arabi april 2006

a somewhat incoherent little report on my visit to new orleans, april 2006

saturday april 1 -- left madison monday morning, arrived arabi monday afternoon.

--about the emergency communities camp in arabi, louisiana--

the tents are roughly in rows, a couple rows in a field along the edge of the parking lot, and then there is a ditch and some trees, and another field behind that with more tents, and that is the back 40. way across that field was some kind of refinery. there were also tents scattered along a dirt road/path along a canal on one side. across the canal there were empty ruined houses. some people had campers or slept in their cars, all parked on the parking lot, and then juan and about eight (?) other people slept in bunks in a container trailer near the campers & cars, and there were two big tents that maybe 20 or so people slept in, one was americorps people i think.

you were not supposed to walk around barefoot there because the ground was toxic--on the asphalt and the grass, it had all been flooded and there was a refinery nearby.

there is a canal next to the parking lot, and across the canal there are shells of empty houses. ghost town.

there were boy scouts and other kids helping there, in the serving line dish washing etc, there were two kids helping in the distribution tent, maggie and graham (?) and they were twins about 12-13-or so i am terrible figuring ages. they opened boxes and set things out for people to take. they were nice kids. also there were hippies--some from rainbow gatherings/family or random, scouts, habitat for humanity, americorps, various christian groups, people from all over the country (plus canada)

there is also a "peace patrol". they have pairs of people just walk around and check on things, and they have walkie talkies, and they have 4 hour shifts i think, all day and all night, and a whole bunch of people do it at rotating times, so one night juan was doing it 2am to 6am. so he slept late the next day. other days he didn't do it, but then i saw other people doing it. just making sure there's no fights nobody sick nothing lost etc.

juan helped me set up my tent and said we'll get pallets to put under it later (all the tents were up on pallets because it got so muddy and waterlogged when it rained, but that night it was supposed to be clear) and then we went to the party in the back 40. i should have taken pictures at the back 40 party but i was too frazzled. it was late afternoon, golden light, and people sitting around on the grass, some people had backlit gold haloes of hair, some were all light washed out in the direct light, there were lots of hippie & eclectic crazy clothes (there were tons of clothing donations, and a free store, a tent full of clothes, and people would get practical things and also crazy stuff, evening gowns and things that don't match and so on.)& piercings & tattoos and punk like people too, and raggedy trees, and scattered tents, and this big broad field behind and off in the distance a refinery, and people drumming and chatting.

later we went to the dome to eat, and later i went with juan to do night prep and we swept and mopped. a lot of the other tents just have the asphalt with faded yellow lines for floors, but the kitchen has a raised wood floor. pretty nice. i was so tired and starting to feel like i was falling asleep standing up so i said i'm going to bed. when i went to my tent i fell asleep. there was noisy refrigerator truck humming and rumbling all night, and some loud music playing right when i went to bed but it stopped later. but i slept pretty well.

sunday, april 2

already i got 5 compliments on my hair and 1 guy said i'm very beautiful -- he says "hello beautiful" to me in the morning.

in the morning i got some breakfast (every day there were 5 or 6 things at meals, so for breakfast there might be scrambled eggs, grits, ham, mixed fruit salad, pancakes, or quiche-like casserole, or corned beef hash. also there tables with coffee, tea, milk, cereal, another with crackers, cookies, candy bars, and another with coolers of water and fruit juice, so you could get some sort of snack all the time). the food is pretty good, hippie vegetable casseroles and stews and salads and then weird canned middle america stuff, baked beans and ham and corned beef hash.

i didn't know what to do, where to go to sign up for shifts or whatever. i talked with a guy who was at the party the night before. he said just go and ask people if they need any help -- that's what he does, he'd been there 4 days and hadn't done any formal "signing up". he said don't worry about the rules. and then this man came over and gave us forms to fill out -- name, address, emergency contact, how long we'll be staying, etc. so there is some semblance of coordination.

after breakfast, in the morning juan helped me move my tent. we found a place for my tent that somebody was using for a "porch". there were pallets already there, with a table and chairs on it. it turned out the guy whose porch it was didn't mind, and we moved the furniture off and put my tent on it. it was a better place than the 1st night, farther away from the trucks and closer to trees (also closer to the portopotties & showers).

i went past the dish pit and asked if they needed help, and they did, so i "found my niche" and helped out there. it was pretty fun -- i dried things and put them away at first, so it was nice to bustle around carrying stacks of pots and container etc into the supply tent and to the kitchen. also helped wash both big pots in big tubs and dishes in small tubs. they put bleach in the water to sanitize. also have running water in hoses, but you can't drink it. the showers have water in metal tubes and tanks in back to heat it up in the sun. while washing big stuff i had a nice time with garrett, who was doing the preliminary spraying and scraping, and kate who as washing and then i dried and put away and we got a good rhythm gong. plus they play all this music everywhere so we had raucous danceable music on. different things-country punk bluegrass jazzy indie reggae etc all kinds. there were several cd players in various tents.

later i met tasha, i saw this nice looking girl with a camera and we were talking about photography.

in the afternoon juan and i went to one of the teepees to paint. it had a floor, with carpeting on it, and some mats and blankets and stuffed animals scattered around on the floor, and an opening in the middle of the floor for a fire pit. it was big and open and the wind made the canvas and wood creak like on a sailboat. we lay on the mat and it was nice looking up at the hole at the top with a bit of blue sky showing and hearing the cloth flapping in the wind. other people came and went, came in and chatted, somebody else came and got some stuff they'd left in there; one guy was doing some yoga stretching, all very low key, just nice sunday afternoon hanging out)

on the pallets sidewalk near the laundry someone had written in magic marker -- "you have just bent down to read something completely superfluous"

at night prep i was cracking eggs into big buckets with jessica, who is from quebec and speaks french and asked me what the word for "shell" was -- pointing to an egg shell. we cracked eggs together the next night, too. another night i was sitting in the dome and jessica came in and nervously giggled and asked for a pen and paper and wrote a word she wanted to know what it meant, and it was "gourd". she had heard something like "you're out of your gourd" and was puzzled. this other guy helped us crack eggs and he was more efficient, doing two at a time with a flourish. tasha and siren and some other girls made jello shots for the next day. some of the other people in the kitchen were trying to remember how to do the charleston, 1 60ish person and a couple of 20something people.

april 3 monday

i had breakfast with ray. he's 66 years old from illinois. he is helping gut houses and they have to wear hazmat suits and it's sweltering. he said he can't believe all the unchaperoned young women here and it scares him and he thinks about his 3 daughters, but then he says his "boss" in gutting houses is a 22 year old girl. i said young women these days are independent and tough and don't take krap from anybody

monday i washed dishes for about 8 hours, plus did night prep later. in the morning was talking with bailey from boston about pets, cute kitties etc. and she has a rabbit, and we talked about history and i told her about charlemagne, how his daughters could read and had power. also a nice guy whose name i didn't get was there and we talked about web stuff. also kate who is kind of tough and has dreadlocks and smokes a lot (a lot of people smoked a lot there) and seemed more together and taking charge there.

while i was helping with dishes like dinner plates i was with this guy named bert? from seattle, i think he was in some christian group, and was a plumber, and later he was helping fix up some other sink that hadn't worked

it was hot and humid, well for me, nice for new orleans, in the 80s, and after about 4 hours of work i felt wilted.

in the evening we had a jello shot party in the back 40. the shots weren't that strong though and didn't jell too well. i was telling some people about san francisco in the 70s. one guy had about 20 or 30 jello shots but wasn't that drunk. he had all the little empty plastic cups and another guy was counting them. i only had about 3 shots and just had a buzz. but it was nice sitting around in the dusk and dark by the big field and the trees. there are two guys who walk around everywhere together and dress kind of punk and wear these black kilts, and i was talking to them and didn't get pictures or their names but they are from port townsend washington, so i told them about my sister martha living on a boat there.

april 4 tuesday

it was really hot and humid tuesday i felt grubby enough to take another shower in the morning. i usually took a shower after supper, since in the morning lots of people took showers, also at the end of the day i felt quite grubby, plus wanted to spiff up for any partying later. at night it got cool enough to pull up part of the quilt, i slept on part and folded the other part around me. i had a sheet and a blanket too.

in the afternoon juan said let's go paint, so we went to the trailer to get his paints, and the steps on the trailer are very rickety, boards on log, and the 2nd step is two boards and one was loose, and i didn't know that, and i stepped on the loose board and it gave way and i fell through, and when i got up, my ankle felt like jelly when i stepped down on it and i couldn't stand on it, and then it just swelled up to like a baseball sticking out, in just a few seconds. gross. several people were there, and juan was coming down the steps right behind me, and we all looked at my huge ankle and exclaimed in surprise, and somebody was saying take her to calm, what they called the medical tent, and juan helped me hobble over there, and they put ice on it. there was hardly any ice that day and they had to scrounge and snitch some from the drink coolers. i can't remember the medical guy's name but he was interesting had lots of travels etc and the last night i was there he told me a poem he made up for peter pan to wendy.

i was crying and felt terrible and worried i wouldn't be able to do anything to help out, and juan told that to the medical guys, "she's crying because she thinks she won't be able to work". also they acted like i'm so funny and interesting or something when i took a picture of my foot -- they had it propped up with ice, and i said i have to take a picture. i sat with my foot up on another chair and ice on it, and juan sat next to me and talked to me, and was all kind and comforting. it got to be supper time and juan went and got dishes of food for us both and we had supper in the med tent. later he went back to finish night prep and another guy whose name i don't know, but the one who says hello beautiful and came up behind me and hugged me while i was brushing my teeth and who wore the silly daisy dress with witchy boots and later in the day he had on a black slip -- anyway he helped me back to my tent. i had an ace bandage and a crutch. i lay in my tent and whimpered and took ibuprofen, and juan came to see me and got me more ice.

april 5 wednesday

wednesday jocelyn gave us a ride into new orleans and dropped us off in the french quarter and she had to go work someplace i'm not sure. so juan and i wandered around in the french quarter and later we ran into some other emergency communities people, lulu and two guys, and we got a ride back with them in the afternoon.

there were trees uprooted still lying on the ground and block after block of empty houses still like just after the hurricane and flood.

we went to some art galleries and to a store that just had all christmas ornament and xmas trees and xmas music.

we also stopped in at oz the gay bar where a drag show was going to be and talked to some nice queens who were there, and for me it is always so much more "home" safe happy feeling being at a gay bar and being around quite flaming people.

in one gallery juan said, "hello sir," to the person at the desk, who turned out to be a very mannish woman. so we all laughed, and she a was real nice and that gallery had very colorful paintings, kind of fauve but new modern, and these clear acrylic sculptures that were kind of hokey like angels or faces kissing, but really nice, translucent faces inside a clear crystal, and white kind of greek goddesses and gods in clear plastic. it was bullet proof non-yellowing acrylic specially formulated for/by that artist.

another gallery had not very good pictures and a snooty clerk so we didn't stay long.

another gallery was the gallery of light, also kind of hokey (like thomas kincaid) but neat paintings that changed when you turned the lights up or down on dinner switches. one was of palm shadows on shutters that really changed a lot, another was noah's ark and dolphins in the ocean and the windows of the ark glowed when you turned the light down and the ocean glowed when you turned them up, and there were also these glass sculptures, by a retired dentist or doctor or somebody i think, of jellyfish like things that glowed with neon etc inside and the light would be in bright spots if you touched the glass and changed as you ran your finger along it, brightened and changed colors. there was little old man there who told us about the paintings and sculptures, also about the hurricane and how his son had a big nice house but no flood insurance, and they lost a lot but still had the gallery. they had giclee prints for $800 and the original paintings for $2000 or so. the giclees were really fine detail and huge, the same size as the paintings and had little dabs of paint on them to complete the illusion. the artists touched up the details, like highlights etc.

later we went and got shrimp po boys and sat at a sidewalk table to eat and the other people came along to go back. also cafe du monde is there and most businesses are open and its like not much happened. pretty intact, just some boarded up places and some damaged roofs. on the way back it was wild, we were all laughing and joking an whooping. when we got into the car a bunch of books fell out and it was huckleberry finn and things like that and i said, "ooh classics," and while riding one guy said, "i used to love ghandi when i was in high school" so we all guffawed. one guy had brands on his arms instead of tattoos, and said one was a druid symbol and he has an anarchist a on his back. we were talking about anarchy and revolutions and how we're pacifists, or were.

april 6 thursday

there was a pan of icky looking things at breakfast and it was pickled pigs feet but some of the local people were all happy with that.

everybody kisses and hugs a lot here. a girl came up to me when i was on crutches and asked me what happened and i told her and she kissed me on the cheek and said get well.

one day this other guy had hulk walkie talkies and he and juan were talking with then. they really worked and you talk in his stomach.

when i went back to the medical tent a day or so after hurting my ankle, i went in and you leave your (toxic) shoes outside, and i took off my zorris, which were falling apart and held together with duct tape and safety pins, and when i came out they were gone. we couldn't find them. i think someone took them by mistake since there was a smaller nicer pair of blue zorris sitting there that nobody claimed. anyway a couple of people went in search of my zoris and new zorris and all they could find was a black zori and a green striped zorri that fit me. luckily later i did find i brought an extra pair of zoris just in case, so i had a matched pair my size. but everyone was so nice, searching for me. i don't know their names. one girl is in a picture with juan and the drummer in the french quarter, she did lots of searching for zoris for me. i had a sore throat from my cold, and brian made me this really good herbal throat cough tea, that tasted kind of licorice-y only it wasn't, it was slippery elm, marsh mallow and something else. he gave me a water bottle full to keep in my tent at night and it helped.

there was this totally crazy woman named sunshine there. she seemed to have money i guess because she had new looking fashionable hippie clothes, like nice purple tie dyed dresses and stuff. she was maybe late 40s or 50 or so. she talked about how she loves jesus all the time and also said things that didn't make sense, in a sing song voice. she was telling me and juan that heaven is full of shiny rocks. she said, "shiny rocks... for real!" one night there was all this yelling and it was sunshine arguing with somebody, but also saying nonsensical things, and other people saying be quiet, we're trying to sleep. (also about the way people act here -- the guy who sunshine was arguing with walked away and past my tent and he said, in a disgusted fed up tone, though, "good morning... loving you." i saw several times situations where normally you might expect and argument defused by the people involved. somebody might say something in a peeved tone, and then apologize & explain why, or somebody might accidentally do something that would make somebody else mad, but then they'd both say their side of it calmly to each other and then it was ok, or they'd even hug. it just seemed sunshine didn't get that.)

the day we went to slidell i heard some people saying they were putting sunshine on a bus to go home and they were getting last minute money for her ticket, and some people were saying, "the one who loves jesus is leaving? thank god! i'll contribute!"

last night juan and i got dressed up to go out to see the drag show. i was going for ridiculous and got a black polka dot skirt and a zebra striped magenta and black shirt from the clothes tent, and juan was dressed all in black, nice fitting black pants and black silk shirt and we went to the clothes tent and he found a nice black ladies suit jacket.

but then we couldn't find a ride, so juan called a cab, and we waited an hour and it didn't come, so we gave up and went to bed. we were sitting there talking and this guy walked by so we asked him what time it was, and he said 11:40 so we gave up because the drag show started at 10:30.

there is an ice shortage but this older guy wolf (well, around my age) said he'd put a bag of ice for me to pick up when i get back from n.o. (when juan and i were going to go to a drag show), and i hugged him. only when i came back later to get it, the ice was gone. i saw wolf put it in the cooler for me, so i think someone else must have been searching for ice last night and found it. he didn't put it in the big regular drink coolers, but in a smaller cooler behind them. (which normally people would not notice, but in an ice shortage any cooler type thing is game.) so that night i just made sure i slept with my foot elevated, on top of my gym bag full of clothes. today my foot and leg are all ugly purple and still swollen.

one day wolf had on a fringed leather vest he got from he clothes tent and he said, "look i'm a hippie, take a picture", so i did.

one day at breakfast i was taliing to this kind of crazy guy who was wearing a plaid skirt and he said it was his family's tartan. he had a colorful necklace of plastic fish.

one day this older hippie guy (like, older than me) was wearing several black ladies slips so it looked like an evening gown, and he had on a leopard print hat and veil only he said it was thong underwear and a piece of netting. he got this generator going and was pressure washing the asphalt in between the dome and kitchen and trucks (the refrigerator truck that people called the reefer, and there was a freezer truck and another one i don't know what was in it). it was loud and annoying and he did it all day and stopped at supper time. then when we were starting night prep we couldn't find the ramp to the kitchen -- you need it to push carts full of beans and potatoes and whatnot. so we were looking and i saw the guy and asked him. i said, "did you put the ramp somewhere when you were pressure washing?" and i knew i shouldn't have said that, as soon as i said "pressure washing" his eyes kind of lit up. he told me where the ramp was and i got it and put it back where it should go, and he went and started up the generator and was pressure washing the area he just did that afternoon, in the dark.

also one night at night prep there were some old drunk men (in 50s or 60s thereabouts)(locals i think) sitting in the kitchen watching everybody, and one went and took my crutch and started dancing with it and i said, please put that back. so he sheepishly put it back and later came over and said, slurringly, he's sorry he took my crutch.

one day i was sitting with these local people, a family, parents and teenage kids, and one of the boys from port townsend walked by in a kilt, and the mother said, "there's another skirt! what's that all about?"

quite a few hippie guys wear skirts, indian print hippie skirts, then some guys wear funny goofy skirts, weird things they found in the clothes tent, and some wear fancy sequin ladies tops for shirts.

in the day on thursday i helped at the distribution tent and at night helped juan in night prep. since i hurt my ankle, i tried to find a sitting down job, so i ended up at the distribution tent.

at the distribution tent there were canned goods, tooth brushes, soap, things like that, also these candy bars (granola power bars), and weird odds and ends, like a bunch of hello kitty bathmats. also some disposable hazmat suits for cleaning houses. there was also weird canned stuff, like a lot of cranberry sauce. the stuff was donations from charities and businesses. people asked for bleach a lot and we didn't have it. also they were giving out big packs of water, only fema cut them off, so we just had water to drink, individual bottles and couldn't give people big boxes of them, and for a couple days nobody knew where to get drinking water and finally there was some place the city or parish was giving out water.

this woman named pat kind of ran the distribution and was there with her husband from oregon or massachusetts (?) and they had two greyhounds and an air conditioned mobile home, so the dogs stayed there most of the time and they take them out to walk. i sat and checked peoples id -- they had to have something to show they were locals, but if they didn't have anything i'd just ask where they were from and they'd say some local place and i'd say that's id enough. it is just because some rotten apples -- some people from who knows where had come earlier and just loaded up cars and the were selling the stuff. the local residents were very honest and they all needed stuff and didn't have money, or if they did have money, there weren't places to buy things. i checked off people as they came in so that's how we knew 350 or so came each day.

at the distribution tent, one lady, a resident, told me she got out of her house in just shorts and a shirt, no shoes, and spent 3 days in the hot sun on the freeway until they got rescued and got out of new orleans and she got some sandals at a relief center later.

another woman came in and said, to no one in particular, "i'm so sunburned and exhausted i can't think"

it was heart wrenching, all these people, still living in tents or fema trailers, their houses and workplaces all gone.

one day two big trucks drove in and it turned out they were coming to take the portopotties away because they hadn't been paid for. there were 20 or so portopotties and maybe 80(?) people at the camp using them, plus residents when they came for meals. so in the distribution tent we were saying what?! and saying we'd get everybody to lie down in front of the trucks, and this is crazy etc. but then some people were talking with the truck drivers and finally they left -- they were just the drivers and didn't care who paid for the portopotties. it was some miscommunication between the city and parish and so on. then it turned out some agency (gov't?) would pay something like $14 per hour for each volunteer hour, so after that at supper there were people with clip boards asking if you were a volunteer and what you did today about how many hours did you work. i was glad i _did_ work and put in 8 hours, what with daytime things like dish pit and distribution tent and then about three hours night prep. more than 8 hours a couple days. just the days we spent in the french quarter and slidell i didn't do anything but night prep when we came back.

in the afternoon thursday i listened to drum lessons. judah was in ghana and learned about african drumming, and he and taught juan, isaac, and this girl and other guy, by the fire pit. sunshine came along and was going to throw a t-shirt into the embers and judah stuck out his foot and said, "no! i forbid it!" and she stopped and got kind of mad but left. also judah was having the others clap in time and they were standing there clapping and juan looked so cute, grinning, and he had on a long black skirt and no shirt and a baseball cap. it was really hot sitting in the sun and by the hot embers but i just sat and closed my eyes and listened and kind of drifted off on drum sounds.

i like night prep and dish washing best. at night prep we had raucous music playing, and i was cracking eggs with chris and this other guy and we were so incompetent. partly it was these weird gloves, there weren't any of the regular ones so we had these stiff plastic clear ones and you couldn't get a grip on the eggs, and we lost some shell in the buckets of eggs. meanwhile juan was buzzing around. he gets pots and pans and supplies and mixes pancake batter etc. at the end everybody else leaves and juan and i sweep and mop the floors. it's nice being with juan. one night they played paul simons' graceland and i really like that cd.

earlier when i just met chris, i was showing him how to curtsey. so then after that we'd jokingly curtsey when we saw each other. he wore skirts all the time but was with his girlfriend who always had on jeans. he had this one beautiful skirt i wish i had, long rayon powder gray blue with cream and pink peach flowers on it, full and to the ground. real fluttery.

one day i heard these women sorting through new clothes donations, and one of them held up this weird sparkly metallic shirt and another one said, "put that in the box for the hippies".

one day at night prep tasha came in and she was carrying a bowl of cereal and i had my crutch and my bag with camera etc and we hugged clumsily so then i rushed over to a table and put down my stuff and she put down the bowl and then we hugged without accoutrements.

there were flaming flickering lights on the clouds last night and i thought it was lightning, only it turned out it was ambulance lights, some guy had a seizure and they called an ambulance. i didn't know the guy.

a guy from the trailer called me ma'am, and after i fell he was all apologetic and the next day told me he fixed the steps, and he did, they were shored up with 4x8s and lots of nails.

last night there were salsa dance lessons in the kitchen. i just looked on for a while. tasha was dancing.

my tent was very comfortable. i had a quilt on top of a sleeping bag and then sheet and blanket and it was a comfortable as my bed at home. i get a bit claustrophobic and for some reason i never zipped the flap and screen all the way up so bugs got in. i wasn't bothered by mosquitoes, but i did feel something(s) crawling on my face at night and i had these red spots on my face. they didn't itch or anything and went away in a couple days. but i should have zipped everything up. i also only had to get up one night in the middle of the night to go to the portopotties. usually i just slept all night quite well. one night i got pretty drunk and drank a lot of water before going to bed. it was odd getting up in the middle of the night and walking (hobbling) down the pallet walkways to the portopotties, and it was all very quiet, except for the refrigerator truck, and nobody around and some lights on in the dome or something so it was soft light where i was walking.

april 7 friday

thursday after night prep we went out with isaac and sarah to the french quarter. we went to several bars and it is expensive. it is nice though, since it is warm al the bars had big open doors and windows and you could walk down the street and hear different music and see in and decide which bars you want to go in to. i got heinekens at one bar for $4.50 each.at night prep earlier, juan had on a black baseball cap, and he put the baseball cap on me and laughed delightedly & took me to the dome to take pictures of me, and have other people take pictures of us.

wolf got a whole bag of ice for me that night and put it in a cooler and carried it to my tent for me. i got some good pictures of him climbing into the freezer truck to get the ice.

in the french quarter we kept running into other emergency communities people, also drummers juan knows. so we were joking around and going into different bars with various other people we knew. in one bar we met this old drunk tugboat captain. he said he has the "biggest tugboat" in the harbor. we were saying later, aren't most tugboats about the same size? but we think tugboats are cool.

at the last bar (spotted cat?) juan and i went to (sarah and isaac were at another bar sown the street that was way too loud for me), there were these guys doing a very funny stylized tango and we were talking to them and another guy named kenny. we were all joking and laughing and i took pictures of them and got their email addresses so they could see the pictures later.

we got quite rowdy on the way back, shouting jokes. i yelled "hot damn!" we were talking about when we die, and i said in my will i said to scatter my ashes on lake wingra and that's pretty lame, and then sarah said she wanted to be smoked and stuffed. so i said i want to be smoked and drizzled with butter and dill. i also told them stories of 1970s san francico. anyway a jolly night last night

we were going to slidell friday. when juan and feren were going all over the place getting things and trying to find each other before we went to slidell, i sat on the steps of the trailer and waited for them. these guys were in the trailer talking. one grew up in ocala, florida and said there's a heavy christian metal scene there. he says they have this attitude, if you don't love jesus then fuck you, your soul will burn in hell. he said, "its brutal. that's why i like it."

this guy called mojo was wearing a sequined ladies top and cut off jeans and hiking boots and a scarf in his hair, and from far away you could see the sparking of the sequins in the sun. the top was all ripped in the armpits. so he came over to the trailer and the other guys said, "it shows off your armpits nicely." mojo was talking and joking around and he threw a boot up in the air, and it landed on the roof of the trailer, so he said, "oops", and the guys were laughing, and then he climbed up the side of the door frame to get the boot. then he went off someplace and you could see the sparkling a long way off.

feren drove us to slidell. when we were driving through devastated neighborhoods the song "joy to the world" was on the radio. like we were in a movie and the director was trying to be ironic.

april 8 saturday

i'm sitting in the sun & morning breeze on the bayou in slidell. there are wrecked trees and a few tents and a couple of gutted refurbished houses. we are going to go canoeing.

when we drove to slidell, we went past where all the camps had been on lake pontchartrain, and all that was left was pilings. all along the way there were ruins, and still boats or cars in trees, or houses on top of boats or cars.

when we got to the camp (after getting lost and doubling back) the people there had leftovers from the night before so fixed us macaroni and cheese and ham. they have one house fixed up and this couple is living there (but might go back soon to where they were from i'm not sure, out west or something) they have a generator hooked up and had a computer. we stayed in another house, "meg's house" after this woman who got killed in a bus crash. it had bunks and blankets and air mattresses, and two rooms to sleep in, both with fireplaces, and a kitchen with some canned and dry food, and a bathroom with running water. one fireplace had been painted with an underwater scene with fish and rippling light. there were a bunch of lanterns and flashlights only most of them didn't work. we had dumped our stuff there in the day time and just lounged around outside, i'm not sure where juan or feren went but i fell asleep in a hammock by the water. we went back to the house at dusk and stumbled around trying to light things. some of the flashlights needed batteries, and some of the kerosene lamps didn't seem to have wicks. but we finally got a few lighted and sat and tried to paint a bit but couldn't see that well.

the house was kind of hot and so we had the windows open but there were no screens and mosquitoes came in. they didn't bother me and i didn't notice getting bit, and i just put a little bit of off on my ears to keep them from buzzing around, so i just heard distant mosquitoes like little violins in the night. i told juan that in the morning and he wasn't so thrilled. juan and feren had a terrible night and said the mosquitoes were driving them crazy. i put the bottle of off on the floor in the middle of the room, and they kept tossing and turning and jumping up to put on more off. juan was on an air mattress that creaked and groaned whenever he moved, and he said, "this bed is so loud", and in the middle of the night he got up and went to a cot by the window instead. in the morning we were looking out the window and said it was a nice view, and it reminded me of the view out my window in florida when i was a kid, i guess because of the palmettos, there weren't wrecked houses out my window.

i feel sick today and am losing my voice, headache, sore neck. my foot is more swollen & purple & gray than yesterday & now i feel depressed about leaving tomorrow.

when we went out on the bayou, i said i don't feel up to rowing, and juan said that's ok and he and feren would paddle, and i said i could sit in the middle of the canoe. so we went out on the bayou and the dogs ran along the shore and swam after us for a while. we didn't see any alligators but juan said he saw a small one earlier in the morning. all along back in the bayou there was evidence of the storms, trees broken and some wrecked houses, but not as many wrecked houses as new orleans. juan and feren had made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, so we stopped and floated and ate before turning back.

also in slidell we saw a big concrete fish by the highway, so i took pictures of it.

on the way back we drove past my grandparents' house on marshall foch, and also through the 9th ward, and i took pictures. along marshal foch and that neighborhood it is mostly brick houses and was under about 10 ft of water. it was like a ghost town, nobody there, empty houses missing doors and windows, yards full of debris, for blocks and blocks. one or two houses here and here had people working on gutting them but otherwise nobody around. my grandparents' house was different from when i was a kid, it used to be red brick and now the brick had been painted yellow, and there was a brick wall around the yard and an iron fence along the street side, and the old barn-like garage was gone and an addition to the house was there instead. we drove up the alley past the house with the swimming pool. the pool was full of branches and boards and junk. i remember when i was a kid it was all beautiful turquoise. also all around that neighborhood was cute little manicured yards. no more. juan said going to see my grandparents' house was a little bit of closure.

the 9th ward was even worse. just rubble and ruins as far as you can see. it was under about 30 feet of water. feren said she heard that people went to the bridge to look out when the flood just happened, and people were stunned to silence, all you could see from the bridge was water and floating corpses.

there were streets closed off with yellow tape and those orange barrel things, but they had fallen over and we went down the streets we could. there were still wrecked houses in the middle of some streets and branches down. there were a lot of steps going up to empty slabs and piles of wood and downed trees, and things scattered everywhere, chairs, kids toys, clothes, wrecked cars, kitchen appliances. i was taking pictures and this other car drove up and this woman asked, "do you live here?" in a belligerent tone, like she was mad i was there, and i said, "no, i am taking pictures to show to people up north so they don't forget about this," and she got all enthusiastic and said yeah do that.

we went past common ground in 9th ward and saw a house they had fixed up, a lone ok house in the ruins. feren goes back and forth between common ground and emergency communities, so do several other people we met. there was big stack, and nice pyramid of bean cans in the street in front of a house where some people who i think work with common ground were staying.

then we went into a less wrecked part of new orleans, still lots of ruins though, and stopped at the common ground's free internet place and checked our email. juan hadn't had a chance to check his for about two weeks and said there were 20 messages from me. i sent out a message to everybody. there was a guy there wearing a black evening dress with lots of gold sequin flowers on it. also i heard some guys talking about dealing with fema -- one guy lived downstairs in an apartment building and his apartment was flooded and ruined but the upstairs was ok and the fema people said the house was 50% habitable, but he was saying, "but i can't move in with the guy upstairs". also these two women who lived next door to each other, a mother and daughter, one house was sort of ok and still standing and the other was just the concrete slab and everything else gone, and that was "50% habitable" too. i guess they average a lot and then you have to go fight it and fill out forms and have them come look again.

last night there

it was really windy all day, and got worse at night. it was kind of scary. the kitchen tent sides were flapping violently and when i rinsed out rags and draped them over the edge of the sink and went to do something else and then came back, the rags had been blown out into the parking lot. this one girl from hawaii said it's tornado weather and said, "look at that", and there was a colorful pinwheel spinning around and it would stop and spin the other way. so we were looking at that, between violently flapping tents, in the dark, and it was spooky, like in a horror movie. a lot of the tarps on tents blew off and piled up on tents further downwind, and my tent pulled loose of two stakes and swung around and was half hanging off the pallets. but the sky was clear and you could see the stars as you were buffeted by the wind.

at night prep this guy put on a cd of flogging molly and i love that music -- punk irish, and we were cracking eggs etc as usual. this one girl was expertly cracking eggs two at once.

there was going to be a big party for the residents that night only pretty much nobody came -- people just stay put at night, so the emergency communities people had a party anyway. we did face painting and i did my face, and this guy who has metal teeth wanted me to paint his face so i did. juan and i did night prep and then there was drumming at the fire circle so juan went and drummed too. two guys had little pennywhistles or flutes and were playing irish folk songs with the drumming. i was going back and forth between the drumming and face painting in the dome (where tasha was). the next day in the early morning people were walking around with smeared paint on their faces.

april 9 sunday

the morning i was going to leave i got up early and packed up my stuff and took down my tent and woke up juan (banged on the trailer door) and had breakfast -- they just have sunday brunch at 11, but i sat out at the table where people hang out and juan brought me some cereal, and later we were sitting in the dome talking and he got me some eggs and bacon and said you need to have a good breakfast.

jocelyn accidentally locked her keys in her car and all these guys were trying to get the door open and kind of wrecking the rubber thing around the door and finally some guy who had burglar/locksmith tools popped the lock open in a few seconds.

there was this big guy with shaggy hair and beard named kevin, i think, and the drink lady (whose name i don't know)(but she was real nice; also kept saying you really need to have a doctor look at my ankle) said he was worried about me when i broke my ankle, and his tent was near mine, and the last day when i was packing up he came over and hugged me bye.

in the car to the airport juan said he wants to just be buried in dirt when he's dead, no coffin, so he can decompose under apple trees, and jocelyn and i both said we want to leave our bodies for organ donation and science and then have what is left cremated, and i asked juan if he'll scatter my ashes over a garden and he said a garden would be good (instead of lake wingra). at the airport jocelyn hugged me bye and juan helped carry my stuff in and i checked the big bag with the tent and then went to the gate and hugged and kissed juan, and then he went back to the car (and they were parked illegally) (also i gave jocelyn some gas money).

at the gate, though, it was so aggravating, they wanted to open all my film cans and i asked to talk to the supervisor and he said the same thing and i was practically crying (in squeaky voice) and trying to explain the infrared film would be ruined, and the supervisor said then you'll have to leave the film here, and i said no no, and can't you check it in the dark, so finally he agreed to go into a less lit corner and put my coat over the film cans and open and close them quick. i don't know why they have to do that. on my way to new orleans my film was not a problem but they weren't going to let me on because my id was no good. my passport was expired -- i didn't realize that, and my university id was no good, they said only government id. and in new orleans it was the opposite, id ok but film a problem. they aren't even consistent. and i have to get searched any way because of my titanium hip. and they broke the lock on the duffel bag to search it in madison. i highly doubt they stopped any terrorists. i was all frazzled but i had gin in the water bottle so i had that instead of buying expensive drinks on the plane. when i got to madison nobody was there to pick me up and i called and my mother said, "i thought you were coming tomorrow!" it turned out i told everybody i was coming back sunday april 9 but somehow i copied and pasted the airline itinerary and it said april 10 -- i had about 5 possible itineraries and thought i copied the right one, but didn't. but my nephew jacob came and got me and we went to my sister alice's for supper and alice said i looked like i'd been through the ringer -- ace bandage, bug bites on my face. but i felt fine. the next day i went to the doctor and found out my ankle was broken not sprained like i thought, and i had sinus infection. so the next couple weeks i was just sick and working and sleeping, but they got the internet back in arabi so juan and i emailed a lot.

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