Louisiana Log

Mardi Gras - it's not what you think... - 05/30/2007 06:06 PM

For starters, Mardi Gras is just one day of a whole season referred to as Carnival, which starts 12 days after Christmas and ends 40 days before Easter. There are parades and parties and various goings-on every weekend for at least a month before Mardi Gras. The above pictures were taken at a parade called Shangri-La a week and a bit before the big day. What else about Mardi Gras is not as you've been given to believe? Well, there's that whole thing about hot chicks flashing their boobs just to grovel for beads. This is pretty much stuff that tourists do - they think they are coming here to experience some sort of Mecca of debauchery, but really they are bringing the mountain with them. The locals tolerate this self-perpetuating stereotypic image to the extent that they can quarantine the idiots it attracts to the French Quarter and bilk a lot of money out of them. But down on St. Charles, it's a different story. (Thoth parade, weekend before Mardi Gras) In this neighborhood, it's about tradition... about family and friends and camping out on the same neutral ground (otherwise known as the median) as they have for twenty years, in the same spot. Firing up the BBQ or boiling up some crawfish, or picking up a mountain of muffalettas from Central Grocery. Going all out to compete for the trinkets being thrown from passing parade floats, because like any game, it's only fun if we all agree to pretend it matters. And of course, in this town, great music is to be assumed. We're pretty spoiled that way. And the music is not limited to what would typically be considered the "performers". Random citizens along the parade route walk around unconsciously humming one opus or another from the collected works of the Meters or Wild Tchoupitoulas, or, just as often, break into them in full voice. In doing so, they are less likely to get funny looks than they are to be joined by an extemporaneous chorus. Rather than going on and on like this, I'm going to opt for letting the pictures speak for themselves, with maybe a caption here and there. As always, you can click to enlarge... On the subject of speaking pictures, the particularly astute among you may have noticed that there seem to be more pictures of me in recent entries that aren't self-portraits (you know, my typical method that involves holding the camera in my outstretched hand and taking a wild stab at getting myself in the frame) and the word "we" might occasionally work its way into the descriptions of some events. The name of the mystery man behind the camera is Nick, and that's about all the detail I'm likely to go into here. After all, this here is _my_ journal... =) Flambeau and an illuminated float, Orpheus parade Zulu parade, first thing Mardi Gras morning. And Rebirth Brass Band, my favorite local live musicians... Streets shut down, Rex and his queen are front page news, Jackson Square, and me with the coveted "big beads" I caught at the Zulu parade... Rex parade... and the aftermath...

Beginning the year at the end of the world... - 05/29/2007 08:05 PM

Holidays are a popular time for volunteers to come lend a hand, so there's not much rest for the wicked among our long-suffering staff. We did, however, get New Year's Day off. I decided a good place to begin the new year would be the end of the world, or at least its local terminus. It has slowly come to my attention that despite the overabundance of water by which Louisiana is surrounded (and occasionally submerged) there really aren't any beaches. Beaches are the solid line where land meets water. That doesn't really happen here... the land just kind of branches into narrower and narrower fingers and eventually coalesces to river and gulf. The closest thing to definition between the elements is accomplished artificially through the use of levees. One of the most interesting places to observe this is at the mouth of the Mississippi. There is a spit of land that traces the western bank of the river farther and farther into the Gulf. As you drive down the highway that runs down the middle of this spit of land, you will notice that off in the distance on each side, there is a levee almost paralleling the road... one to hold back the gulf, the other to hold back the river. I say "almost parallel" because the careful observer will get the distinct impression that they are actually gradually closing in. Eventually, you come to a point where no more than 100 yards separate the two... and here the road ends. Katrina came right through here, and as you can imagine, the place ain't been the same since. Still, it is filled with beauty and wonder... if perhaps mixed with a little bit of the scary kind of awe... That last picture above is for just in case you've always wondered what a top-quality mosquito farm looks like... Right: by the river, Left: atop the levee

Trailer-living patrons of the Saints - 05/27/2007 06:49 PM

This is my sweet little Louisiana home. I can not begin to describe to you what a palace it was for me, given that it was my ticket out of the sardine can that was my 10-to-a-room church bunkhouse. I could not have been more thankful. I thought that after a while the novelty would wear off. It never did. I eventually decorated it with my Mardi Gras loot, a Jaimi Kercher calendar of California wilderness scenes, and some other favorite special items. I had a whole bunch of yummy seasonings and spicy sauces and herbs and oils on the back of my tiny stove... I used that trailer for all it was worth. That first picture is taken from the bathroom door looking toward the bed alcove. You can see my little kitchen table and "loveseat", as well as my keys and headlamp hanging on hooks. This one is taken from the opposite direction... the light's not as good this way... And here's the obligatory bathroom door mirror pic. I am wearing my Saints sweatshirt... which makes for a convenient transition into another important topic, which is the near impossibility of understanding post-Katrina life in the vicinity of New Orleans without assigning proper significance to the Saints. Yes, I am talking about a football team. I am also talking about just about the only thing that was going right in New Orleans for a good part of the past year. And no one is more surprised by this (the diehards won't admit it, but deep down they know this is true) than the Saints' fans themselves. This team is dearly beloved by its more-than-half-crazy multitudes, but any of them who have been on board more than a couple years have become inwardly resigned to the certain knowledge that it will all end in tears, notwithstanding the fact that every time the team has won a game in the last 30 years, there's been someone somewhere saying, that's it, this is the year - we're going to the SuperBowl. Imagine the collective surprise when in this, the year of great frustrations, stupidities, and dimensions of personal and shared agony that are difficult to enumerate, for the first time in their history the often bewilderingly self-destructive Saints came very near to going all the way. Most of the Habitat staff gathered every Sunday at the home of Craig, one of the construction supervisors, to watch the game, drink some beers, and eat good grub. Craig is a die-hard Saints fan. He's from "da Parish", which is to say St. Bernard, which pretty much means that the house he grew up in as well as the houses of all his friends and family no longer exist, except as shells on overgrown lots where no one is certain there will ever be life again. But damnit, at least the Saints had a winning season. And that is something. Driving through the business district of New Orleans, a friend saw a homeless man holding a cardboard-and-black-marker placard that my friend referred to as "a sign of the times": Please help Will work for food No home No job Go Saints As popular Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose observed after the Saints' first win in the Superdome once it finally re-opened after the horrors of its use as an unsupported shelter in the first weeks after Katrina, it is important to keep some perspective on these things. It is, after all, only a football game. "Like hell it is."

What were we talking about again??? - 05/21/2007 02:31 PM

So... as those of you who have been paying attention will have noticed, the story of my life as a Habitat construction supervisor and wanna-be New Orleanian kinda fell off a cliff there somewhere along the way. I could fairly legitimately blame it on the fact that beginning somewhere in the vicinity of September, I took an official (and thus more demanding) job with Habitat, started dating again for the first time in about a hundred years, became a fairly rabid Saints fan, lost easy access to the Internet, and hosted a fairly steady stream of out-of-state family and friends that lasted up until the New Year. While I'm sure all these things had something to do with it, I don't think that's really the story here. There simply seems to be an immutable Noelle law that has governed my journal writing (or lack thereof) throughout my whole life: without exception, the only times I have ever managed to string together two or more entries within a one- month period have been when I've been on a trip. A quick perusal of the archives of this journal will confirm that, but it goes much further back. To India, to Alaska, to the road trip I took to Seattle with my brother and my dad when I was 9. (I still have that journal -it's pretty funny. That's when I learned how to write stuff that rhymed by writing limericks. As you can perhaps imagine, I was somewhat unfettered by the usual limits placed on the number of syllables that each line of a limerick is to contain...) Anyway, I think that's what happened. Somewhere along the line, my time in Louisiana stopped feeling so much like a "trip", and started to feel a bit more like... well... you know... "life". But still, I do hate not to finish what I start, and there are a few more entries I'd like to include by way of closing this chapter of my time with ESTHFH, July 2006 - June 2007. Maybe I'm doing this now because it's the first time I've really had a chance. But more likely, I think it's because I'm now on another trip, taking a sabbatical before one last stint with Habitat to help out with a massive short-term build in the middle of June. Right now, I am writing to you seated at a wooden patio table in front of a house within earshot of the Pacific in the town of Samara on the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica. So why am I not journalling about _that_? Well, let me summarize: it's ridiculously beautiful, and an excellent place to learn Spanish. I'm not going to go into details because those of you who don't have room in your plans or finances to take a trip here soon shouldn't be made to suffer, and those of you who do plan to come here will do much better to see for yourselves. However, since a couple of you have asked for pics, I'll send you one each of beach and mountains as I prepare to dip into the well of Louisiana life for a couple more entries...

I Am _from_ Somewhere - 12/25/2006 04:14 PM

Words I never thought I'd hear myself think: "Thank God I have a stop-over in Houston." Turns out there are places in the world that are largely devoid of any inescapable evidence of destruction and tragedy. You probably knew this already, but for me it's just sinking in. I'm glad I'm getting the opportunity to adjust to the existence of life outside the Hurricane Haunt before the more significant event of my return to California, whose very familiarity I can't help but think is going to feel pretty strange. I've been giving my Californian origins some fairly serious thought lately. Much as I like to think of myself as at least something of a world traveler, this is the longest I've been outside the confines of my home state by a factor of 4, which apparently is just long enough out of that water I grew up swimming in for this fish to be able to understand that the water is actually contained in a pool of some kind. Which has edges, an inside and an outside, and a name of its own. I am reasonably sure that I have used the word "California" in conversation more in the last 5 months than in the rest of my life put together. I guess that's what happens when you leave somewhere. It suddenly makes more sense to talk about it as a whole and discrete entity rather than merely discussing various aspects, events and details as one does in the course of everyday intrastate interactions. A couple months ago, I had a particularly fantastic group of volunteers working with me on a house in LaCombe in the finish stages. Out of this universally stellar group, there were four folks in particular, two couples, who I found it instantly easy to relate to. Their style of humor, outlook on life, frustrations, passions and politics all just made immediate sense to me. One of the couples was from small-town Washington, but I later came to learn that both husband and wife grew up in California. The other couple I found out was from LA, though if not for some complicated external circumstances, it seems they'd rather move to Kentucky. It dawned on me that perhaps I had found my "people"... a group I think I'll call the Ambivalently Californian. There is no doubt that my upbringing in California has left a deep imprint on me. You can't spend (conservatively) 97% of your life somewhere and not be shaped by it in innumerable ways, many of which by definition you're unlikely to be aware of. And let it be said that there is so much about California that I love. The beaches, the mountains, the informality, the burritos... the list goes on. And all of that pales in comparison to the relationships with friends and family that grew up out of that soil. But any Californian also knows well the price... the overpopulation, the ever-increasing and life-inhibiting expense. And in Southern California in particular, I would add to the list a materialism that seems at least a shade over the national average, and an obsession with physical appearance and apparent fear and denial of aging and mortality that may well top the charts. But it is where I'm from, and for all I know it may also be where I end up, and those deep roots together with my varying levels of discomfort with them might well be fairly called my cultural background. The same week as I met my new Californian friends, another volunteer who currently lives in Texas and who I think was originally either from the Northeast or the Midwest called me out for what he said was a dead give-away of my origins. I was giving him directions that started with "take the 10 east..." Here he smiled and said, "You just told me where you're from." Apparently nobody but us puts the "the" in front of the interstate number. For a moment, I had the instinct to change this pattern of speech, perhaps for clarity, but more, I suspect, to blend in. But then I thought about how one of the things I love most about this crazy state of Louisiana and the even nuttier town of New Orleans is its celebration of all its local peculiarities. If calling it "the 10" happens to be what I've got to bring to the table in terms of local color, so be it. An Ambivalent Californian I am, an Ambivalent Californian I shall be, wherever I end up. Whether that's Louisiana, Colorado, Oregon, or parts unknown. Or even California.

Chiropracty 202: Jesus wept - 12/25/2006 04:07 PM

Chiropracty 202: Jesus wept. My previous thoughts on emotional mobility (see the previous Chiropracty 101 entry if you haven't read it yet) got me thinking about a song fragment I generated a couple months ago, revolving around the famously shortest verse in the Bible, which is "Jesus wept." In the story in which that verse is found, Jesus weeps over the death of his friend Lazarus, then raises him from the dead. The first obvious question to me is, "Why stand there weeping when you can fix it?"  If I know me, and if I were Jesus, I'd be saying, "No, no, really, it's okay people - check this out, I'm going to make it all better!"  Wanting to save the people from having to endure the grief, and perhaps saving _myself_ from their grief, as well as any grief of my own.  The fact that he took that time to grieve instead is one of the many things that reminds me how much I am not like him. I wonder why you wept when you had it all in hand I know you're clear about the reasons - it was you who made the plan when you see what I can not when you've seen it all before hard to fathom that there's anything that can touch you anymore I wonder why you wept... Deeper questions also hover around this story.  Getting past the question of why to mourn someone's death when you can bring him back to life, how about why bring him back to life when he's going to die eventually anyway?  When we're all going to die?  When our lives are but a blink of an eye, and they all end the same, such that on a cosmic level neither our death nor our life would seem to be of very great significance?  What fascinates me here is that I believe there are actual answers to these questions, and while I many never be able to fathom it all, just wrestling with the questions seems to leave me more open to the clues to it all that I find in my daily life, in my own heart, in the hearts of those around me... My question is really about how we move the heart of the Eternal now, today.  Does Jesus weep for me, for us, and why?  And what does this say about the things that make me weep... and what should?

Chiropracty 101: spiritual subluxations - 12/25/2006 11:55 AM

I've been seeing a whole lot of my local chiropractor's office since I managed to tweak my back in an ugly way a couple months ago. This is a new thing for me... I've always had a low-grade fear of chiropractors. You know - the scary cracking thing, the apparent addictive quality, the disconcerting evangelistic zeal of its true believers. I've become more of a convert since my course of treatment has so far not only gotten me out of a pretty unpleasant crisis, but also rendered me able to stand in one place for up to an hour without pain. I haven't been able to stand still for more than 15 minutes without pain in at least five or six years. At any rate, as I understand it, the basic theory behind chiropracty is that spinal alignment is really important to a person's overall health. And alignment doesn't just mean some idealized static state, but also implies the ability to easily slide in and out of place as necessary without locking up. Okay - so it's going to seem like I'm jumping topics here, but bear with me. A few weeks ago, after a day off, I felt a little out of the loop at morning circle. Our volunteer coordinator Caitlin was offering up a Hail Mary for our executive director Nancy, as I later found out she had decided to do daily since Nancy's husband had been diagnosed with late-stage cancer. He is relatively young and this was not foreseen. Nancy is a tireless and consistently positive worker for good whose plate is more than full of challenges on any given day, over and above the stresses common to pretty much everyone around here since Katrina. I was so sad for her. And this got me thinking about the incredible range of intensely positive and negative emotions and experiences that gets thrown into the gumbo of life in our neighborhood. The raucous humor of our construction staff which is best kept behind closed doors, but has a bad habit of leaking out. The dislocation-inspired pathos of our unlikely brotherhood and intermittent mutual admiration society, together with the variety of personal reasons each of us has be be thankful for being where we are and doing what we're doing. The million tragedies still working their way out throughout this city, this state, this whole Gulf area. The unbelievable ways in which people have reached out to help eachother, and still do every day. Wall-raising ceremonies that mean a family is one step closer to having a real home again. The plague and pestilence of trying to fill some tiny part of a huge need for housing while understaffed, collectively under-housed ourselves, and struggling to establish internal organization, let alone chasing the quixotic dream of finding any external organization in the larger community and hoping to interact with it in a better-than-disastrous way. The joy of a volunteer learning how to do something new and finding themselves able to be so much more helpful than they thought. The angst of looking into the eyes of a volunteer you can't put to work, at least for the moment, when there aren't enough folks with skills to keep the unskilled workers productively engaged without risking almost certain disaster. The joy of watching the kind of people who come here meeting other like-minded goodhearted folks and returning home energized and feeling considerably less alone. The pain of knowing a single mother, who is by doctors' assessment well on her way to dying of cancer, is sharing a FEMA trailer with her four children while we struggle to get their house done in time for her to be able to share it with them, at least for a while. There's a proverb about rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn. But when there's so much to take in, it's pretty easy to get entrenched in hopeless despondency on the one hand or myopic optimism on the other. So I guess what I've been thinking is that maybe proper emotional alignment is not that different from proper spinal alignment - a place of relative comfort and balance from which one can easily and genuinely move into the experience of various emotions, even intense ones, and back to center again. Easier said than done, I guess. I think I'll think about this some more.

Coon-Ass Turducken - 12/24/2006 07:32 PM

Some local friends of Habitat loaned the staff their house for our Thanksgiving dinner. The house had taken considerable Katrina damage, but with repairs and re-modelling nearly complete, it was really pretty breathtaking... particularly for those of us who had barely seen the inside of a house in months... at least not one with niceties like drywall and such. Here's a pic of our spread and a few of my teammates: whole fandamily/ Kyle(Opie) Craig Meech You know the widely-espoused idea that eskimos have a hundred words for snow, islanders tend to have a large number of words for shades of blue, and so on? From what I hear, this is generally an exaggerated notion, though we americans apparently have a phenomenal variety of words for types of fasteners - you know, screws, bolts, nails, staples and all the variations thereof - compared to people of other national origins. Honestly, it's hard for me to imagine doing without any of these terms. But maybe that's true for snows and blues too, depending on your perspective. At any rate, here in Louisiana I've been struck by the sheer multiplicity and variety of terms for... well... what we would crassly refer to as "rednecks". "Rednecks" is actually one of them, and the subculture it describes seems to overlap in some not-easily-defined way with the tribe referred to as Mullets. It is not clear to me whether one has to have a mullet to be a Mullet. But I'm pretty sure, conversely, that if you have one you are one. Then there are some distinctly New Orleanian urban varieties, such as the Yats, so called because of their oft-noted greeting, "Where y'at?". (The appropriate answer to this query, by the way, is "Awrite.") This group has an amplified subgroup known variously as "sweats" or "hey bras". Said with the proper tone, there is a usage of the word "cajun" that identifies yet another rural set. I've even occasionally heard people use the term "hillbilly". Since there are no hills here, and I mean _no_ hills, this is a designation reserved for some abstract idea of a variety of hick that might exist Somewhere Else. But I digress. The point here is to acquaint you with my favorite breed of downhome Louisianan, the Coon-Ass. Don't blame me, that's just what they call themselves. Rock, born David Lawrence LaStrappes, is a self-proclaimed Coon-Ass. His origins are French and Sicilian, which as far as I can tell is a typical ethnic breakdown. The term also carries with it the connotation of a somewhat heroic but often comically self-destructive stubbornness. "Don't call a coon-ass a redneck unless you're trying to piss him off," says Rock, employing his best deep south sound. (Rock, by the way, is actually exceptionally articulate, but he prefers to reserve that for special occasions, largely for shock value.) "There's a difference. A redneck ain't got no sense. Coon-ass got sense, he just don't use it." One of the glorious contributions of Coon-Ass kind to the world is the Coon-Ass Turducken. As a special twist on its more widespread southern counterpart - comprised of a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey - the making of the Coon-Ass variety involves also stuffing the chicken with shrimp. My New Orleanian friend Nick, unversed in such country ways, asked the obvious question, "But what do they stuff the shrimp with?" "Rice," I answered. This isn't strictly true - the chicken is actually stuffed with a shrimp and rice dressing - but I couldn't resist. Anyway, here's a picture. I know it sounds like some kind of moral violation, especially to Californians, and maybe it is. But I'm here to tell you it was the highlight of my Thanksgiving meal. When in Rome, baby. For any of you who are wondering about the logistics of how a turducken is constructed, here's Rock's summary: "It's a real pain in the ass." By the way, he shot the duck himself the weekend before. Behold, the Turducken: And here we have the Thanksgiving Picture of the Year... Van's family (Van is our on-staff plumber) engaging in the traditional post-turkey coma, plus a bonus shot from Halloween of me dressed as Van and Van dressed as Excessively Excited Corporate Volunteer Guy.

Heavy equipment - 12/24/2006 06:57 PM

One of the truly great perks of my job is getting to run the big machines. I'm getting to be reasonably proficient in the use of the Bobcat, and recently added the Excavator to my resume as well. Coordinating simultaneous use of toes, heels, and arms isn't necessarily a natural talent of mine, but I'm getting the hang. My most dramatic experience with the Bobcat yet involved lifting the bucket to near maximum height and holding moderate tension on a tree with it while Rock cut through it with a chainsaw near the bottom. Once the tree started to go it was my job to hold my ground so as not to run over Rock before he had the chance to get out of the way. Despite feeling the need to incessantly repeat a neurotic mantra requesting divine assistance in not killing my supervisor, I actually executed the maneuver without difficulty. Or accidental manslaughter. Which is good, because as Josh says, we here at East St. Tammany Habitat for Humanity do like to keep the mortality rate hovering right around zero. Turns out the off-chance of getting some quality time with the Bobcat is also one of the perks of visiting me. Here are some pics of my friend Meech experiencing the joy of massive power (supervised, of course, by the legendary Rock)...

Playing Tourist - 12/24/2006 01:03 AM

A funny thing happens when you get a lot of visitors... you do more stuff and you have less time to talk about it. From late September through the end of November I had guests almost two-thirds of the time. Then I left on my trip to California for the holidays, from whence I am now making an attempt at catching up this almost inexcusably outdated journal. On the bright side, it was a lot of fun sharing the joys of my Louisiana life with friends and family. And also, I got to play tourist, which I don't do much on my own. I am bad about taking pictures, especially when I'm with other people, so some of my friends' visits went undocumented, photographically speaking. But here are a smattering of pics... Mom and I took a tour of Honey Island Swamp, where the Pirate LaFitte used to hide out. Typical French Quarter balcony. St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square Mom at the botannical gardens in City Park. The gardens were decimated by Katrina, but are recovering through a lot of hard work. Pool at botannical gardens New Orleans Connector bridge and skyline, as seen from the Mississippi My friend Darcy's son Joseph at the Louisiana Children's Museum And lest we forget about that whole hurricane thing: the abandoned Six Flags park with which Darcy was enthralled, and an eerily overgrown sign for the area known as New Orleans East which is still struggling to survive. By the same token, lest we forget there are places outside the hurricane zone, here's a pic from Avery Island, birthplace and ongoing mecca of Tabasco Sauce.

Miss Kim Brown's House - 11/03/2006 12:40 AM

This is Miss Kim Brown, with her daughter Kimberly. She is the president of our affiliate's homeowner association, and an amazing woman of strength and grace. It is my honor to be a part of the building of her house. Kim's house was started many months ago but hit several major snags, between materials issues and permitting problems. Once we were finally able to get rolling again, we got her house from forms to wall-raising in a little over two weeks. Miss Kim took the day off work to be there when we poured the footings. It was quite a day of celebration and she encouraged us all to sign our names in the surface of the footing (which only needs to be smooth where the block stacks are going to go). Rock told Miss Kim that if index cards, printed backwards, were nailed to the inside of the forms the ink would transfer into the concrete as it cured, so just before the pour, she and a couple of the volunteers were busily writing messages of hope and scriptures and prayers onto cards and hammering away. Throughout the week-and-a-bit process from footings to subfloor detailed in the previous entry on construction methods, Kim came by every day to see what had happened. After so much time going by with little or no progress, she was overwhelmed by the changes now happening on a daily basis. Nearly every evening she would call Rock or our construction manager Rebecca, thankful to the point of tears. She would cry, they would cry - this is pretty much how we roll around here. One evening near sunset after the subfloor was completed, I happened to drive by the site. There was Miss Kim's car, doors open, gospel cranked on the radio, going to town with a can of spray paint. She looked a little sheepish at first when I caught her, then just beamed. After the walls were framed and most of them put in place, it was time for Miss Kim's ceremonial "wall-raising". She brought homemade gumbo for everyone on site. In attendance were the volunteers who had done the decking and built the walls, our office staff, board members and directors, construction staff, and some of Kim's friends and family. We had a brief time of reflection and prayer, and then the final wall was put into place. From left in the first group pic are Kim, head honcho Jim, construction manager Rebecca, Rock, and volunteer coordinator Caitlin. The older gentleman in the tan cap is the saint who donated the land for Kim's house in honor of his wife, who passed away recently and was along with him a big supporter of Habitat. The picture of me is taken with me standing in her front doorway - those beautiful trees are what she'll see from her front porch. This last one pretty much says it all...

Building a House the East St. Tammany Way - Installment 3: Block through Subfloor - 11/02/2006 10:56 PM

You may recall this picture from our workshop on pouring footings, taken at the future site of a Habitat house in LaCombe. In this chapter, we'll be following the construction of Kim Brown's house in Slidell from footings to subfloor. You'll meet Kim a bit later. Once the concrete sets up, the first task is to tear apart the forms and backfill around your footings so that ground level is just below the top of the footing. Form break-down is pretty grueling work when it's hot, which it still invariably was since this was September. Next, you take elevations on your finished footing to see how well you did at keeping it level everywhere. You snap chalklines to show where the outer edges of the bearing walls will be. Then at each location where you previously set hurricane straps, you now place a stack of three concrete blocks, their outer edges lined up with the wall lines. This is where you find out how well you placed your straps, based on whether or not you can place blocks in all the locations called for in the plans with the straps threading neatly through the holes to both the right and left of middle in the blocks. Thanks to spending way too much time setting these straps and about a days worth of smoke coming out of my ears from all the mental geargrinding, none of our straps on this house went astray. Based on the footing elevations taken, the block stacks at the high points will be stacked "dry" (without mortar) and everywhere else the amount of mortar used will depend on how much lower than those high points the footing is at the location of the stack. This is our best block-laying volunteer to date: Milton, King of Mortar. Once the stacks are mortared in place, and their heights are checked and rechecked to make sure we have created a level plane across the top of all the stacks, we fill the stacks with concrete. Preferably without knocking the stacks all wonky in the process. Yes, "wonky" is a technical term. Is it a carpentry term? No. Owing to a desire to keep this web journal family-friendly, I can't print the carpenter phrase for "wonky". Laurie in the bright green shirt has the distinction of being the only volunteer to come close to making even Rock blush, God bless her. As the concrete is being poured into the stacks, the straps are carefully placed within the concrete... three inches from outside edge of block on the perimeter of the house and an inch and a half from middle on alternating sides on the interior. This is to accomodate the two adjacent 2X10 sills that will be run along the outside of the straps on the perimeter, and sandwiched between them on interior walls. Block stacks are then finished with termite flashing to discourage the little buggers from crawling up the block and munching on the sill plates. Next, the sills are nailed to eachother and to the hurricane straps. The sill boards are cut in a staggered fashion so that all joints are on top of block stacks, and both sills never break on the same stack. On the corners, they lap eachother in an interlocking manner, as pictured. (That's "3% Tammy" on the nail gun. She got that nickname based solely on being from Utah. Depending on who you ask, this is either because being from Utah, even though she is not LDS, she is still at least 3 percent Mormon just by association, or because 3% is the highest level of alcohol beer is allowed to have in Utah, well below the national average. Either way, "3%" stuck.) Next, the joists are run between the sill plates, and fastened with the use of metal joist hangers. As with the sills, it is very important to make sure all the joists are "crowned" currectly, which means that the natural end to end curve of the board should always curve upward, like a rainbow rather than a "u". It's also important to run a string line on the sills during this process so that your joists don't push the sills out of whack without you noticing it. Now we're ready for the decking. We use tongue-and-groove plywood so that it all locks together to create an even surface. First we goober on some construction adhesive, then slide the sheets into place and nail them. Rows are started alternately with whole and half sheets to stagger the seams. And that gets us through subfloor. Next, we'll be ready to put some walls up!

The Rayne, Louisiana Frog Festival - 09/21/2006 12:10 AM

The city of Rayne, in the heart of Louisiana's cajun country, is the self-proclaimed frog capitol of the world. Here's one of the mosaic/murals that greets you as you pass under the highway into Rayne proper. I think this is definitely one of those times where a picture is worth a thousand words... so I'll keep my descriptions brief. For starters, there are the frogs. They have races and jumping competitions, and general appreciations of all things frog. And there are rides and t-shirt stands... this one flying some typical regional banners... And then there was the music... the first band was zydeco and sang almost all of their songs in French... though the songs themselves hailed from a variety of original genres, adapted to the cajun style. The second band was pretty much straight-across southern rock... except that the lead singer happened to play accordion. But what it's _really_ all about is the dancing. Now I don't dance, for reasons both genetic and experiential. I try now and then, but generally only at weddings, after an appropriate amount of alcohol, and certainly not partner dancing that involves anything like "steps", under any circumstances. But I can still really enjoy watching. Especially when the couples are so colorful, and you also see girls dancing together, adolescent boys with their grandmothers, very pregnant women cutting a rug with their husbands... I think maybe if I was born cajun even I would have learned to dance. And just in case you're inclined to feel sorry for me as a spectator to the action... you should see the dinner I got with this show...You've probably never had boudin. I hear you can't really get decent boudin anywhere outside a hundred mile radius of this very spot. So all I can do is tell you that it is a kind of sausage made with either crawfish or pork and quite a bit of rice, and it is good... no, better than that... keep going... Put it this way: every time I open up iPhoto and see the thumbnail sketch of this picture in with all the others, it still makes my mouth water.

Lovebugs - 09/20/2006 11:08 PM

When I arrived back home on the Northshore, there were some new residents there to greet me. Lots and lots and lots of them. My first week in Slidell, I was talking to Rock about my bug-related heebee-jeebees. His answer? "Just wait 'til _luuuuv_ bug season!" He seemed to take a certain pleasure in drawing out that first part of their name. Apparently they come out for a couple weeks every early fall, and they are everywhere. What are lovebugs? According to Rock, they are creatures God put on earth to "eat, s@#%, screw, and die, all of which they do in mid-air". Here's a portrait. No, despite appearances, this is not a two-headed bug. Once closer inspection reveals that this is in fact a pairing of linked lovebugs, you may think me crass for taking pictures of them in the midst of so personal an act. But you would only think that if you have never been in Louisiana during lovebug season. This is pretty much what they spend all of their time doing. You rarely see a lovebug going stag. They fly around like this, walk like this, climb like this, eat like this. I'm pretty sure they spend the majority of their lives as a "push-me-pull-you". I'm not sure how it's decided which one is going to walk and drag the other, etc., or whether they take turns. But it seems to me that their means of reproduction must be either incredibly inefficient, or highly recreationally rewarding. It is not, however, the total lack of modesty of the lovebugs which makes them particularly distasteful... the problem is how many of them there are. I mean, on the one hand, they don't bite and are not unforgivably large, which in many ways makes them several notches in social grace above your typical Louisiana vermin. But they just get everywhere! You find gobs of them in your vehicle, even if you only have your door open for brief periods in the course of the day. They particularly like my tailgate and tool drawers. They like to alight in the crease at the back of my knee when I am in the middle of a skilsaw cut. They love the gatorade cooler, but they don't hesitate to hover around the water tap either. Everywhere all the time. But at least it's only two to three weeks. And it certainly does bring a whole new kind of retrospective comedy to instances in which I've heard the term "lovebugs" used to refer to a particularly couple-y couple. I will certainly never be able to hear it the same again...

Dumb Things I Did on My Trip - 09/20/2006 07:53 PM

Those of you who knew me in Santa Barbara may be familiar with my "dumbest smart people/smartest dumb people" club. To be invited into membership, one must have demonstrated, in spite of being generally acknowledged as a reasonably functional and even fairly intelligent person on the whole, a history of consistent and egregious moments of inattention leading to embarrassing and occasionally potentially dangerous outcomes. The requirements of membership are that one is to call other members upon recognition of the occurrence of a noteworthy instance of the above. The benefits of membership are the receiving, and also the making, of said calls, which create many opportunities for mildly painful laughter, particularly at oneself. In the spirit of the dsp/sdp club, here is a run-down of this aspect of my trip. Any consistently smart people who actually have their acts together who are inadvertently reading this may kindly proceed to the next blog entry. Any parents reading this entry should remember that on the whole you raised a lovely person who most people seem to like okay, despite her mental deformities which are no reflection on you. =) Hattiesburg, MS: I have to stop at an urgent care center because of severe pains in my leg. After a cursory (and admittedly quixotic) search of my accordion file for my insurance cards, I walk up to the window armed only with my passport. Don't ask why not my driver's license... I think it's in a shed in Upland, CA. Maybe. Anyway, they were kind enough to see me anyway. They sent me to the hospital to rule out a blood clot. I got lost on the way and was bumped from the order in radiology. Waited three hours. Mt. Juliet, TN: Went to fill my prescription in the walgreens. Sitting in the parking lot, ordered new health cards and updated my address to Slidell. So proud of myself. Until after all that I discovered that I did in fact have my health cards in the accordion file! They were still folded into the paper they were attached to for mailing purposes. Well, okay - bad that I didn't know I had them, but good that I tried to replace them when I thought I _didn't_ have them, and also good that I have them now, so I can give them to the people to fill my prescription. So pleased was I that I got out of my truck to go inside and promptly locked my keys in the truck. This is something I rarely do... I only do it when I do something in between turning off my truck and getting out, which I generally don't do for precisely this reason. Ironically, the thing that sank me this time was trying to be responsible and call the insurance people to have them send me cards it turns out I had. While waiting for my prescription to be filled I wandered through walgreens calling through my list of friends who have AAA... the third one I called answered and gave me the number to call. Here's where luck turns my way... since I was calling to be let into my truck, when they asked me whether I had my card, it was entirely believable that I could neither confirm nor deny that I had my AAA card on my person... I mean, fair enough to say that if I had it it would be in my truck somewhere... Thankfully, the locksmith had just come back from helping with relief work in the Gulf area, and he could have cared less if I had a card or not. Nashville, TN, 5 days later: Realized I hadn't made a mental note of where I left my truck in long-term parking... which extends for a mile or so. Fortunately, the shuttle winds in and out, and my truck actually called out to me when it saw me passing. It's a good thing it hadn't decided to give me the silent treatment. Chattanooga, TN, next day: It occurred to me that while I had made an intentional last trip back to Vee's studio in Nashville to make sure I hadn't left anything there, like a toothbrush or shampoo or my cell phone or something, I had no concrete memory of actually putting my guitar in the truck. Sinking feeling - pulled off at gas station. Turns out there was a reason I had no memory of this event, in that it did not in fact take place. I can't bear to tell you how far Chattanooga is from Nashville. You can look it up if you want. Fortunately, it's pretty country. Unfortunately, one whole round trip was in the dark. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I roll.

Opelika, Biloxi, and home - 09/18/2006 10:15 PM

The weather was beautiful in Tennessee... hot enough to make me happy in the daytime, clear as a bell, and cool in the mornings and evenings. As I make my way southward, I seem to be gaining about 2 degrees and 5 percentage points of humidity for every 100 miles. But it feels like home. In Opelika, Alabama I stayed with Crystal, another Coke Scholar, and her husband David, both of whom I knew from the January Slidell trip. They showed me around Auburn University, which was really neat. I also got to meet some of the other folks who are going to come with them when they bring a group of volunteers out to help with construction in October. Yay! Volunteers. We need 'em. Bring 'em on. We played a few rounds of liar's poker, which was good fun because we were analyzing the nature of the game at the same time as we were playing it. Then I got to sleep on a real bed for the first time since I last slept in my bed in Santa Barbara on June 24th (not that I'm counting). Actually, I did get to sleep on a very nice futon in Philly. I think a bed is the only thing from my comfier life that I do miss sometimes. Travel note - cheapest gas of the trip: $2.39 a gallon in Waugh, Alabama. Exactly $1 a gallon less than the last price I paid in California. On my way back I really wanted to check in on Biloxi and see how re-building is going there. The answer is that they've done a lot, and there's a whole lot still undone. Here's a pic to give you a quick visual... this is taken along the road I took from Biloxi to Gulfport 9 months after the storm. by grey_mare There are some great aerial photos of the Gulf Coast at http://www.pbase.com/smms/katrina_aftermath_aerial_perspective. These really give you a sense of the scope of the damage there. And for my own snapshot of the human scene, here's something I wrote driving down that road... the first complete song I've written since I left California... Biloxi Bound I came in June 2002 in search of Keesler Air Force Base like most of my dad's stories it was a name without a face took a picture of the guard gate, ate fried chicken on the sand and dreamed me fuzzy photos of my dad as a young man what a difference a few years make - summer two thousand and six they've done a bang-up job with clean-up, but there's so much here to fix watch construction and destruction sites play leapfrog down the shore and conjure fuzzy photos of things to be and things no more on the cutoff for Biloxi, take a thoughtful look around no one's coming here by accident, assume some common ground you can look a stranger in the eye while driving into town because wherever you may come from, you are both Biloxi bound some are drawn to devastation, some are called here to rebuild some are here just for the money, some to prove it can't be killed some have come here snapping pictures, some are paying their respects some returning one last time to pack whatever they've got left some have chosen here to holiday, for a kinder kind of sin gambling freely in casinos where _somebody_ always wins some greet the future full of pride, some stay in spite of fear just can't imagine coming home to anywhere but here on the cutoff for Biloxi, take a thoughtful look around no one's coming here by accident, assume some common ground you can look a stranger in the eye while driving into town because wherever you may come from, you are both Biloxi bound

Kudzu and Coke: a day of revisitations - 09/18/2006 09:43 PM

Upon leaving Cloudland Canyon, I was informed that the trip to Atlanta by way of rural highway was a half hour shorter than the trip by interstate. You know how I love to hear that. But little did I know the bonus it would provide me... a reunion with an old friend of mine... here's a little portrait, which I find totally unsatisfactory as usual: Please at least humor me by clicking to enlarge. Ah yes, towers of kudzu. And no, this is not by _far_ the most impressive display I witnessed that day. In fact, I saw some formations I'd never seen before. I saw a whole huge _field_ of kudzu that stretched for at least half a mile, rippling over what presumably were rocks and low bushes, and possibly the occasional hapless dingo or wildebeest for all I know. It was pretty cool. But all of these things seem to happen in places where there is no shoulder to pull off and take pictures from. And besides, it's just not the same as getting the in-person panorama. Back in the day, none of this deterred me from wasting several rolls of film in the attempt. This time, I came away with three modest images, the best of which is above. The difference? Digital, baby. Not only could I instantly delete disappointing attempts to make space for more photogenic subjects, my ability to see immediately what even my good pictures looked like disabused me of the fantasy that it was within my power to take that perfect kudzu picture I've always wanted. So I just let go and enjoyed the unbelievable scenery. Unambivalently this time, since one of the things I've gotten clearer on in the last 11 years is that for better or for worse, my approval or disapproval of things in my environment doesn't do a darn thing to change the reality of them, so I may as well enjoy the view whenever I can find a way. I close this kudzu retrospective with an observation: had there been digital cameras available to the average schmuck in 1995, "Kudzu" would most likely be minus one verse, at the very least. If you're unfamiliar with the song I'm referring to, and you're curious, email me through the "contacts" tab, and I'll see what I can do about posting the song on the site. From there it was on to Atlanta to visit my friends from the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation. First stop was Carolyn's home, to drop my stuff and get ready to go out to fellow Coke Scholar Jany's for a girl's night out Bunko party. Carolyn and I became friends through the infamous 2005 banquet (infamous due to the fact that what I thought was to be a singing performance turned out to involve some "simple choreography" (shudder)) and our week in Slidell last January, and because she is really fun to talk to and hang out with. Bunko is a dice game involving great food, very little mental activity, wine as desired, gratuitous hollering, and enough raucous laughter to make your abs sore the next day. At least that's what I gather from my first initiation to the sport. How many extremely cool groups of people can one expect to meet in one trip??? Seems like I hit the jackpot. Next day I spent some time in the office with the heroic staff of CCSF. They were all excited to hear about what's been going on down in Slidell, and to try to tack down dates for another week-long trip. For those of you who don't know my history with the Foundation, here's a quick re-cap. 1990: Coke flies me out to Atlanta for the finals of their national scholarship competition. Coke gives me $5000 a year for college. I get a degree in math and become a part-time mental health worker. After several years, I graduate into the similarly rarified field of carpentry. 2005: Coke surprisingly asks me to sing at their Scholar's banquet. I repay this magnanimous offer by providing considerable tangible support to the supposition that white people have no rhythm. But the energy and optimism of the young Scholars of the class of 2005 rubs off on me a bit, and gets me thinking about the extent to which I am and am not living a life that is in line with what I believe to be truly important. Then Coke Scholar Caitlin puts together a post-Katrina trip to Slidell, and the rest is history. In short, if you know a promising high school student, encourage them to apply for the scholarship - they don't all turn out like me. Here's a pic of the staff, a truly amazing group of people who have won a tremendous amount of respect from me over the years... as much as anything else, by making friendly room for outlying variables like myself. Special thanks to Gabi, another fellow Scholar and friend from the Slidell trip, who came out to meet us for lunch.

Nashville and Cloudland Canyon - 09/17/2006 01:10 AM

It was early evening by the time I made it back to my long-lost truck in long-term parking at the Nashville airport. We had a tearful reunion. I begged its forgiveness for not bringing it along, and tried to downplay a litte how much fun I'd had while it was all alone in an endless sea of temporarily abandoned vehicles. We laughed, we cried, we moved on. I went straight to the home of Vee, the friend of a friend whose "writers in the round" set I'd been graciously invited to join. Well, almost straight there... she met me in the parking lot of the local Irish pub so I wouldn't get lost on the way to their studio. Here's a pic of Vee and her lovely husband Joe that I swiped from their website at www.veemusic.com. It was a fun show... we were joined on stage by Robin, who rocked the heck out of her electric guitar and had some serious lungs on her. Vee has a beautifully powerful voice with guitar playing to match. And there I was on stage sandwiched between the two of them as we took turns playing songs. I honestly felt a little toad-like. (I just re-read that sentence, which made me laugh, and asked myself if there wasn't a better way of putting it, but no, that's pretty much it. I felt a bit like a toad.) But I croaked and three-toe fumbled my way through three songs, hitting my stride best with song 3, which was "Chucking Altoids"... when hopelessly outmatched in terms of basic talent and musicianship, you just have to go with doing what you do best... and there are few who can utilize power tool references and comic retellings of tragic breakups with the level of skill I bring to the table. I felt like I at least survived, and was equal parts gratified and surprised when the fellow running the show gave me his card and asked me to call him about future gigs. I had so much fun chatting with Vee and playing with the two little pugs that she and Joe have adopted as children that I ended up staying in Nashville a good part of the next day, postponing my trip to my next destination - Cloudland Canyon State Park in northwestern Georgia - until evening. I arrived (due to circumstances which will be described later in an entry I plan on entitling "Litany of Really Dumb Things I Did on My Trip") after the gates to the camping area were closed, so I laid my camp pad across the top of my tool drawers and slept in the truck. The next morning I had a wonderful hike (and a little rock basking under the gentler-than-Louisiana skies of Georgia...)

Ernesto gets in a parting shot: Wedding on the Farm - 09/16/2006 12:41 AM

Life is funny. Sometimes the longer-standing your plans are, the more likely it is that something will fall through the cracks. My friend Butch, who I met at an open mike in San Diego where neither of us lived at the time (Noelle's Prime Directive: never hesitate to do an open mike in a town not your own... you never know who you might meet...) had been telling me about his upcoming wedding for over a year. He said to save Labor Day weekend as well as a day or two before and after - that it was going to be a big extended party with lots of folk music with guests invited to camp out for the duration. Butch and Christie live in Bowling Green, Kentucky, so when I moved to Louisiana in the meantime, I thought, "All the better! Road trip!" Butch has often pointed out to me that Nashville is only an hour away from them, and that I should consider combining a visit their way with a gig or two in Music City. So I emailed Butch for likely venues and talked to other contacts in Nashville, booked a show for the Tuesday evening after the wedding, and was quite pleased with how the whole thing was coming together. Until I got the official email invitation from Christie, telling me all the information I already knew, and one new little tidbit: the wedding was indeed still to be on Jimmy and Maggie's farm... it just turns out that their farm is in _New Jersey_!!! Oh boy, that made things a bit more complicated. Apparently my asking about venues hadn't seemed strange to Butch because, as he put it, "well, Nashville _is_ on the way to New Jersey from New Orleans, roughly speaking". As is almost any point south of New York and east of the Mississippi, roughly speaking. Fortunately, the newlyweds-to-be helped me pull the whole thing from the jaws of disaster by pointing me in the direction of a really cheap flight: $120 including taxes for Nashville-Philly round trip. So I drove to Nashville, flew to Philly, and planned to take a train to Trenton, but was kindly picked up along with several other arriving guests by the self-described "Best Available Man", Adam Brodsky. (I hesitate to tell you that I think Adam is a brilliant songwriter, because I am afraid you will then be persuaded to check him out and inevitably think the less of me. Seriously, I promise you that if you possess an ounce of decorum this guy will offend you immediately. I will also attest that he is one hell of a nice guy.) Those of you who didn't get around to reading my August 27 entry about the odd things one thinks about when one spends hurricane season smack in the middle of the strike zone may want to go back and skim at this point in order to fully appreciate what follows. In it I discuss the internal conflicts that arise from praying and wishing a storm to turn eastward and then when the danger has passed from you suddenly being struck by remorse as you watch the track shift to your friend's town... in Ernesto's case, heading straight for Tampa. I commiserated with my dear friend Lara about this conundrum, and shesaid she was in the same boat... hoping for it to turn further east, but then feeling bad for her friend in Miami. I proposed we could at least hope for it to continue to track even further eastward and maybe break up in the Atlantic. Which is pretty much what it did! Well, that was easy enough now, wasn't it? North Carolina got a bit of a beating, but mostly just heavy rains... Ernesto was down-graded back to a tropical storm from the hurricane status it had achieved on its way into the Gulf. By contrast, had it continued into the Gulf it would have most likely fueled up on the warm waters and escalated into a bigger hurricane. Funny thing is though, even in such a generally ideal scenario, there are always unforseen consequences. Though it had lost a lot of its power, Ernesto still had one last goal, which was to attend my friends' _outdoor_ wedding. It was the wedding crasher we couldn't throw out. It rained like crazy from the night before the wedding all through the next day and finally cleared just in time for a campfire and bedtime. And then the weather was absolutely gorgeous from then on out. But the wedding itself - what an adventure! Tremendous credit to all involved in putting the tent back up that crashed overnight, and keeping the tents up throughout the ceremony (timed precisely with the heaviest deluge and fiercest winds), and in general keeping spirits up and logistics on the preferred side of the disaster line. Apparently a tree branch, itself as big as your average tree, cracked and fell right next to the portapotties in the middle of the ceremony... but the wind and rain were so loud we didn't even hear it happen (except the one guest who was in the portapotty at the time!!!) It was a wonderful wedding in spite of it all, which is a real testimony to the character of the bride and groom, organizers and helpers, family, and guests. Here are a few pictures that capture the mood... The resilient couple... The Best Available Man raises his toast and drops his umbrella... The father of the bride, whose toast was in the form of a very witty poem. Of the lines I remember, this is my favorite, written to describe his response when Christie came home one day determined to learn to play the hammer dulcimer, which she now plays quite incredibly: "... her birthday wish she did stammer - a stringed box, as big as an ox... and you hit it with a hammer!" The wedding and the days that followed were a feast of music... swedish nickelharpists, an irish folksinger, various dulcimers (hammer and otherwise), fiddle players, mandolins, drums, bagpipes, and of course more guitars and singer/songwriters than you could shake a stick at. Over the next three days, the gathering evolved/devolved into a waxing and waning song circle punctuated by an excess of fabulous food that appeared in waves. And having shared a room with ten people for the last several months, sleeping in my tent _by myself_ in the open air provided me the best rest I'd had in a long time. I was pretty much in heaven. Thanks so much to Jimmy and Maggie for their hospitality, and to all the other wonderful people who were strangers to me when I arrived who I now consider friends. Rarely have I felt so entirely welcome while having done so little to have earned it.

Building a House the East St. Tammany Way - Installment 2: The Pour - 09/15/2006 01:12 AM

Here I go with construction crash course number two. (See the journal entry from August 8 for installment #1, in which we discussed "Formwork".) When we last saw our house-in-progress, it looked like this: Next, a transit level is used to mark the desired elevation of finished concrete on the forms, and a chamfer strip is applied on that level all the way along the inside faces of all the forms. This will be used to run a screed board along to ensure that the finished concrete is all on the same elevation, or at least as close as we can get. Then the rebar is tied together in long sections, which are laid on top of metal chairs to hold them up off the ground. The rebar is required to be no closer than two and a half inches to the edge of concrete in any direction. After the rebar is placed, temporary supports are nailed bridging the forms for the purpose of holding the hurricane straps in place during the pour. These straps are embedded in the concrete, and will come up through the cement blocking and be nailed a jillion times to the sills and the wall studs. The hook-shaped bottom end of the strap is wire-tied to the rebar. Then, all you've got to do is talk a pump truck into coming out to your site. The operator uses a remote to move the hose around with the boom while our people move the hose manually throughout the form system. Here, Lauren and Julia "man" the hose. The concrete is then finished with trowels and floats, checking elevation with the transit level in the process to verify that nothing's gone badly awry. The sole purpose of this last picture is to demonstrate why it's better to be tall than short when you're holding a hose out of which concrete shoots at high pressure...

Parceing Nash - 09/14/2006 11:43 PM

Well, as my more avid readers may have noticed, I fell a bit behind on my journalling for a couple weeks here. I spent a week and a half travelling and my first week back has been a hectic one. But I have a lot of stories to tell and pictures to share from my journeys, so I'm going to try to do a few entries a day to catch up. First, I want to start with an important event that happened in the East St. Tammany Habitat for Humanity family a bit before I left. You may recall my mentioning Nash before (see entry from July 9). Well, all good things must come to an end, and we had to bid a sad goodbye to the Nate half of Nash, who is returning to architecture school in Buffalo. Our construction manager Rebecca tried to get him school credit for what he's doing here so he could stay a little longer, but despite her near-legendary powers of persuasion, the school reps appeared to be people of limited vision. In my opinion, every architect should have to do what Nate is doing here. Maybe then we'd all get along a little better on the jobsite. But I digress. Nash, as I have come to know them, are an amazing team. Nate is solid, often quiet, but more often than not this is just because he is saving his words for just the right moment. He would be perfectly content to say two lines in a whole evening, if they were the _perfect_ lines. And often they are. He is very funny, thoughtful, and capable of getting along with pretty much anyone. Here he is, in his free-standing mode. Josh is intense, restless, bright, and comedic. He tends to need something to keep him occupied at all times or he will spiral quickly. This shot elucidates his role as Nash's dark side. Together, they are kind of like a team of antisuperheroes. Their chosen uniform, particularly on the arrival day of any new large group of volunteers, is a pair of matching shirts they made themselves using iron-on decals that read "Questions are Cool", dreamed up after the umpteenth time when a volunteer's jumping of the gun caused backward motion in construction rather than forward. I can best sum up the impact of Nate's departure by three comments I found myself making one evening sitting out in front of Josh's trailer drinking a few beers with the crew in his last week here. "Nate, what are we going to do without you?" Then, realizing the greater seriousness of this next question, "What is _Josh_ going to do without you?" And then, the burning question that made both the previous questions pale utterly in comparison: "What are we going to do with Josh without you???!!!" Before Nate rode off into the sunset, a few of us took a kayak trip down the Bogue Chitto river. Left: Nash with Scott, our volunteer coordinator. Josh managed to capsize his kayak about 30 seconds into the ride. Like those sunglasses? Yeah, he did too. Unfortunately, this is the last time they were seen on his face. Right: Nash proudly display the impressive necktans they've achieved courtesy of Louisiana summer.

Figments of our information: a letter to Lara - 08/27/2006 07:26 PM

So, any of you who've been watching the weather channel have probably heard about Hurricane Ernesto. It's certainly been on my mind... especially with the anniversary of Katrina being observed this Tuesday. My good friend Lara, photographer extraordinaire and graphic artist of "Stranger's Treehouse" and "Backlit" has lived in Florida for several years. Her trials and tribulations with the Florida hurricanes of 2004 were the first personal connection I had with this particular variety of disaster. I sent her this note today and then decided posting it to my journal as is might be the best way to share my take on living in the land of the potentially screwed... language edited for my more upstanding readers... (By the way, it just so happens I have previously set travel plans from August 30 through September 10, so rest assured I will not be here if the hurricane hits.) **************************************************** Hi Lara. I don't have my phone with me at the moment, but I'm definitely going to try to call you when I do. This whole hurricane thing is different from the inside. I've been fretting these last couple days watching Ernesto. It's not a feeling of fear, but of emotional pain... I feel like a hurricane coming through here now would be such a heartache. It's strange too that if it comes through here, I will be in New Jersey when it does. The whole thing has been really weighing on me. So I checked the 5 day cone again just now, which up until recently has shown us in the dead center of the five day path. Much to my relief, it seems to have shifted very notably to the east. Whew! But then (and forgive me for being slow at geography) I looked again and realized that the new path goes straight through Tampa. F***. This hurricane s*** sucks. And here's the weird part... which I'm sure has ceased to be weird to you for a while now... I am stepping outside of my emotional state of the moment to think how strange the whole thing is. I was really pained by this. Then relieved. Then worried again for you and yours. All of this as a reaction to blips on a screen. I mean, there's a hurricane. This much we know. The rest is just guessing, and each new prediction that I'm reacting to is just another figment of someone's best intuition. Hmm... yes, maybe that's what I'll call these things: "figments of information". I think that's going to be today's journal entry title. Anyway, I realize that at least in my case, this is all kind of stupid. The relief is as dumb as the worry, since my next NOAA log-in may show the cone headed straight for us again. My plans are made, so I need not be concerned with the practicalities of evacuation. The least I can do is wait for the storm to arrive, at your doorstep or mine, before trying to react to it. Perhaps we will both dodge the bullet and some other poor unsuspecting community will get the shaft. It's hard to know how to feel. But dumb to feel much about something that hasn't even happened yet. Noelle ******************************************* Addendum: in the hours between when I sent this email to Lara and when I posted this entry, Ernesto was downgraded from a hurricane back down to a tropical storm. Case in point on the whole needless worrying thing. For now.

August events and some people I love - 08/27/2006 07:04 PM

With hurricane thoughts putting a fine point on the level of attachment I've acquired to those who live, love, and labor here in Slidell, I feel like this is a good time to recap some recent events and put some faces with some names. This week is a time of transition in many ways. The AmeriCorps team who have been such a part of my life for the last seven weeks left for Denver at 5AM on Wednesday. Volunteer groups came and went. The geographical separation of the siamese twins known as Nash is now in the history books. New longterm staff have arrived, and we had an official ribbon-cutting ceremony to dedicate our offices on Friday... though they've been there for nearly a year. I discovered the joys of kayaking and biked from Mandeville to Abita Springs. The last of the mighty Drew University crew finally took their leave, we had a night of Karaoke at Kappy's that no one will soon forget, and Jayce's parents threw us an incredible feast at their house in Bay St. Louis. This is about half of what has gone on... but I'm getting tired just listing it all. So here are some pictures to fill things out a bit (as always, click to enlarge)... Here they are, my AmeriBuddies, all dressed up for their team dinner at LeBlanc's Creole Kitchen, a small and wonderful family-owned restaurant just down the street. On the right, Libby, Meghan, and Kristin enjoy s'mores roasted by the team one evening behind the church. This is Lauren, who rocks. I am very excited that she will be stationed for her next round in St. Bernard's parish doing mucking (hence the 3-times-too-big coveralls). Chalmette is right on the way to New Orleans from Slidell, so I will be springing her upon occasion for city-type adventures... and she will most likely be coming accross the lake to do her required off-site volunteer hours... which means we get bonus experienced help!!! AmeriCorps' last night at the church appears to have been exhausting... =) Goofing around at a bowling alley one evening: left are Jayce, AmeriCorps member from Bay St. Louis, Miss, and Caitlin, our assistant volunteer coordinator and one of the funniest people I know. Jayce was our expert on all things local and provided excellent Mississippi team getaways on several occasions... not to mention anonymously leaving me a "best of Harry Chapin" CD on the way out of town... on right, Caitlin and Nate of Nash fame. "Drew Crew": A bunch of Caitlin's friends from Drew University came down for a couple of weeks and formed a formidable sub-unit of our local culture - siding specialists, family dinners, and questionable humor galore. I don't have pictures of the whole crew, but here's the inimitable Georgia in a quintessential pose, and on the right Meredith and Georgia sit with Jayce in the hall (this picture is for all of you who wonder if the church is a little like living in the dorms... wonder no more...) Karaoke at Kappy's is a deadly serious event. While I don't have any pictures of the actual performing... here's my new friend Stephanie, the broadway actress who sang with me at the Neutral Ground coffee house show, dancing with local Karaoke star Jimmy, who was first described to me as "possibly the only openly gay man in Slidell", taken some time after his indescribable rendition of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On". Our big challenge for this week was constructing homemade trusses. Luckily I had a great group that quickly became pickier than me about them, so I left them alone and occupied myself by cutting plywood gussets. Sean and Taylor from New York are pictured shooting elevations on the LaCombe site... included here largely because every week there are a couple of people I meet on the strength of whose encouragement alone I know I can hum along for another week or two... this week they were the guys. This is Rock. I will definitely be doing a full Rock profile soon. Until then, I will simply tell you that the pose was his idea. Pictures from the ribbon-cutting: On the left, the guy with the big scissors is the mayor...on the right, Craig and Rock, two of our contruction staff (and two of the biggest characters you could hope to meet) pose with volunteers Rebecca and Kristi, two of my truss team. And what could be a better way to unwind from all that???

Chalmette - 08/09/2006 12:00 AM

Generally I haven't included many photos of hurricane destruction in this journal, but Matt Hemberger, a volunteer from New York, took these four pictures in St. Bernard Parish (along the way to New Orleans from Slidell) that I feel give a pretty good overview. Thanks to Matt also for all the form-setting pictures of the LaCombe crew. 1) house on truck, 2) rooftop message, 3) home on a half shell, 4) debris pile.

Building a House the East St. Tammany Way: Formwork - 08/08/2006 07:19 PM

So, I am actually here for a reason. I mean, the fact that I am having a great time here is, I am sure, blatantly obvious... but I feel I should probably spend an entry or two here and there on what I spend most of my time doing. Actually, what I REALLY spend most of my time doing is sweating like a boar on a spit. Yesterday, I achieved a new milestone. We have these magnetic name tags... three circular magnets hold the front plate to the back plate. If you really truly sweat enough early enough in the day and then continue to stay sweat-soaked all day, the magnets rust right through your shirt, leaving three little dark orange-y brown circles. The Josh half of Nash pretty much gets the marks every day... but despite already having broken my previous personal perspiration record at least three days out of five each week, yesterday was my first time to actually achieve rust marks. So proud... Anyway, back to my point - yes, I had one, and this is it. I'm thinking some of you may be interested in what our house-building process is here from beginning to end, so from time to time I will give little snapshots of each phase. Since the "one year, 100 houses" goal just got started a month ago, most of our houses are in the beginning phases, so in this installment I will discuss the forms we use to prepare for the pouring of concrete for footings. My descriptions will be intentionally broad and basic, so don't bail out on me here just because you don't yet know anything about construction. On the other hand, if such things bore you to tears and you don't actually _want_ to know... feel free to proceed to the next journal entry down, which concerns the more salient topic of "The Daiquiri". If, on the other hand, you find this kind of stuff fascinating and are full of detail-oriented questions, feel free to email me and ask away. Okay, first - a little background. Habitat acquires site and permits. Site is cleared and levelled, and a pit a foot and a half or so deep is dug with a Bobcat in the approximate shape and location of the footprint of the house. The exact footprint is laid out using 2x4's referred to as "batter boards" which are attached to stakes and stabilized with braces, between which are strung strings to mark out the edges of the footing. A footing is basically a network of concrete-filled channels that form the structural support for the blocking and sills, and from there, the subfloor, walls, and on up to the roof. "Forms" are a system of braced plywood and stakes that form the channel into which the concrete will be poured. These need to be accurately placed, reasonably plumb, and the appropriate distance apart from eachother, as well as being very sturdily staked in so that the considerable weight of the concrete will not blow them out when it is poured 18 inches deep. Here's a sketch of the process (as always, click to enlarge): In this picture, San Francisco volunteer Susan carries the top and bottom pieces of a form that has been marked for cross-pieces (kind of like studs in a wall) The nails that will attach the cross pieces have already been started. Here I am, looking less than industrious while in the process of nailing together a form unit. Also pictured are Lauren, our AmeriCorps form leader, and the Nate half of Nash (from behind). In the background are NY volunteer Jomari and AmeriCorp members John and Justin. (Figuring prominently in the foreground are my toolbelt and half my hat.) Once the unit is nailed together, a plywood piece that has been cut to size will be nailed onto one face, squaring the unit up in the process. NY volunteer Matt drives a stake while Lauren ducks out of the way, holding the stake in place with two hammer claws. Lauren's no dummy. =) Much checking and re-checking is required to ensure that forms are placed accurately. Here Lauren is joined in this effort by volunteers Kit, Julie, and Jomari. Once the bottoms of the forms are set in place and nailed to the stakes, the tops are plumbed up (made adequately vertical) by attaching one end of another board to the top of the form, called a "kicker", which is then used to push or pull the top of the form, and then nailed at its other end to a second stake. It takes a whole team to ensure that the placement stays correct throughout the staking and nailing process. Here's what the finished form looks like for one of our typical floorplans. Next, the required re-bar and hurricane clips will be placed, and a screed strip nailed inside the form to guide us in finishing the concrete once it is poured. Once the concrete is cured, the stakes, braces, and form units will be removed for use on the next house. The dirt will be backfilled.. and then, congratulations! We've reached ground level! So, in summary, forms are cool. And did I mention, you get to swing a big sledgehammer? NY volunteer Beth is clearly a fan thereof, while CA volunteer Jan seems mildly concerned by the fiendish gleam in her eye... Thanks to the entire LaCombe crew of August Week One. You guys were truly amazing. Thanks for unwittingly becoming the models for my little web workshop on forms. =) Of course, all work and no play is pretty much unAmerican, so here's one last picture. Volunteer Joe cut about 200 small lengths of 2x4 for use as the crosspieces in the form frames, and was left with a small scrap at the end of each 8 footer he cut down for the purpose. He was concerned about wasting this material, but I told him that we had a use for a large number of scraps that size, so if he stacked them neatly we would be able to reuse them. He decided to take me extremely literally, and stacked them by threes, each layer at a 90 degree angle to the previous, constructing quite the tower by the time he got done. I'm not sure whose flash of brilliance this was, but some visionary in the group saw not a pile of scrap lumber, but rather the world's largest game of Jenga. Here's Nate taking his turn, with volunteer Brandon looking on anxiously.