While writing an English Paper

In the midst of writing an English paper I got a call from my dad telling me that my Grandma is really sick and coming to the end. He wasn't that abrupt, but I had a feeling he had something bad to say. He asked me what i was doing (homework), was i in my room or in the library (in my room), do i normally do homework in my room (yes), unimportant questions with an intensity behind them that implied he wasn't interested in the answers, and eventually he told me that Ro really wasn't doing to well, that she's really very sick, and that i should give her a call. He asked me to get a pen and paper, and I did. And he asked me to write down her number, which I also did. I was starting to feel really sleepy as i was writing, but I got it down and added a little note to call her first thing in the morning, because by the afternoon she's asleep.

Then he asked me what was new. "Not much," I said. I didn't really feel like talking anymore, but i humored him. I told him a little bit about my weekend, a midnight move i went to with Zombies and costumes and music, but I felt like getting off the phone. Then he asked me how easy is it to get to Providence Airport, because if Ro did die soon, Southwest flies out of Providence directly to Philly, and that'd be the easiest way to go to her funeral. I told him that I didn't know, but that I'd look in to it, and as soon as I could I got off the phone. I felt tired. I was too tired to carry on the conversation, almost too tired to say goodbye, too tired to tell my dad I loved him.

And as i'm writing there's a car alarm going off down on the street, and the sounds of the ROTC drill practice are flying through my window, and all i want is a little bit of silence, a symbol that something big is happening, and that the world is slowing down, fatiguing with me. But the world isn't slowing down, isn't tiring, won't slow down or stop because of my mood. Ro's death is something all of us have been expecting, actually something we expected to happen a long time ago. There've been countless times when my dad has told me that Ro's health isn't doing too well, and that this saturday we should probably go up to the hospital and see her. The subtext of these conversations was always that we should see her because it might be the last time. And as a family we would visit her in the hospital and have our 30 to 40 minutes of pretty superficial conversation with her, really meaningless stuff, conversation that, while we were having it, I would think "i'll kick myself if these really are the last words I say to my grandmother." I would always make sure, then, that I said "i love you," to her as I was leaving, as a way to counter the banal conversation before it.

But Ro would always get better, and she would bounce back. And then she would get sick again, and then we would have another visit, with more meaningless conversation, and I would always say I love you, and then she would get out of the hospital, and the whole series would start over again. I started getting annoyed at my dad when he would tell me on some particular day that Ro's health was declining, and that we should probably go visit her. I was annoyed because by repeatedly preparing myself for my Grandmother's death, I had over prepared for it. These announcements and the planned visits turned something that I always assumed would be spiritual and mysterious into something that was routine. These visits, though, there was a comfort in these visits, because I knew it wouldn't be the last one. We would go and talk and kiss goodbye and then she'd get better, and then there'd be another one later.

Now we're at the end of the road, and she's not going to get better. She sleeps a lot, my dad tells me. She's been put into hospice care, and when I went home last weekend I saw the my parents had taken a bunch of Ro's artwork that had originally been hanging in her house. And, like I said, my dad wants me to call her. He said "it only has to be for a few minutes, and you don't have to talk about anything really serious. Just let her know that you love her." But is that enough? Is five minutes really enough? How can I expect to say all that I want to say in a phone call that both of us know is for the sole purpose of talking to each other before she dies? I don't call my Grandmother. I don't think I've ever talked to her on the phone when I was the one who dialed her number. Isn't that obvious, this call, this out of the blue call to talk about nothing really serious, but to tell her i love her? I don't know what i want to say. In five minutes or an hour, I don't think my language has the capacity to capture the nuances of what I feel for someone I love who is about to die, the nervousness about talking too seriously, the guilt over talking too trivially, how you're feeling, what you're trying not to feel, and the ability to focus down exactly what you want to express about them, who they are, why you love them.

Maybe I can't say why, but I will tell her I love her. It's the one thing I've been able to tell her through all of this, the only thing I know I'm capable of saying. I love you Ro. But I can't call her today, though. I have an English paper to write, and a science lab. A million little pieces of things that won't disappear because you feel a certain way.

College Blog

I suppose it's now incorrect to call this the Gap Year of Power Blog. The first year of power? The Freshman Year of Power Blog? I've been at Boston University for two weeks now as a freshman, just another teenager at school. Having taken a year off has taught me a few things.

But first, what i did with the rest of my time.

I got back from New Orleans the 26th of May. The 27th of May was Lawrenceville's graduation. So my friends a year below me in high school graduate, who would become my same year in college in September. Realization number one. You're going to be old for your grade.

The beginnings of summer were spent soaking up a lazy homelife and seeing friends. I recall my first few days doing very little apart from watching movies and lying around. On June 6th i had to head up to Boston for a three day orientation. That may have been relevent a month ago, but now that i've been in college for two weeks, what would be the point of discussing orietnation? Then i went to north carolina for 10 days, and then i worked odd jobs for a while, but you know what, things didn't get really interesting until mid-july, when i went to England and Italy.

And some point during the end of New Orleans, or maybe even the beginning of my return, i decided i needed one more adventure before school. While in North Carolina i was randomly at a bar with my cousin, randomly talking to a friend of his, and randomly mentioned i wanted to go to italy this summer. Turns out the friend had just come back from a four month work exchange in italy, and she recommended a pretty killer site for me, called www.helpx.net. It's an online forum for work exchange opportunities. You pay a small (very small, like 10 dollars for two years of service) fee, and you get to browse, by country, available work exchange opportunities. It's extremely rare that you'll find something to pay you, but they will feed and shelter you for free. I found place to stay in italy, worked enough in the summer to have some spending money, and then headed for england july 19th. Flying to england from the states is the cheapest way to get in to Europe, and domestic flights out of england to other european countries are pretty inexpensive as well.

this was a letter i wrote to a friend on July 31st, after i left england and had been in italy for a few days. It talks about both places:




...but i do have five minutes now. right now i'm in Sinalunga, a small rural town in Tuscany. I'm working on a farmhouse there thats about 20 minutes from the city. its incredibly beautiful here, if not a ltitle primitive. but its exactly what you imagine a tuscan house to look like. spacious, high ceilings, terra cotta floors, a vineyard and olive grove, very rustic and nice. i went for a hike with my friend yesterday evening and we watched the sunset on a hilltop overlooking rolling hills and vineyears; it was the cliche Tuscan experience, but it was wonderful.

before this i was in England for a little over a week seeing friends and a lot of extended family. england, if you don't know, is unbelievably expensive. everything costs twice as much as it does in the us, because the pound is twice as much as the dollar, but the prices in England are all the same. So i burned a lot of my savings from my three days in London. But after that i went to the countryside and stayed with generous family who really didn't let me buy a thing with my own money. One person i saw was a guy named Julian, technically my second cousin, but i ignore the . he used to be in a pretty successful rock group in the UK called Toploader, so he has this keen music sensibility. The older i get the more fun it is to see him because we can relate more on artists and genres and the like. but hes gotten into music management now, and hes managing a few artists and trying to get them signed and booking tours, and its been a great experience to tag along with. one of the artists is really brilliant, his name is Paul Steel. its sort of psychadelic influenced british power pop, and if that's something you'd be interested in, i highly encourage you to check out his my space. hes only 20, but he's a very talented arranger, and extremely nice, and i hope he becomes famous.

a few interesting british facts:

the brits like to drink something they call "bitter beer," which is warm, flat, and bitter...beer. its gross. don't order it.

hard cider is extremely popular here, refreshing and alcoholic and carbonated, but you too can get this warm and flat. and its a little gross, but sort of like luke-warm apple juice, and considerably more alcohol than the carbonated version

when people smoke pot they mix it with tobacco, but noone really knows why. because "its the way weve always done it." right. anyway,

after that it was off to british countryside with the greenest grass ever and cows and lamb grazing around freely. i went to a traditional english pub and drank british beer and ate british bar food and had an amazing time, and the 27th i headed off to london to catch a plane to italy, and a day later i got here, and that's where i am now.

i met up with a friend in florence and we headed to Sinalunga and got picked up at the train station by Ugo, one of our hosts. Life has been really easy going here. we only work 4 or 5 hours a day for five days a week, and we take long siestas in the afternoon, get great food that barbara, ugos wife cooks, and drink plenty of wine that they make themselves on the vineyard. there are two other workers staying at the house right now, a couple from australia. She came to italy to visit him, but he's been traveling through europe for five months. after dinner we usually sit outside on the porch with a pitcher of wine and talk and drink till we're too tired to do either. the moons have been full and incredibly bright the past few days, which is pretty incredible because of how much light it generates, but frustrating because it washes out the stars, which apparently are pretty incredible in such a reclusive setting. but it's fine. last night i took an outdoor shower outside and the moon made it light enough to see relatively well. its a little unnerving at first to be bathing naked on a hilltop, but again, its one of those things that just really fits in with the tuscan image, bathing outside under the moonlight.

i know im being a bit obnoxious talking in such detail about the almost nauseatingly romantic details of this trip, but we dont have internet access there, and i havent been able to use a computer, or talk about this to anyone yet. so it had to be you, but it wont happen again.

life is going to be crazy when i get back home on the 22nd. im trying to plan a little trip back down to new orleans, but im really only giving myself a few days to completely prepare for college. dont we have to be there to move in on september 1st?

right. well. that's that. pllleeeease tell me what youve been up to, and also give me your home address so i can shoot you a post card.

mathias!


that was italy. i have all my pictures at home from the trip, and i'll be going home the weekend after next. so expect those.

and, now i'im in college. i got here september 1st. It was an interesting experience, at first, being in school after my year off. I was telling someone on the phone about a week ago that i think i'm in the extreme minority of college freshman by asserting that college is actually a more restricting lifestyle than life before college. I'm surrounded by kids who are awed by the freedoms that college presents them, and so most weekends are spent staying up way past what i'm sure was their bedtime, and going to frat parties to drink themselves silly. i'm not claiming to be straight-edge. i like to have a good time, but new orleans offered the wonderful pair of being able to go out and drink and see incredible music simultaneously.

More later. Things are good though. I'll talk about classes and friends in a future post.

ciao!

oh, and i'm taking italian.

oh god, it's been too long.

i have too little time to say anything else. but...

i've had an amazing time being home since new orleans.

and i'm going to italy the day after tomorrow. well, it's wednesday, so technically tomorrow, and i'll be there for a month.

i guarantee you that italy will be the return of the Mathias blog. a new location, a new chapter.

Road Tripping, Post III

I got into Chicago tonight, I'll talk about that in a little bit, but I need to, as promised, continue on with my Milwaukee trip. I don't know if anyone has picked up on this, but in this blog I am awful at continuing any topic I say I'll pick up in a later post. It never happens. I remember one of the first, the trend setter if you will, was this story I said I didn't have time to tell, but I'd tell it soon. Then, in a post about a month later, I said something along the lines of "I want to write more in this post, but I'm exhausted now. And I still haven't told my great story." TWICE! I've referenced this story twice, and still haven't told it. Well, six months later, I'm going to tell it now, although the thrill of the moment is gone. Nonetheless,
I
Beatboxed
With
CHARLES BARKLEY!
Who's afraid? Not me, that's for damn sure. My second or so week at Hands-On, Timerbland Clothing Company was hosting a large scale volunteer event with multiple organizations from all over the city helping to clean up a large section of a street in Central City. One of the supports of the event was TNT, who had their basketball analysts (CB being one of them) down there to broadcast the New Orleans Hornets game, but also to do a special on Katrina and the relief effort, on the CB hosted show Inside the NBA.

Lunch is being served in the ground level parking lot of a police station. It's technically underneath the police station, and it's dirty, there are too many echoes, and it's dark. Most people are sitting outside on the grass, eating their hot plates. We had heard that Charles Barkley was coming, but we weren't sure when. We had heard some time during lunch. Sure enough, as I'm getting up to throw out my plate, this hulking black man, followed by a camera, followed by a trail of eager eyed volunteers, walks across the grass and in to the parking lot. I quickly become one of those eager eyed volunteers. He walks with an elderly black woman, who I'm assuming was a homeowner, and interviewed her for a bit. Then, she left, he stood, made no introduction, just waited, knowing throngs of people would want to speak with him. People went up, said hi, said they were a fan, said it was nice to meet him. But no, Mathias Goldstein doesn't get down like that. Mathias Goldstein likes to make a bigger impression. I joked with a friend that I should beatbox for him. She said maybe you should, I said why not. But as I stood in the small line of people to speak with him, I was considering how we generally like to make good impressions with people we respect, how we like to make them like us, how we try to be "cool," and how I was doing everything to go against that. He finished speaking to the person in front of me, turned and looked at me, but also looked through me, like "next. your turn. say your peace so I can move to the next one." I was nervous, and he was large, so I could only refer to him by his full name. However, I said this:

"Charles Barkley? Can I beatbox while you freestyle?"
He paused. "Uh, well, I don't know bout that." This was not a dismissive comment, this was an unconfident comment. Was this DOUBT?! The fact that I suddenly had more ego than a Hall of Fame basket ball player gave me the smooth talking abilities of a used car salesman.
"Oh, no, my man, it's real easy. But if you can't do it, I'll teach you something. Let's do Ladi Dadi. You know Ladi Dadi."
"Ooooh man. I can't remember those words."
"What? You don't know Ladi Dadi? Everyone knows Ladi Dadi!"

And so I coaxed him the first line of the song. It took him a couple of minutes to get the words, especially to get the rhythm. When it was finally showtime, he stumbled and mumbled and sputtered the lyrics, but he got through them. At the end of it he laughed, although it's not unimaginable that he was thinking about how he'd like to whoop me, but we hugged. And that was it. My 5 minutes of fame with CB.


Anyway. I digress. Milwaukee. Great place. I left La Crosse in the morning, said my goodbye's with Shelby, and headed off. I drove past a few bars, a few chain stores. This was really the only bit of La Crosse I got to see, although the drive towards Milwaukee steers you along these beautiful bluffs that are, apparently, amazing for hiking, and made the drive as pleasant as driving on the interstate could ever be.

I was driving to meet Danielle Maltby. I met her at Hands-On, and she was from the same school group as Shelby, though they really couldn't be more different (except that they're both good people). Shelby graduated High School in 2000, waited six years before going to college, working in between, getting her own place. She's the self-proclaimed atheist at a Christian University. She has multiple piercings. She's bad ass. She's a brunette. Danielle is blond, she's 21, she just got her ears pierced (er, re-pierced, but that means she wore earrings so infrequently the wholes closed up. You get my point). She was the youngest one from her class to graduate. She was a nursing major and is now working for a Milwaukee hospital in the Neonatal unit. She's incredibly sweet and warm and extremely charming in a very Midwestern way.

But I learned all these things since my time staying with her. At Hands-On, I barely knew her. I gave my first orientation to her group. She was tall and very pretty and, therefore, noticeable, and she was one of the first people from her group I talked to, but she didn't seem to be particularly interested in any of the questions I had for her, and that was that. Hands-On is a busy place. But we kept in touch a bit after she left, first online, then on the phone, and as my road trip plans started to materialize, I asked if I could stay with her in Milwaukee en route to Chicago. She said of course.

Now here's where having a public journal gets tricky. My emotions are my emotions, faithful reader, and I'll leave it at that. But we care about each other, a lot, and it's fun to experience all that summer romance at such a quick pace. Hands-On is a terrible place for organic relationship development. It's very crowded and very public and very gossipy. This was the first time in about six months where I'd been able to have something like that. We reunited. I met the dog, the brother, got a tour of the house. We went to Madison, an awesome little northeastern college town dropped in the middle of Wisconsin. We had a fun lunch at a Sushi restaurant, we found a little park and lounged for a bit. But all of it, the introductions, the small talk, the first date, the being flirtatious and charming, the romantic spot, and the first kiss, these were all things, wonderful and positive things, that simply aren't possible at HONO.

But anyway, I can't talk this stuff on Blogger. Jeez. It's already inappropriate. But, well, I just gotta add this. Danielle, I'm sorry. But don't worry, my grandparents are my most consistent readers, and I don't think they'd care. I'm starting to laugh, by the way. I'm not chewing, or something.


Anyway, I left Milwaukee this morning. Wasn't particularly happy to be going, but hey, I said I'd be back home by the 26th. I'm getting home by the 26th. I had an uneventful drive into Chicago tonight, and that's where I am now. I had a terrific conversation with my family. This is my first and only stop where I'm not staying with fellow volunteers, but my cousin, Debby, her husband, David, and their two adorable children, Sophie and Jacob. I'll get on to that in a later post, but for now, I depart.

Whoever you are, thanks for reading.

Road Tripping, Post II

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Wisconsin has been wonderful.

A few of the places on the road trip have been fun mainly because, had it not been for this trip, I don't know if I ever would have made them destinations. I've never told myself that one day maybe I'd want to vacation out to St. Louis, Missouri, or La Crosse, Wisconsin, or Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but these are all places I've seen on my road trip so far. Everyone knows that when they go to Chicago or Los Angeles or New York they will be impressed. Those are cities with clout, with reputations, with expectations. But it's been exhilarating to enjoy a place you weren't expecting much from. I had a wonderful time in St. Louis, even though my stay there was brief. The weather was beautiful, the arch was impressive, and the people were friendly. After Shelby and I finally woke up, we lazily exited our car in search for a coffee shop. We both looked grungy, but I particularly so, having not showered in a couple of days wearing a stretched out wife beater and jeans I had basically worn for the past week and a half straight. But we found a Starbucks, and despite our appearances, I was greeted at the door.

"Hey, my man, how you doin? Look, can you help me out for a sec?" There was a very friendly employee at the door with a propped up cardboard display for a new drink. He seemed to be placing it.
"Yeah, what's up?"
"This ad, can you see it as you walk in?"
I thought for a minute. "Yeah, it looks pretty good there, but, I mean, the window frames here blocks it a bit." When you approached the Starbucks you actually walked through a glass vestibule, and the framing prevented seeing the ad until you walked through the door.
"So I should move it to the right a bit, right?"
"I would say it wouldn't hurt."
"Hey, thanks my man. Hey, you ordering something?"
"I was planning on it."
"Yo, Frankie. Frankie! Whatever this guy wants, it's on me. Thanks a lot my man."
All I had was the cliche, "No. Thank you."

I help place a sign, I get a free drink. Things like that don't happen very often, and it made me feel like I was somewhere different. The rest of the day was essentially the arch. We lounged around the grassy park around it, beat the heat in the shadow under it, and then went in it for a ride to the top. The lifts inside are very small and metal and white, but managed to sit five people, and look like some sort of ejection pods from a 60s sci-fi flick. These stupid things were shaped like those ridiculous egg shaped chairs. Any chair that makes you sit forward is not a chair; it's a torture device, and that's a bit how I felt in this. After that, though? What can I say? We got up, we got down, and I took a couple pictures in between.

We left St. Louis around 5: 30, which towards the end of the drive turned out to be a mistake. The problem with getting in late is that you want to spend most of the next day in the city, since you hadn't had the time the night before. But, friends, it's easy to see the problem in this logic. The few hours of light we had showed more of the beautiful farmland that I'm so unused to seeing, but after about three hours it was dark, and I saw nothing, and I knew I had a long drive ahead. My directions, I knew, were somewhat incorrect. Around midnight I was driving through Illinois, approaching the Wisconsin boarder, my directions told me that once I crossed the boarder, I got onto I-90 and only had forty miles to go. I knew this had to be wrong, but stopped at a gas station to fuel up and see what the clerk in the convenience store had to say.
"Five hours"

"Excuse me?" I told him I didn't think this was possible. He was a big man, older, with a kind face and a Greek accent. He walked over to the selection of maps and pulled one out, then opened it.
"I drive from Arlinton, this is near us, to Rochester, to Hospital, across the river, in Minnesota. This take me six (seex) hours."

I told him that, though I don't think he's lying, the mileage looks less.
"Yes, well, maybe it will take you three or four, but either way, you will be burning the night." He smiled at me. I smiled back, then headed over to the Energy Drink isle of the refrigerated section and got the 24 oz "triple strength!" Rockstar energy drink.
"Guess I'll need it," I said.
"Drive carefully, my friend."
Shelby had driven about an hour today, but I had wanted to do almost all of the driving. I was at the end of a six month stint at Hands-On, and had curved my partying considerably at the end of the trip. She was there for a week, and tried to make the most of it; when I went home at two in the morning, she went home at five. She had carried on this pattern the entire week, and I didn't want someone with that little rest driving on what are basically completely straight roads for a couple hours at a time. She was sleeping when we pulled in to the gas station, and she continued to sleep most of the way to La Crosse, Wisconsin, which is where she lives. I found, however, that her being asleep kept me alert; I felt like a responsible father driving his sleeping daughter through the night.

The gas station clerk estimated five hours, we got there in three and a half. At three thirty I unloaded her stuff and we headed inside. I was on a caffeine overdose, exhausted but completely jittery. I was trembling a little bit, had a bit of a headache, but a bit of water at hitting the sheets and I was out. This was really all I would see of La Crosse, Wisconsin, the view of the pavement in the headlights and a single, two bedroom house.

I'm writing from Milwaukee right now. It's close to five in the morning, and I'm exhausted. I have so much more to talk about in my Wisconsin trek, but it will have to be for later. All I'll say is it's been a wonderful part of the trip, and I'll get in to it. I left in the morning, said my goodbye's to Shelby, and headed to Milwaukee to see another friend, Danielle. She is marvelous, she will be the majority of the next post, and she deserves it.

Farewell

Road Tripping, Post I

It's Monday afternoon right now. I'm sitting in a Panera Bread in St. Louis using their wonderfully free wireless Internet, trying to update all of you on my road trip as I leave New Orleans. This is my first post outside of the city since November, when I hadn't arrived yet.

The beginning of the road trip has been going well. It was rough leaving New Orleans yesterday, and particularly the first hour of the road trip was uncomfortable. I feel sorry for my fellow road tripper Shelby, who probably got a short and sullen answer to any question she asked in that time. It just felt weird to be driving through the city knowing it was going to be the last time I would see it for a while, and the last time I would interact with it extensively for a long, long while. After a couple of hours though, the terrain changes from Louisiana Bayou to the rural south of Mississippi to the fertile fields of Tennessee and Missouri. The change of scenery made a real difference in my mood.

I've never been through the Midwest, and barely through the south. With the exception of Mississippi, where I did work last March, every state on this road trip will be a new one for me. I imagine this was a good thing for me, because even though I was told constantly before I left that driving through hundreds of miles of flat farmland is mind numbing, I found it rather beautiful. We didn't really hit much of it until Tennessee (which we really just clipped) and Missouri, but green field after green field and farm after farm did a lot to lift my spirits. It was the time and place to roll down our windows, stick out our arms, and let the wind blow through our fingers. Shelby and I talked a bit the first couple hours of the drive, but it seemed that when we got to all that farmland we became quiet, save the sound of the air around our car and the cassette in the stereo.

We were heading for St. Louis. We had planned on leaving around 12:30 to git in by 10, but (unsurprisingly) the final goodbyes and a little last minute packing shipped us off just after 3 30. I got lunch with Abby Sartor, a girl who went to school with me for the first school year after Katrina before heading back to NOLA. This girl is funny and charismatic, and she was often a life raft when the Hands-On atmosphere was, if i may continue this metaphor, drowning me. We got lunch, talked about the future, said our "see you later"s, and I headed back in to Central City to make one last goodbye, this time to Ty Shon.

Ty Shon didn't want me to go. Of course, he didn't tell me this, but it's always been that body language is more telling than his words are. Ty Shon has always put on a front of apathy and a small front of toughness, even if sometimes when you look in his eyes you can see a twinkle of irony. When I knocked on his door and told him I was leaving and that I'd miss him, he didn't say it back. He didn't say he'd call me once a week, or that I was a good friend, or that he was glad to have met me. But the ultra confident, charismatic showboat was unusually quiet. He was fidgety and he was pacing and his eyes were darting, and that was good enough for me. I knew then that he would miss me. Even if this borderlines on the vaguely sadistic, it feels good to know that he will miss me. It feels good to know that I will be missed.

I dapped him off (which, for all you non slang speaking sophisticates, would be the arm-wrestling-position handshake that frequently leads into a hug), and he said alright, and I told him I would see him later. Then I decided to give him a hug so I said "come here, man." And wrapped my arms around him. "Alright, bruh!" "ALRIGHT, BRUH!" he said and pushed me off with a big smile. I'm glad my last memory of Ty Shon was the confident, smooth talker that he normally is.

And then, not long after that, I headed off. I went over most of the action earlier in this post. We got in around one in the morning, a consequence of embarking on a 10 hour drive in the late afternoon. Our lodging accommodation, a friend of a friend, fell through when we called him and told him how late we were coming in, so we ended up parking in a downtown residential neighborhood and sleeping in our car. We slept in (which feels strange to say when your bed is a car seat) and then headed off to the only tourist attraction immediately noticeable, the arch. I have pictures of all of that, and those tell a better story than my words. But we're heading off to La Crosse, Wisconsin this afternoon, and since we probably won't be leaving till about 5 PM, it looks to be another late night. But I'll keep you posted!

Mathias

The Last Moments of the Last Night

Ladies and gentlemen, my time at Hands-On, my time in New Orleans is coming to a close. The past couple of weeks have been a love affair with New Orleans, filled with great music, and spending time with my close friends. In the past three weeks, Hands On has changed a lot. My three best friends here, Aaron Carlson, Allan Rey, and Jon Edwards, have all left. Multiple staff members have left. This place is changing, and I'm leaving at the end of an era.

All day has been a pensive day. I didn't work today. I did morning wake up, lounged around base for a little bit, and then headed off to meet my Rabbi's wife, who's down here interviewing New Orleanians compiling information to a play about post-Katrina New Orleans she's writing. I introduced her to Miss Antoinette K Doe, widow of late, great Ernie K Doe, social figure of New Orleans, and patron of Hands On. I set them up for the interview at Antoinette's bar, the Mother in Law lounge, and was curious to here her story, cause it's an interesting one. But rather than sit and listen, I opted to sit in a side room and think about what I was going to say tonight at community meeting, when all leaving volunteers are given the option to stand and speak about their experience. I'd been thinking about this, in bits, since I first saw someone give the speech, but the past few days, naturally, I've been thinking about it more.

It's been difficult to balance the ways in which I want to spend my last time in New Orleans. My New Orleans expereince has been broken up into three circles: my friends at Hands-On, my friends in New Orleans, and the city of New Orleans itself. I haven't found that balance very easily. A friend from Wisconsin bought a one way ticket down to New Orleans as a returning volunteer, but in a large part to see me in my last week. To be fair, I've been a pretty lousy host. All of my closest friends at Hands On have left already, so the people I'm most interested in seeing are my New Orleans friends. I don't think they realize their importance to me, but it's been appreciated beyond words to have friends to go to when the claustrophobia of Hands-On became overwhelming. It was harder to say goodbye to these folks than Hands-On friends. Having friends come and go at HONO is the nature of the beast, and you take it as a given that you won't really be seeing them again. But these weren't my Hands-On friends, these were my New Orleans friends, and so it's no longer saying goodbye to friends as I leave my volunteer organization, but more like I'm moving, and saying goodbye to my next door neighbors.

Of course, on top of all this, a topic on my mind the entire day was what I was going to say at my last night speech. This is a tradition at Hands-On, where at the end of community meeting, all leaving volunteers are asked to stand and, if they wish, say some parting words. Hands-On offers this to any volunteer, but people expect long termers to say something longer and, usually, more poignant. I had a few ideas rattling in my head but nothing really profound, nothing to connect to the greater picture of the big world. All I felt I could do well, and all I really wanted to do, was talk about my Hands-On experience.

I had spent the day with my Rabbi's wife and got to Hands-On late, right as dinner was being served. I had been stuck in obnoxious French Quarter traffic, and though the stress of potentially missing my last community meeting caused to yell "fuck" more than Scarface, at the end of it i was so drained that it mellowed me out when my time for the speech actually came.

It came quicker than I anticapted. I think TV and film have warped me in to believing that all goodbye speeches should have a quiet, tense build up, a powerful delivery, and a climactic burst of applause and tears. The build up was quiet, but really because I think everyone was tired from a hard day of gutting. But it did finally get to me, and the host of the meeting asked if it was my last night and I stood and started speaking. I realized that I still hadn't thought of how I was going to start or connect the loosely connected thoughts I had on Hands-On, so I decided to start by saying how I felt.

I told the volunteers that as I was waiting for my chance to speak I was feeling nervous, and I was curious as to why that was. I've spoken in front of large crowds there before, and generally public speaking is something I can do rather comfortably. So why nervousness, and not just sadness? I told them that I think it was because my body was telling me I was making a mistake. Not that I think I am making a mistake leaving Hands-On (I've been there long enough), but I could understand why my body would think that, because Hands-On is a beautiful place with amazing people and, more importantly, is in a city that is, at this time, incredibly dynamic. It's a beautiful to be in a place that is changing so quickly, in a city that will be completely different two years from now, even different two months from now. I told the volunteers that what attracted me to the organization so strongly was the fact that it was this small, intensified microcosm of all experiences. I have lived at Hands-On, obviously, but I have lived here, loved here, fought here, succeeded here, failed here, been happy, sad, frustrated, energized, burnt out, overwhelmed, and overjoyed. You feel it all at Hands-On, and you feel it strongly, and you feel it quickly, and it's an amazing thing to be thinking about and feeling so much in such a short period of time. And finally, I ended by telling them the things that I would miss. Before my part of community meeting, announcements were being made about frisbee in the park on sunday, a crawfish boil later that week, all things that I would miss. And I told them that it was really the first time in almost six months that I would be missing out on Hands-On experiences. For the first time in six months, volunteers at Hands-On would be experiencing New Orleans without my influence. I told them that I knew this was the nature of the organization, people coming and going, experiences constantly rotating, the feel of the organization constantly changing, but being there for so long, you being to fee like Hands-On doesn't just evolve with you, but it evolves around you (this is a point I made in a previous point), and that when you leave, that spot where you were is empty, and the whole organization is a little less effective, slightly incomplete. And I said I knew that this wasn't the way it worked, but that that's fine, even exciting, because it means Hands-On is so dynamic. And I finished by saying how much I would miss my friends here, how my best friends at Hands-On are my best friends everywhere, how proud I was of any volunteer who walks through the keypad guarded door of Hands-On, and how very, very much I will miss this place.

And I sat down feeling a little exhausted, a little embarrased, until Emma came over and presented me with my shirt, a customized, drawn-on T-Shirt that's hung on the long term volunteers "wall of fame." The shirt read "Mathias Goldstein: Classying up HONO since December 06'. Emma presented it and started tearing up, not looking at me and telling everybody if she did she would start crying harder. She said wonderful things about me, things that make anyone feel like a million bucks while hearing them, but finally she did look at me and really did start crying, and gave me a big kiss and a long hug. And witht that everybody started clapping and aww-ing.

I think that large scale public displays of affection can feel staged. But this was so genuine I didn't care I was hugging with 80 pairs of eyes on me.
And I knew that I'd be missed.

A little note for a previous post dated March 3rd

I just now, immediately after writing the post just before this one, decided to also post a blog i had started to write March 3rd. It has a few pictures of some of my friends from the NCCC team. This was the first post i had started to write after my epic mardi gras post, but i stopped mid way through, promising to return to it later, but never did. You'll notice that when in the beginning i say "i have an awful lot to talk about" but then stop after i mention the NCCC group. I wasn't going to go back now and write the completion of the post two months later, pretending i had written it then.

I should also note, with more than a bit of irony, that my original Title was going to be, before i just changed it to "Goodbye NCCC," "The Beginning of More Frequent Posting."

Sigh. Maybe this post really will be.

A Late Night Post

It's late night in New Orleans right now. I've been quietly browsing the Internet in the bunk room on one of the community computers. It's fun being up and about while everyone else is asleep in the bunk room, similar to waking up and having a midnight snack in your sleeping household.

I was just looking through the blog of a former hands on volunteer, a writer for the Virginian-pilot who came down a couple of weeks ago, and reading his words on Katrina and Hands-On motivated me to write something of my own. The man's name is Tris Wykes; he's a mid-thirties sports writer for the Virginian-Pilot, but decided to come down to volunteer at Hands-On during his vacation time with another VP writer, a guy by the name of Kyle Tucker. Tris kept a blog and updated it daily while he was down here for eight days, and his consistency and passion motivated me to write a little bit tonight. On his last day at Hands On, Tris spoke at community meeting and told his audience that he generally describes himself as a rather grumpy and cynical individual. That being said, his eight days in New Orleans were some of the best and most life changing moments of his life. People say that somewhat frequently at Hands-On, but it seems to have more gravity coming from a 36 year old pessimistic news journalist than it does a does a hair-twirling, "oh my gaaawwwdd" college girl. He was a guy that really connected with Hands-On. I'm glad for him, and I think Tris' initial pessimism is what allowed him to have such a moving experience. Anyone that comes down to do volunteer work expects it to be grueling and tiring, and expects their time there to revolve around the work itself. What I think is special about Hands-On, and what I think Tris found rather disarming, was how important the community was. That's what prevents burnout at Hands-On, a strong group of friends, a strong sense of community.

That community certainly has been heavy on my mind recently, because I'm leaving fairly soon. Solely from the perspective of this Blog, the number of posts wouldn't indicate that. I wrote fairly regularly up until February, than stopped writing until mid April on a post that wasn't even about New Orleans, and now here I am, finally, almost two and a half months later, returning to the subject of the Big Easy. And I imagine in time one of my regrets will be not writing about the period at Hands-On where everything stopped becoming foreign and exhilarating, and the city started feeling more like home. My inhibition to write, I think, stemmed from the fact that my New Orleans trip was intended to be a learning experience, and this blog a kind of tool to process and explore my ideas. But there came a point when I lost that wide eyed curiosity for this city and it began to feel familiar. Writing about regular things is a lot harder than writing about extraordinary things, and I kept telling myself in that period "What is there to write about?" Well, looking back on it now, a lot. In the time between Mardi Gras and now I parted ways with my first group of substantial friends, an Americorps group based out of South Carolina. I met an amazing group of actors, dancers, and musicians from Juilliard. I went home for ten days and got to see friends, family, and appreciate more distinctly the uniqueness of New York city. I went up to Boston for passover and spent some time at BU, sampling what will by my college experience for the next four years. And I said goodbye to more long term volunteers, as well as met some new volunteers who will, for the first time, continue to be volunteers here after I'm gone. I've been here long enough that some selfish part of me wants to think that when I leave, this place will struggle, that yes I have grown in to this place, but this place has grown around me as well, evolving like a jigsaw puzzle with a single piece missing, a space just for my niche, a space that will be empty once I leave. But it doesn't work like that, does it. The nature of a volunteer organization is far too dynamic to allow that. People cycle through so quickly at Hands-On that in a few months, who will be there to tell my tale? I'm speaking epically only with a hint of self irony, because seriously, I've never been so emotionally invested in anything my entire life, and I'd like to leave having left my mark in some substantial way. Call me selfish, but the one reward a volunteer receives is the recognition that he or she is doing something important. That is what I want at Hands-On, the memory that I did something important.

And, well, I was planning on talking about all the music I've been seeing, French Quarter Fest, and Jazz Fest, and the blind pianist Henry Butler, and I was going to talk more about the Virginia Tech shootings, but at this point anything I wrote would become an anti climax. So I'll end here. But anyone reading should know that it feels good for me to be writing again, and I appreciate the audience. New Orleans is in my heart and soul, and I'm finally, again, putting that onto this page.

I'm posting again, finally, after almost two months, mainly because I feel I need to write about the shootings at Virginia Tech. These killings have been heavy on my mind since the moment I read about them. Perhaps being in New Orleans has heightened my sensitivity towards injustices, or perhaps it's because I'm around the age of the victims, but no news of strangers has ever affected me so much.

I find it inconceivable the reaction Virginia Tech gave towards the morning shootings. Two people were killed in a dorm room at 7 15 AM, but the school, basically, did nothing. The police were called to investigate, but from what I've read that's about it. They sent out an all school email urging students to exercise caution because of a shooting, but they did this two and a half hours later. The email was sent out close to 10 00 AM. Why they didn't shut down classes, why they didn't make an immediate warning, a more urgent warning, a louder warning, is beyond me. I don't care if the school thought that the shooting was an isolated incident, or that they had no reason to believe there would be a second round of shootings. Two students shot and killed in a dorm room is a tragedy, regardless of the size of the school or the assumptions of the killers intentions. And yes, I realize it's easy to say this only after knowing that a few hours after the first two deaths could come thirty-one more, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable when I say that the response was a joke.

But what I've been most interested in aren't the facts, or the chain of events, or the motives of the killer. It's been the victims.

I think something that's been striking about the timing of these killings is that they happened in the Internet age, where information is so accessible. With websites like MySpace or Facebook, it's easy to look people up, and those who participate in those kinds of sites know that on them you create a public identity for yourself--a superficial one, but an identity nonetheless. You can post your favorite music, your favorite movies, meaningful quotes, you have links to your friends. You can post photographs of whatever you want. Even the photograph you choose to represent yourself carries a huge amount of weight, and are often carefully chosen, because it says something about you: your sense of humor, your artistic sensibilities etc. Indeed, these types of components gradually mold an entire person, to the extent that a total stranger can look at your MySpace page and begin to acquire a sense of you, begin to feel they know you.

Yesterday I was looking at some of the victims MySpace pages, and I felt the sensation I described earlier. Through pictures, through comment posts, this person on my page isn't a stranger anymore. I see snapshots of their lives, comments from their friends, snippets of their favorite songs. And so I'm not mourning the loss of a stranger, but more of a pseudo-friend, an acquaintance at the very least.

One reading that got me the most was on a page for a victim named Ross Alameddine. Like any myspace page, you can post comments on thier homepage, and anyone can read them. Since his death friends have been posting on his page with praises, memories, and goodbyes. But people were posting there before he died, just regular posts about the regular grind.

" ross me dear,

i posted a pic for you haha."



"Happy Birthday LoveDove.

<333" class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Rinda" There was one girl, Leah Nicole, who posted on his page a lot. I can only imagine that she was a close friend of Ross's. She was the last one to write on Ross's page before he was killed. It said the following: "kindly direct your web browser to my myface page and listen to my song, ok? it's tight." So I clicked her page. More noticeable than the song was the huge picture at the top of the page of Ross looking knowlingly in to the camera, next to a poster with a James Dean quote reading "the only greatness for a man is immortality." Scrolling down the page shows wall posts. They go in chronological order, with the most recent posts at the top of the page. There have been a lot since April 16th, and the type of post evolves over the two days. The most recent ones read something like "i'm so glad you're okay!" A few of the early posts are from right after the shooting, from friends who live out of town. "hey girl. are you ok? i heard what happened at tech. i just wanted to make sure you were all right. love you, hun! <3 class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">i'm so glad you're okay" "to, have you heard from anybody else" to, and this is where almost everyone has been identital "I am so sorry to hear about ross." " I'm soo sorry to hear about Ross Leah" " i heard . . . im really sorry . . . i love you pamburger" "Hey, I'm really sorry to hear about you're friend. I am glad you're okay though. Hope everything's going alright." One girl named Pam posted a comment on Leah's wall soon after the shooting, when there was little information, saying the following: "I'm so glad your okay, i hope ross is okay though, ill pray, i love you" I decided to click Pam's myspace link, to see what Leah had to say. When the webpage opens and I scroll down her page I can tell that she doesn't go to Virginia Tech. No one mentions anything about the shootings, whereas on VT myspace's the posts are filled with messages of concern. One person did say something though. Leah wrote the following: Leah Nicole





Apr 16 2007 3:05P

I'm alive, I'm alive! *jumps up and down* I hadn't gone to campus yet, so I was safe in my apartment all day..

But my best friend Ross was in Norris when it happened and no one has heard from him since.. so PLEASE pray for him






I went back to Ross's myspace page, and saw that Leah was both the last person to post on his wall before his death, and the first person after his death. Her last post was something trivial, asking him to check out a song on her website. But i guess anything written about a person before his unexpected death would be trivial. It's easy, in retrospect, to think of something passionate and profound about someone, something you'd want them to keep with them before they died. But this experience has made me think a lot about my friends, and made me realize that I haven't told any of my friends something I'd be satisfied with if i knew they were going to die tomorrow. I ask anyone to do the same thing. Try to cite a single friend that you've said something nice enough for it to be worthy of the last thing you said to them.

Leah's last comment before Ross's death was trivial, a request to check out some music. Her first comment after his death was different, and she wrote:


Apr 16 2007 8:44P

Rossmo, I love you with all my heart. My one regret is that I never actually told you that.




Anyway, I'm done writing for today, but believe me, I'm not done writing about this. I know i haven't written in two months, so I'm not even sure if I even have an audience at this point, but here it is. And if you're interested, here are two links. The first is to Ross's Myspace page, and the second is to a wonderful New York Times feature about the victims.

http://www.myspace.com/kazinkilu

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/20070418_VICTIMS_GRAPHIC.html

Goodbye NCCC!

Well, I really did suffer blogger burnout after Mardi Gras. But, ladies and gentlemen, I'm back, and with an awful lot to talk about.

Hands-On reopened its doors to short term volunteers after Mardi Gras, so the volunteer population once again filled with new people, and I must say the craziness is reenergizing me. Hands-On closed down most projects from the 10-21, only allowing long term volunteers to stay on base. Despite the considerably smaller population, the increased amount of personal space, and the decreased amount of work, the break environment actually burned me out. It was a combination of not getting very much sleep, being in close proximity with the same 3 or 4 people all the time, and a close group of my friends, the long term NCCC group leaving, that collectively made me hit a restless point. It was then I decided I needed to take a little break and planned a New Jersey return for a week or so. Now that people are coming in from all over again, the new flow has made the desire to go home decrease, but I still booked the tickets today. I'll be home from the 16th-26th, so gimme a call.

I want to dedicate this next little section to the NCCC team. I kept planning on posting something for them immediately after they left, but that was almost three weeks ago. Nonetheless, you guys were some of my best friends here, all spectacular and easygoing and different from one another. It's refreshing to have a group where each person has possesses different qualities and idiosynchrasies, but still manages to gel collectively.

I miss you guys, even three weeks later. The new NCCC group isn't nearly as cool as you. But more importantly, and I can't stress this point enough, the individuals don't seem to differ from each other enough. Every one of you were captivating personalities, and brought something different to the table. And I just really miss how collectively, because you were each different from one another, you created this super group, that together had anything anyone could possibly want.

And, to name names...Amber, I always wish you were here, but occasionally I feel like I need you here, because there are few people as level headed and grounded as you, nor are there many people with such great taste in music, or who appreciate good music as much as you.

Anyway, a great, great, great, group.

The Beginning, Middle, and End of Mardi Gras Season

I guess I'll start by saying that I partied harder this Mardi Gras than any other time in my entire life. Maybe even combined. That's right--I'm pitting one weekend against four years of a high school party scene. New Orleans gets packed with tourists during Mardi Gras, tourists all looking for a weekend of drinking and fun. I'll do my best to write this competently, because I'm coming off of no sleep last night, so bear with me. I guess I'll just start going chronologically.

I would say that at least a good number of New Orleanians would agree that Mardi Gras day is somewhat anticlimactic, because much of the partying and celebrating happens the weekend leading up to Tuesday. By Fat Tuesday, everybody is so burned out that it's actually a tradition to see the morning parades, take a long nap in the afternoon, and then go out again at night. All of these pictures are from Mardi Gras weekend. I actually don't have any from today. Let's start by picking any day out of Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday--they basically follow the same formula: Go to the morning parade in the morning, the evening parade in the evening, and then out with friends at night.




The day parades are understandably more kid friendly. Usually the floats are unicorns or cartoon characters. But it's fun to get out there early and set up during the day parades, when there's more room to create a space for yourself. The parades all run down St. Charles, so the popular thing is to watch the floats pass from the Neutral ground in the middle of the road. We got lawn chairs, two coolers, a grill, a bunch of meat, and spent the day watching the parades while having a barbeque. A very nice time.

To keep the momentum going, bands, musicians, and step teams perform. The school marching bands have an added measure of importance, because many of them were not able to perform in Mardi Gras 06', since so many kids were displaced by the storm and the schools were all closed.

___________________

And then come the night parades. With the exception of Zulu and Rex on Mardi Gras, all of the big name parades happen at night. Usually the floats are more satirical, the people act a little wilder. Saturday night Aaron and I, in an attempt to get more beads, dressed up in our Tyvek suits and hardhats. We had signs to represent Hands-On. Before the parades started it was a little disheartening, because the majority of the crowd at Mardi Gras are drunken tourists who, apparently, all tend to assume two guys wearing matching Tyvek suits are gay lovers.

It was an entirely different story once the floats came though. Aaron would get on my shoulders for extra height, and the combination of the effort and the puffy white outfits made us bead magnets. As a sidebar, it's a little ridiculous how intense people get about positioning for and collecting beads. Almost anywhere we stood someone would yell at us because we were standing too close to "their space," and "they had been there all day." And once the bead throwing started it wasn't unusual to see people getting pushed out of the way to prevent a catch.

But anyway, back to the parade itself. The parades seem to be all about light and color. All the floats are flamboyantly colored and brightly lit. Riding between the floats are search lights, fire holders who get tipped quarters as they pass, and beautiful women in extravagant costumes.

And there's plenty of other craziness that, I feel, is given better justice in a picture than in a written description. So, I'll just give a few more pictures, and you can imagine the night for yourselves:

























































Right, so, that was the weekend. Monday was a different schedule. There weren't any morning parades on Monday. What they did have was a music festival right on the Mississippi river that's based around the Zulu and Rex kings meeting the day before Mardi Gras. Really, though, it's meant to be a nice change of pace from the constant, and it was a good opportunity to listen to some high quality free music. I met up with my friend Karin and together we headed down to the river.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was out, and the weather was warm. The weather gods seemed to bless the Mardi Gras weekend, switching from 30 degree weather to 70 degree weather in a couple of days. Our only real agenda was to see the Rebirth brass band, which I've mentioned in the Blog before, and I'll mention them again: they are one of the best brass bands in the city. And the brass bands make up some of the best music in the city. Therefore, by the transitive property, that makes Rebirth Brass band some of the best music in the city. Again, I think the pictures will do better justice than words will, but we just had a lot of fun dancing and grooving to some really funky music. While they were playing a tuba player for another brass band came out and started secondlining. It was just a wonderful, high energy day.

Rebirth!

Karin!

A very nice couple that was grooving out to Rebirth

Karin again, this time with a little extra attention. Follow the eyes.

The tuba player for...

This Brass Band...

Secondlining and greeting the audience.

Monday Night and Tips

And now we get to last night. Last night Tipitinas hosted the jazz/funk/jam outfit Galactic. They're one of the better known New Orleans artists outside of the local music scene (they were pretty popular at my high school), and every year for the past 10 years they've played an all night gig at Tipitinas the Monday leading into Mardi Gras (intelligently called Lundi Gras). The event was sold out. I had bought two tickets in advance, so my Cuvvy and I were fine. Mahi and Chandra, however, were not. They had expected to be able to purchase tickets at Tipitinas, and when we arrived there and tickets were sold out, it seemed all was lost. Enter Allen. Allen is an intern at Tipitinas. He perfectly fits the lazy stoner rocker type you see in movies. He seems like the type of guy that could quote every line of This Is Spinal Tap. We stumbled into conversation with him outside, and he took a liking to us. So much so that he suggested a way (although a way that had never been tried by anyone he knew) of sneaking the ticket-less members of our party in to Tipitinas. And, all I can say is that it worked. Thank you, Allen. You were directly responsible for making the night.

And what a night it was. To put things in to perspective, Tipitinas upped the price of a can of Red Bull to five dollars, cause they knew people were going to be buying them. Galactic's deal is that they play until the sun comes up, and not only did they accomplish this feat, they did it with incredible energy. In fact, the energy of the whole place surprised me. I expected going in to the night that around three in the morning I'd see sleepy Hipsters slumped in to dark corners of the venue. But I don't think I saw anyone asleep that night.

Galactic knows how to jam. They're the type of music that people nod their whole bodies to. It's not as good for dancing in the way the brass bands are, but it's extremely groovy. And they brought in an eclectic audience. Lundi Gras tradition encourages people to dress up, so there were men dressed as women, women dressed as Elvis, and all sorts of colorful, more Mardi Gras oriented costumes in the mix. The only thing about the audience was that it was 100 percent white, which was a little surprising considering Galactic is so funk oriented. I would have liked to of seen the audience a little more mixed up, but Galactic does have a big jam band influence, which would explain it.

So, Galactic rocked, I tried to do my best to keep up with them, and at seven in the morning the show was over and people stumbled out of Tipitinas bleary eyed, got some breakfast, and then walked to the final parades of the year, Rex and Zulu.

And I guess these parades were fun? It was a little hard to tell at that point. I remember thinking as the floats passed "okay, you need beads, you need to yell and jump and scream and maaaybe throw in the fact that you're a volunteer. Okay, do these things." But when I checked up on my body, I realized that all I was doing was staring as the float went by, my arms raised in a silent sort of desperation. I was tired. Too tired to take pictures. Too tired to yell. Too tired to celebrate. And when you can no longer celebrate during Mardi Gras, you know that's it. It was a fun Mardi Gras. But it was time to go home.

So there it was. My Mardi Gras weekend. Mardi Gras was anti climactic. I walked around the French Quarter for a good chunk of the day, taking pictures of the outrageous costumes (which, I suppose, I will show another day. I took an hour long nap. And I spent a good while working on this blog post. I'll have a new one up in a few days. I still want to talk about the glorious NCCC team that left last week. Oh, and I'm digging the whole havin a camera thing, so expect more pictures.

Peace!