A message to Charleston and Sacramento:

This family from New Orleans East had it right.

The Cross He Bears. . .

We were working in Adullam Christian Fellowship over in St. Bernard Parish. Cleaning it up so they could rebuild. Inside, a giant cross. My team leader at the time was a devout Catholic. She refused to carry it out. Cole Kauffman didn't have any problem with it. Just threw it over his shoulder. As he carried it across the parking lot, people approached him. Blessed him. Thanked him for what he was doing. He came back in, didn't know what was going on, generally oblivious to the symbolism of his action. It was rather amusing.

Finding Work Can Be Like Pulling Teeth. . .

Bringing Down the House. . .

One Week In Biloxi. . .

So it goes. . .

This has nothing to do with the National Civilian Community Corps, but Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday, and I am heartbroken. I present to you a couple quotations of his:

In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.
And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely.
"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.
"Certainly," said man.
"Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God.
And He went away.

And:

I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I'd never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterwards I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman named Carol out in Woodstock and say, "Are you still doing typing?" Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, "OK, I'll send you the pages."

Then I'm going down the steps, and my wife calls up, "Where are you going?" I say, "Well, I'm going to go buy an envelope." And she says, "You're not a poor man. Why don't you buy a thousand envelopes? They'll deliver them, and you can put them in a closet." And I say, "Hush." So I go down the steps here, and I go out to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it's my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of 47th Street and 2nd Avenue, where I'm secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I've had a hell of a good time. And I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different.

When you get there, there isn't any there there. . .

(My apologies to Gertrude Stein.)

April 29, 2006, I was involved in a pretty cool ISP -- aerial art. Thousands of people were to have gathered on the beach, where we wanted to form the image of a Live Oak Tree and the word "HOPE". Unfortunately, the weather conspired against us. The thousands became approximately one hundred -- one hundred who would spend hours being sandblasted while we waited for the helicopter, which kept not arriving thanks to the high winds. But the indignity didn't end there. Because our grey and khaki didn't contrast well with the sand, somebody broke out giant black trashbags which we cut holes in for our heads and got to wear. Except for me. I instead got to wear a TL's green sweatshirt!

(Once more The Sun Herald does not seem to have archived their write-up, but it did end up on WLOX.)

Here's a picture of the final product. Move your cursor over the image to find me!

And if you're interested, here's a view from the ground.

All along the Waveland coast. . .

Take that, Flipper!

Near the end of May, 2006, The Sun Herald ran a story about a huge dolphin who beached himself in MS. (It doesn't seem to be there anymore, but the story has been archived in full here.) Aparently, "residents of the area and passers-by" were the first responders. Soon "others gathered, some just wanting to help and some from agencies well-versed on the subject." These people waded in and helped the dolphin into deeper water. Who were these people?

Those passers-by happened to comprise mostly Sun 3. And yet . . . no mention of the NCCC in the article. I am reminded of a couple lines from T.S. Eliot:

He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place — Macavity Wasn't There!

The NCCC seems too often to have some sort of alibi, because as far as the news is concerned, even when we're there, we're frequently not there. This has happened more than once on my teams alone. The NCCC is a part, sometimes an integral part, of an event receiving media coverage, but receives no mention in the eventual write-up. Which I can understand -- if the reporter mentioned us, then he or she'd also have to get off-topic explaining who we are, which probably would not usually be worth the inches. Even so, it's nice to be mentioned when you're there.

But the real reason I wrote about this is: I wanted the opportunity to post some of the pictures of my team with the dolphin.

I am but a shadow. . .

This is a blogger blog. A just for fun sort of thing. There is, however, an official *NCCC blog, hosted on the official *NCCC website. It's run by Sacramento's Green 5, whose members happen to be working here at HONO with me at the moment. A good team. Read their stuff: The Lost Tribe of Green 5.

The best thing. . .

One of the best things about having been down here for such an extended period is having had the opportunity to see the changes. When a volunteer comes down for a week, he or she experiences what is, essentially, a snapshot -- often a very powerful, very compelling snapshot, but a snapshot nonetheless. But people who are around for months get to see something special: renaissance. The rebirth of an area.

I wasn't among the first responders on the Gulf Coast after the storms. I didn't get down here until February '06, nearly six months after the storms. When I arrived, there was no electricity, no running water where I was working. Something else was missing, too: life. A team'd be out gutting a house, and there would be no one else in the neighborhood. But people came back. A homeowner would see us gutting a house in his neighborhood, decide that maybe the neighborhood would come back after all, and come in to start gutting his own house. FEMA trailers started popping up in yards. After a couple months, you'd go to gut a house, and a neighbor whose house had already been gutted and de-molded would be in the process of putting up drywall, his house almost ready to be reinhabited. Streetlights came back. Water lines were repaired. People started driving by.

People who come down here now, a year and a half after the storms, are often stunned by the devastation, but they don't see how much has come back in a year alone. In a particularly misanthropic moment, it's easy to focus not on how much has been done but on how much is left to do. There is still a staggering amount of work to be done along the Gulf Coast, in some areas more than others, but to be able to see how far things have come, how much has been done -- it's very rewarding. Very rewarding indeed.

Object Lessons

Nothing left. . .

CM Ashley Kimmel from Water 6 had a piece published in USA Today about a week ago, two weeks into her first Spike. She's staying at Camp Hope, one of the hubs of *NCCC activity in the NOLA area.

Read her piece, "Nothing left to rely on but their spirits".

Welcome!

Hello. My name is Nathan, and this is my second consecutive year with the National Civilian Community Corps. Both years I've worked out of the Central Region, based in Denver; as a Corps Member, I was in Sun Unit but as a Team Leader I'm of the Earth Unit.

The purpose of this blog is to chronicle anything worth chronicling having to do with AmeriCorps*NCCC -- post stories, squash rumors, tell people what's going on, and generally have a good time.

To start, I'll post a brief and incomplete account of where I've been over the last year.

The history of my time in the Corps has actually developed as a sort of good/bad schtick, an extremely abbreviated version of which follows:

Good: I'm inducted into the Corps. . .
Bad: . . .but my TL is incompetent.
Good: My team gets a local education project when most everyone else is being deployed to the Gulf Coast with minimal prep. . .
Bad: . . . but some people get in trouble on another team so I end up getting put on their team, which is going to gut houses in the Gulf.
Good: It's a great team, and we soon find out that our next project will be trailbuilding in Milwaukee. . .
Bad: . . .but the people who got in trouble are getting put back on their team, and I'm getting put back on mine -- which is coming down to gut houses in the Gulf.
Good: Third round I get placed on the Pike's Peak project in CO. . .
Bad: . . .but I allow my Unit Leader to talk me into taking my second choice, in the Gulf.
Good: I'm given a choice. . .
Bad: . . .do I want to be on a different team each round and get out of the Gulf once, or do I want to spent my entire year in the Gulf and spend two rounds on my "permanent" team?
Good: I graduate, get to come back as a TL. . .
Bad: . . .and manage to get dead last pick on first round project lottery.
Good: Another TL offers to switch with me and I get a great project. . .
Bad: . . .and then draw dead last again on my second round project lottery.

And that's about where we are now. Don't get me wrong. I love it down here. I've now been working in Louisiana and Mississippi for over a year and I don't regret that at all. But I did join the *NCCC with some expectation of getting to see the country a bit, and I've been within a 100-mile radius this whole time, which has occasionally been frustrating. Further, given that this is a team-based program, it's been strange not having a permanent team my first year, and now, in my second year, I've gotten two consecutive projects that don't allow for my team to work together as a team.

So what teams have I been on? I spent less than a week on Sun 3, then a day on Sun 7, then six weeks on Sun 5, then nine weeks on Sun 3, then six weeks on Sun 4, then finished out my first year on Sun 3 again. One week with Habitat for Humanity in Santa Fe, NM; more'n a month in Camp Premier (now closed) in Saint Bernard Parish, LA; a couple months with CORE in Ocean Springs, MS; a couple months with The Green Project in NOLA; a couple months with Operation Blessing out of Slidell, LA. This year I've been TL Earth 1, spending six weeks with Hands On New Orleans and about to spend two months doing needs assessment for the American Red Cross.

Stories and pictures to follow!