will my being frank about my needs mean that ULL will not want me to study there?

I certainly hope not. Because I will tell you one place that I DO NOT want to spend even two years of coursework (even if I am commuting): Baton Rouge (at LSU). Lafayette is charming and funky. Baton Rouge is a big ol' suburb with a terrible frat boy problem. Yuck!

Hey, Jealousy, or, What DOES this Storm have to Teach Me?

2007-09-24T18:35:00.000-05:00

I've been regularly checking my new favorite blog, http://www.helpholycross.org/. I've promised its manager that I'll do some on-the-ground reporting, since he (Dave Macaulay) lives in Kansas City.

Anyways, he has lately been covering the progress of Rashida's shotgun-renovation. Rashida is a member of the HCNA. She's an artist and an activist. She has roots in the Ninth Ward. Oh--and she's beautiful. So it's not hard to see why the folks at This Old House would have chosen Rashida to cover on their show.

But oh, dear Gawd, am I jealous!

Would you just look at the size of the house they're building! I mean! When I compare it to our tee-tiny shoebox, I find myself wanting to throw a tantrum. (I feel as though I've been wanting to throw a lot of tantrums, lately.) I want to pout and whine and say, "Why can't y'all hook us up, too?!" Either that, or I want to go back in time and re-tell our story. We'd wax poetic about our children running up the stairs. (Stairs!!) We would tell a more compelling story than the one that is ours.

I need to stop with the devaluing of our own story, though. Forreal.

Anyways, I really am happy for Rashida (she is wonderful and deserving--and she's been working to support the alternatve school that many in the neighborhood have been vocal about wanting to get rid of). But I'm finding it hard to be the person I'd like to be right now: the one who graciously accepts loss. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I have ever been very good at accepting loss.

Maybe that's what this storm has to teach me. (Had I had more significant losses, maybe I would have a better attitude now.) Maybe I need to listen to what this almost-but-not-quite-getting-help-from-This Old House-experience is telling me: Quit whining! Carry on! And look at your damn self with all that you have! Whining!!! Why, you oughtta be ashamed.

I am ashamed.

It's just that trying to find home we can afford has been really hard. We've found ourself only minutely "too wealthy" for low-income housing help (I'm talking within hundreds of dollars of the cutoff.) We didn't lose our home, so we've been unable to take out a low-interest SBA-loan (the kind that has allowed my in-laws to purchase a more expensive and gracious home in Gentilly of the sort that we'll never be able to afford.) Add to those facts that no one wants to hear about this kind of lower-middle-class whining, and, well--can you see why I'd be jealous?

No, Mom, I am not jealous of all of the loss that those who are getting help experienced. I am grateful that we did not lose everything, that we are, after this storm, together and by all accounts, intact. I am jealous of a big house and pretty appliances, is all.

(Did I mention, by the way, that the staff of This Old House told us that we were "in the top four"? Shoot: they even said that they would provide appliances [which we have to purchase] to the tune of $10K! Appliances... [said a la Homer Simpson and "Dooonuutts."])

It's just jealousy.

Anyways, in spite of my committing to submitting my reports to my new-favorite website, www.helpholycross.org (where there's now a link to my blog, Mom!) I am going to have to skip over the coverage of Rashida's project if I want to avoid going c-c-crazy with jealousy.

Oh, what I wouldn't give for a good dose of simply being content with what I have.

Now, who can hook me up with some of that?

Watching the Tropics (Again)

2007-09-20T15:59:00.000-05:00

Yes, I am watching that blob to the west of Florida. Especially because we have a roofer working on the house right now, so there's a veritable arsenal of objects ready to be hurled by the wind. Depending on what happens with the wind speed, we may have to call him to come collect the roofing materials.

Folks will hate me for this, but I would kind of like the storm to give our levee system a little test. I'd alos like our soon-to-be new house to be given a test, as well. That way we can avoid the pain of actually buying it if we know it is in jeopardy in even a tropical storm.

In all of my ten years (in just a few weeks) of living here, I can't recall there being a topical system in the Gulf this late in the season. Maybe I'm wrong, but it does seem as though weather patterns have been changing in the past couple of years. Or perhaps it's the ppost-K 'tude that has me more wary of what happens out there.

I've had to tell a few of my students to shut it in conferences this week. They are already so stressed out by all of their work that they seem to be wishing something serious on us so they can get out of writing their essays. Don't. Even. Go. There, I say.

But in the meantime, I ask it to go there, too.

It's just that if the agony of the levees breaking is to happen again, I want it to happen sooner rather than later. At first, I couldn't undersdtand why T and B, who bought a house in Gentilly after their former one flooded, would buy a house there again. I mean, I know we are buying in Holy Cross, but HC is not in a floodplain, and Gentilly is. T said, "If what happens after Katrina happens again, this city is finished, no matter where you live." He had a point.

So, if the storm could just give us a tiny kick--a little brush. Enough that our homes and the levees could survive and inspire confidence. Oh--and enough that the insurance rates could come down, too...

What the heck is a "Gumbo Party"?

2007-09-18T09:59:00.000-05:00

Simon and I were on the verge of watching what we hear is a quality movie, The Constant Gardener, last night, when we remembered that the series premiere of "K-Ville" was airing on Fox.

First, you must understand that no one here calls New Orleans K-Ville, in spite of what the spray painted graffiti may have implied. That is one of many errors on the show--including what was referred to as a "gumbo party."

A gumbo party?

Simon and I died laughing when Marlon Boulet, the main character, cried out, "I need some gumbo, man! It's what I do when I think!" as though gumbo were some "fix."

(I remember getting really agitated after the storm by how casually the phrase toxic gumbo" was thrown around. That ain't cute!)

Also:

No one makes fried shrimp po-boys at home. They're sold on nearly every corner, so there's no need to mess up the kitchen with all that messy frying for one dern sandwich.

The Upper Ninth Ward looks nothing like the Uptown-looking block that houses Marlon Boulet's two story, balconied house on an oak-lined street. HA!

Also noteworthy:

A chase that begins in "the Upper Nine" is, within seconds, along the neutral ground on the Westbank side of the Mississippi Bridge. Anyone who's driven here knows it takes ages to cross the river, especially now with all the trailers hauled by trucks clogging up traffic.

The singer who is shot in the show is local singer and actress Fahlonhee Harris, who, incidentally, was in the musical "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" with me back in my dinner theater days. HA, again!

The general mental stress portrayed in the main character is real and, I think, largely accurate. He goes from crying to pulling a gun in mere seconds, and anything will set him off. This is how it goes when you'd been through something like the cops here went through, and like the rest of us continue to go through in seeing the city flounder.

I loved the graffiti, "FEMA: Fix Everything My Ass."

The for sale signs everywhere: accurate.

But "gumbo party"? Never heard of it.

Anyways, we'll probably watch the show because it's fun to recognize landmarks on TV, and because it's FOX, so it's classic bad TV with terrible dialogue and glorification of stereotypes. In other words, irresistible like a train wreck. Many on nola.com seem to worry that the show will hurt the city and it's recovery, but I think their fears are unfounded. Shoot, TV shows draw tourists even when they portray settings as violent, right? And anyway, can we be hurt any worse that we already are? I find it amusing, and it was nice, for a moment, to laugh at how the writers got so much right--and so much wrong.

If anyone is having a gumbo party, though, let me know!

Too Many Choices, or: Oh, the F-ing Money!!!

2007-09-13T21:33:00.000-05:00

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a terrible time choosing. I always feel as though the thing/path/whatever I choose will leave me eventually regretting not having made some other choice, and so there I am, paralyzed. This happens with everything.

In fact, I just called to Simon (who's in the other room) and asked, "Simon, what are some of the things I have difficulty choosing--as in, deciding between?"

He had no problem rattling off a list: "What to eat, what to wear, where to live, what house to buy, whether or not to go out--on a Monday night or a Thursday night--interior decor, what career path to take--"

"Okay, got it."

I have several choices on my plate right now.

First, do we want to buy the house we've been planning to buy--for nearly a year now--or do we want to buy the house that has gone up for sale three doors down from said house.

The house that has gone up for sale is a heckuva deal, and it's a double (which, for those not familiar with shotgun houses, means that it is twice as wide as a "single"--28 feet instead of 14). It has a sound roof, sound windows, new vinyl "wood-style" siding, two beautiful Eastlake (historically accurate) doors, lovely "lace" trim, and a live oak tree in the back yard. It's also on a corner lot that affords a view of both the Mississippi River levee and the Industrial Canal levee. And, it's cheap. (I feel confident that there are no aggressive real estate investors reading my blog, otherwise I wouldn't even write about it, so steal-y is this steal.) Depending on other condition-factors, it could even mean that we'd be able to do fancy interior things--like a walk-in shower and the custom concrete counter tops we want but can't afford to have in the single.

But...

Doubles are a dime a dozen in New Orleans. Singles are much less common. I like less common.

Doubles are typically darker because they are split in two with an interior wall (so they have windows on just one side) We would knock down the center wall, "converting" the double to a large single, but it will still not be as light as our single will be.

There's no porch on the front, and no place, therefore, to sit and watch the sunset (and the sunsets in Holy Cross are remarkable. Re-mark-a-ble.) Our single has a porch. But the double has a better view, even without a porch.

The live oak in the back yard of the double is short and heavy and makes the back yard feel dark and contained. Our yard in the single is bald, and will require a lot of landscaping.

The double sits at a dead end that ends at the Holy Cross campus. That dead end could potentially be used for a future entry, or for construction-access during what will likely be a long and messy renovation of the very large campus.

The double, however, will not require any adding on. It will be big enough for us to have two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, and an office. And it will cost us probably the same as the single, which is smaller and will require adding on in the long run.

This, my dear readers (whom I have now utterly bored) is what happens in my head. With everything. Sometimes I feel like my head is a giant swirling mess of pro-con, pro-con, pro-con--and what's frustrating is that all the pro/con-ning never seems to lead me to any confident ends. I still feel worried when I finally choose one or the other.

What is this about? I mean really, is it some American culture thing, or genes--or a combination?

Anyways, if you want to weigh in on my house pro-conning, go ahead. Simon and I have finally decided that the single--the house we've been thinking about for a year--is the one we feel connected to and the one that "feels" like home. The double would likely be a better investment.

We, however, see a home as home, not as an investment.

Speaking of homes, tonight's Holy Cross Neighborhood Association meeting was informative. I learned that there is, in fact, a good deal of discomfort surrounding the building of the Global Green ("Brad Pitt") houses. Evidently, when representatives from Global Green were initially meeting with the neighborhood association, the priority was on being able to build homes that were both energy-efficient "green" homes, and homes whose material and building-processes could be replicated in other parts of the neighborhood.

The prototype home that has been built, however, is "stick-built," which I guess means made of lumber and built entirely on site (I think initially the hope was the that homes could be made into environmentally-sound modulars, or could at least be replicated in a more economically-feasible way.) Not only is there building process not an easily-replicable one--or their materials easily attained--but they are expensive. I believe the estimated building cost of the initial prototype home is over $200K. It will be sold for between $150 and $200K.

Now, I realize that this may sound like a steal to the rest of the country, but this is a lot of money here--particularly because the cost of insuring a $150K home is around $3K/year, which breaks down to just under $300. The note, itself, would run around $800 (with mortgage insurance, because no one here has the money to put 20% down. That rainy-day/house fund was spent on--guess what?--an evacuation and return to a much more expensive city.) Add it up and you have a monthly note of $1,100. Add to that utilities, expenses, and all the other accouterments associated with home ownership, and you're up there.

Plus, we live in a city that pays a pittance to just about everyone. Simon and I, as I have mentioned many times, are having a hard time sorting out how we are going to pay for our own home (which will be around $150K). Why? Because we are both teachers who are payed below the national average, but we're living in a city whose cost of living has increased by 40%.

Linda Novak, the recording secretary of the HCNA, asked John Williams, the Global Green designer, to explain why Global Green had not communicated with the community about all of the changes to the project they had made. Another resident wondered about cost. When I offered the cost I'd read in the paper, it was backed up by John, and in the room, heads shook slowly and tongues clicked.

The thing is, too: say they pay a lot to build these houses, and then they get soft-second mortgages and maybe even some serious buy-downs for the owners--well what then? How will they afford adequate insurance? How will Global Green ensure that the owners won't simply sell? How will it work?

I don't know. I was all high on my almost meeting Brad Pitt that I don't think I really even thought about what was actually happening, and how it will change the nature of the neighborhood.

Oh--what I loved: how John said that he really didn't have adequate answers (he did promise to have Global Green come to next week's meeting to communicate fully with the community), but that he did know that there would be a safe haven from storms for us. So even if we can't afford the homes, we can use their safe have to huddle in come storm season. Hmm...

The problem appears to be that Global Green said one thing to the HCNA and then--surprise, surprise (especially when it comes to PR and big money--even if it does have a worthy cause behind it)--they did another. In their case, they don't feel paralyzed by too many choices or potential regret. Dudes got the money, so they're going to spend it and worry later.

Reminds me of many-a-botched investment. Is this what we're doing with our little house? Buying because we love it and worrying later?

Oh, the f-ing money!!!

I am a bona-fide PRO!

2007-09-11T13:36:00.000-05:00

Oh, how I needed some good news!

I've been invited, along with several of my UNO colleagues, to present a paper at the 2008 Conference on College Communication and Composition!

This is, like, big-time in the comp-rhet world, so I couldn't be more thrilled, particularly because I have just begun looking into a Ph.D. program in comp-rhet at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Yes, that's right: I've decided that I may need to get another dern degree.

For a while I'd been content to just go on about my merry way with my MFA in fiction, teaching hard and earning a pittance for it. I was perfectly fine, even, with knowing that I was viewed as a mere grunt worker (being an instructor, and all--relegated to freshman and sophomore-level teaching, heavy course-loads, and meagre raises).

But what I can't take is that even though I do a LOT of research in the field of rhetoric and composition, and even though I think long and hard about my teaching--changing it to adopt new findings in pedagogy and scholarship--my "word" means little to nothing my colleagues unless I've got the clout (read: a Ph.D.) to back it up. (Sometimes it even feels as though the "real faculty" think I may as well have spent three years making friendship bracelets, so undervalued is my degree and my expertise.)

Realistically, I think one reason why my enthusiasm for the subject of teaching writing may be met by so much--what is it?: incredulity? on the part of my colleagues is that they simply see me as young. If I had a nickel for the number of times I'd excitedly brought up the subject of teaching writing only to have a colleague (jokingly) comment on my being too young (or too fresh) to be jaded.

Well, I've been teaching for almost six years--including summers--and in that admittedly short time I've taught some of the more challenging and difficult groups of students and in some of the more difficult circumstances. I've taught basic writing classes, volunteered teaching ESL classes, and taught nighttime sections (whose nontraditional students haven't been back to school in years and years.) I've taught from 8am until 10pm. I've filled in for teachers who have quit in the middle of the summer, while also working full-time on my degree. I've served on committees and panels, and darnit, I'm still excited!

But I digress.

My CCCC paper is tentatively titled "When Assessment Breaks Your Heart: Assessing Writing Ethically and Empathetically After Katrina." I presented a scaled-down version of what will become my paper at the College English Association's convention in New Orleans last Spring, and my talk was very well received.

Most of what I addressed concerns the difficulty of maintaining our writing and performance assessment standards when both teachers and students are faced with the aftermath of a collective trauma. I also addressed institutional pressures to retain students, and the way that pressure impacts our ability to assess student writing and performance ethically. It may sound like dry stuff, but I've been working on research for months, and I think it's an interesting subject that illustrates a number of complexities surrounding teaching after a collective trauma--although what it doesn't do is offer many answers.

So now, I've got to actually write the paper!

Also, I've been asked to participate in a basic writing workshop that runs concurrent to the CCCC convention. In that workshop, I'll present my methods of using student-teacher conferences, student-authored letters of reflection, and student self-evaluations in the basic-writing classroom (techniques that work at any level, really, but I need to gear my content toward the specific concerns of basic-writing teachers).

And yes, now I've actually got to get to work on that material, too! Phew!

But, OH, how affirmed I feel! I mean, shoot: I feel like a new woman!

2007-09-04T15:09:00.001-05:00

I have battled with the vaguest and most tepid of depressions for as long as I can remember. My version is more run-of-the-mill moodiness than mania and melancholy, more avoidance than a lack of desire.

I think the avoidance-part is called "harm avoidance." I don't want to get hurt, or scared, or whatever, and so I avoid putting myself out there, thereby avoiding any pain. Of course, then I spiral into an even worse place because there I am, having done nothing and therefore being disappointed in myself.

I've been in one of these spirals for a while now. I've avoided my blog, avoided my writing, avoided sorting through my stuff, avoided readying myself for our move. And, predictably, my blog-avoidance makes me feel bad about my half-assed maintenance of this sloppy blog; my writing-avoidance makes me feel worse about having a writing degree (and being a writing teacher) and not actively and regularly practicing what I preach; my sorting-avoidance means that piles-upon-piles continue to accumulate in every corner of my house, making the eventual inevitable sort-fest an even more daunting prospect; and my move-avoidance means that when moving-time really does come around, it'll likely result in a series of fights with my organized and task-attacking husband. None of this is good.

I realize that these are the kinds of feelings everyone has.

It's like the not-going-to-the-gym bit. Of course, for every day you put off that workout, your return to the gym grows ever-more unlikely.

But it's difficult to get out of that rut, isn't it? And in some ways, the best intentions of our friends and loved ones make it even more difficult to get out of the rut. Husband reminding you that once you work out, you'll feel better makes you want to punch husband in gut while he's sit-upping away. Parent telling you that you are talented and highly capable makes you want to tell parent that you know that, thank you very much, but how does that knowledge really help?

Strangely, I found the most tangible inspiration from watching Anthony Bourdain's travel and eating show, No Reservations. Bourdain gets excited about eating like I do. When he eats a roasted Balinese pig (stuffed with herbs and coated in a coconut-water candied glaze), he can barely speak. I got this one time when I had a crabmeat beignet with a tri-pepper salad with a Balsamic vinaigrette at Herbsaint. When I tried to describe the concoction, I couldn't; instead, I broke out in goosebumps.

Simon always makes fun of my sensory memory--I can recall what everyone ate at whichever restaurant and what was good and bad for years after the meal has passed. I can remember phone numbers with ease--I think because I associate the pattern with a tangible connection with a person. But I can't remember historical dates--and important one. In fact, in order to remember the dates of the Civil War, I have had to devise a mind-trick (I "call" Abraham Lincoln using the dates of the war). Next up: a phone call to Nixon based on the dates of the Vietnam War. This is how my mind works. Is that bad?

Anyways, the Travel Channel ran an all-day marathon of Bourdain's show yesterday, and I watched probably seven hours of the show. At one point, I felt as though his lively writing and sardonic voice were readying me for a bout at the computer, but when I turned on my laptop, I found myself ranting about my job and feeling smothered by life again, so I turned it off. Then, I felt worse.

I tried to do this vowing-thing: I vowed that tomorrow (today) I would be productive--like, forreal. I vowed to turn off the TV. I vowed to start writing my essay about Global Green in Holy Cross.

Here's how that went:

Today, I overslept, had breakfast with Regis and Kelly, pet the cats, deposited a check, tailgated a student who'd cut me off on my way to UNO (all the while thinking die, die, die frat-boy scum!), read blogs and felt bad about my lousy one, ate two handfuls of parmesan Goldfish crackers, emailed students that no, I would not type up the exercises that they had missed until they had exhausted any other options, emailed my tutor, emailed some more, read http://www.helpholycross.org/, wondered why the webmaster hadn't replied to my email, felt bad about how good his blog was, graded a few fiction-writing exercises, ate some more Goldfish, read http://www.dangerblond.org/ and felt bad about my blog some more, and then decided, finally, to write.

In short, I have accomplished almost none of what I set out to accomplish today, and writing about that fact is now making me feel even worse. I am deeper in my funk, and now it will be even more difficult to climb my way out. I know that my depression is unimpressive and self-pitying, but that doesn't change its feeling really bad.

So I am thinking that I may need to resort to drastic measures. Next up: reading a Self-Help book. Yes, it's come to that. Any recommendations?

Until I can climb out of this funk, I'm not sure I want to make myself feel any worse by angst-ing over this blog. There are better bloggers out there. I've named two. Enjoy them for a while. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better--or at least it will be a bad day that will inspire a productive visit to the page.

Number Two...

2007-08-29T22:33:00.000-05:00

It was two years and a lifetime ago that HK hit NOLA and I am too tired to process all of the information that's been coming at us from all sides this week. (Maybe this is the year I'll call her HK, 'cause we're tight like that, now). Anyways, Wednesday is also my busiest teaching day. I have classes from 9:30am until almost 9pm.

We did have a power outage on campus this afternoon, which brought the days of our early post-storm livin' back. Yeah--that made me feel hurricaney. That brought a lot back.

But right now I am too tired to process this anniversary-bit, so I will just say goodnight to it and to all things Number Two. Tomorrow, after I help my best friends pack their U-Haul so they can leave the city, maybe I'll be sad and inspired and ready to write.

Blerck.

So many hurricane recovery summits, so little time...

2007-08-27T11:15:00.000-05:00

As I drove to school this morning, I listened to local columnist Chris Rose on NPR. It was a nice enough piece. I liked that he was defiantly explaining why we stay. He said that here, one is necessarily living a meaningful life, and I think he's right; this recovery makes everything you do, say, hear, think, and feel "mean more," somehow.

I worry, though, that the rest of the country tires of hearing romantic tributes to our home--especially because those romantic tributes rely not just on what New Orleans is, but on what the rest of the country is not. How long can we tell the rest of the country that "You just don't get it" before the rest of the country says, "You're right! And not only don't we get it, but we also don't want to hear no mo' about how you think you DO!"?

I worry that they tire of our stories, of our musings on food and culture and whatnot. It's like how we down here tire of listening to New Yorkers go on and on about New York. (Actually, I kind of think everyone tires of New York-nationalism, no?)

Anyways, the inability to explain "Why New Orleans" is an ongoing theme in many-a-writer's coffer down here. Strangely (or perhaps not so), it was an outsider who did it best for me: Dan Baum for The New Yorker. Read it. It's good.

In some ways, the way New Orleans was before is dead not because of the loss of housing or culture or even the loss of life, but because the meaning that is attached to everything has altered our ability to Just Live. Now, there is the national attention. Now, there's recovery summit after recovery summit after recovery summit . There's march after march after march. There are media events (I like how the city's media schedule brief has "Celebrity Holds" scheduled.) To commemorate the Katrina, two years later, there are vigils, memorials, bell-ringing ceremonies, and even a "hands around the Superdome" event. There is so much darn meaning being made that it's hard to make sense of it all. And anyway, do all these meaning-makers, summit-havers, and celebrity so-and-so's know what it all means anymore than we do? I doubt it. I doubt it...

So, today at UNO, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mary Landrieu, and others are discussing our recovery right this very minute. I wish I could go. I hope there are some disgruntled residents who will raise a stink. A streaker would be nice.

Me, I'm here, blogging, teaching. My students are student-ing. The city is being. Meaning? Meaning, meaning...

Lucky Us.

2007-08-24T17:28:00.001-05:00

So by now you all know that Dean missed us, thankfully. Thankfully. I've been mired in the whatnot of the first week of school: faculty meetings, first day introductions, syllabus design and distribution, getting stuck in traffic on my way to teach on the Westbank, missing my officemate, reading, writing--whatnot.

There is some excitement to report (not that the first week of school isn't exciting, 'cause I think it is and in fact I still can't sleep before the first day each semester). For instance, there's Tuesday: the day I almost met Brad Pitt. As you may or may not know, he and Angelina are part-time residents of New Orleans. Also, you may or may not know that I am happy about that fact. We can use all the help we can get, and having arguably the most famous people on the planet loving your limping city--and doing something about it--is a very good thing, indeed.

Anyways, I am in the process of writing both about the Global Green Project in Holy Cross, and about my almost-meeting Brad Pitt. Until I finish that piece, here's the short version:

I was touring the beginnings of the Global Green prototype house with another member of the HCNA, and when we left, there was Brad. The VIP-group was coming in to tour, and because I was wearing my HCNA T-shirt, I was able to see the house with the president of Global Green, the Home-Depot lady who's spearheaded the material-stuff, and Brad. Oh, and one scary dude in a suit and a few choice reporters.

I realized pretty quickly that I wasn't "supposed" to be in there, and that my shirt was my ticket. So I listened. Raptly. And tried very hard not to look at Brad. Luckily, the reporters were snapping pictures, and so I felt okay snapping away with my dinky Powershot. I felt almost as though Mr. Pitt wanted to align himself with me because of my shirt. He stood close. Like, close. I'd had this plan to get him to sign the back of my Holy Cross T-shirt. I had the Sharpie and all. In my plan, I would thank him for his work, tell him how the project helped seal the deal for two teachers who couldn't afford to buy elsewhere to take the plunge into the Lower Nine. He would sign my shirt, "I HEART HOLY CROSS--Brad Pitt," and I would wear that mofo with pride.

Instead: I could barely breathe.

Instead: I stood right... next... to... him... and took his picture with my dinky Powershot. He looked at me and I said, meekly, "Thank you." I'm pretty sure he said "No problem."

Ever since then, I have been hating on myself for being like everyone else. I have been hating myself for not being me. WHY did I take an f-ing PICTURE? WHY didn't I introduce myself?

Anyways, I am a retard, as I told Pam Daschiell (the past-president of the HCNA and a veritable buddy of Brad's in this Global-Green Holy-Cross project) at last night's HCNA meeting. She laughed and said he's a nice guy.

"I know," I said. "So why couldn't I be me? I'm a nice girl!"

"Yes, you are," she said.

Yes, I am.

So, I guess the lesson is that I am a bona fide product of American popular culture. However much I may ignore the Dan Akroyd's of the world so they can have their lives (Liv Tyler, too, and Roman Polanski, and Mos Def... all of them I've "left alone"), when I come face-to-face with Brad Pitt--someone with whom I share a genuine interest and actual common ground, I do What We Do: I take a picture and say, "thank you."

ARGH!

I know you are dying to see my pictures, and they ARE spectacular! I can say two things of Brad in Real Life: 1) he is not shorter than he looks, and 2) dude can wear a hard hat. But I am saving the pictures for my piece. After all, I know there are forreal freaks out there, who will re-publish my pics all over (right?--I mean what would you do with really great pictures of Brad Pitt in a hard hat? And don't say sell them). Since I plan to write about the event for nolafugees.com, I'm going to publish the pictures there. That way they can get all the hits and this blog can cruise along in relative anonymity.

So: that's how I almost met Brad Pitt. Now, I am going to have a margarita. Happy Friday.

Dean-watch, Day Two.

2007-08-17T11:19:00.001-05:00

Here's Dean's probability cone:

Bob Breck (my favorite local meteorlogist) is doing less shrugging and more sideways glancing, which means we now really need to watch. Yesterday I failed to get a cat carrier, so it's on tomorrow's shopping list.

I was in a BAD MOOD yesterday until we went to church--the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association meeting, that is. There's nothing like a group of people banding together to get things done to make you feel better. Among my favorite moments from last night's meeting:

--A young black mother asking that we help each other out with home renovations. She was holding her antsy four-year old, and when she announced that this weekend she'd like volunteers to help her "mud her drywall," her daughter squealed, "MUD?!" before wriggling free to bang on the gospel church drum set.

--An older man who's bought a large building that he plans to call "The Village" (after the phrase, "It takes a village..."). He stood at the pulpit and said, "I'm not gonna lie. Originally I bought the building because I like to work on cars. But then God gave me a mission, and I don't know about you, but I'm not gonna fight God." He was asking for help with the project, which he plans to be a community center for neighborhood kids.

"I grew up in the village, if you know what I mean," he said. "When I was a kid, if you got into something, the whole village knew before you got back home. You couldn't get away with stuff like these kids do now, and I'm here to tell you that it's our fault that they're going wrong."

The attendees (mostly women) nodded in agreement. Then, eighty-something year old Miss Maybell got up and said she could help teach kids how to sew. Warenetta passed around a survey form and Simon and I offered to work with kids with reading and writing.

The Global Green Project has started work on their Greenola project (the mixed-income housing and community center built from sustainable materials and focused on energy-efficiency--it's down at Forstall and Egania in Holy Cross). They announced a dinner at MLK Elementary on Monday. One neighbor, Ann, was worried about there being enough food and somehow the meeting turned into this funny critique of Global Green's not organizing an RSVP-list so we could be sure to get a seat (presumably next to Brad Pitt).

--Finally, there was a somber moment when HCNA president Charles Allen asked if everyone had a plan to evacuate. There were no No's, but plenty looks that said, "I dare you, Dean."

Anyways, I'm feeling better and renewed today. That neighborhood is home like nobody's business.

Home... home.

2007-08-16T10:32:00.001-05:00

[I apologize in advance to my small out-of-town readership for the "going off" that is to come in this entry... Your girl's on edge, as anyone would be looking at this:]

Ordinarily I swell with pride when we drive over the I-10 high rise into New Orleans, back from another of our trips back east to Atlanta. The high rise affords a spectacular view of the city, and even post-K I've seen that view and gotten goosebumps.

This time was different, and when we finally pulled up to our house, I switched off the car's ignition and said, "I don't want to be here."

The truth is, I don't want to be anywhere else, either. We found a good Mexican restaurant in Copperhill, Tennessee. We stopped for fried pork skins at "Carol Sue's Unique Funnel Cakes." We giggled at the sign in Ducktown, TN, endearing: "Welcome to Ducktown--A Quacking Good Place." There was evidence of a life we could enjoy in the N. Georgia and Tennessee mountains.

But what we missed were minorities. In fact, I'm always missing minorities when we go to whiter areas of the country. I don't get why on earth people would want to live around a whole bunch of people carbon copies of themselves, which may be one reason why I've loved New Orleans for so long--the people here who are just like me are just like me because they want the same things as I do: diversity, a joyful daily life, music.

It's just that now all of these things are what we have to fight for, and I find that I'm not feeling up to the whole push and struggle anymore. Two years later, it's still the push and struggle. Two years later things feel the same, only worse.

And then, two years later, we returned from vacation to learn that our local political hero, councilman Oliver Thomas, was guilty of accepting bribes. (Calling him a hero is a bit of an overstatement, but he was an excellent cheerleader for our city, and he had the rare support of both blacks and whites in the city. Any unifier these days makes you feel good.) We watched his speech on TV, dumbfounded. I wanted to cry.

Instead, I am diving back into my work. School starts on Monday, and I'm trying to get my syllabi revised and my new fiction-workshop planned without becoming too distracted by the movement of Hurricane Dean. Today I have an appointment for a haircut, and I plan to pick up an extra cat carrier at Petco just in case. Just in case, I'll fill up the gas tank.

In the meantime, the media has been doing its two-year bit, and relatives and friends are taking notice. No one notices when the Corps announces they've given up on Category Five levee protection--we get no angry letters to Congress written on our behalf. We are left to do these things for ourselves. Instead, when TIME magazine publishes a feature, when National Geographic publishes a feature, we get concerned emails and calls. No one comes right out and says it, but I can tell they are thinking, Why are you still there? Do you really think your city has any chance? Isn't it about time you gave up?

I get angry. I want to say: What do you care? What are you doing about it? Isn't it about time you started thinking about this city's recovery as YOUR problem, too?

I am sick, sick, sick of the way the rest of the U.S. is just tsk-tsking us and opening their worried motherly arms: come home, come here!

This is home. I know you can't understand that, but you don't need to: you just need to understand what a home is.

Sometimes, I suspect that what separates those who love New Orleans from the rest of the U.S. is our understanding of home.

And so even though I came home and felt a bit, myself, like (yes) giving, up, we will stay. We will stay because this is home. It sure would be nice if that mattered to the rest of the U.S.--enough that we didn't have to come home--every day for the past two years--to more push and struggle. That is not home. Or at least it shouldn't be.