Entries this day: Japanese_day Ma_after_Katrina Zzzz

Japanese day

12:53pm BRST Friday 10 February 2006

Today several of the GET Ts are only allowed to speak Japanese between 9am and 6pm. I got an early start and felt pretty good with it, but then I got trapped by an old cat who I think meant well, but was just blabbering on about stuff that I could just understand the topic, but not the details... he was talking about 新しい vs 新たに which have the same meaning, but were used at different periods of Japanese history, I think. He was telling me that I should ask people what was the difference between these two words and that no one would really know and that I should find that interesting, and he proceeded to flag people down and ask them as if I wanted to know and I couldn't gracefully duck out; god it was just a mess for a while.

I did escape after a bit and was nearly bummed out enough to *not* play dodgeball with a lot of dodgeball playin' peeps, but when Petra was like, "where ya going?" (in Japanese), I explained that I didn't want to play cause I was wearing my glasses and my back hurt blah blah, and I realized I was relishing being in a victim role, so I cut that shit out, went and put on my contacts and played.

My back still does hurt, but not terribly.

So far I have collected about 9 smiley faces and 0 Xs on all Japanese day. In a bit, to take care of myself, I'm going to create some art, specifically for the daily paper, which always has an artistic title image on the front top page.

7:29pm BRST Friday 10 February 2006

I got 30 smiley faces today. Lisa got 32. Neither of us got any Xs.

I drew an image type thing for the newspaper: the first 'o' of "Go To Times" is an image of the earth with a rocket launching from Florida. (not to scale)

I've got two other ideas for images and two other 1/2 ideas. Started to draw one of them and decided to revamp it. Just need to be careful not to turn it too much into work, or to totally neglect my GET duties.

Silly teaching....

Had a meeting in Sunshine Bar from 3 - 3:30 (GET Open Curriculum planning), then a pile of meetings in T-Club room today: 4-5:30 Walter Penge, 5:30 - 6:30 Port Orientationa and GET meeting. By the end of all that my brain was just like ugh.

Came down to the favela and found Rei was available for dinner! Chowed a bit with her in Yacht Club (in the shaded breezy part, cause it's been hot recently, but we are headed to colder latitudes... brrr!) To the front top deck for a bit and now writing this in her room while she imports pictures. About to go eat in Topaz now...

Ma after Katrina

February 10, 2006 

though I write in my journal only sporadically, today's entry seems worth
capturing in a way that can be shared.  Perhaps into a sermon soon?

The SWUUMA Retreat this year was at the Solomon Episcopal Retreat Center
near Covington, LA.  The nights before and after the retreat I stayed with
my niece Bridgette Benton and her sons in Slidell.

On January 30, Bridgette drove me around to show me some of areas hardest
hit by Katrina - residential neighborhoods with piles of debris and tree
branches; refrigerators wrapped with duct tape, not to be opened; and the
swath of destruction along Highway 11.  She stopped a couple of times for me
to take pictures.

After the retreat, the Rev. Matt Tittle (minister of Bay Area UU Church in
Clear Lake City, TX), Jon and I drove to Violet, just outside Chalmette, LA.
Bay Area's church sexton lives in Texas City, next door to a Katrina evacuee
who needs help cleaning out her flooded home.  Matt had hoped more ministers
could have come to help, but most of us had made travel arrangements already
and most had planes to catch.  Jon had driven over from Austin and wanted to
see the damage for himself.

With just three of us, there was not a lot we could do, but it was a far
worse mess than I could have imagined from videos, photographs, and stories.
At first we couldn't open the front door all the way; the back door was
boarded up.  I slid in sideways and started grabbing what I could reach and
handing it out to the guys - sheet rock, pieces of furniture that broke
easily in my hands.  Matt used a board to scrap some of the muck out from
behind the door and finally we got it open.

The muck was several inches of black gumbo, very sticky and slick, probably
toxic.  Masks, gloves, long sleeves, long pants, and sturdy shoes were a
must.  We pulled out small furniture like a chair and a couple of small
tables.  The smaller table's glass top was intact so I leaned it against the
outside wall.  I started a pile of sheets of broken glass in the yard so it
was visible and perhaps less hazardous.  (Now I worry about kids using it to
smash in the street, but that's out of my control.)

The three of us managed to haul out a large screen TV unit and a love seat.
A couch fell against my leg and I held it that way until I could get my
hands clear to shove it back.  The bruises are healing.

Then while I was outside and Jon and Matt started moving the larger sofa, a
snake came out of it and aggressively hissed at Matt.  They couldn't see any
markings, but it had a diamond shaped head (not a good sign).  Jon took a
picture or two and later identified it as a water moccasin - probably with a
nest of them inside the couch - the cushion was wriggling.  We decided that
was enough.

Matt wants to get a crew from Bay Area to go over for a weekend cleanout.
Now he has a better idea of tools needed - a Bobkat would be great, for
instance; or at least shovels, chain saw, pickaxe, maybe pry bars?

We set salvageable items at the corner of the fence closest to the house -
wine glasses, trophies (a sports trophy and another for "Parent of the
Year"), a two-tier serving tray, some DVDs (could they work if cleaned? I
have my doubts, but it would be worth a try.)  I started a black trash bag
for small, unsalvageable but maybe precious items like notebooks and
pictures.

Matt had brought some supplies that we left on the porch of the FEMA trailer
parked in the yard - trash bags, latex gloves (too thin, really), toilet
paper, bottled water, and Gatorade.  There are no utilities to the trailer,
but it should be coming soon.

Though we were there for just a few hours, I am glad to have seen it myself.
As my tank top said, "The Good Faith Is Messy." That was the theme for
SWUUSI 2005 by theme speaker Dick Gilbert.  He meant that a good faith makes
room for paradox and doubt, for instance.  In this case, I took it to mean
that a good faith requires that we roll up our sleeves sometimes and help it
along.  If you can have faith in the future in the midst of utter
devastation, then you must have a strong faith indeed.

Jon and I then followed Matt back to Slidell, where we had lunch at Wendy's
then parted ways when Matt headed back to Houston.  Jon and I wanted to see
my sister Jean's house, the one she designed and had built, the 5,000 square
foot, two-story house on pilings.  Just now I am remembering my stays in the
guest room, with its comfortable furnishings, private bath (with the
rust-stained toilet and the brownish showers (we drank bottled water)), and
private porch with its own exit into the wooded back yard.  Every room in
the house has a porch or a balcony.  (Do geckoes still live there?  She had
a couple of them in the house to help with roach control!)

I am remembering the two-bedroom garage apartment where I sometimes stayed
during those long visits when she was so ill with cancer.  Her son Buddy's
sound protected band studio was downstairs.  He couldn't play past 10 or 11
when people were staying upstairs, but he did love his drums.

Since the house is on pilings, the house got only 4 feet of water downstairs
(where the bedrooms are).  All of the native trees and plants she had put in
are gone.  The gazebo and tree house are gone.  There's tree damage to the
roof and various broken windows.  The winding wooden sidewalk to the road is
gone - maybe taken out even before the storm since it was getting a bit old
when she died seven years ago.

But the house is still standing, and work is being done to remove damaged
contents.  I am selfishly glad that none of our family heirlooms were still
there, since Herb sold it and moved to his new house in Chauvin.

I remember in particular (downstairs) Mama's wicker rocking chair, the
children's wicker rocking chair, the children's card table and two little
folding chairs, red and white.  They would certainly have been ruined, but
they're gone already, anyway.  Everything has been divided up, moved,
stored, and/or used in different homes in Slidell, Columbus, College
Station, Austin, Chauvin, and who knows where else.  It's all just stuff -
the stuff of memories - memories also captured in photographs.  I wonder how
the ship's ladder in the master bedroom fared.  I guess it depends on how
long the water stayed high.

There had been a huge thunderstorm the night before.  Tornadoes had
destroyed a couple of homes that had been damaged by Katrina.  The ground
was soggy.  Next door is a private cemetery, even fairly recently in use.  I
made my way through the mud and debris of branches to look at it up close.
There is a cemetery recover program under way.  It was rather poignant to
see a row of caskets, graves half full of water, above ground tombs empty of
their contents, and caskets halfway out of their tombs.  May those souls and
their families rest easy.

All of these scenes replay themselves in my mind, eight days later.  Three
hours of my time (in Violet), an hour or two in Slidell; three pages in this
intermittent journal.  The whole experience has left me a little less
interested in ordinary work, a little less patient with complaints at
church, a little less able to focus on anything meaningful.

It is important, from time to time, to be confronted with great loss, to
lend a hand where you'd rather not go, to slog through the muck in hope of
salvation, to test our resolve.  I am humbled in the midst of these comforts
- clean running water, comfortable chairs, art on the walls.  I am blessed
to have dipped one toe into another world of ruin and recovery.

I have witnessed a strength of character that has been tested in the
aftermath of a huge devastation.  The levees could not withstand nature's
force.  Instead, people have had to build their own personal levees of
faith.  In the event that any of us or our community are threatened, we
would do well to have constructed levees of faith and strength.  We would do
well to stick our fingers in the dike, to fill and stack sandbags, to join
together when everything seems to collapse around us.

This is our community of faith, our sanctuary, our place of refuge.  The
levees we build here through tradition or covenant will strengthen us
against threats from the world out there and bolster us against threats from
within as changes take place.  Live Oak grows and new generations grow up
among us and time marches on, and we will see change.  We are blessed here
and now with the opportunity - even the responsibility - to bind ourselves,
one to another.

The covenant generated by at least 75 of us, discussed at two town hall
meetings, and up for consideration at the March 12 Steering Committee, is
summed up in its last three words - integrity, respect, and love.  May these
qualities become our way of interacting with one another in this messy,
faithful endeavor.

Zzzz

1:19am BRST Saturday 11 February 2006

Perhaps the best thing about getting water up in Namihei was being sidetracked by three friends of two of my Fighting Goats, Hitomi and Akiko (aka Eye and Ann (aka Ninnin and Anko)), Nao, Keiko and A-chan, and during our conversation, them asking about Palestine. I will do a presentation soon.