Bob Dole and Hurricane Kartina

The week is almost over again. This weekend, I HAVE to move the rest of my things, and repaint my old bedroom. I am not looking forward to it, but once I am done, I won’t have to go back to my old place EVER again! Hooray! Then I can be completely in my new place.

I was thinking about Africa again today. I think that I have to go there at some point, or will dream about it for the rest of my life. But, that brings up an interesting thought, well to me anyway. Do we always need some dream to hold onto? I think this is how I have lived my life for the most part; I have only experienced a few moments actually in the moment. Most have been through hindsight or looking forward. Is this unique to me?

I remember being maybe seven or eight and realizing (I can see exactly where this happened too; on 10th Avenue in Caldwell, Idaho, in the backseat of my parents’ gold Impala) that it was so much better to look forward to going to the fair, and remembering the fair than it was to actually experience the fair. This theme repeated itself with dances, vacations, and the other moments of youth.

One exception to this that I can remember is the Republican National Convention in 1996. I can honestly say I lived every moment of this. I can remember exactly how it felt to get sunstroke in the harbor while waiting for Bob Dole’s boat to arrive. I can remember the temperature outside, and the way it felt to have Jeff’s arm around me when we were evacuated from the dorms at 2am. I can remember seeing a picture of Jeff and I asleep in a hammock in the sunshine, in the LA Times the morning after it was taken, realizing that we were a part of this huge event.

So what was different about that one event? I can’t put my finger on it–exactly. Though I do know there were differences. I was extremely excited. This was one of the first times I was ever away from home. This was the first time I had ever had slept in a bed with a guy (not that we had sex mind you). I took everything in. I hardly talked to my parents. I didn’t know anyone. And I had an amazing time. And it was crazy–something that most of the other people in the country were not experiencing for whatever reason.

Volunteering for Katrina was like this at first; eventually it got to be very routine, but in the beginning, it shared the same energy. The similarities between the two are pretty obvious. I was untethered–I entered both experience without knowing another soul. It was a BIG deal–one was a political convention that only comes along every four years, and the other, well, the greatest natural disaster our country has seen. During both experiences, I was a part of something so much bigger than myself, yet I still felt like I was a part of history; sound strange? That’s how it felt.

I also got quite a bit of attention from boys at both; something that generally doesn’t happen in my everyday life. What was it about me during those times that guys seemed to like so much? I liked me more during those times; maybe it is as simple as that?

I want to think about this and dissect it a bit more later. Something good to sleep on.

Thinking about the Peace Corps…

I am a computer nerd at heart. As much as I have tried to get away from it I can’t; it’s me. I love learning new things in every program imaginable, just as much as I love lying on my back wiring a network to full connectivity. When Hurricane Katrina happened, I had recently been laid-off from Hewlett Packard, and was feeling very badly about myself. But Katrina was too big; it snapped me out of my funk, and drove me to do something. As soon as I heard about what had happened, I logged onto the Internet to find out how I could help. To my surprise, I was quickly contacted by the local chapter of the American Red Cross. I explained that I didn’t have much money to donate but that I had plenty of time. I was signed up for volunteer training the very next day.

Initially I was trained to work in Sheltering and Client Casework (or some similarly named groups); almost every volunteer was being trained in these fundamental disaster relief areas, and my chapter didn’t have a technology volunteer group, so I didn’t even know it existed. When I arrived in Louisiana, it was amazing, in good and bad ways. The damage done by the storm was horrific, but the volunteer response was uplifting. Since almost every volunteer on the disaster was assigned to client casework or sheltering, there was a lot of waiting. While waiting for assignment, I noticed some people wiring a network. What was this? Other nerds? So I walked over to take a look.

This is how I was introduced to the Response Technology Group. I asked if I could help with anything, and in fact they needed several volunteers. I worked with the group for the day, and was asked to join that function by the end of the day. So began my nine months in response technology with the Red Cross. I was euphoric; I could actually help people with my nerdiness?

During my time with the Red Cross, I worked with amazing volunteers from all over the world who were working toward the common goal of helping people rebuild their lives after Hurricane Katrina. I learned so much from others, and know that I taught many people many things. Many of the volunteers coming to the disaster had never used a cell phone, let alone a computer. As part of my work with the Red Cross, I taught grandmothers in their nineties how to make functional Excel spreadsheets; I taught Americorps members how to wire networks. It was amazing.

Since my time with the Red Cross, and specifically during the last year, I have been trying to focus on what I really want out of life; what will really make me happy; which path my life should take. Through this searching I have figured out a few things: 1) I crave helping people; my world is not right unless I am giving back, helping someone. 2) I am a computer nerd; it is me, I may as well be happy with it. 3) I am good at teaching people, and really good at teaching people about technology. 4) I crave experience with other cultures; I have spent my life (aside from my two years in Louisiana) Idaho. Idaho is great, but it is small potatoes (I am funny!); there is so much more to the world. The two years that I spent in Louisiana were amazing; the culture is very different than that of Idaho. I enjoyed very much learning about and interacting with the people, taking part in cultural traditions such as Mardi Gras, and of course eating all of the wonderful Cajun and Creole foods.

Through the soul searching I have done (and I have really, really been searching for the past little bit) I think that serving in the Peace Corps is the next step in achieving my life’s goals; those that I know of anyway. I am at a crossroads in my life; the crossroads. I have finally figured out (I think anyway) the path I should take; this path began with the American Red Cross and Hurricane Katrina, and will be continued with Peace Corps service. Where will it go after that? I haven’t a clue; I only know that service with the Peace Corps is right, is home. The Peace Corps encapsulates all things that make me me; it is where I belong, where my skills work the best, where I am at peace, where I am at home.

But maybe the Peace Corps (And the Red Cross was too?) is running away from my life? I wonder this sometimes. I think the feeling comes from that American Dream ideal that is supposed to be the aim of every good American; well that just doesn’t work for me, yet the draw to it is magnetic, unconscious; we cannot escape it, or can we? I want to, I need to. I would not be happy in this life, I would be settling and selling myself short. Because of the perfunctory draw of the American Dream, anything that is not it, feels itchy, wrong; that is why I sometimes feel that I am running from my life (you know, the one with the two kids, house in the suburbs, etcetera, etcetera…). But its not; for me, for someone I love very much; it is just not it. Its a shame that I felt like I had to live that life; it is a same that anyone feels that pressure. But there are those that love this life, that would live no other. I do not look down on them, no I almost envy them. To those that are really, truly happy, I wish them well. I however, could never be happy in that life, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself that I was.

I’ve lost my writing mojo…

Hmmm… . This is definitely not fun. I can’t write about New Orleans in an amusing, or even angry sort of way. I have sat down several times during the last few days and… nothing. Where did my writing mojo go? What happened? (Did you read Thursday’s post? Rubish!) There is so much I want to say about the place. It was such a huge part of my life. Maybe that’s the problem? I can’t sort anything out? I don’t know.

I know, I know. I just need to start writing, get the juices flowing that sort of thing. I don’t know. I have been doing plenty of other writing, just not here. In an effort to get back on the writing wagon, here is a list of some of the more defined sections (don’t know what else to call them) of writing about New Orleans that I have stored up in my brain. (Forgive me if I wander a bit!)

• My first days as a volunteer
• The general setup of the Red Cross headquarters; I think it is pretty interesting that an empty WalMart was turned into the control center for the response to Hurricane Katrina. The logistics fascinate me, and hopefully, will fascinate others.
• Relationships at the DRO — DR wife/husband (keep reading the blog and you will find out what that is!); actual relationships; cheating on one’s significant other who was safe at home while their mate was out doing good (I did not participate in this, but it seemed almost a disease on the DR; everyone was doing it).
• Some of the interesting people I met and probably never would have outside the Red Cross (Vito, etc.).
• Gossip, gossip, gossip.
• Brushes with fame and celebrities as part of the Red Cross

This is a small representation of the things I want to include here, and hell, they aren’t even as defined as I thought they would be. I have the before I went to Louisiana, and the first couple of days clearly recorded as I like, but cannot seem to move past that point. I have a scribble here and a scratch there about my time there, but I cannot seem to put together another cohesive piece that could be loosely referred to as an essay. That’s going to make it really hard when I try and sell my idea to a publisher!

I do have one piece I have been working on (it requires research) regarding New Orleans and Detroit. As we all have heard by now, Detroit was named the most dangerous city in the country. How can this be? Have the researchers even set foot in (or heard of for that matter) New Orleans’ crime rate? Anyway, it should be an interesting piece once I finish it.

So for now, I will stay stuck. I want to, need to, write about Louisiana, but can’t. Hopefully the writing gods will be kind to me soon.

Back to the SportKing

I returned home to the motorhome today; I had a murderous trip home (I don’t want to get in to details, because it isn’t worth it, but basically, my flight was delayed from 7:55 pm to 9:55, to 10:35, to 11:45 last night until it was finally cancelled; I was finally on a flight today at noon).

Sitting in the airport thinking, wanting to be alone, and reading Into the Wild, really made me think about what I am doing with myself. When I got home, and was driving out to my parents’ house, I started crying; I couldn’t stop. Here I was cruising down I-84, tears pouring out of my eyes, with not stop in sight. What was going on? Well, I felt tired and travel-worn from the weekend, but more than that, it was a generally feeling of not belonging. The life I am living is simply not right; it becomes more and more clear to me everyday.

While I was in Seattle I talked to people when I was out and about, in bars, and all over the place; it was really nice. And, I felt more like me than I have felt since I left New Orleans, no, it was much before that. Eventually the topics always circled around to “So, what do you do?” I would go on to explain that I was simply visiting Seattle, and that I had recently returned to Boise from a stint in New Orleans at a law firm and the American Red Cross hoping to live a grand and exciting life there, but walking away empty handed. I explained to people what the city was really like, that it wasn’t the happy thriving place depicted in the commercials with the Musician’s Village development and Harry Connick Jr. acting as front man. I explained that even if the city hadn’t been virtually destroyed by the storm that it wouldn’t be good.

It was also nice to explain my role in everything, to explain the tension I felt from working for both the good and bad guys (Red Cross and Corporate Defense Firm). I am still seeing just how deeply this tension runs every day. It was nice to talk to people about this, to gain a fresh perspective. The more people I talked to about New Orleans (and many people wanted to listen, and I won’t say that it wasn’t nice to be a pseudo-star for a bit) the more insight I gained into my time there. Despite all that happened there, the giant steps backwards I took in terms of self-development, the deep depression I fell into, I still think that I was supposed to go to New Orleans; maybe I shouldn’t have stayed so long, but I definitely was supposed to be there.

I say this for several reasons, one of which is obviously my meeting Ben, which I am not concerned with in this post, but chiefly, I think that my time in New Orleans set me on the path to figure out what I am supposed to do in life. (As I have written earlier, career-wise this needs to be some sort of chaos-filled humanitarian field.) Most importantly it awakened the good vs. bad fight that is present (and often subdued) within each of us. I really feel like shit for working for Rock Wolfman; I mean these guys may as well have been raping and pillaging distant villages; it was absolutely horrible, and it is so easy to get sucked into when that is all that surrounds you.

To deal with being bad people (at least I think it is some coping mechanism) everyone is plastic, focused on only the external: $500 suits, $1000 shoes, which restaurants you went to for lunch and who you saw there, what kind of car you drive, whether you live in Metairie or Uptown; ridiculous when you really think about it.

As if the ambient work environment wasn’t bad enough Administration thrived on beating down the office staff, almost all of which were fresh college graduates with just as many smarts as the attorneys they painstakingly labeled folders or copied and pasted letters for. The HR director (a woman with her own closets full of skeletons) made so many people cry; this is not something that is supposed to happen in a business, and it wasn’t because of the office staff; it was the HR director and the executive director; pure evil. Single women in their fifties, absolutely poisoned by the lawyers they worked beneath for years.

I do not, cannot thrive in that environment. And the fact that the firm represented the bad guys (insurance firms) in the whole Katrina thing didn’t seem incongruous to me when I took the job (perhaps because I was blinded by hope, love, and a sense of rebirth) but slowly it wore me down, until I was a shadow of myself. I cannot believe that I was one of them. I feel very guilty, and silly for not even knowing what I was doing at the time. Self awareness hasn’t ever been my strong suit, and now I need to bring it to the forefront even more so; I don’t ever want to lose myself for some other purpose, good or bad, again.

Continued Red Cross Training

Night Two of Red Cross Training; over two years ago now:

On the second night of Red Cross training, we all took the same seats as the evening before, and continued the awkward conversations from the evening before waiting for the class to begin. The big difference this time was that most of us had prepared for the stifling hot room as we hadn’t the night before. This preparation included shorts and bottles of water. The instructors began the class by telling us that the national Red Cross office had specifically asked that our training be switched to Family Services training rather than the Shelter Simulation we were scheduled to take. I don’t know how the class really felt about this; I think that most people were kind of confused as to everything going on, and not really feeling as if they had learned anything; at least this is how I felt, maybe I shouldn’t speak for the group? The instructors seemed to be kind of sad that they weren’t going to get to put on a Shelter Simulation; after all, they kept referring to this as the “fun part of the training.”

So you’re probably asking yourself what exactly Family Services does within the Red Cross. I was wondering the same thing. Well, you know those Red Cross debit/credit cards that are in the news? Well we were trained on Wednesday how to fill out all of the appropriate paperwork, determine the amount each client (the Red Cross calls all of the people it helps clients, which I think is a nice touch), and activate the cards for each recipient.

This seems like a lot of power to give people who have been trained for barely four hours but we are actually just form-filler-out monkeys. The amount of money that the people receive is not just decided willy-nilly by some retired teacher or a college student volunteering for the disaster. There is a formula that differs for each disaster and each location that determines how much money the client receives. For example, there are three adults in the household, and all of them have lost their clothes. The chart says that for each adult, the Red Cross will provide $130. So for the three adults this is $390. And so on, and so on…

I remember those being the actual amounts we were told during training. However, I remember that during Katrina some clients received $3000+ on their debit cards. Though this was not my responsibility during the disaster (despite my training) I had several people tell me this.

Red Cross volunteers were also issued the same debit cards (though they were imprinted with Disaster Staff or something similar) to use as a stipend. An amount was placed on the cards every three weeks, or once if you only lasted your initial deployment, to help pay for all of life’s necessities: food, gas, toiletries. We were supposed to use the remainder of our balance during our trip home and then destroy the card once we were safe at home. I kept mine. It is still in my wallet. It makes me remember my time in Louisiana.

This may not really seem like a lot of money for new clothes, but the Red Cross only attends to immediate needs (those that need to be met within fifteen days). For all other needs, the Red Cross refers people to different agencies such as the Mennonites and the Salvation Army. It is actually pretty interesting.

On top of our official positions as pencil pushing drones, we are supposed to be a part of the grieving process for the clients. From what the trainers told us, many of the people within the shelters are still in shock. Because of this they are not thinking about things like getting new clothes. We are supposed to be kind of bringing them back to reality by asking questions to help them begin to move on. Some of the questions are things like “What are your plans for a home in the future?” This is going to be awfully rough on the people, and the volunteers I have a feeling.

Additionally we are supposed to be on the look out for people who need some mental help. We are often the people who catch this, the instructors told us.

So we learned how to fill out forms etc, now what? At the end of class, we had to go through a short five question verbal pseudo interview. The questions were basically the same as those we answered the first evening of class. After answering we were handed little Red Cross cards for our wallets listing the courses we had completed. As of Wednesday evening I am certified by the Red Cross in:

• Sheltering
• Mass Care: An Overview
• Introduction to Disaster Services
• Family Services: Providing Emergency Assistance

Even though I attended all of the training I still am unprepared to do any of these things. I am sure that this is natural and that most of the people in the class feel like this, but it is still a little overwhelming to know that I am certified to help people in the hardest time of their lives. I guess that that is something you really cant be prepared for. I think most of it has to be learned when you get to the area you are helping in.

While I was working on the disaster, I was also certified in several other things. I can’t find my cards at the moment, but know that I went through all of the supervisor training, and am now qualified to be a supervisor, despite having acted as one for the last six months of my deployment, an ECRV class, and extensive RTT training in Austin, Texas where I learned how to work in every aspect of Response Technology including setting up a satellite for Internet service, wiring a network, deploying a server, customer service, CAC, and basically every other thing you could possibly think of doing technology wise on a disaster.

Now this is what is supposed to happen next:

• The Red Cross calls within twenty-four hours of your leaving, informing you of your location, what you need to bring, etc.

• You go to the Red Cross and pick up a packet with an airline ticket and a fifty-dollar Red Cross credit card.
• You board the plane and fly to your location.
• You train at your job in your destination for a day or so with someone who is currently doing the job.
• You work your three weeks, either sleeping in a hotel or the shelter, depending on resources.
• You come home.

Now all I have to do is wait.

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Fiery Flood

I have been hearing so many comparisons between the disaster response for the California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina. Yesterday there was a story on NPR about it, and it made my blood boil. I had to think about it for a while, and figure out why it got me so excited. Part of it was that I was jealous, that I wasn’t there. I know it sounds horrible, but I think that my time in Louisiana made me a sort of disaster junkie. And it wasn’t just the volunteering, helping those in need, giving your all for a good cause Red Cross Disaster Relief Operation volunteer moments either. It was every minute I spent in Louisiana.

Louisiana, New Orleans in particular, is the modern equivalent to the Wild West; kind of a backwards sort of analogy, but I really don’t know of any other way to describe it. Roads are bad. The infrastructure is very poor; I read a statistic a few months back saying that an astounding sixty (I think that was what it was) percent of the water in New Orleans water system leaks before it reaches its destination; crazy. Crime is rampant. The government is corrupt. It is filthy. Bourbon Street is wild; every Western town had its share of brothels and bars. And it is hard to do anything, just as I imagine it was in the Wild West-or New Orleans 150 years ago. New Orleans is always like this, but pile on top of it the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and well, you can see what happens.

I felt like kind of a pioneer living in the city. When I first moved there, mail wasn’t yet being delivered. It was 2005 in the United States of America and there wasn’t mail being delivered. I understand; hurricane, flooding, etc., but that just takes us back to the “How could this happen in America?” theme that we have all heard a thousand times. It was just weird, eerie even. Imagine living in your neighborhood of normal, family homes, and then take away all of the people. Oh and throw in a flood that damages and covers in mold everything below eight feet above the ground. Now move back in without all of your neighbors. Electric service was scant when we moved in, and yes my house had been remodeled, but it was still creepy to be the only house on the street; even the church in the backyard was abandoned.

There is no way this could happen in San Diego. There are many reasons for this, the majority of the areas evacuated were younger than New Orleans and had better infrastructures being the main reason. But I think the key difference between New Orleans and San Diego (and I feel silly even comparing the two because the things that happened were so different) is the people. I think that the majority of people in New Orleans are out of touch with reality and live in some alternate universe, which only operates during banker’s hours mind you, where things like goals, ambition, self-responsibility and even small things like being on time for appointments do not matter a whit.

Think about the city’s moniker, the Big Easy. Where did this come from? The overarching attitude of the city. Everything slows down a bit in the city, and not in a good way. It is impossible to get anything done between all of the stores closing before you can even get off of work (or maybe they just didn’t open today because there was a Saints game?), the tourists and the heavy, horrible air. And try and do anything on a Sunday? That is just crazy thinking!

People lounge in New Orleans. Drive through any neighborhood-rich, poor, black, white-it doesn’t matter, and you will see people milling about porches and corner stores, at any time of the day. Don’t these people have jobs? And why aren’t the kids at school? I have a friend who teaches in one of the city’s urban schools. She told me that it is the culture for students not to show up the entire first week of school. The culture? This is absurd! No one would even think of doing something like this where I grew up, or in most other places in the United States.

The biggest symbol of people not, no refusing to, take care of themselves in New Orleans, is the unbelievably large chunk of society depending on the government to take care of their every whim; I am frankly surprised that some of them can even use the bathroom without being told to do so. (I have to write a disclaimer here: let me state that I am not racist, classist or anything of the sort. I think that all people are equal, some simply chose to make the best of the attributes they have while others do not, and this has nothing to do with race, heritage, sex, anything; it is a personal choice. ) Many of the people living in New Orleans public housing have lived there for generations. Public housing was built as a temporary solution to the lack of housing for the poor, now it has turned into a lifestyle.

Someone told me that kids in the projects had two paths. If they were a boy, they aspired to be a drug dealer. If they were a girl, they had babies. How unbelievably sad is that? It is sad, and having lived in the city, it is definitely believable. People are born in the projects, watch their parents, and sometimes grandparents, live off of the system. They don’t need to work, so why should I do well in school so that I can get a good job? The government will take care of me! For some reason there is this attitude (among those stuck in the system) that the government will take care of me (food, shelter, money to buy rims, but not birth control) because I am owed it; my great, great, great grandfather was a slave after all. This attitude angers me to no end, but explains a good deal about why and how so many people were stuck in the city following the disaster.

As I noted earlier, the government in the city is corrupt; members are looking out for their own welfare, not their constituents (William Jefferson? $90,000 cold cash). The project living people waited for the government to step in and rescue them when the hurricane’s howl was starting to wane and the flood-waters were beginning to rise. But they weren’t there; they were looking out for their own well being. I have heard about the poor people in the city being stranded. Are you kidding? I honestly don’t believe that if someone had really wanted to get out of the city they couldn’t have. Everyone was leaving; I am sure that a church group, busload of carpoolers, for God’s sake they could have hitchhiked, and found a way out. But they didn’t. They waited for the government to step in and take care of them like it had for their entire lives. Come on, show some personal responsibility people!

There aren’t nearly as many folks living off of the government in San Diego. Granted the fire burned in much more affluent areas (strange since New Orleans was once the wealthiest city in the world; WHAT HAPPENED? Laziness?) but why were these areas more affluent anyway? Because people took responsibility for themselves, and didn’t look to the government to care for their every need. And when the fires came, people listened, packed their things and got out, when they were told to; they didn’t wait for anyone to come and rescue them. My 82 year old grandmother has lived in Poway for over 50 years and got out of the way. My brother-in-law in Fallbrook got out of the way. My various aunts, uncles and cousins scattered about San Diego county got out of the way. Why? Because that is what they were supposed to do, they were concerned about their personal safety so they got out of the way; they didn’t wait for the government or someone, anyone else to come and get them.

The information card in the seat pocket of the Boeing 747 is emphatic about placing the oxygen mask on yourself before placing it on your child, or anyone else needing assistance; it doesn’t show everyone waiting for the flight crew to come and put the passengers’ masks on for them. That would just be silly. And so is depending on a (corrupt) government to take care of you during a disaster.

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Well fiddle-de-dee!!!

Atlanta. Hurricane Rita came through the South and I was stuck. Stuck in Atlanta. Aside from a few weeks spent in Minneapolis with a boyfriend, I had never been away from my family. Sure, I lived in Boise, the only thing resembling a real city in all of Idaho, but I grew up, and my family still lived, on twenty acres a few miles from the Snake River.

My flight to Atlanta left Boise at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. (or at least I thought it was ungodly then. Now things have certainly changed!). Because of the early hour, or so I thought, my throat was scratchy. Once in Atlanta, I was supposed to board a connecting flight to Baton Rouge, where I would volunteer for the Red Cross. By the time I reached Atlanta, Rita had already started assailing the Gulf Coast. All flights were canceled. What the hell was I supposed to do? Sure most people had flown by themselves numerous times by the time they were twenty six, and I am sure that most were more worldly than I, but bottom line, I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do.

Armed with a paper itinerary, a host of phone numbers for the Red Cross, and enough crap in my backpack to sustain myself on a three week Survivor Man style stint, I had to figure out what to do. My first stop was the United information desk. The only thing they had to tell me was that I would be reassigned to another flight, but that it would probably not leave until the day after next.

So I looked at my list of Red Cross phone numbers to call, and picked the volunteer helpline for the DR865, the Disaster Relief Operation, headquartered in Baton Rouge. I was greeted with a recording. I would learn later, that this recording was updated in the beginning every few hours, and near the end, every few days, and supplied volunteers with information such as where to go at the airport to make sure that someone would pick you up and bring you to the headquarters, and weather information for the site. I don’t remember exactly what the recording said, but I am pretty sure that it said something like, “There is a hurricane currently pounding us. That is why there is not a live person answering the phone. You were crazy to think this was a good idea.”

My sinuses were killing me, and my throat hadn’t lost the scratchy feeling. I called my mom. I told her what was happening, and she told me I could come home. I did not want to do that. I may have been scared, but this was the first time I had ever done anything on my own (well sort of) and I certainly didn’t want to fail. Plus, why would I want to come home and be bored again? She asked me how much money I had. I had just about three hundred dollars in my checking account (thanks unemployment!), and absolutely no credit; something else I had messed up in my foray into adulthood. My mom offered to put a night’s stay at a hotel on her credit card. The lady at the United desk told me about a hotel a few miles away, where most of the other stranded passengers had already booked rooms. And the shuttle went there. I was sold.

My next stop was retrieving my luggage, which somehow, was next in line for a flight to Baton Rouge, or at least being stowed until I was finally able to arrange a flight.; I forget which. Anyway, it was quite an ordeal to get my luggage out of custody, since it clearly said right on the tag that it was destined for Baton Rouge.

Luggage in hand, all seventy five pounds of it or so, and all in a backpack so that I could carry it, I traveled on the super fast shuttle train that runs beneath the airport to catch my ground transportation to the hotel. By this point, I was feeling miserable.

Finally, I checked into a sad looking Drury Inn, somewhere in the outskirts of Atlanta (to the South, maybe?); to this day, I really have no idea where it was.
There was a Waffle House in the parking lot! This was the South. I had never seen such a place in person, and half of me didn’t really believe that they were an actual chain of restaurants. It absolutely reeked of every stereotype I had ever heard about the South.

Once I was checked in to my modest room, I called my grandma and my mom to assure them that I was safe in a hotel room in Atlanta. Both were unsure of this. Neither of them had been to Atlanta, and I was very naïve, and getting sick on top of that. After I hung up the phone, I cleverly hid the most precious of my belongings, which on this trip included a light that I could strap to my head, and several bags of batteries; both of which were listed as important take alongs by my Red Cross packing guide, (mind you, both the batteries and the strap on light were still in their plastic bags two years later when I came across them in a move; important, indeed.) and set out for a convenience store a few blocks away, to find something to make myself feel better.

Holy shit! was all I could think when I walked in the door; the clerk was actually behind glass, bulletproof I am sure, and you had to pass your money to him through a slot at the bottom. Crazy! This was just like I had seen on TV. I had never been in a place where I had to talk to the clerk through the glass before. It felt so clinical. It felt like they were simply waiting for something to go horribly wrong. So, so naive was I. I found a generic variant of Dayquil, made my purchase, and headed back to the hotel.

Dayquil normally hops me up like nobody’s business, but this time, I took a couple of pills, and woke up fourteen hours later. I was so sick. My head had never hurt so badly. My throat was swollen shut, and I hurt everywhere. It was the good old fashioned flu! I had completely missed Rita, or the coverage of her on the news anyway.

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Before Louisiana

The following is an entry from my for-the-time-being-defunct Bemusings in Boise blog. It is dated roughly two weeks following Hurricane Katrina.

So the plus side of not being able to find a job is being able to leave town at a moment’s notice for weeks at a time. This is exactly what I am doing in the next week or so with the Red Cross. I have never volunteered with the Red Cross before, nor have I been to the part of the country affected by Hurricane Katrina. This is going to be quite an adventure for me.

I wrote an email to the Red Cross explaining that I wanted to do something for those affected by the hurricane but that I did not have the money to contribute to disaster aid financially. I wrote that I was more than willing to go to the region and volunteer in that way. To my surprise, someone form my local Red cross called me the very next morning and asked me questions about my willingness to volunteer. The questions included:

“Can you make a commitment of three weeks?” pretty mild,
“Do you feel comfortable sleeping in an open-air dormitory?” and the ever popular,
“Do you have any open wounds?”

After several more questions, the volunteer on the other end of the phone told me that they were at that moment (this was the tenth of September or so) compiling a list of people interested in volunteering. e told me that I would probably hear from them in the next couple of weeks. He asked if I had any questions, but I told him I couldn’t think of any right then; he told me that is how everyone felt, no one knew exactly what was going to happen and when with the disaster or the response.

To my surprise a nice lady from the Red Cross called on Friday morning. I was not home when she called, but she left a message with my living-with-me-again-ex-boyfriend, asking me to call as soon as I got in. After returning from a lovely afternoon at Art in the Park, I returned her call. The lady asked if I could attend pre-deployment training on Tuesday and Wednesday evening. Wow! This was moving much faster than I had anticipated. It was very exciting.

I have to admit that I have been in kind of a rut, getting quite depressed about not being able to find a job. This is exactly what I need; a way to get over myself while helping others who really need it.

I will keep you posted as to the contents of the upcoming training sessions.

(It is interesting for me to read this over two years later; hopefully it is for you too. I think it is really interesting that I felt that I was depressed because I wasn’t able to find a job. I am sure that that is part of it, but I now know that there is a lot more to it than that, the largest part of which was my living-with-me-again-ex-boyfriend; he made me feel horrible, and I didn’t even realize it as it was happening. I had lost myself. I had no idea who I was. Louisiana helped me.)

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Begin at the Beginning

Immediately before I went to Louisiana:

We were at an end. It had been coming for a very long time. It had already come in April, when I smashed your guitar and you wrote all of those horrible songs about me. But we were saying goodbye. I was trying very had not to; I didn’t want to let go. I didn’t even like you any longer. I had been with you for so long that I just didn’t know what else to do. We had been camping for what was it, four, five days? Labor Day Weekend 2005. Throughout Idaho. Remember when we stopped at the Ranger Station along Highway 21 to pickup an Auto Tour Tape, only to find out that the tape player in the Goldsmobile was broken? I was so worried about returning that damn tape to the ranger station in Boise. Did I ever return it? The fallout shelter left over from another life at the Shoshone Ice Caves. Camping at Craters of the Moon. Taking pictures at the nuclear submarine forever run aground in the middle of the city park in Arco, a town ever-decaying from its heyday in the atomic age. The rows and rows of taxidermied animals at that strange man’s “museum”. A necklace made of dino-poo, or so the purveyor Bob assured us. A completely dead trip.

We didn’t watch TV or listen to the news on the radio the entire time we were gone, strange for both of us. The only things of concern were your attempt to break free from me, and my resistance to your escape. We had absolutely no idea that Katrina had happened. No idea that hundreds of people were drowning. No idea that in the wake of the mass evacuation tens of thousands of pets were being left behind to die. No idea that fairy tale courtyards and dank projects were drowning alike. No idea.

Once we were home, I reached through the window next to the door to move the chair holding the door shut. You had broken the door a few months back, and now it would not close on its own. Out of habit developed from the months of being unemployed, I flipped on Oprah. What was happening? Rather than an interview with Matt Damon or a Book Club episode, I was smacked in the chest by images of Nate, Oprah’s trusty decorating guru (why him?) talking to crying, dirty people, trying to say goodbye to their pets as they boarded busses(?) out of New Orleans. What the hell was going on? I sat down unable to move myself away from the TV. The front door was open and the trunk sat half emptied into the street. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the images I was seeing thrust before me in 27″ portions. You walked in the door and I made you sit down and watch.

The disaster may as well been on some remote Pacific island, for the fleeting mention it received.
Oprah was dressed in what I can only remember as some sort of combat gear, sans makeup, unpretty like a real person, hair frizzy as it should be for that part of the country, flanked by Mayor Nagin, a man, who at that moment like most Americans, I did not know. The Superdome. I did not closely follow professional sports, and upon seeing the images of the Superdome, I assumed that the building was being used as a shelter because it was no longer being used as a venue. It was implausible to me that the building looked this way because residents had been sheltered within for a few days during the storm; it looked like this was a long-abandoned building that had simply served the purpose of providing a large, mostly dry space in which people could take refuge. I could not believe that the filth and damage to the building were caused by those taking shelter there. And later, all of the stories of horror about the place.

How the hell were these images true? And how had I missed all of this over the weekend? How was this happening in America? We were the good guys who were always rescuing the poor people stuck in similar situations have a globe away. We had spent most of the time in the car, and granted we weren’t listening to NPR, or an AM news channel, but I would think that something like this would have made it onto a special report on even Tejano station coming from the desert of Idaho. Maybe it was covered, and I somehow missed it. I am still not sure.
How were people trapped in a city? It didn’t make any sense to me. I grew up in Idaho, a land of big, open spaces. You can literally see for miles in any direction without a thing disrupting your view. With my limited geographical experience, it seemed impossible to me that people could live in a place that they couldn’t get out of. I wonder how many people shared this point of view when the disaster was unfolding? (Should I add a reference at this point, noting the geography of the city, and the very few ways to make it out?)

I had to do something. Never in my life have I been compelled to action as I was after seeing the images on Oprah. I didn’t know what I could do. I didn’t have any money, but since I had been laid-off, I had plenty of time. What could I do? I needed information, and the new channels seemed to be doing so only begrudgingly. The computer he gave me for my birthday had been repossessed, so I didn’t have access to the Internet. I had to get online. I hadn’t seen my parents since the week before when we had gotten into a fight, a real screaming and yelling match, rare for our family, and wanted to make up; plus, I needed to get online so that I could get some information about how I could help. I drove the hour to my parents’ house to search for something I could do, some way that I could help. I remembered seeing something about the Americorps on Oprah, I think. Maybe it was the first President Bush and President Clinton talking about them? I don’t really remember; it is all kind of mashed up in my head. The first place I went was the Americorps website. It didn’t look like it was something that I would qualify to join. So somewhere I got the idea to go to the Red Cross website.

I went to the main Red Cross website, and learned that I to volunteer I needed to contact my local chapter. Local chapter? I had no idea how to do this, but found a link on the main website. I clicked on it, and then found my way to the American Red Cross of Greater Idaho website. Here, I got a number to call. When I called, I was sent to voicemail. I left a message saying that I didn’t have much money, but I did have a lot of time and was really interested in helping the people affected by the hurricane. I really didn’t think that I would hear back from them.
I went home. You were asleep on the couch. I told you what I had done. I asked if you would call too. You didn’t want to, claiming that it would take away from time recording your album. I took it as you not wanting to spend time with me, and am still certain that that is what it was. How on earth did I pretend that everything was okay between us? You wouldn’t even sleep in our bed with me, and when you went out at night to play in the bars, I was definitely not welcome. After I had convinced you to move back in, you had a friend stop by one night, and told me that I was only welcome (in my own house, where I was the only one paying the bills!) if I stayed in the bedroom out of view the entire time. For some reason, I did it. I even listened as you said some terrible things about me. Why did I let this happen to me? Why did I think I deserved to be used like this? I still don’t know, but fight almost every day to remember the way I felt so that I will never let myself be treated that way again. You made me feel very bad about myself for a really long time. I don’t think I will forgive you.

Even though I didn’t want to, I knew that leaving was the thing that I needed to do. I needed to get away from my life, completely.
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