Katrina @ MindSay 
hurricane
Here's the real McCain, for anyone interested ;~)
http://www.jabberwonk.com/flinker.cfm?cliid=m1id2
(McCain's YouTube problem just became a nightmare)
In my life, why do I give valuable time, to people who don't care if I live or I die?"
--MORRISSEY
If this is what you have given me, America, then I opt out. I must have somewhere to spit my vitriol. A 10 hour day where I see no daylight, where I am one in the line of hundreds on the freeway, when I have learned to taste bitterness and feel revulsion at the sight of others, of the many, of the faceless on my way to where I'm going...always going and never getting there. I will have this job in order to get another, I will go to this school to get into another, I am always pushing forward! Forward, America!
Where we hundreds swallow pills because we cannot think, it is too troubling, where we are tough and we are not unhappy, we are imbalanced; there are certain criteria one must diagnose, here, it is all listed in this diagnostics and statistical manual, it is an illness, after all. It has little to do with external factors, more of a inclination toward disorder, you see, it is inside your head, you know, and your childhood. Where was your smothered childhood? In the schoolhouse built exactly like a penitentiary, no exaggeration or lie, under sickly yellow fluorescent lights watching a transparency screen? Did your parents scream every night? Do you avert your eyes from them? Do they avert their eyes from you? You were made to not care. Must we turn everything sterile? Must everything be given to regulation, to reproduction on a massive scale, ones and millions in the same docketed household, taxed and filed? America, I am bored, and I am tired of your demands. Must children wear ties? Must fifth graders study and worry about PSATs? Must we excise all knowledge and condense education to a neat and tidy test? Why must everything, even personality, intellectual capacity, be codified? Numbers, results.
Intellectually, Ms. Sheehan has above average mentality and has excellent abstract reasoning skills. She is comfortable and skilled in concrete reasoning but prefers to deal with more hypothetical ideas. She is extremely well read and has excellent reading comprehension. She responded to the test in a manner that reflected her wide range of knowledge and background information. Finally, she has an exceptional ability to separate essential from non-essential information. Ms. Sheehan works best when challenging her mentally in her work environment. If required to work with mundane tasks for a lengthy period of time, she may become quite discontent due to the absence of mental challenge.
Verbally, Ms. Sheehan has excellent receptive and expressive vocabularies. She is in the top quartile in her verbal fluency and her scores are reflective of persons who are superior in vocabulary capacity. She has been exposed to words that are used in the workplace as well as social circles. She can be extremely persuasive due to her verbal understanding and is able to communicate exceptionally well when she so desires.
Ms. Sheehan tends to be slightly apprehensive and concerned. This internal stress will make her appear fearful, worried, uncertain, and troubled. Individuals like Ms. Sheehan will look beyond probable outcomes and fret over the less likely, though maybe critical, situations. This small degree of uncertainty can sometimes promote depression, internal tension and nervous behavior in the workplace. Individuals like Ms. Sheehan who are at times apprehensive may be occasionally plagued by feelings of incapability and inadequacy. It would be suggested that Ms. Sheehan try to seek hobbies or interests which will promote further confident and secure behavior.
Here is where we glorify mediocrity, where I step into the half-million, million dollar house and find no art, and very little books,where we are stuck in our chairs, using our minds but to keep up the movement of numbers that gives our lives sustainability, a means. Even independence. I say, when I get a receipt from the bank, those numbers do not adhere to me, not like my spit, they do not build anything, not like my hands, and it hurts to wonder, what else can I do? We are so settled in our ways, even I cannot imagine them differently, I am too comfortable, too fat, so fat, just like everyone else, and those who have learned only to laugh at the situation, laugh and point satire. How can one laugh? Or have you become efficient? Have you become only motion without thought? I have grown until I feel nothing but hate, and sorrow, in chopping bouts almost too hard to take. With these excesses, we are all driven to distraction.
America, why must you always operate via the hypothetical? Why must the nebulous be the final rule? Why must green numbers in a constant scroll dictate the sway of our minds, our worries, our lives? My grandfather's house flooded, he is 80 years old and so worried he had a heart attack because, as I ask myself, asking as if everyday were a disaster, what else can I do? Where there are bayou dotted by bright blue tarps, the makeshift homes of the homeless, where those that are bereft have been given plastic trailers, egg cartons, to ward off the rain. Is this like your levies, America? You do not support those who live behind your walls, who huddle at your feet. And because government has failed we all decry it, we all hear the rallying call, the less government the better!, but when has it ever been that when something has failed us, America, that we dispose of it? When have we become so careless? So unforgiving? So devaluing of life? Having left those huddled under tarps, under bridges? Having wheeled out those unable to pay from our hospitals? Having passed by huge dead bears on our highways, rotting carcasses, sticky blood and bristled black hair baking under the sun? When have we forgotten what we have? We can still salvage it.
When the constitution was made, was it not made for modification, for renewal, for the words to be resealed in ink with new agreements? It was not made to be discarded with the apathetic cheer of a reductionist, eager to relinquish what we have. Because it is easier to stop. It is easier to stop caring, to move forward as is, as reconsideration only hampers progress. Because it is more proficient to move forward rather than look back, to face the horrors, to bear them, and right them.
Let us just say, this was inspired somewhat by a far better poem.
Seeya later Allen Ginsberg.
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
-3am. We all get on the bus and start driving. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and finally New Orleans at about 1:30/45 pm that afternoon. We drove through a time change so we got there at just under 12 hours (including food and bathroom stops)
-We drove to the Restoration Embassy (church) where we would be staying for the week. It's in a "bad" neighborhood. And I don't want to give off the wrong impression. It looked bad. But we didn't know about anything just yet.
-We speak to David Shelton, the "Bishop" of the church. He's a funny 87 year old man who loves life and loves people. For lunch, he recommends to us the restaurant Cannon's.
-We then drove up a side street into the Garden District (high income homes) and onto St. Charles. We arrive at Cannon's.
-At the restaurant, I had a bowl of duck and andouille gumbo. I then finished Delmas' popcorn shrimp, Drue's blackened redfish po' boy, and ate a piece of bread pudding. Needless to say, I could not walk correctly for the rest of the day.
-Back at the Restoration church, we unpacked and got situated. We went and ate dinner (spaghetti, but I was so full from lunch I didn't have any) and then worshiped. When we got back, the last group to arrive (from Hilltown Baptist in Philadelphia) showed up in the room as we were getting ready for bed. I met most of the people from the guys in the group (without my glasses though, so I didn't know who I was meeting).
Sunday, June 24, 2007
-We got up early and sat down with our project leader Denny who shared with us the dress code once more in case we didn't read through it the first time (all while sitting with her legs apart in a skirt. blegh).
-Church was fun. Small attendance without us there to bulk up the pews. At the end, we learned that communion would be served. Denny then made her first stupid move (out of countless amounts during the week) by telling us "we will not be taking communion." Well... we are Episcopalians. We're TAKING communion. We do it every week. Manischewitz wine with Matza. A true communion.
-After church, we toured the flooded areas of New Orleans. Went to Lakeview to see the waterlines from up to 10 feet of flooding. Went to the lower 9th ward where 2 levees breached and homes were trashed and eventually demolished.
-Dinner, worship
Monday, June 25, 2007
-After getting up and having a typical camp-style breakfast (bagel, coffee) we headed out to the organization called Beacon of Hope.
-There, we were told that we needed to split our group into 3 and 3. 3 of us went to help clean the yard of an elderly lady who was trying to sell it, but could not until the yard was neat. Lots of pulling weeds and raking up debris. The other 3 went and helped an older couple with their yard as well, but that's their story.
-We get back to the Knights of Columbus center where we ate lunch. After lunch, we went back to the Restoration Center to get our VBS supplies together. We would be leading a VBS for 3 hours with kids from the surrounding neighborhood.
-Rain came down and lightning cracked all over the sky. We were rained out and a little depressed that we wouldn't be playing with the kids.
-Kellie than called Cam (the old youth pastor at my church who now lives in New Orleans and runs the Chapel in Touro, one of the few hospitals that did not flood during Katrina) and let her know that we had a couple hours to spare.
-Cam was in a meeting. We decided to go and prayerwalk the hospital anyways. Just then, Kellie got a call from Cam letting her know that Cam's meeting was cancelled and she had the exact amount of time we had to show us the hospital (definitely a "God moment")
-Prayerwalked the entire hospital, every floor.
-Came back to Restoration
-Ate dinner, worshiped, went to bed
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
-Woke up in the morning, ate breakfast
-We were informed we would be working at a man named Mark's house (he's a contractor, not actually his house).
-Got there and met a man named Sharkey (once a government mercenary, fought in 'Nam, has killed several people, now a devout Christian with nothing but a rented apartment, a bucket of tools, and a green van)
-He told us we would be doing the hardest job out of all the jobs on the house so far. We would be drywalling a 10 1/2 foot ceiling.
-We got to work. Each section got harder and harder.
-We get to the last piece and decide to lower the scaffolding a foot so we wouldn't have to bend over to put up the drywall. Long story short, the wooden platform (around 60 lbs.) fell directly on Delmas' big toe. We were down one man
-After getting Delmas back to the Restoration center to put his toe on ice, we finished the last piece.
-The whole job took about 4.5/5 hours
-We then drove to Cold Stone Creamery and got ice cream
-We get back to Restoration and shower, and then go back to Knights of Columbus to eat dinner and worship
-We go to bed afterwards
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
-Wake up, eat breakfast
-We are informed that we have prayerwalking in the morning, lunch, and then ATL in the afternoon (Ask The Lord. It is what it sounds like. We just pray about what we should do, and then we do what we feel most called to do)
-We go to a pretty low-income neighborhood off of St. Charles and start prayerwalking.
-We prayerwalk for about an hour and a half and feel like we've done very little. We've just prayed over areas but no people. Delmas (who somehow made it walking with us for that long with a busted toe) went back to the van to rest. After we drop off Delmas, we start prayerwalking again. We arrive at a section where there was a cross road. We were facing the corner of a building and had either left or right as a direction to walk in. We pray to God and ask Him to show us where to go. Nicole suddenly speaks up about a verse she remembered from the morning when we woke up. It came from John Ch. 3 (can't remember what verse) and basically says that the Spirit is in the wind. She proposes that we follow the wind. Well, earlier, we had passed a lady in a grey track outfit 2 times and had just said "Hey! How ya doin?" We started following the wind to the right and the wind literally pushes right into her. We all get to talking with her and ask her if we could pray for her about anything. She says that would be great and we start praying. At the end of the prayer, she was in tears and thanked us for praying with her. "I really needed that."
-We keep walking and we end up at a house under construction. Two of the workers were taking a break. I can only remember that one of their names is Troy. We started praying with them and Kellie finished the prayer after a couple of minutes. Before we could break apart our prayer circle, Troy asked if he could say a prayer. It turns out that, for some reason, he was really missing his mother that day (who had died in '79). We all prayed for him and his mother and we were all in tears afterwards. We said goodbye to both of them and started walking again.
-We spot a "house" that had no walls on the inside, no windows, and no roof. They were literally tearing the house apart only to rebuild it. We see a woman walking out of the house and we stop her and ask if she's the owner. She says yes, and we ask if we could pray with her. She says "Of course" and we begin praying. After our prayer she tells us "Thank you" and we walk back to Delmas to tell him about our success.
-When we got 10 mins away from Delmas, he calls us and tells us to hurry back, because in 10 mins they would be opening a church that was located at doorstep he happened to be sitting on.
-When we got there, Delmas heard our story and then told us that he had met more people than us just by sitting on the stoop of the church (that he didn't know was a church until he was told so by the pastor). We both had great success with the prayerwalks.
-We decide to celebrate and skip eating our sloppy sandwiches (PBJ, Ham and cheese, turkey and cheese) and went to a place called Igor's and we all got Po' Boys. I had an oyster Po' Boy that was out of this world (mostly because of the fact that we were all very hungry). We hurried back to Restoration before we did our ATL.
-Once we got there, we all sat in the van and prayed about what we should do. I kept thinking about "children." Kellie thought of the word "garbage." Dru said "blood donations." Nicole said "9th ward." But Heather hit the spot and said "Beacon of Hope."
-We head over to Beacon of Hope to just ask if they needed anything done. It turns out that they did. Kellie and Delmas ended up cleaning (and eventually taking out garbage). Heather, Dru, Nicole, and myself grabbed welcome-home-baskets and drove down Argonne Blvd. to give to residents who had just come back to their homes (which all had at least 8 feet of water inside).
-The first house we stopped at was an elderly lady with a BEAUTIFUL home. She mentioned that the ceiling had actually caved in from the water and it was completely gutted at one point. You could not tell. We took her information in case she needed any yardwork to be done by volunteers from Beacon of Hope and said our farewells just as her grandson came home from a friend's house.
continued soon.....
I didn't get too many shots of houses from the bus -- and I was too engrossed in a conversation with one of our guides to get off and take pictures in a house that had been destroyed. The thing is -- this was a relatively nice part of town. Big houses -- just abandoned and overgrown and gutted. Very weird to see.
We saw quite a few houses with the same "X" on the door and the codes listed around them. This house was checked (by a squad which consisted of local police and rescue, National Guard and FEMA) on 9/21 -- a full three weeks after the storm. Zero people were found in the house at that time. There was a lot of work to be done...
This is the old Congregation Beth Israel Orthodox synagogue which is no longer in use. Those stripes represent the water-lines at which the building was submerged. The yellowish one is the one that stands out the most -- the stagnant flood waters were at that height for quite a while.
It's a pity -- the synagogue itself was grand and beautiful. But there wasn't much left salvageable inside.
A very blurry picture through one of the glass doors. Most of them had been boarded up.
The inscription over the synagogue -- any of our Hebrew scholars want to take a stab at it? (Hint: Exodus 25.)
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Part III will get into our first day of work at the Habitat for Humanity site in the Upper Ninth Ward.
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