Link to our newsletter!
http://www.xavier.edu/portal_announcements/pdf/Newsletter_2.pdf
Friday, October 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Two Women
This is a poem we read in our Ethics class. It was written in 1973, shortly after the Chilean Revolution. The link is to a video on YouTube (more of an audio recording, with a title on the screen), recorded by Graham and me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzAbkO64jn0
Here's the text:
I am a woman.
I am a woman.
I am a woman born of a woman whose man owned a factory.
I am a woman born of a woman whose man labored in a factory.
I am a woman whose man wore silk suits, who constantly watched his weight.
I am a woman whose man wore tattered clothing, whose heart was constantly strangled by hunger.
I am a woman who watched two babies grow into beautiful children.
I am a woman who watched two babies die because there was no milk.
I am a woman who watched twins grow into popular college students with
summers abroad.
I am a woman who watched three children grow, but with bellies stretched from no food.
But then there was a man;
But then there was a man;
And he talked about the peasants getting richer by my family getting poorer.
And he told me of days that would be better and he made the days better.
We had to eat rice.
We had rice.
We had to eat beans!
We had beans.
My children were no longer given summer visas to Europe.
My children no longer cried themselves to sleep.
And I felt like a peasant.
And I felt like a woman.
A peasant with a dull, hard, unexciting life.
Like a woman with a life that sometimes allowed a song.
And I saw a man.
And I saw a man.
And together we began to plot with the hope of the return to freedom.
I saw his heart begin to beat with hope of freedom, at last.
Someday, the return to freedom.
Someday freedom.
And then,
But then,
One day,
One day,
There were plans overhead and guns firing close by.
There were planes overhead and guns firing in the distance.
I gathered my children and went home.
I gathered my children and ran.
And the guns moved farther and farther away.
But the guns moved closer and closer.
And then, they announced that freedom had been restored!
And then they came, young boys really.
They came into my home along with my man.
They came and found my man.
Those men whose money was almost gone.
They found all of the men whose lives were almost their own.
And we all had drinks to celebrate.
And they shot them all.
The most wonderful martinis.
They shot my man.
And then they asked us to dance.
And they came for me.
Me.
For me, the woman.
And my sisters.
For my sisters.
And then they took us.
Then they took us.
They took us to dinner at a small private club.
They stripped from us the dignity we had gained.
And they treated us to beef.
And then they raped us.
It was one course after another.
One after another they came after us.
We nearly burst we were so full.
Lunging, plunging—sisters bleeding, sisters dying.
It was magnificent to be free again!
It was hardly a relief to have survived.
The beans have almost disappeared now.
The beans have disappeared.
The rice—I've replaced it with chicken or steak.
The rice, I cannot find it.
And the parties continue night after night to make up for all the time wasted.
And my silent tears are joined once more by the midnight cries of my children.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzAbkO64jn0
Here's the text:
I am a woman.
I am a woman.
I am a woman born of a woman whose man owned a factory.
I am a woman born of a woman whose man labored in a factory.
I am a woman whose man wore silk suits, who constantly watched his weight.
I am a woman whose man wore tattered clothing, whose heart was constantly strangled by hunger.
I am a woman who watched two babies grow into beautiful children.
I am a woman who watched two babies die because there was no milk.
I am a woman who watched twins grow into popular college students with
summers abroad.
I am a woman who watched three children grow, but with bellies stretched from no food.
But then there was a man;
But then there was a man;
And he talked about the peasants getting richer by my family getting poorer.
And he told me of days that would be better and he made the days better.
We had to eat rice.
We had rice.
We had to eat beans!
We had beans.
My children were no longer given summer visas to Europe.
My children no longer cried themselves to sleep.
And I felt like a peasant.
And I felt like a woman.
A peasant with a dull, hard, unexciting life.
Like a woman with a life that sometimes allowed a song.
And I saw a man.
And I saw a man.
And together we began to plot with the hope of the return to freedom.
I saw his heart begin to beat with hope of freedom, at last.
Someday, the return to freedom.
Someday freedom.
And then,
But then,
One day,
One day,
There were plans overhead and guns firing close by.
There were planes overhead and guns firing in the distance.
I gathered my children and went home.
I gathered my children and ran.
And the guns moved farther and farther away.
But the guns moved closer and closer.
And then, they announced that freedom had been restored!
And then they came, young boys really.
They came into my home along with my man.
They came and found my man.
Those men whose money was almost gone.
They found all of the men whose lives were almost their own.
And we all had drinks to celebrate.
And they shot them all.
The most wonderful martinis.
They shot my man.
And then they asked us to dance.
And they came for me.
Me.
For me, the woman.
And my sisters.
For my sisters.
And then they took us.
Then they took us.
They took us to dinner at a small private club.
They stripped from us the dignity we had gained.
And they treated us to beef.
And then they raped us.
It was one course after another.
One after another they came after us.
We nearly burst we were so full.
Lunging, plunging—sisters bleeding, sisters dying.
It was magnificent to be free again!
It was hardly a relief to have survived.
The beans have almost disappeared now.
The beans have disappeared.
The rice—I've replaced it with chicken or steak.
The rice, I cannot find it.
And the parties continue night after night to make up for all the time wasted.
And my silent tears are joined once more by the midnight cries of my children.
Monday, October 27, 2008
What has happened to our country?
What has happened to our country? What has happened to our ability to discuss? It has given way to partisanship and divisiveness, to debates and winning (or losing). When the Right condemns the Republicans who endorse Barack Obama for president (most notably, though not only, Colin Powell) rather than listening to their arguments; when the Left makes jokes of Sarah Palin for her misstatements; when honest voters have to abandon their positions on one issue or a few issues for what may be the better overall ticket; when people are so bent on being right that they refuse to listen but instead think about what someone else says only in terms of their response to it, we have a problem. We as a nation have an addiction to being right.
With the election so close, this is going to take on a clearly political overtone. I do want to stress, however, that I am implicating myself as well. I will do my best to implicate "my side" equally. I know that both sides are at fault.
Today at dinner, My'eka passed along an email that someone at the St. Mary's Pregnancy Center, her service site, was passing out. More importantly, she passed along a statement of one of the women whom she works with. She said that she has spent her life working on abortion, so she cannot bring herself to vote for a pro-choice candidate. She will not be voting for Barack Obama. The email, however, implied that God wants John McCain to win. I cannot believe that. I'm not saying that God wants Barack Obama to win either. I just don't believe that God is in full support of either candidate. For me, the issue that God has placed on my heart recently is the issue of poverty. Because this is the primary issue that I am working with and surrounded by at this point in my life, I cannot bring myself to support someone who wants to give the rich (who don't need it) more money, widening the income gap, and who supports corporate welfare. I believe that for some people certain issues are more important for them than they are for others. I don't believe either party has a monopoly on being right.
In our dinner/post-dinner discussion, we began to talk about the St. Mary's Pregnancy Center, Planned Parenthood, and abortion. Specifically in our brief research of Planned Parenthood, I was reminded of how despicable they are. Planned Parenthood is a for-profit organization that wants women to have abortions because they make a profit off of the abortions. It is an organization founded on the basis of racism and eugenics and, to a degree, still operates under these principles today, primarily in classism based on the locations of their clinics. While I don't believe that abortion will be a priority issue on either ticket, I'm a little disturbed by it.
This is my condemnation of politics: I believe the Democratic Party has adopted its position on abortion to pander to a certain group of people. I remember when I was probably a freshman or sophomore in high school, although maybe I was still in junior high, there was a bill in the Indiana legislature to require high school health classes to teach the negative aspects of abortion. There was a Democrat who opposed it. I don't understand why. If you're pro-choice (and if that's a feminist position), wouldn't you (or shouldn't you) be pro-educated-choice? Because isn't that the only way to be pro-choice? Our conclusion was that he was probably financially backed by Planned Parenthood or someone of the like. So he was pandering to his financial backers. (We don't know this for sure, but it seemed a logical conclusion.)
But lest you think I'm once sided, Republicans do it as well. Most notably is President Bush's appointees to head national environmental agencies - former lobbyists for coal or gas industries and former executives within those industries, industries that supported his bid for the presidency. Bush's laws haven't helped much either, largely deregulating environmental protections to benefit the industries and hurt the environment (and in turn, our quality of life through air quality, water quality, and other toxic chemicals - such as mercury - that make their ways into our food sources and our bodies).
We as citizens don't do so well either. We have debates rather than discussions. We defend rather than listen. It's about being right or wrong rather than finding the truth. We accept what fits with our positions and deny what doesn't rather than analyze on merit. We don't look into who wrote what article and, more importantly, who funded what study. I've even come across someone who defended his position on one issue through an article that put forth at least three different positions in an attempt to contradict the other side. And he didn't have a problem with that whatsoever.
But the bigger problem I see is the polarization. I felt like I was told to leave the Catholic Church recently in a response I got from a leader in a high school group that I was a member of. He may not have said those words, but he strongly implied it. And all because I posted a link to a document by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, a guide to voting, in response to another one not sanctioned by the bishops that simply told people how to vote by picking the issues the author saw as important. The USCCB document mentions many more issues as important, issues that cross the spectrum of political parties, and says that each voter must make up her or his own mind about which issues are of the greatest importance and which issues are most likely to be effected by each candidate's election. To be honest, I'm guilty of it too. I had gotten to the point where I disregarded abortion as an issue because it's not the most important issue in my perspective. I felt that I had to disregard it, even though I had a fully thought-out reason for doing so, to defend myself. I'm coming to realize that I can vote based on other issues while still see abortion as an important issue to consider. And I can respect people more who see abortion as the overriding issue as long as they've considered the other issues. So I'm learning.
I recognize that it has become very obvious in this post where I stand politically. I don't intend for this to be a political post, and I don't want it to be polarizing. I just wonder if we can ever reach a point of discussion and honest respect for other points of view. Can we ever discuss things and begin to come to agreements?
As much of a proponent of journalism as I am, I have to wonder if the media is, to a large degree, to blame. To blame for not doing their jobs, or not doing them well. I overheard a discussion about how there are people who just blatantly lie to us about certain issues. We just accept those statements as facts because of a M.D. or Ph.D after the name. And sometimes the media gives those pieces of "research" the attention they need for people to believe them but doesn't give proper attention to the true research. They don't say who funded each study or what that organization stands for. Those are very important questions to ask because organizations seek to gain something through funding research. Sometimes that leads to false research. The media would rather report on Bristol Palin's pregnancy than on what global warming studies were funded by oil companies and what weren't. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently said at a talk he gave at Xavier that "America has the worlds best-entertained and worst-informed public." It's because the media is so controlled by corporate conglomerations. These corporations seek to make money. A journalist's job should be solely to expose the truth. But it hasn't become that. We don't check facts anymore, even with easy access in the form of websites like snopes.com and truthorfiction.com.
That, I believe, is why our democracy is failing. By the way, democracy is not only about voting on election day, it's also about doing our part in terms of lifestyle, consumer choices, business practices, volunteer activities, etc. Those are just as important, if not more important, than a vote on election day.
One closing comment (which I stole from a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer): We have become such a majority-controlled government that the party that has control by around 1% has 100% control of everything, while the slight minority has to all but sit back and watch. Why don't we work together better? Why should Republicans be completely forgotten just because Democrats have control of Congress? There are still a lot of them too. Why don't our representatives vote issues based on the validity of each issue rather than party lines? (I know this isn't all the time, but it's enough of the time to be a problem.)
Just some thoughts on American politics....
With the election so close, this is going to take on a clearly political overtone. I do want to stress, however, that I am implicating myself as well. I will do my best to implicate "my side" equally. I know that both sides are at fault.
Today at dinner, My'eka passed along an email that someone at the St. Mary's Pregnancy Center, her service site, was passing out. More importantly, she passed along a statement of one of the women whom she works with. She said that she has spent her life working on abortion, so she cannot bring herself to vote for a pro-choice candidate. She will not be voting for Barack Obama. The email, however, implied that God wants John McCain to win. I cannot believe that. I'm not saying that God wants Barack Obama to win either. I just don't believe that God is in full support of either candidate. For me, the issue that God has placed on my heart recently is the issue of poverty. Because this is the primary issue that I am working with and surrounded by at this point in my life, I cannot bring myself to support someone who wants to give the rich (who don't need it) more money, widening the income gap, and who supports corporate welfare. I believe that for some people certain issues are more important for them than they are for others. I don't believe either party has a monopoly on being right.
In our dinner/post-dinner discussion, we began to talk about the St. Mary's Pregnancy Center, Planned Parenthood, and abortion. Specifically in our brief research of Planned Parenthood, I was reminded of how despicable they are. Planned Parenthood is a for-profit organization that wants women to have abortions because they make a profit off of the abortions. It is an organization founded on the basis of racism and eugenics and, to a degree, still operates under these principles today, primarily in classism based on the locations of their clinics. While I don't believe that abortion will be a priority issue on either ticket, I'm a little disturbed by it.
This is my condemnation of politics: I believe the Democratic Party has adopted its position on abortion to pander to a certain group of people. I remember when I was probably a freshman or sophomore in high school, although maybe I was still in junior high, there was a bill in the Indiana legislature to require high school health classes to teach the negative aspects of abortion. There was a Democrat who opposed it. I don't understand why. If you're pro-choice (and if that's a feminist position), wouldn't you (or shouldn't you) be pro-educated-choice? Because isn't that the only way to be pro-choice? Our conclusion was that he was probably financially backed by Planned Parenthood or someone of the like. So he was pandering to his financial backers. (We don't know this for sure, but it seemed a logical conclusion.)
But lest you think I'm once sided, Republicans do it as well. Most notably is President Bush's appointees to head national environmental agencies - former lobbyists for coal or gas industries and former executives within those industries, industries that supported his bid for the presidency. Bush's laws haven't helped much either, largely deregulating environmental protections to benefit the industries and hurt the environment (and in turn, our quality of life through air quality, water quality, and other toxic chemicals - such as mercury - that make their ways into our food sources and our bodies).
We as citizens don't do so well either. We have debates rather than discussions. We defend rather than listen. It's about being right or wrong rather than finding the truth. We accept what fits with our positions and deny what doesn't rather than analyze on merit. We don't look into who wrote what article and, more importantly, who funded what study. I've even come across someone who defended his position on one issue through an article that put forth at least three different positions in an attempt to contradict the other side. And he didn't have a problem with that whatsoever.
But the bigger problem I see is the polarization. I felt like I was told to leave the Catholic Church recently in a response I got from a leader in a high school group that I was a member of. He may not have said those words, but he strongly implied it. And all because I posted a link to a document by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, a guide to voting, in response to another one not sanctioned by the bishops that simply told people how to vote by picking the issues the author saw as important. The USCCB document mentions many more issues as important, issues that cross the spectrum of political parties, and says that each voter must make up her or his own mind about which issues are of the greatest importance and which issues are most likely to be effected by each candidate's election. To be honest, I'm guilty of it too. I had gotten to the point where I disregarded abortion as an issue because it's not the most important issue in my perspective. I felt that I had to disregard it, even though I had a fully thought-out reason for doing so, to defend myself. I'm coming to realize that I can vote based on other issues while still see abortion as an important issue to consider. And I can respect people more who see abortion as the overriding issue as long as they've considered the other issues. So I'm learning.
I recognize that it has become very obvious in this post where I stand politically. I don't intend for this to be a political post, and I don't want it to be polarizing. I just wonder if we can ever reach a point of discussion and honest respect for other points of view. Can we ever discuss things and begin to come to agreements?
As much of a proponent of journalism as I am, I have to wonder if the media is, to a large degree, to blame. To blame for not doing their jobs, or not doing them well. I overheard a discussion about how there are people who just blatantly lie to us about certain issues. We just accept those statements as facts because of a M.D. or Ph.D after the name. And sometimes the media gives those pieces of "research" the attention they need for people to believe them but doesn't give proper attention to the true research. They don't say who funded each study or what that organization stands for. Those are very important questions to ask because organizations seek to gain something through funding research. Sometimes that leads to false research. The media would rather report on Bristol Palin's pregnancy than on what global warming studies were funded by oil companies and what weren't. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently said at a talk he gave at Xavier that "America has the worlds best-entertained and worst-informed public." It's because the media is so controlled by corporate conglomerations. These corporations seek to make money. A journalist's job should be solely to expose the truth. But it hasn't become that. We don't check facts anymore, even with easy access in the form of websites like snopes.com and truthorfiction.com.
That, I believe, is why our democracy is failing. By the way, democracy is not only about voting on election day, it's also about doing our part in terms of lifestyle, consumer choices, business practices, volunteer activities, etc. Those are just as important, if not more important, than a vote on election day.
One closing comment (which I stole from a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer): We have become such a majority-controlled government that the party that has control by around 1% has 100% control of everything, while the slight minority has to all but sit back and watch. Why don't we work together better? Why should Republicans be completely forgotten just because Democrats have control of Congress? There are still a lot of them too. Why don't our representatives vote issues based on the validity of each issue rather than party lines? (I know this isn't all the time, but it's enough of the time to be a problem.)
Just some thoughts on American politics....
Monday, October 20, 2008
Questions
One of the most interesting things about this semester is making the connections of cause and effect between so many things. So here are a few:
Who thinks of the importance of where we create roads? Yet, as one article I just read for my Community Building class says, roads form the skeleton of our societies. We build up communities based on the roads.
Who thinks of how people are affected by roads? As in, who gets displaced by the creation of roads, particularly interstates? Because most interstates were built after cities were established. To go through the city, the highway has to go through neighborhoods. How do they decide what neighborhoods get to stay and what neighborhoods have to go?
Although there are problems with it, suburbanization isn't inherently bad. It was how it happened that created problems, that isolated people in inner-city communities and caused those communities to deteriorate. Who decided how suburbanization would play out? Who decided that they didn't want to be near people of different income levels than they themselves are? Who in the government decided that it was more beneficial to back loans for new construction in suburban areas for whites than to back loans for the improvements and maintenance of already existing homes? Who decided that it needed to be racialized determining which neighborhoods people could get loans to purchase homes in and who could get those loans?
Why do we claim that racism doesn't exist anymore? Sure, we had the Civil Rights Movement, and things have been a lot better since then. But why don't we recognize that there are still lingering effects passed down to today's generations of the injustices we promoted before the Civil Rights Movement? Racism today often hides behind the language of classism (although sometimes it is more overt).
Most of all, once I acknowledge the injustices, how do I work to fix them? Can we create systemic change? Should we focus on individual levels and simply become do-good people owning do-good businesses and volunteering? What would systemic change look like? How important is passing this knowledge on to others, recruiting their help? Or should I just do what I can to help?
Why is it so much easier to just deny that problems exist than it is to try to help? I mean, I know why, to a degree. But it shouldn't be that way. I should learn to be thankful that my work got me where I am and recognize that someone else didn't have as great of a chance at success with the same amount of work. The fact that I am where I am isn't all my doing. I know that I can't just forsake my education and my ability to further it. That doesn't do any good. So what do I do with it to help, to make a difference?
Who thinks of the importance of where we create roads? Yet, as one article I just read for my Community Building class says, roads form the skeleton of our societies. We build up communities based on the roads.
Who thinks of how people are affected by roads? As in, who gets displaced by the creation of roads, particularly interstates? Because most interstates were built after cities were established. To go through the city, the highway has to go through neighborhoods. How do they decide what neighborhoods get to stay and what neighborhoods have to go?
Although there are problems with it, suburbanization isn't inherently bad. It was how it happened that created problems, that isolated people in inner-city communities and caused those communities to deteriorate. Who decided how suburbanization would play out? Who decided that they didn't want to be near people of different income levels than they themselves are? Who in the government decided that it was more beneficial to back loans for new construction in suburban areas for whites than to back loans for the improvements and maintenance of already existing homes? Who decided that it needed to be racialized determining which neighborhoods people could get loans to purchase homes in and who could get those loans?
Why do we claim that racism doesn't exist anymore? Sure, we had the Civil Rights Movement, and things have been a lot better since then. But why don't we recognize that there are still lingering effects passed down to today's generations of the injustices we promoted before the Civil Rights Movement? Racism today often hides behind the language of classism (although sometimes it is more overt).
Most of all, once I acknowledge the injustices, how do I work to fix them? Can we create systemic change? Should we focus on individual levels and simply become do-good people owning do-good businesses and volunteering? What would systemic change look like? How important is passing this knowledge on to others, recruiting their help? Or should I just do what I can to help?
Why is it so much easier to just deny that problems exist than it is to try to help? I mean, I know why, to a degree. But it shouldn't be that way. I should learn to be thankful that my work got me where I am and recognize that someone else didn't have as great of a chance at success with the same amount of work. The fact that I am where I am isn't all my doing. I know that I can't just forsake my education and my ability to further it. That doesn't do any good. So what do I do with it to help, to make a difference?
Thursday, October 16, 2008
New Orleans
I got a complaint today that I haven't posted in a while. I know. I was in New Orleans, and then I was trying to catch up. I still am trying to catch up. But it's all but the weekend for me, and I don't have to do a lot for my theology class. So I'll update.
We went to New Orleans the week of fall break. Christine (our trip leader and history professor) was supposed to come with us, but she had a family emergency and had to stay in Cincinnati. Due to that, Jennifer (our service learning professor) and Megan (the assistant to the head of all the academic service learning semesters) came. Chris (our trip assistant, who lives with us) couldn't drive a 15-passenger van to New Orleans by himself, so we all took the Greyhound. Due to family and work events, Jennifer and Megan couldn't be there the entire time we were, so they both got to fly. So Friday night (at around 10 p.m.) we left on the Greyhound bus. We arrived in New Orleans around 4:30 p.m. on Saturday. Once we got our vehicle for while we were there, we got lost. (We got lost a lot.) It was nice for a while though to drive through different areas of the city and see them, mostly areas we didn't see on the tour we took later in the week. I specifically remember Mid-City and seeing the mix of houses that were recovered and had people living in them with the houses that still had the mark of the national guard unit that searched that particular house. The dates listed were almost three years to the day of when we drove through. (But those were some of the later houses searched, and many of the dates on other houses were a week or two before.)
We stayed at a Catholic Charities volunteer house in Marrero, just south of the Mississippi River. On the property, which spanned both sides of the street, there were many buildings. It took us a good half an hour and the help of an employee to find the cottage that had a key under the door mat. The house itself was pretty nice. There were four bedrooms, two with two beds and two with four.
Sunday some of us attempted to go to mass. We picked a church from the list of churches in the reference book in the house, and Erin called to make sure we had the right mass schedule. The voicemail said mass was at 11:30, so we got there right at 11:30. As we walked in, they were playing quiet music without words, so we thought it was the beginning of mass. We weren't particularly quiet, and we sat down in the middle of the church. All the sudden, someone realized that the priest and the altar boy were up at the altar preparing it for communion. So we went to half of mass. And we can legitimately blame it on the church.
Sunday we went to the French Quarter and did the tourist thing. We wandered around, bought some things, went to Cafe du Monde for beignets, etc. Megan arrived at the airport and met us at Cafe du Monde, and she and Chris took her stuff to the vehicle. We wandered around some more, and then met up as a group to walk around and possibly find someplace to eat. We walked down to the riverfront, and were walking along the river when Erin misstepped on a crooked brick in the sidewalk and sprained her ankle. So Austin and Chris P. played human crutches while Chris G. and Graham went to get the car. My'eka walked ahead and found a security guard who drove Erin to where the car could meet us. So we ended up just eating at Subway because it was a random place still open by the time we got there.
On Monday we started working with Catholic Charities. We were in a town called Jean Lafitte, which is south of New Orleans. We started out at two different homes. Chris G., Graham, a woman who was helping for a few days named Kelly, and I went to the house of Charles and Theresa. They were the funniest people. Theresa told a lot of jokes. It was really fun to work with them. In their house, we took out the furniture and insulation, salvaging as much as was reasonably possible. Their house was a very small house with just a few rooms. In the middle of the trash piles we were creating, though, Charles cooked us a barbecue. They said they wanted to do something to thank us and that they didn't have a lot of money. It was really sweet. The really frustrating thing for Charles and Theresa is that they had been getting ready to stilt their house. They had the stilts sitting there and were just waiting to have enough money to get the jacks to do it (something like a $3000 expense). And then Hurricane Ike hit and destroyed it.
The other group was gutting another house, what had been a much nicer house. They did a lot of pulling out sheetrock and so forth. We joined them for a little bit when we had finished with Charles and Theresa's house. We worked there for the rest of the day, and then left everything to come back in the morning.
Monday night we took Erin to the hospital to take care of her ankle. We tried to take her to an urgent care center, but the one that we looked up wasn't where it was supposed to be, and the one we found wasn't open. So we finally gave up and just went to the hospital. We found out that it was just a sprain and got real crutches to replace Austin and Chris as the human crutches.
Tuesday morning we returned to the second house in Jean Lafitte, and some people finished it off while others moved on to the next house. Essentially over the course of four days (Wednesdays are in-service days for Catholic Charities employees, so we didn't work), we gutted five houses. Some already had the furniture out, others didn't. One house we worked on Thursday was filled with mold. We had to wear masks (we were provided with them at other sites, but not nearly as strongly encouraged to wear them). We moved out furniture and other belongings, and then begin to rip up floors and rip out walls. Everything had to go. We had to be the ones to throw away the family Bible. This house we worked all the way through - from fully furnished to frame-only.
On Wednesday, we met Jennifer for lunch when she flew in. We went to a restaurant called Mulatte's, a supposedly really good one for traditional New Orleans food. It's just near the waterfront. It was some good food. We had alligator. I think my favorite was Chris's corn shrimp bisque. Then we went back to our cottage and had the tour guide come pick us up. We did a post-Katrina tour with Tours by Isabelle (although Joseph was our tour guide). We drove through downtown and then saw the Ninth Ward, Lakeview, and other areas around the city. Lakeview is starting to rebuild, but the Ninth Ward is all but empty. There are still FEMA trailers sitting around in some areas, but the Ninth Ward doesn't even have that.
Amongst our group (and within myself) there were mixed feelings about the tour. I think it was important and that we learned a lot, but we were also intruding on the fact that so many people lost so much. It was like we were intruding on something sacred. We were staring at people trying to rebuild their lives or at the lives that were destroyed beyond rebuilding.
We also met with a Tulane social work professor (on Tuesday night) and (on Wednesday night) two Tulane students who had grown up locally (at least in the summer). They provided some interesting perspectives and some good conversation.
Thursday night we went back to the French Quarter just to explore a little more and hang out, as well as to get more beignets.
Saturday morning, we arrived at the bus station around 4 a.m. so that Chris could take Jennifer to the airport and drop off the van (Megan had left Friday to get to a family wedding) and take a cab back to the bus station. The bus left around 7:30, and we returned to Cincinnati at 6:15 in the morning on Sunday. When we were in Nashville, we had about an hour layover, so Graham's beautiful family (they are the cutest family EVER) came to meet us at the bus station and bring us food. It was good food too. Sandwiches (really good ones), chips, apples, brownies, and drinks. And then they sent it back with us.
The trip was fun, and we learned a lot. It was also hard work. By Friday, I was taking frequent breaks (and long ones) at the house we were working on. I even almost fell asleep sitting on the stoop out back. Oops.
One thing I loved about the trip was getting to know Jennifer more personally. We heard stories of her son and her family and so forth. And we found out that she makes stereotypical comments too, even though she is an anthropologist and tries to fight stereotypes. We jumped on her hard for one comment that she made. We got her for being ageist and sexist for a comment about "Daddy still bought him a BMW." Ageist because she assumes that he didn't buy it himself, and sexist because dad bought it and not mom. I even realized that it could be racist because she probably wouldn't have said that if he were a black young man. But it was good to have conversations with here, even academic ones, outside of a classroom setting.
Then we're still discussing race/class relations and how they played into who the disaster hit and who received the aid afterward and how the city is rebuilding. Last night in history we had a discussion about it with the other members of our history class. It was definitely valuable to hear their views based on what they knew and how they compared it. We don't claim to be experts on New Orleans; we barely got a glimpse of it. But it's definitely a city (and Katrina a disaster) to use to explore race and class and poverty in the United States. Because it's not concentrated in New Orleans.
The other thing that we learned about was the evacuation itself. So many people blamed those who were stranded on the tops of their roofs for not evacuating, but we forgot to consider the reasons they didn't evacuate. Evacuation is expensive. It was the end of the month, so many people didn't have a lot of money to use to evacuate. If you don't have a car, how are you supposed to get out? There wasn't a lot of public transportation out. One person even got arrested for stealing a bus to try to bus people out of the city. So there are all these factors involved that so many of us don't have to deal with in our daily lives, so we don't think about them. Should they have evacuated? Yes, of course. But are there extenuating circumstances that we need to take into consideration before we pass judgment. I certainly believe so.
We went to New Orleans the week of fall break. Christine (our trip leader and history professor) was supposed to come with us, but she had a family emergency and had to stay in Cincinnati. Due to that, Jennifer (our service learning professor) and Megan (the assistant to the head of all the academic service learning semesters) came. Chris (our trip assistant, who lives with us) couldn't drive a 15-passenger van to New Orleans by himself, so we all took the Greyhound. Due to family and work events, Jennifer and Megan couldn't be there the entire time we were, so they both got to fly. So Friday night (at around 10 p.m.) we left on the Greyhound bus. We arrived in New Orleans around 4:30 p.m. on Saturday. Once we got our vehicle for while we were there, we got lost. (We got lost a lot.) It was nice for a while though to drive through different areas of the city and see them, mostly areas we didn't see on the tour we took later in the week. I specifically remember Mid-City and seeing the mix of houses that were recovered and had people living in them with the houses that still had the mark of the national guard unit that searched that particular house. The dates listed were almost three years to the day of when we drove through. (But those were some of the later houses searched, and many of the dates on other houses were a week or two before.)
We stayed at a Catholic Charities volunteer house in Marrero, just south of the Mississippi River. On the property, which spanned both sides of the street, there were many buildings. It took us a good half an hour and the help of an employee to find the cottage that had a key under the door mat. The house itself was pretty nice. There were four bedrooms, two with two beds and two with four.
Sunday some of us attempted to go to mass. We picked a church from the list of churches in the reference book in the house, and Erin called to make sure we had the right mass schedule. The voicemail said mass was at 11:30, so we got there right at 11:30. As we walked in, they were playing quiet music without words, so we thought it was the beginning of mass. We weren't particularly quiet, and we sat down in the middle of the church. All the sudden, someone realized that the priest and the altar boy were up at the altar preparing it for communion. So we went to half of mass. And we can legitimately blame it on the church.
Sunday we went to the French Quarter and did the tourist thing. We wandered around, bought some things, went to Cafe du Monde for beignets, etc. Megan arrived at the airport and met us at Cafe du Monde, and she and Chris took her stuff to the vehicle. We wandered around some more, and then met up as a group to walk around and possibly find someplace to eat. We walked down to the riverfront, and were walking along the river when Erin misstepped on a crooked brick in the sidewalk and sprained her ankle. So Austin and Chris P. played human crutches while Chris G. and Graham went to get the car. My'eka walked ahead and found a security guard who drove Erin to where the car could meet us. So we ended up just eating at Subway because it was a random place still open by the time we got there.
On Monday we started working with Catholic Charities. We were in a town called Jean Lafitte, which is south of New Orleans. We started out at two different homes. Chris G., Graham, a woman who was helping for a few days named Kelly, and I went to the house of Charles and Theresa. They were the funniest people. Theresa told a lot of jokes. It was really fun to work with them. In their house, we took out the furniture and insulation, salvaging as much as was reasonably possible. Their house was a very small house with just a few rooms. In the middle of the trash piles we were creating, though, Charles cooked us a barbecue. They said they wanted to do something to thank us and that they didn't have a lot of money. It was really sweet. The really frustrating thing for Charles and Theresa is that they had been getting ready to stilt their house. They had the stilts sitting there and were just waiting to have enough money to get the jacks to do it (something like a $3000 expense). And then Hurricane Ike hit and destroyed it.
The other group was gutting another house, what had been a much nicer house. They did a lot of pulling out sheetrock and so forth. We joined them for a little bit when we had finished with Charles and Theresa's house. We worked there for the rest of the day, and then left everything to come back in the morning.
Monday night we took Erin to the hospital to take care of her ankle. We tried to take her to an urgent care center, but the one that we looked up wasn't where it was supposed to be, and the one we found wasn't open. So we finally gave up and just went to the hospital. We found out that it was just a sprain and got real crutches to replace Austin and Chris as the human crutches.
Tuesday morning we returned to the second house in Jean Lafitte, and some people finished it off while others moved on to the next house. Essentially over the course of four days (Wednesdays are in-service days for Catholic Charities employees, so we didn't work), we gutted five houses. Some already had the furniture out, others didn't. One house we worked on Thursday was filled with mold. We had to wear masks (we were provided with them at other sites, but not nearly as strongly encouraged to wear them). We moved out furniture and other belongings, and then begin to rip up floors and rip out walls. Everything had to go. We had to be the ones to throw away the family Bible. This house we worked all the way through - from fully furnished to frame-only.
On Wednesday, we met Jennifer for lunch when she flew in. We went to a restaurant called Mulatte's, a supposedly really good one for traditional New Orleans food. It's just near the waterfront. It was some good food. We had alligator. I think my favorite was Chris's corn shrimp bisque. Then we went back to our cottage and had the tour guide come pick us up. We did a post-Katrina tour with Tours by Isabelle (although Joseph was our tour guide). We drove through downtown and then saw the Ninth Ward, Lakeview, and other areas around the city. Lakeview is starting to rebuild, but the Ninth Ward is all but empty. There are still FEMA trailers sitting around in some areas, but the Ninth Ward doesn't even have that.
Amongst our group (and within myself) there were mixed feelings about the tour. I think it was important and that we learned a lot, but we were also intruding on the fact that so many people lost so much. It was like we were intruding on something sacred. We were staring at people trying to rebuild their lives or at the lives that were destroyed beyond rebuilding.
We also met with a Tulane social work professor (on Tuesday night) and (on Wednesday night) two Tulane students who had grown up locally (at least in the summer). They provided some interesting perspectives and some good conversation.
Thursday night we went back to the French Quarter just to explore a little more and hang out, as well as to get more beignets.
Saturday morning, we arrived at the bus station around 4 a.m. so that Chris could take Jennifer to the airport and drop off the van (Megan had left Friday to get to a family wedding) and take a cab back to the bus station. The bus left around 7:30, and we returned to Cincinnati at 6:15 in the morning on Sunday. When we were in Nashville, we had about an hour layover, so Graham's beautiful family (they are the cutest family EVER) came to meet us at the bus station and bring us food. It was good food too. Sandwiches (really good ones), chips, apples, brownies, and drinks. And then they sent it back with us.
The trip was fun, and we learned a lot. It was also hard work. By Friday, I was taking frequent breaks (and long ones) at the house we were working on. I even almost fell asleep sitting on the stoop out back. Oops.
One thing I loved about the trip was getting to know Jennifer more personally. We heard stories of her son and her family and so forth. And we found out that she makes stereotypical comments too, even though she is an anthropologist and tries to fight stereotypes. We jumped on her hard for one comment that she made. We got her for being ageist and sexist for a comment about "Daddy still bought him a BMW." Ageist because she assumes that he didn't buy it himself, and sexist because dad bought it and not mom. I even realized that it could be racist because she probably wouldn't have said that if he were a black young man. But it was good to have conversations with here, even academic ones, outside of a classroom setting.
Then we're still discussing race/class relations and how they played into who the disaster hit and who received the aid afterward and how the city is rebuilding. Last night in history we had a discussion about it with the other members of our history class. It was definitely valuable to hear their views based on what they knew and how they compared it. We don't claim to be experts on New Orleans; we barely got a glimpse of it. But it's definitely a city (and Katrina a disaster) to use to explore race and class and poverty in the United States. Because it's not concentrated in New Orleans.
The other thing that we learned about was the evacuation itself. So many people blamed those who were stranded on the tops of their roofs for not evacuating, but we forgot to consider the reasons they didn't evacuate. Evacuation is expensive. It was the end of the month, so many people didn't have a lot of money to use to evacuate. If you don't have a car, how are you supposed to get out? There wasn't a lot of public transportation out. One person even got arrested for stealing a bus to try to bus people out of the city. So there are all these factors involved that so many of us don't have to deal with in our daily lives, so we don't think about them. Should they have evacuated? Yes, of course. But are there extenuating circumstances that we need to take into consideration before we pass judgment. I certainly believe so.
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