I arrived in Louisiana yesterday. I drove down from Springville, a town north of Birmingham, Alabama, where I was visiting a friend's farm. And while Sunday night was filled with farm food and a silly comedy video "Role Models," Monday was a day filled with 75 MPH highway.
Interstate 59 comes out of Chattanooga, TN, on the southern end of the Great Smokey Mountains. It runs between the Tennessee River and Lookout Mountain, following the mountain through Georgia and into Alabama, then goes down a valley between long rolling hills down to Birmingham. After Birmingham, it begins to flatten out... and once I entered Mississippi, the high points in the road tended to be bridges over creeks and floodplains.
Mississippi was not entirely routine driving. The skies were no longer clear, though the air wasn't much cooler than the weekend. At one point the sky ahead looked especially opaque... indeed, the road seemed to vanish. It was a Mississippi downpour. The road was completely dry at one place, then three seconds later it was a complete deluge. I hydroplaned briefly and coasted down to 40 MPH, windshield wipers going full blast. And then, after perhaps twenty seconds of travel, the rain had stopped and the road was dry-- not drying-- dry! This pattern repeated a few times over the next hour, once with a flash of lightning. By now my eyes were crossing from staring through a wet windshield, so I pulled over for pie and coffee. While sitting at the truckstop a big storm came through, with heavy rain and plenty of lightning. Twenty minutes later, after checking some e-mail on their WiFi, it was over and I headed south again.
Coming into Louisiana means crossing the Pearl River, a small stream with a large flood plain. For the next half-hour I was still in the country. The only way I knew it was Louisiana was the large Welcome Center, and a new map for my collection. The Welcome Center personnel were watching Fox News, which was loudly discussing how angry America was with Obama for calling those who silenced debate on health care un-American... or something like that. Every phrase seemed to twist and insinuate. I couldn't get out fast enough... but it told me that yes, I am in The South. And yes, many Americans have opinions not heard in Berkeley, CA!
So I was thinking about that, and the large billboard announcing "RUSH LIMBAUGH HAS A NEW HOME IN LOUISIANA- 99 FM!" as I went across the causeway from Slidel to New Orleans. I caught myself driving too fast a couple of times. I will learn serenity.
The directions I had included a turn-of onto I-610, but I went on to a surface road paralleling the elevated highway just before the interstate, and drove across the neighborhood called Gentilly. I was surprised to see how little had changed from two years ago. The drive-through Daiquiri place looked like it had been cleaned up, but several shopping centers were just fenced off and boarded up. Churches were abandoned. The surface roads have holes, and the concrete squares on the road are not all level. It makes driving somewhat like a video game, with sudden hazards to avoid. Some houses look wonderful, with landscaping and toys on the driveway, while the house next door still has an X on the siding, and boarded up windows. And maybe next to that is an empty slab. The X indicates that the building was searched... in each corner of the X is: Who searched, When, How many Dead, and something else which I can't remember. The houses I saw all had "0" in the How many dead corner, thank goodness.
I drove over to the big city park, and across it to try to find Community Church, in Lakeview neighborhood. This is where my office will be. It is on Fleur de Lis Street-- a boulevard. In happier times it seems to have been two lanes with a wide park-like divider. Now only one lane was passable each way, and you could not safely go more than about 10 MPH. There were broken concrete slabs and holes... and sometimes entire blocks of missing road. You had to divert to the side street to continue. With hundreds of miles of broken roadways, it's clear that Fleur de Lis is not on the top of the list for repair.
The church, or rather, the vacant lot where the church had been, is on a corner lot. Community Church operates out of a converted house next to the vacant lot. I parked in front of it, went up and rang the bell. Inside I met David W. who is a member of the finance committee. I got the quick tour-- the large assembly hall was formerly the dining room, living room and family room, while the minister's office was a former bedroom and the kitchen was a slightly modified kitchen/social hall area. There is a tiny upstairs, with a bathroom and a library. I think my desk will be up there, or maybe I'm in the walk-in closet (now book supply closet) next to that room. It's nice to have my own space... but it will be "modest." Fortunately, it is air conditioned, and well lit. The "Annex" as they call it is a wonderful small church. I can imagine that it gets pretty crowded on Sunday, and it will be good to have more space for meetings, children's classes, etc.
David showed me one wall hanging called the "Tree of Life", done for the original church building. It has all sorts of threads and beads sewn into the fabric, and must have been marvelous, two stories high in the church. CCUU had retrieved it before the church was torn down, and sent it to an art college in Florida to be restored. It now hangs from ceiling to floor, folded to make it fit in the one-story assembly hall. I imagine that when the new building is dedicated, the moving of the tree of life will be an important part of the ceremony.
David also talked about where he lives, which is across the Mississippi, on the western side in Algiers. He says the rents are cheap, and that the bridge isn't too bad for a commute. If I get a place within bicycle distance of the ferry, I'd have easy access to the French Quarter, too! I'll look at the area, I'm not sure it's for me.
I decided to take a trip over to First Church after that. It's a bit of a drive, including a short stretch of freeway. South Carrolton was in better shape than it was two years ago, but still not perfect. The intersection with Napoleon had two huge front end loaders parked on the wide median-- like lions guarding the entrance to the Boulevard! I drove around First Church, then walked around the building. They are renting out the assembly hall to Gymboree, or some similar organization, and signs for that dominated the outside of the building The "First Church Unitarian Universalist" sign seemed unimportant, and the stonework still has the old Evangelical congregation's name on it (in lovely lettering.) I felt a little bit like First Church was just renting space in the building rather than telling the world that they are alive and open for business.
The doors were all locked, so I headed out to the Frostop for a catfish dinner -- where I had enjoyed eating two years ago. A big TV had MSNBC blaring, making digestion impossible. So I downed the fish and got out of there. This time I drove back to the freeway and off to Gentilly to my Bed and Breakfast home. I'm staying in a very nice rebuilt home on a bayou-- an inlet from Lake Pontchartrain-- and have two rooms, one for a study and one with a double bed. It's very comfortable!
The house I am in isn't actually a B&B, but it takes in guests from other Unitarian Universalist churches during Mardi Gras, as a fund raiser for the congregation. The homeowner had gone to Texas during Katrina, and had to have the entire first floor repaired. We talked for an hour about the recovery, her family and the church. Then I excused myself and went to bed.
I am angry about the lack of progress of recovery. Back in June I went to Iowa City to see where the Mississippi River flood had been, and it all looked repaired. It was only a memory. But four years later New Orleans still has decades of road repair to do... the scale of the work is astounding. There are tens of thousands of homes yet to be rebuilt. Even in the classy neighborhood of my B&B, one house is just steps to a slab. My host told me of one church member stuck on an overpass for three days, waiting for food or water. Now whole neighborhoods are waiting... waiting for road repair, or schools or community. I'll have to listen for what all that waiting has done to people's self worth, and to their souls.
I am also angry at how the healthcare debate is being avoided by Fox and MSNBC... hour after hour not talking facts, instead talking about opinions about opinions. I also have started to hate the word "THEY", as in "they think this is...." painting groups, including the Democrats with a very broad brush-- "othering" them. Recently I began listening for the word "should" and now I am going to add the word "they" to my list.
I am happy to be here. My spring term was spent waiting for this adventure. My summer so far has been a vacation from the process (or driving around the USA to get here.) Everything has been some form of "not doing," but now it's time to "do." I still have a few weeks before work starts, and I need to concentrate on getting a place to live. It is like the dress rehearsals... not quite showtime, but clearly this internship exists, and I am making decisions which have an effect on what it will be like.
So off I go... time to learn the city enough to figure out where to live!
