The Gap Year of Power

While writing an English Paper

2007-09-30T12:38:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-14T14:51:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-17T22:55:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-24T00:04:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-23T04:33:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-03T23:10:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-03T21:34:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-04-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-03-02T19:59:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-20T15:46:00.000-08:00

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!

Mardi Gras Time!

2007-02-17T10:16:00.000-08:00

Life is crazy right now!

It's Mardi Gras. I've been going to at least one parade every night they've had them. Here are a few pictures. I'll have more, as well as updates, later. But for now, enjoy. I'm sorry I've been so bad about blogging. It's busy here. But a lot of stuff has been happening! I'll get to it!

As Promised, Though Considerably Late.

2007-02-06T18:09:00.000-08:00

So, my apologies for taking so long to send out this blog post, but the wireless internet access has been down the past week or so, and I haven't had the opportunity to write any blogs. But anyway. Here I am. I'm going to resist the urge to "briefly" update you with current goings on before launching into what I really want to talk about, because every time I've tried to do that I end up investing too much time on it and don't have the energy to talk at all about my main point. So the deal is, I have a bunch of pictures of people and places, and I want to share them. This is Hands-On:

Well, I suppose we'll start with me. That's me in a Tyvek suit and full-face respirator. That is also me looking bad ass.

This is Reggie. He hails from South Africa, and came to America a couple of years ago, right after graduating high school. He wandered around the country for those two years until finding his way to Hands-On five months ago. He has completely embraced the expression "work hard, play hard." Every time I go out with him it turns crazy. But he's usually up at 6 a.m. every morning, and works as hard as anyone I've ever met.

Right. Now. This is Tyshon. I mentioned him a long time ago in a previous post, but haven't dedicated any real time to talking about hm. TyShon is a kid from the neighborhood of Hands-On. I actually don't know his story that well. He's 14, he's in 7th grade, and he got in touch with Hands-On in the spring of last year through a volunteer who was doing a program at Tyshon's school. The volunteer, Tom, ended up taking TyShon under his wing, and almost every day for a solid month dedicated time to doing something constructive with him. I've basically taken on that role indefinitely.

I think the biggest challenge with TyShon is that he's a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. TyShon is 14, but he certainly doesn't act it. Usually he's rude, he talks a lot of shit, and he likes pushing people's buttons. So, people at Hands-On treat him like a kid. He gets loads of attention and rarely gets scolded, but TyShon frequently tells people that he wishes they would stop babying him. At the same time, when it comes to me taking him out in the evenings, or having conversations with him, I tend to treat him like an adult, like a peer. In these situations, TyShon says something along the lines of "Go-lly Mathias! I'm just a kid!" TyShon craves to be taken seriously without wanting any of the responsibility that comes with it. I guess this is something everybody has to go through, usually around TyShon's age, but what makes it harder in his case is his seeming unwillingness to be nice and warm to people. He's always insulting guys and flirting with girls, and this pushes some people away. This is what I've been working on with TyShon the most.

At the same time, TyShon has a good head on his shoulders. TyShon gets a lot of peer pressure from friends and neighborhood to not trust white people. Thankfully he understands that thinking this way is stupid and shallow. I think a place like Hands-On is one of the best things he could have, because it gives him a window outside of the closed-mindedness of the ghetto-street mentality. He gets a lot of support and attention at Hands-On, two things that living in a bad neighborhood and having a questionable family life don't give him.

So, I guess that's what keeps me going, knowing that his time here is necessary for him turning in to a good kid. He can certainly test my patience, because, again, it's frustrating to hear him ask constantly to be taken seriously but then object to me not babying him. The whole time with Tyshon, though, is giving me a different perspective of New Orleans. I get to hang out with a local kid at his peak period of self-consciousness and emotional development. It's an interesting scenario.

This is a shot of our bunk house (at a rather unoccupied moment). It's rows of bunks with little space in between. You have your bunk, you can put up a privacy sheet to sequester yourself in, but that's as much personal space as you get. This lack of personal space hasn't really bothered me yet, although it can be frustrating to have absolutely no place to catch your breath in solitude. But, that bunk is my neighborhood.

This is Reggie with his best friend, Amanda. Reggie just turned 21. Amanda is in her mid-thirties. They're both South African, though they met at a Westchester country club they were both working at. Since then, about a year and a half ago, they've been completely inseparable. They've lived all over the country together, and they've been here for the past six or seven months. Amanda is one of the funniest people I've ever met in my life, absolutely ridiculous and profane but a heart of gold. She makes everyone feel loved when she's talking to them. She is unique, and it's satisfying knowing that I will never meet anyone like her in my life. Thank you, Hands-On!

And speaking of unique people I'll never again meet, Chet falls comfortably in to that category. Chet is a hardened dude. He's spent 12 of his 43 years in prison, something that I'd probably be apprehensive writing here if he talk so openly about it himself. He has, for instance, a MySpace prison blog, where you can read a few of his wild and crazy tales about life in the joint. He's also battled with drug and alcohol addiction, some troubling family issues, and then, of course, his own inner demons. Since his time here, though, he's mellowed incredibly. I'm not saying he won't yell at you if you're doing something stupid. But, usually he's yelling because...well...you're doing something stupid. Yes he's the first to criticize, but he's also the first to compliment, the first to praise, and it's qualities like this he's developed at Hands-On that, in a similar way as with TyShon, make it a perfect place for him. He has a strong support group here to help him out, and on the flip-side, being in such a social environment helps his people skills.
I love Chet, even though he can be a real hard ass sometimes. And I will never, ever, ever, meet a guy like him again.

A little sample of Chet's softer side.

That's it for now. If I can get more pictures I certainly will. Again, I am soo sorry it's taken me two weeks to write this. And to the select few dedicated readers of this blog, I promise I'll be more consistent in the future.

Peace!

A New Post After A Brief Hiatus

2007-01-27T07:39:00.000-08:00

Well. Today is Saturday, and I have the day off. I haven't any intense things to talk about, but there's been a bit going on.

There was that stomach virus going around that, thankfully, I missed. Although I was one of the first to get a bad cold that circulated right after the stomach virus. It was bizarre having different types of sicknesses flow in to one another. There hasn't been a single moment in the past two and a half weeks where Hands-On has been without some sort of sickness.

Kirby came a couple of weeks ago and, I think, has really eased in to the community and lifestyle. I was a little nervous knowing she'd be doing this work having come from back surgery this summer and having finished physical therapy a day before she headed down, but it's not really affecting her. And, with her down here, I get to take her to my favorite places and see my favorite bands and watch her experience it all for the first time. I don't think I'll ever tire of watching friends experience the sights, sounds, and tastes of New Orleans. I wouldn't say I take the culture of New Orleans for granted, but it's definitely something you get used to. Watching her face light up at a brass band show, though, is a reminder that all of this is unique.

Now, a movie recommendation. Everyone that reads this must, must, must see Pan's Labyrinth. It's been dubbed a fairy tale for adults (it does have an R rating), but please don't let a fantasy movie deter anyone. It's my favorite movie of the past couple of years, and the cinematography and the art design are absolutely amazing. Please, please, please, please see this movie.

The last thing to mention would be that I finished my Team Lead training yesterday, so I'm know certified to take out gutting crews. Mold would be a part of the training, but Hands-On has temporary stopped demolding houses. The way the demolding process works:
volunteers scrub all the studs with a wire brush, then vacuum up the dust and mold spores after the scraping is complete. The volunteers then wipe all the wood in the house with Pine Sol. The final step is sealing the wood with a type of primer that also traps and prevents the growth of mold, called Kilz. Hands-On does all the gutting and molding services for free, but doesn't pay for supplies. So we ask that the homeowners pay the 150 dollars for the Kilz, and then we'll apply it for free. The problem is that so few homeowners are here, and are so hard to contact, that the demolded houses sit for months without the Kilz and eventually, inevitably, grow back their mold. It's a bit of a bummer, but I guess if the mold is growing back, it's a good thing that HONO is trying to revamp their demolding process for something better.
Pretty soon I'll be doing construction TL training as well. We just got a bunch of money from a soap opera...?Guiding Light?...to work on three houses from start to finish. The head of the project needs some long term volunteers to take out crews and work with crews to insulate, hang dry wall, mud, sand, paint, maybe even do some electrical work. I'll keep everyone informed on that as it progresses, but I'm excited to do something constructive.

And last, but certainly not least, I'd like to take a moment to celebrate the New Orleans Saints. I have never been affected by a sports team as much as I was by the Saints. You really had to be in New Orleans during football season to understand how the Saints were infused in to every part of the city. Every time we saw music people shouted Saints' game chants, and the groups would break in to "When the Saints Go Marching In." Every restaurant and Bar had saint's posters, or "Geaux Saints" written on their chalk boards. And it seemed everyone in the entire city stopped to watch the game on Sunday. You didn't have to be a sports fan to support them. There are many here who will say "I'm not a football fan, but I'm a Saints fan."
I think it's a pretty obvious metaphor, so I won't dwell on it too much, but the Saints really had become saints in the face of Katrina, helping to pick the city off the ground as it rose to the Super Bowl. And they also provided a form of escapist entertainment for the current problems of the city: the low population, the horribly slow and ineffective Road Home program, the huge surge of violence in the past few weeks.

In any event, I am now a Saints fan, and will continue to be in Boston. Wow, Boston. To be honest, writing that has been the first time I've thought about my life up there. I'm not trying to make it sound like I had forgotten I was going to school there in September and just remembered. I'm always thinking about the fact that eventually I'll be leaving New Orleans, or more generally ending my year off of freedom and exploration, and going on to college like most kids in my situation. But I guess it took the thought of rooting for sports teams up there to make me think about what life is going to be like. I'll have new friends and a new social scene and new bars and new music and a completely new lifestyle; I'll be learning a new city from scratch. And shit, I don't know why all this is depressing me, but it is. I can't really explain it, but as soon as I wrote "I am now a Saints fan, and will continue to be in Boston" I got a little sad.
I think I'm going to miss the freedom of choice. Right now, If i wanted to, I could finish this post and then pack my stuff, go the airport, and fly back to New York, or LA, or Chicago. On Jet Blue round trip tickets to Chicago are 115 dollars. I've already thought about going there. I was planning on going when I was done here in April, but at the same time, I get to decide when I'm done here. And being here has shown me that college or high school don't have to be the best years of your life. I want to go to BU, I want to go to college, or at least I understand that I should want to and that I will enjoy it while I'm there. But I think this has been the first time where I've come to understand the main symptom of taking a year off and the main fear of parents everywhere: that because of their experiences during their gap year, that they will not want to go back to school.

It's trivial stuff that I'll miss: Po Boys, brass bands, walking through the french quarter. But God, that's the stuff that makes New Orleans unique, those things are completely unnecessary but so wonderful and special and specific to here. Whatever. It's a bit awkward that I'm talking about all this now. I'm still here for another four or five months, probably. But all this just just, BAM, hit me right now, and I thought it was worth talking about. I'm not doing a very good job talking about it. Let me talk about it in five months. But man, I've never experienced the power of words so strongly. Before I made that comment about Boston I was feeling completely differently then after I had written it, and hadn't even the time to realize what had made me feel differently.

Maybe in a later post I'll be a little more poignant. But for now, life is good, life is good, life is so so good. At the very least "life is good, without it we'd all be dead." Tomorrow, I promise, promise, to have a blog entry showing pictures of some of the important people at Hands On and their stories. So, look out for that. But, for now, farewell!

Quite a week.

2007-01-18T17:05:00.000-08:00

Or two weeks, I suppose. It's hard; there's always a lot going on here, and I try and filter out what has been most interesting down here, but inevitably I'm always forgetting some things. So this post is going to be an attempt at catching up on everything that I've missed in the past two weeks that I want to talk about.

Most recently, there's been a stomach flu that has infiltrated Hands-On and is getting its volunteers sick. I don't know if any of you have ever been forced to live in an intensely communal environment during a contagious sickness, but it is terrifying. Every day I wake up with dread in my heart as I watch my courageous fellow volunteers get picked off like flies. I've been using hand sanitizer like a mad man, and have gotten ritualistic in my daily habits. I never use the front bathrooms at Hands-On because I haven't used those since the virus and so far I haven't gotten sick. I only sleep on my right side because that's what I'd been doing the first couple days of the virus and so far I haven't gotten sick. I have the tendency to always, always, always catch whatever virus goes around, so I'm determined to beat fate this time.

Being sick is the only time I really miss home at Hands-On. It really is impossible to have a moment of isolation that lasts longer than an hour here, and those are the moments I wish I could just lock myself in my room and sleep. It's also hard to not work on a work day here, because the drive and (unintentionally, of course) the pressure to work hard is so strong that skipping a day to rest feels awful. Well, I would imagine. I've never taken a sick day here. I will say that wearing a respirator in a moldy house while you have a head cold is a pain in the ass.

Last Friday my friend Kirby came to Hands-On. She's going to be here for a month. So excellent! She was the friend that I stayed with in Atlanta on my way down here, and in the first few weeks of being at Hands-On, I did a lot of phone talking about Hands-On and a little bit of convincing and now she's here. Having an old and established friend is a bit of a relief. I've made this point on the blog before, but one of the tragic things about friendships at Hands-On is that the majority of volunteers are only here for a couple of weeks before they go back home, so no matter how close you get to someone here and how wonderful it is, the truth lurks in the back of your mind that this is only temporary, that once they go home you will keep in touch for a while, but your lives are too separate to be as you were for those one or two weeks. Having Kirby here eliminates that. I've known Kirby for four years, and she'll go back in a month, but we will remain friends.

But now, at the risk of sounding contradictory, I think that I made a friend here that will go past the two weeks at Hands-On. A group from Skidmore came a couple of weeks ago, and I had the privilege of getting pretty close with a couple of them. One of them in particular, M.R., I think I'll stay friends with for a long time. I don't think I've ever met anyone that was so easy to talk to, such a natural conversationalist. Here's where having a blog gets a little tricky. Talking about the specifics of a friendship, what makes it tick, is an intense and personal thing, too personal for a public journal. So all I'll say is that I find it inconceivable that three weeks ago I didn't have such a great friend. In fact, three weeks ago I didn't know you existed.

Isn't that interesting, everyone? There are so many inspiring people here, but before they came I had no idea any of them were even on the face of the earth. Everyone should experience that. It makes the time here richer.

YAY SAINTS

2007-01-14T09:05:00.000-08:00

WHO DAT? WHO DAT? WHO DAT SAY THEY GON' BEAT THEM SAINTS?!?!

This city LOVES its team. The energy is incredible.

The Fun That Is New Orleans

2007-01-12T12:37:00.000-08:00

New Orleans has conditioned me to a life of fun. I'd been sick these past couple

of days, and had to rest up for a few days. It was nice to get the sleep and the relaxation (although gutting and wearing a respirator with a head cold is not fun), but I was ready to go out again. Thursday night is always a good night in New Orleans. It's the night that the Soul Rebels play at Le Bon Temps Roule. But last night was also featured a spectacular show at Tipitina's, I imagine one of the few jazz clubs in New Orleans most non-New Orleanians have heard of. It was a night featuring three brass bands (Free Agents, Treme, and then ReBirth, who are featured in that photo) with a whole bunch of Mardi Gras Indians. I don't have any pictures from last night--I broke my camera a couple of weeks ago...not the fancy one though--but these are what Mardi Gras Indians look like:

Music always starts an hour later than the posted show time here, so I waited around a bit, and ended up meeting a huge group of Bard students who are here volunteering. One of them used to volunteer at Hands-On, and was Ty Shon's Big Brother back in August, the role I'm now filling. I haven't forgotten about writing a Ty Shon post. I'll have pictures of him Sunday, and I promise I'll write it then.

It was easy to break the ice.

"You go to Bard? I applied there--I was SOOOO close to going!"

They were all hipsters and the girls were all pretty. I don't know what it is about that school, but really, every girl there is alternative, brunette, and attractive. Once the music started they made up the bulk of the dancers, and they were a great crowd: enthusiastic and in motion. And the music itself...what can I say about it. The point of New Orleans jazz is to make you move. Very little of it is cerebral, and the players are rarely masters of their instrument. But they are masters of the groove, and the brass bands are at the top of the hill. The two best were the Treme Brass Band and, of course, ReBirth.

Treme was much more traditional. The tempo was slower and it wasn't as funk oriented. But the instrumentalists were great and they had great harmonies. One of their trumpet players could play two trumpets at the same time. The two highlights of the night were when they played a slow dirge for Darryl Shavers, a drummer for the Hot 8 Brass band who was killed a few days ago. It was done a la jazz funereal. I can't really explain what it sounds like. Just Google jazz funeral and look for a sound clip. But its slow and all the instruments play their own melodies and drunkenly overlap, and it's incredibly emotional and beautiful. At a jazz funeral, a brass band follows the casket and the pallbearers and the crowd as the body is carried to the cemetary. Slow, mournful music is played all the way to the grave, but once the body is in the ground, the music turns up beat and happy, and the slow percession becomes a happy, upbeat celebration of life. It's one of those amazing, beautiful, unique qualities of New Orleans culture. I don't care where I am when I die, but I want a jazz funeral. Treme stuck to the theme. They played slow and wonderfully, and when the finished they broke out and everybody started dancing.

The second highlight was Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, a great New Orleans player who stopped by to play a few songs. He's a circular breather, and he used it last night, going on this funky three note groove and holding it for close to a minute, until finally spiraling out. The crowd went nuts.

ReBirth played afterwords, and they're probably the best brass band in New Orleans. And I could go on and on about how good they are, and the songs they played, but I don't want to get redundant. Besides, I don't know enough about music theory to explain what it is about their sound that makes them so good, why their harmonies are so tantalizing or their arrangements are clever. Then again, I think what makes New Orleans' funk and jazz so great is how accesible it all is. It's all about feeling good and wanting to dance, something I think only the most timid of wallflowers would want to avoid.

I'm off until next time. Saint's are playing tomorrow. Pray for them.

A Long Dinner Line

2007-01-08T16:04:00.000-08:00

means that I have some time to kill. I realize I haven't written a post in a little while, so what better time to write something new?

But oh, lord, the spirit of this city is vibrant. Yesterday was a lazy Sunday afternoon until I heard the sound of horns and drums in the distance. I ran outside and and the Perfect Gentlemen Krewe was having a parade with hundreds of people following. Everyone was drinking and second lining and skipping and the Hot Eight Brass Band was getting funky. A friend and I followed them four an hour. Hopefully I'll have some pictures soon.

In what other city does this happen so regularly?

Hands-On has been up and running again for the better part of a week now. Coming back took a little bit of readjusting. I returned to a few missing faces and many new ones. It's something that I don't think I'll ever get completely used to, forming friendships you know are temporary. Most of the volunteers are college groups staying for a week or two at the most, so people leave when you feel you're just getting to really know them. I was sad at the beginning of the break because the friends I made all left and I stayed here, and I'll be sad again once the friends I've made after the break leave as well. Oh well. It is what it is.

Hands-On started up on Thursday, which means I haven't had many days of work since my return. Thursday was a tedious day of reorganizing all the tools in the tool shed, and then heading over to sand and repaint a house that a former group of volunteers had done a shoddy job on. There were many unsanded, flaky areas that could not be painted, so we had to go and tidy up. I'll say now, there are few jobs as mind numbing as sanding pieces of wood, but conversation and a sense of humor keep morale up.

The night was a whole 'nother story. I haven't really mentioned the night life in New Orleans, so I will say now: I'm having more fun in this city than I've had in my entire life. Every night is music and fun and friends. And every Thursday, the Soul Rebels Brass band plays at Le Bon Temps Roule. This is one of the many brass bands in New Orleans, but also one of the best, with an emphasis on the beat. This is one of the funkiest brass bands, the one that makes me want to dance the most. I saw them last month for the first time at a venue called the Dragon's Den and ended up sitting next to the girlfriend of one of the band members. Her name's Lavan (or at least that's how it's pronounced). She's as tall as I am, and she can tear it on the dance floor. It's intimidating watching that big a woman move so quickly. But she's extremely nice, and since that first meeting I've seen the Soul Rebels (and her) a bunch of times, and she's gotten me in to all the venues that are 21+. We saw them at Le Bon Temps last Thursday, and we got back at 2:30 in the morning. They had only finished their first set. I'm telling you, this city is one, big, continuous party.

Friday was my day off (thankfully): sleeping in and watching movies. I saw Snakes on a Plane, which, honestly, I don't think pushed through the "Bad Movies" category into the "So Bad Its Good" category. But I'll admit, hearing Sammy Jackson use "fuck" in various sentences at the end of the movie was highly entertaining.

Saturday is a change of pace for me at Hands-On. Normally Saturday is another work day like any other, but on my Saturdays I spend the day with a kid named Ty Shon. He's a neighborhood kid who started hanging around the Hands-On base five or six months ago, and since has become the adopted son of Hands-On. I've taken on a big brother role for him, and every Saturday we go to a volunteer bike shop and work on bikes from 2 to 6. It's a volunteer bike shop, separate from Hands-On, where a buyer will buy a bike in questionable condition for fifteen dollars and then fix it themselves with parts provided by the bike shop. At the end of the day (or two, or three, depending on the condition of the bike--some were caught in the flood) they have a bike and they know how to build and maintain it. We work there and then bike over to Cafe Du Monde for some beignets.

My relationship with Ty Shon is interesting, and deserving of a separate blog post. I'll have more on him later. For now though, I'll end by saying that time here is just as fun and dynamic as its been from the beginning.

And please, to any and all who are reading this, if you are coming to New Orleans, or thinking about volunteering, CALL ME! 609 577 1528. I highly, highly, highly, highly encourage it.

Farewell.

A Rainy Day Good For Any Blog

2006-12-30T16:21:00.000-08:00

Lord.

It's been a while since I last wrote, but it feels good. It feels a bit like the first day of wearing shorts after a long winter.

A lot has been happening the past couple of weeks, so I suppose i'll just start chipping away at the moments.

Well, I've been on break for the past week and a half. Yes, even volunteer organizations have scheduled holiday breaks. They were apparently much needed for many of the long term volunteers, who were become a bit burned out from months of work without an extended time to recuperate. We got off the 21st, the day my parents came down and visited for a week. We celebrated Christmas in our hotel room with a faux christmas tree made of a long cardboard tube and pieces of cut wrapping paper. It was nice, if a little unconventional. Christmas treated me well, with my "big present" being the promise of a fancy little Canon Digital Rebel XTi. So eventually i'll start having more big, crisp, beautiful pictures to accompany this blog. I do have some for this post though...

of the ninth ward, something my parents wanted to see while they were down here. I'm apprehensive to start with any sort of opinion, so instead just look for yourself:

____________________

These two are the entrance and kitchen of one house in the Lower Ninth. Believe it or not, this actually isn't that bad. The door lead right into the living and kitchen area. I took that from the door because it felt too strange to walk through the houses without a Tyvek suit on or a crow bar in hand. Without a job to do, being there felt too invasive

____________________

Some Hurricane Automobiles
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January 4th, 2007

Right. Back to the posts.

I've found it interesting here to listen to people who have just returned from the ninth ward talk about their experience. They usually say something about how horrible it is, how it was worse than they imagined. How the entire car ride was silence. This was my second time visiting the ninth ward, and my reaction was the complete opposite. Things have gotten tremendously better there since March, although I suppose for someone who's never been there before it would be hard to think that from the photos. But I'd like to take this time to share something I wrote from my Biloxi journal waaaay back in March of 2006 from when I visited the 9th ward with Lawrenceville on a Spring Break trip:

March 8^th, 2006

Every house I walked by today, every piece of rubble on the ground, every piece of debris, is worth its own journal entry. I walked past houses that had been torn off of their foundations and thrown into the streets like play sets. I peered through a broken window of one of these houses, one that had caved in, and saw the ceiling of a house on its floor. The furniture was broken; walls had collapsed; rubble poured through every open space, and six months of dust and mold covered everything.

And I’d like to say that these were things unlike anything I’d ever seen before, but some of what I saw was so horrifying it almost bordered on the cliché. Today was cloudy, unusually cold. In the middle of the street was a child’s bicycle, this symbol of innocence, rusted, mangled, and broken, its bent wheel spinning and creaking in the wind.

It felt surreal. I saw children’s toys next to concrete slabs next to washing machines next to clothing, all scattered about on the same yard.

I saw sights that were strikingly bleak and poetic in their horror, sights that were absolutely chilling but, in a way, perversely beautiful, because I saw today a strange relationship between order and chaos.

You walk through these streets, past washing machines, refrigerators, bicycles, windowpanes, all with their 90 degree angles, glossy sheens, and perfect cylinders, but you see them in this reduced state, this destroyed state: dented, damaged, mangled, dirtied and thrown about…It’s an experience unlike anything else, and if this day has taught me one thing, it’s that man’s own power is microscopic when pitted against nature’s.

My experience of the ninth ward this past break was nothing like that is March. It's much cleaner now, with no houses in the middle of the streets, very few large piles of rubble, and very few collapsed houses. It looks very different now, and in many ways better, but that's the interesting thing about all the clean up down here. It requires a tremendous amount of energy to make something look genuinly nice again. You want to beautify a hit area so you remove all this ugly rubble, but now you just have a big empty hole where a big pile of rubble used to be.

Actually, and I'm finding it hard to explain this sentiment, part of me found my recent trip to the ninth ward a little more unsettling than the first time. The emptiness of the 9th this time was almost overwhelming. There are very few houses, very few cars, absolutely no people, but generally no signs life or community. Back in March, even though most of the houses were splintered piles of wood, there was still something there, filling those voids. It still felt something like a neighborhood, like something that somebody once lived in, instead of a deadzone between two trenches. I also feel that back in March the destruction was so bad, so unfamiliar that it seemed a bit unreal. I'd experienced emptiness before the 9th ward, but I hadn't experienced a house on top of a car. I hadn't experienced so many miles of destroyed houses that the senses overload and you lose touch.

So, I suppose I'm describing a bit of a contradiction. The progress in the 9th ward made me happy, but made me feel worse than the first time I went there. But I've rarely been internally consistant during my work in New Orleans. I'm constantly feeling a combination of emotions, and they're frequently at odds with one another. It's completely possible to be angry and happy and frustrated and satisfied all at the same time while gutting a house. What about this place isn't complicated? Very little.

I'll write more later. For now, ta ta.

Oh, and I also want to say that I recently published a post I had started a long time ago, back in the beginning of December, but never finished. So if you want to read something new, look back to early December. !

!!!!!

2006-12-27T11:54:00.000-08:00

just a quick little post. I fiiinnnaallly have some internet access, and i'm just giving the quick message that i'll have a blog post soon, sorry it's taken me so long to write a new one!

Tonight,

2006-12-14T16:35:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day I saw the power of the community here at Hands-On. I've been here for almost two weeks, and this place has become more familiar. Specifically, the people that were just faces when I arrived now have identities and unique qualities. They've become friends, and I care about a lot of them.

Tonight many of these volunteers had to say good bye, and it was one of the most moving experiences since my time here. Hands-On New Orleans has a strong relationship with Americorps, and there are shifts of teams that come through for two months of their ten month program. This group arrived in early October and their leaving tomorrow, and as is Hands-On tradition, the night before someone leaves they are given the option of standing up and speaking.

The air in the dining hall was quiet and heavy when the Americorps volunteers stood up to mark their farewell. They had become a force at Hands-On. They were all eager and interesting, they were all team leaders, but most importantly they had, with the exception of a few long term volunteers, been here the longest, which meant they've had the most time to forge a relationship with Hands-On and it's city.

They decided to speak in order of oldest to youngest, figuring a forced order would be easier. From the oldest, Kyle, to the youngest, Jennifer, they had the absolute attention of everyone in the dining hall. Some speeches were funny, some were heartbreaking, some were utterly poignant, but what struck me was that they were all unique. Each person had something different to say about their experience here, which made me realize, and a point which a few of the volunteers commented on, the time spent here is so rich and full of experience and friendship and enjoyment. I saw these people standing, speaking slowly, forcing themselves not to cry, looking awkward, shuffling their feet, not knowing what to say, laughing because they didn't know what to say, laughing so other people would laugh, laughing so it was easier not to cry, and I developed an incredible appreciation for what you can accomplish in your time volunteering here. Though every person had a unique perspective on their time here, each came away with one key sentiment: that we are here because we want to help people, and that this is an incredibly special quality.

One of the girls leaving stood up and brought up a point that I've been thinking about since she spoke. She encouraged us to think about our New Orleans environment after we've left Hands-On. She told us that blue tarps, moldy houses, and piles of debris are all around us, and so we are aware of it all, but that the rest of the country is not. And we can go home and tell people about the things we see here, but that ultimately, even if they think about the things for you tell them for an hour, for a night, they won't be moved by the devastation down here, moved by the work that needs to be done, moved by the work that does need to be done. She had no solution, but she begged anyone returning home to try their hardest to make people think about New Orleans, to care about the blue tarps and moldy houses and piles of debris. This is the future job for former Katrina Volunteers. We are a small group that cares about changing the Gulf Coast, but the big challenge is making the rest of the country care.

I thought about Trenton, my home, and (despite the fact it certainly has its problems) its lack of tarps and overgrown neighborhoods and rubble, and in a perverse way found the idea of living in a place without all that unsettling. I still don't have a perfectly clear answer for why that is, why part of me is comforted by all the damage here, but having thought about it considerably I have come up with a guess. This place revolves around the chaos of New Orleans. Its purpose is to clean up the filth and rubble. Having been here for a while I'm now comfortable with knowing that this place is going to be a second home for (at least) the next three months, and these people are going to become a second family. So why wouldn't I be rattled by the idea of living somewhere without tarps and rubble? My life here revolves around those things. If the volunteers are the heart and soul of Hands-On, then the derelict houses and debris are its body, and the idea of having all these thoughts and emotions of New Orleans swirling around my head without any means to take physical action is disturbing.

To be honest, thinking about all of these things is a little bit draining. I'm sorry my last two posts have been so serious and emotional, but there is such an incredibly amount to think about here that writing is a necessary way to process it. This is something that's been a challenge in writing these blog entries--distilling what I feel into what I really need to talk about. Every day there is an eye opening experience, and based simply on how much I've been feeling since my time here it's unbelievable to me that I've only been here for a week and a half. It's felt much richer than one would expect in such a short increment of time. But I’m tired from writing now and I'm stopping. I need a lighter blog entry. I have a ridiculously awesome story, but that's for next time.

Getting Into the Swing of Things

2006-12-08T18:59:00.000-08:00

Well.

Today was a good day. A very good day.

I'm finally settling in to this place a little bit. My body is adjusting to the daily schedule. I'm getting tired earlier, I'm used to waking up earlier. My skin is less sensitive to the cold of drying off after an evening outdoor shower. And I'm getting to become friends with more of the long term volunteers, whose cohesion I initially found a bit intimidating.

I'm learning new skills. I did some roofing for a few days, and today I hung drywall on a ceiling. Any opportunity to try a new trade I immediately jump on to.

The home owner whose house we were working on had many interesting stories to tell about his Katrina experience. He had to get out of his home because he saw how fast the water was rising, and decided the best thing to do was to swim to Elysian Fields Ave, where the nicer, bigger houses were, so he could climb on to a taller house, a two story house. The idea of navigating through your city by swimming 10 feet over the streets is almost impossible for me to imagine.
He was eventually shipped off to Little Rock, Arkansas, but disliked it so much that he returned back to New Orleans. He's not living where he used to, though. He's living in a tiny shotgun house his family left him. I imagine his family is staying wherever they were relocated to. It's essentially three rooms, with a kitchen, a bedroom/living room, and a bathroom which is connected to the bedroom. He has a stapled sheet in front of the doorway seperating the two sections of the house. I peaked past the sheet and saw a mattress on the floor, a tv on the floor, various forms of clutter on the floor, and an electric heater. Luckily he has electricity; he has light, a sports team to watch, a little bit of heat. But his house has no ceiling and a bad roof, so he's been completely exposed to the elements. His house drops to the outdoor temperature, and it's been an unusually cold winter, with night temperatures dipping into the twenties.

This is a level of bareness that I'm not used to experiencing on such an up front and personal level. So the work we're doing feels that much more important. The dry wall hanging was that much more satisfying because not only were we putting up a ceiling, we were doing it for someone who will literally go to sleep tonight with something over his head when before he had almost nothing.

There are lots of people experiencing similar situations to the one in my example, and most of them are not fortunate enough to be getting help. You really can't think about all of it, because it quite literally, and I am not exaggerating this point, will destroy you. I was talking for a long time with a girl volunteering short term with Kalamazoo College, who had been crying while writing her journal because she has been working with eight to ten year old school kids, and has witnessed first hand the awful teachers, the awful role models, the utter anger and frustration that these kids are experiencing, and are powerless to avoid. She has tapped into the social consequences of the Hurricane, things that are much more complex and in some ways much more devestating than the physical ones, because they don't have the clean cut answers "money and labor." She looked around the room in tears and asked me how it is that we all seem okay, that we don't feel completely weighed down by such an overwhelming amount of problems. I didn't really have an answer for her then, but thinking about it now I realize that we don't seem that way because we can't let ourselves think so much about the horrible effects of the hurricane. We've all had our moments of ontological shock--I certainly had mine back in March--and we've learned that to constanatly dwell on these issues is suicide. We learn that the best thing to do is to compartmentalize our emotions, and seperate the physical action of gutting a house from the emotional reactions of why we're gutting a house: what happened here, what the home-owners had to go through, what used to be in the house, what the house used to look like. Those things get pushed back, in a sense ignored, save for the fact that we know that what were are doing is something good and something value and something that is making a difference in someone's life. And we know that pushing these emotions back is not the same thing as being apathetic, because anybody who didn't care about the issues in New Orleans would not be volunteering. Apathy has been a crime here, an absolute plague in this city, resulting in what a friend called in conversation a subtle form of genocide. People are not caring about the people here, and it is destroying them.

It's all been a lot to think about, but the combination of extraordinary people I'm encountering and the truly positive work I'm doing has made me feel incredibly at peace with myself. I know I'm truly needed here, and thus I know i truly have a place here.

And so, today was a good day.

The First Couple Days Of Hands-On, And Such

2006-12-05T17:29:00.000-08:00

So...

I arrived in New Orleans on Saturday night, spent the night with the wonderful Farley family (without Joanna, unfortunately) and the next day drove to the site of Hands-On Neans. This will be my home for the next few months. I am an absolute idiot and am withoug camera at the moment, but I'll have one soon. In the mean time, here are my comments.

All the volunteers are staying in a church, with a dining room, kitchen, and a huge bunk room. It's definitely close living, with bunks pushed together, nothing more than a sheet separating them acting as a privacy wall. But I got here early on a Sunday during a weekend of calm, and the volunteer director (who has taken me under her wing and who I have taken a fancy to) picked me out the best available bunk, and it is suiting me well. There's a bit more privacy, and a bit more quiet. Even so, it's a strange thought that my 6 1/2 X 2 1/2 bunk, and the space underneath it, is what I'm calling home for the next 3 months.

The atmosphere of the volunteer community here has a great vibe. The majority of volunteers are probably in their mid twenties, but it varies greatly. and to be honest, i don't know for sure how old almost any of them are, but they all interact without any feelings of superiority or subordination, and that's what is so special about this place. You're respected based on your ability to work hard and do good deeds, and there are few environments where a 40 year old will commend an 18 year old as a peer.

Day to day stuff goes like this. We wake up at seven in the morning. We have a breakfast, choosing from toast, cereal, fruit; and then we pack our lunch for the day ahead (almost always a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and chips, unless you want left overs from the day before). We try to get out the door around 8:00 AM, making sure we grab our:

Tyvek Suit , Hardhat (and drill, occasionally), Crowbar

and respirator......... and set off for the project. Projects are all over New Orleans, but focus mainly in Central city. This is an area that's known for it's violence, but it wasn't hit horribly by the storm, and so there is hope for it to thrive post Katrina. Hands-On received a grant of 250,000 dollars to work on Houses exclusively this area, because it's an area filled with lower middle class folks, a demographic that's been largely ignored in New Orleans, since the working class get the most government attention, and the upper class can take care of themselves.

Projects vary from day to day. After dinner volunteers sign up for projects on a bulletin board, so you have the option to do something new every day of the week, with the exception of team leaders who bring cohesion to the project and stick with it from beginning to end. Nonetheless, despite the varying projects, there are always crews going out to gut houses and to demold them. This is the work that needs to be done most in New Orleans, so it's a large priority for Hands-On. It's important work as well because the work we're doing is saving the home owner anywhere from $12,000-$15,000, with less honorable contractors charging anywhere from $15,000-$20,000.

I started with a gut, wanting to get down and dirty my first day of work. It was an unbelievably frustrating building, a building known as the House of Pain, as Iron Maiden, as Satan's Den; a house made completely of metal. And I mean completely. Metal walls, metal studs, and the drywall was cemented on to metal chicken wire, that also held in the insulation. The day consisted of using worn metal cutters to cut away chicken wire. But my team was made of good people, funny people (a sense of humor can be essential on a tedious day, I've found) and so it ended up being a fun time.

And with that, I depart. More in the future. I'm looking forward.

"You gotta catch those, Nigger"

2006-12-03T08:27:00.000-08:00

Well, I've arrived in New Orleans and my road trip through the South has come to a close, and while I greatly enjoyed my trip, ultimately it's observations like the title quote that make me realize I love the Northeast.

I feel a little guilty titling my Blog post with that quote, actually. I really did have a remarkable time, and stayed with some remarkable people, and saw a part of the country I had never seen before. And I experienced virtually no racism during my trip. But I did on my last stop before New Orleans, in Alabama, while watching a football game with some UAla boys, and listening to such an offensive epithet thrown out so casually,makes me wonder what could possibly lurk between the surface under more people i met. I'm not saying that racism doesn't exist up in the North, but I am saying that in such a situation the people I know would at least keep their prejudices to themselves.

But enough of that. The trip was great. I left on Sunday and made my down to New Orleans, stopping in DC, Chapel Hill, Atlanta, and Birmingham. I've been driving a 98 Buick LeSabre, with my clothes and a laptop in the trunk, and a pile of casette tapes in the seat next to me. The car is without CD player, so my road trip soundtrack was lo-fi. Usually my sountrack switched between Dr. John, The Police, a ridiculously cheesy (ridiculously good) 80s mix, and George Gershwin. These moments of driving down long stretches of road with nothing but wind and music were some of my favorite parts of the trip. I usually had the windows open, and one arm out of the car.

The moment I felt like I was really doing something special was in Virginia, as I crossed the Susquehannah river. The police was playing, the sun was glowing, the sight was beautiful. Maybe it was just because of how cinematic the whole experience felt, but the whole thing made me scream.

Nothing extraordinary happened. This wasn't a crazy road trip. I barely partied. But it was incredibly satisfying. I had an opportunity to see good friends at their homes, and such opportunities are bound to become few and far between the more years Lawrenceville falls behind us. And I got to see a part of the country that I'd barely visited. In fact, the trip down was so fulfilling I wish now I'd scheduled more time to get to New Orleans. A week seemed like a long time, but it was anything but.

Anyway, tomorrow is my first day of work. I'll try to publish something then.

The Final Day Home

2006-11-25T23:17:00.000-08:00

Well, ladies and gentlemen, in a few hours I'm getting up and starting my journey down to New Orleans. Tonight is my last night in my home, in this bed, on this computer, for a long, long time. I'll keep this post short and sweet. I'll try to be as consistent as possible in writing journal entries, maybe even a few as I drive down. I'm taking a week to get there and stopping off at colleges, seeing friends along the way. Right now I'm too tired to be nervous or excited, but we'll see how I feel tomorrow. For right now, all I want to do is sleep.

wish me luck.

Oh Lord. New York.

2006-11-23T00:54:00.000-08:00

Ah New York. It really only takes one visit there for me to realize that no matter which cities I go to--New Orleans for the next five months, Boston for the next four years--none of them will be as enchanting and close to me as New York is.

I suppose a lot of a Blog is essentially just literary masturbation. I talk about all the stuff that's going on in my life, even if it's trivial in the grand scheme of things, and i'm talking about it just for the sake of talking about it. So this may not be that interesting for those reading it, but nonetheless, here is my day in New York.

The last few days before I start my road trip down to New Orleans have been busy, balancing the time between being with my family, being with my friends, and reserving a little time just to reflect personally. But I decided to go to New York today to see my oh-so-wonderful friend Dena Yago. The train to New York was funny. It was crowded so I stood at the end of the train, near the door of the vestibule between cars, holding my ticket and scanning for empty seats. I didn't have to look long, however, before a woman asked me if I would like to sit with her and her two daughters. They picked seats that were facing each other. They were on one side, and I had an isle to myself. The mom was very New Jersey. She was loud and bubbly and loved to drink and was going in to New York to do the touristy things: see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, then see the Thanksgiving day parade the next day. The mother talked the entire time and occasionally pulled the kids into the conversation. One was a sophmore at an art school somewhere in Ohio and was mortified by everything her mother had to say. She rolled her eyes a lot. The other daughter was in a nationally ranked (ranked first, actually) High School marching band in South Jersey. She had recently gone to the Marching Band finals in Annapolis and won. So it goes.

And then New York. Everybody is moving in that city. Places to go. There's very little eye contact. You aren't aware of everyone you pass. And there's something about that that I love. I went up to Isabelle Delouvrier's house next. This charming girl happens to have a five story house in the Upper East side and it is amaaazing. We got food and watched stupid game shows and sat and talked and gossiped and I felt like i was at Lawrenceville again. Isabelle still is at Lawrenceville. She's still stuck in the system. And listening to her talk about all these Lawrenceville kids--and me knowing exactly who they are--made me think about when the time will come where I won't know exactly who they are, and who they dated, and what their stories were. In other words, it made me think about when I'll be done thinking about Lawrenceville. Not yet anyway.

I left Isabelle's and then went up to Columbia to see Dena. Now, I could write pages about how ridiculously wonderful this girl is. But I can't, so i'll say this: she's absolutely brilliant, utterly charming, and exhaustingly beautiful. That about does the trick. She has seen every good movie, read every book that goes good movies are based on, and on top of all that has a fantastic amount of knowledge about good, alternative music.

We ate Fallafel and we talked. I hadn't seen her in about a month. I'm preparing to go to New Orleans, so this is my farewell meeting. We then meet up with her friends, who are all smart and wearing tight jeans and hip, and decide to see a movie that is only suited for such people: Darren Aranofski's The Fountain. This is a beautiful movie to look at, and (amazingly) has no CGI. It's filled with these ethereal images of what looks like Nebula's exploding and such, but it's actually all this microscoping photography of, like, yeast growing. Excellent. Narratively, though, the film was weak, and waay to over indulgent and pseudo-philosophical. I decided that the person that thought The Fountain is their favorite movie is the person that I will hate most in life.

The movie ended and I had to go but we both decided that this was not nearly a climactic enough goodbye. So, I'll be going in on Sunday.

Anyway, I need to be going now. But i'm so frustrated with not getting this post finished that I'm going to post it anyway. It's not done, but i'll be finishing it later. Consider this a to be continued...

walking around and going to Rockefeller center
people watching in Penn station (drunk people0
Maya
train ride (lights off, people smoking up)

What Brittany's Friends Miss About Her Part IV

2006-11-20T17:14:00.000-08:00

DHRUV!

What Brittany's Friends Miss About Her Part III

2006-11-17T18:42:00.000-08:00

Shamsa.

Oh, and I know this is a rather obscure Blog, but anyone who reads this, please, pleeease feel free to give your opinion on which ones I should choose. It's two pictures each: one with the person holding the board, and one of them by themselves as a portrait shot. That's the word.

Complications

2006-11-16T15:06:00.000-08:00

Here's the thing.
The work that needs to be done down in New Orleans is so, so broad in scale. I realize that I'm making a pretty obvious point, but I read an article in the New York Times today (although it was from a few days ago) that really made me think. The article focused mainly on one high school and on one type of student. The school is John McDonogh School, the largest functioning high school in the city. The type of student is the student who is alone, students who are either living with extended family or by themselves. The principal of John McDonogh school estimates that up to one-fifth of the student body lives without their parents, parents who are forced to stay in their relocations to pay off debts and rents. The psychological consequences for these kids living on their own have manifested physically. Since the school opened two months ago, six "very serious" assaults have occurred, and fights break out daily. A student, refused entry in to his class because he was tardy, beat his teacher "unmercifully" to the point of hospitalization. The violence has resulted in heightened security, but the 25 guards in the building, the four police officers and cruisers on the side walk, and the metal detectors are only adding to the unease and aggression.

What surprised me so much about this story is that it went against what I believed to be the intuitive response after Hurricane Katrina; that after such a devastating event, family becomes most important. Reading something like this feels unfortunate, but even more it feels unnecessary. We want so badly for a simple solution for rebuilding New Orleans, that if we could just raise a little more money, get a little more support from the government, build a few more houses, then everything could, and would, come back together again. But this article has made me think about how deep the problems run in Katrina affected areas. Rebuilding houses is one piece of an entire jigsaw puzzle of problems that need to be addressed. It'd be nice to have someone to blame for all of this, someone who, when fixed, fixes the problems of the city with them. Perhaps this is a wholly American response: quickly looking to find fault, quickly looking to blame instead of looking for change. I don't know who to blame. I can't blame the parents, because many of them are forced to stay to pay off debts and rents. I can't blame the guards, because the high school students are ignoring authority and fighting all the time. But I can't blame the kids, because being parent-less and having my every move watched by law enforcement would make me lash out as well.

I don't know who to blame and I don't know how to change things. All I know is that i truly wish I had the ability to do more than just build houses down there.

If you're interested, this is the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/education/01orleans.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&amp;amp;amp;amp;en=e95f64cb644eb8e1&ex=1163826000

What Brittany's Friends Miss About Her Part II

2006-11-15T14:13:00.000-08:00

Now Ashley Pakenham. Um.... need i say more?

What Brittany's Friends Miss About Her

2006-11-13T07:22:00.000-08:00

I'm doing a little photography project for Brittany Patton, and, well, for myself. I'm feeling starved artistically! So this: Brittany Patton is in China for her entire Junior year. I've assembled some of her closest friends and will be taking pictures of each one and then making a photo book out them. Each friend has two pictures: one of them holding a white board with the words I Miss _____ and then their filled in memory; and the other is a portrait shot. I'll keep posting 'em as I shoot 'em. Here are a few of Hunter.

Hill Weekend

2006-11-12T14:03:00.000-08:00

Ah, yes, The Great Return. For those that don't know, Hill Weekend is essentially Homecoming for Lawrenceville, built around a day of all the sports teams competing against Lawrenceville's oldest rival: The Hill School. But let's be honest here--first year graduates posing in front of the Lawrenceville student body to get recognition is as big a part of Hill Weekend as anything is. My memories of Lawrenceville hosting Hill weekend involve sitting in the bleachers in front of the football game, but actually watching all of the graduates standing on the track that surrounds the field for the entire crowd to see. They were talking to each other, but their bodies were facing the stands. Think of how elementary schoolers act on stage during the second grade play, and you have an idea.

There was a bit of that this year, but Hill Weekend offered all of us returning graduates something more, something I had thought about while watching as a High Schooler, but hadn't really understood until I experienced it as a graduate. This weekend, most of us ignored everything non-Lawrenceville. It became more than just going back to high school. We were back in high school. All the graduates convened at the Pep Rally Friday night. This was where the hugs, the handshakes, the small talk, the "oh my god!"s and "you look great"s took place. But as the night wound down, the graduates fell into their Lawrenceville routine.
A group of kids went off to eat dinner at Fedora's, the restaurant across the street from Lawrenceville that is oh-so-frequented by its student body.
Most kids walked through campus, stopping at their old dorms, and talking with their old house masters.I went on one of these strolls with two friends who had prefected one of the Crescent houses, and within five minutes of greeting the House Master they were asking her for gossip.
And as I was leaving Lawrenceville on my way up to a party, I drove passed a group of graduates hopping over the Lawrenceville fence to get onto Main Street, just as they had done all of last year.

And the next day, of the forty-five or so returnees that arrived on Friday night, virtually all of us drove the two hours to Pottstown to see the games. I spent most of my time at the football game. I noticed very little of the graduate posing that I'd witnessed in previous years. Most of us were in the stands watching. Most of us cheered for a school that we were no longer a part of. And when Lawrenceville won, most of us there charged the field with everyone else and jumped in celebration with the massively forming huddle. I found myself more invested in this Hill football game than I had been in any during my time at Lawrenceville. Why? Why am I unusually excited for a school that, while good to me, has moved on without me, with players and fans who don't really know how to feel about us returning, who maybe feel like we're trespassing?

I think that Hill weekend became a second chance of sorts for us, a moment for us to evaluate our time at Lawrenceville and focus on what we cared about: friends, celebration, and ultimately, achievement. We were Lawrenceville students, but better Lawrenceville students--a little more excited, a little more unified, and looking back on the past few days I realize that to the graduates nothing else was relevant. I can't tell you how many times I heard someone say "I'm not going to think about how much work I have to do when I get back." Granted, maybe all these people mean to say is that the mental burden of worrying over homework would dampen the fun of the weekend. But that's not the only reason they don't want to think about their college work. There's something to it that's a little more profound. We do not want to think of college work because we do not want to think of college. In a way, we wouldn't let ourselves. The weekend had become about returning to being a high school student. We were in high school. The idea of college homework is anachronistic. We do not need to work on college things. Do not mention these things to me. Do not break our suspension of disbelief. Do not pull us out of our characters.

But I'm writing this on a Sunday night, and Hill Weekend, my friends, is over and done with. And the people that wouldn't let themselves think about college homework are now forced to. And they have gone back to wherever they were on Thursday and, in a weird way, they are leaving Lawrenceville for the second time. I was so comfortable this weekend, everything was so familiar, conversation was so relaxed and benign (and i don't mean that in a bad way. Who has a revelatory conversation every day of their lives?), that i was, I realize now, blind to the fact that I will probably only see most of those graduates a handful of times in the rest of my life.

And that. is that.

the key,

2006-11-07T20:34:00.000-08:00

they say, to becoming a better writer is to write even when you don't want to write. Well, that's what I'm doing now. It's 11 30, I'm tired, but this blog is important to me, and thus i need to be consistent.

I feel that part of the reason I've been apprehensive to write in this since its inception is that i feel i don't have that much to talk about, or that i don't have a lot to talk about when it comes to what I've been doing. Most of my conversations regarding my deferral involve what I'm going to be doing (going down to New Orleans), but for now I'm just sort of hitting the daily grind--working in Trenton during the week, going out on the weekends, repeat.

But, for those of you who don't know what I'm planning this deferral (a lot of people think I'm up at Boston University), this is it:

In a little less than a month I'll be heading down to New Orleans for an indefinite amount of time, but at least four or five months. I'm planning on volunteering for a few months with Hands-On New Orleans (a well organized volunteer group--check them out), long enough to pick up some new skills, and learn the city a little better. When I'm ready, I'll leave, get a job for a contractor, and then get my own apartment.

The possibilities in this vague, idealistic plan are endless. I'm excited. I'm excited to see all the things that'll work out, excited to see what it will be like to have to work to put food on the table, to be self sufficient. But I'm also curious to see what's going to go wrong, what parts of my plan I'll have to change or compromise. So far things are going pretty well. The volunteer stuff is fallen into place, I have a job available to me in New Orleans, and apartment prices are reasonable.

I've also been corresponding with the editor of the Times-Picayune, pitching him the idea of writing a bi-weekly editorial for them writing from the eyes of a Katrina volunteer. It's a long shot, and he said there are no guarantees, but he asked for a writing sample. Who knows, i might, might, might just get to write something for the New Orleans Times-Picayune

I'm off. I promise to spice up this blog, but for now I need to set up the ground work. Wait for the end of November. I will have stories

Peace!

Just to get the ball rolling

2006-11-02T15:51:00.000-08:00

This is my first official blog post. excited, world? i am.