« May 2006 | Main | July 2006 »

June 30, 2006

Coco's Catch

Was anyone else watching the Red Sox/Mets game last night? Did anyone else see Coco Crisp's SPECTACULAR catch in the top of the 8th to end the inning and save one, maybe two runs? WOW.

Johnny Damon doesn't make that catch. I'm just sayin.

Posted by Nakia at 08:47 AM | Comments (4)

June 27, 2006

Back again from the Big D

It seems like all we've been doing so far this summer is travelling. I love to travel, but it's starting to wear me out a little.

I returned late (later than expected) Sunday night from Dallas, where Sarah and I travelled for her father's ordination as a deacon. Growing up in Protestant chruches, I didn't realize that becoming a deacon in the Catholic church was such a big deal. Roger and Marilyn attended classes for over five years, performed many hours of community service, and generally put in a whole lot of time, effort, prayer, and thought. The ordination ceremony Saturday may have been the most moving church service I've ever attended. Held in a beautiful cathedral (The Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe), presided over by the Bishop, and attended by all the parish priests and many of the current deacons, the service was amazing. I was especially moved by the Litany of the Saints, a part of the Mass I had never heard before. The service was also accompanied by a "mini-orchestra" and was musically led by a beautiful soprano voice.

I was moved by the service and proud and humbled by Roger and Marilyn's dedication to their faith and to each other.

Posted by Nakia at 08:46 AM | Comments (2)

June 21, 2006

Ph.D. = Please Help the Deaf

During my New Orelans trip, while "talking" to John, the pastor of the deaf church we were helping out, I mentioned that I was a professor. He asked (via Jerry, the pastor of the church in Knoxville that is fluent in sign but can hear) if I had my Ph.D. I told John "yes". John then remarked that Ph.D. stood for "Please help the deaf."

I am not sure how much I accomplished while I was in New Orleans, but I certainly leared a lot about deaf culture. I learned a few signs to help me get by. (I know the ones for "bathroom" "work" "shower" "tired" "lazy" "hard" "angry" as well as a few more words and about 30% of the alphabet). I learned that "disability" is certainly a relative notion. When working with a group that is primarily deaf, I -- with my general lack of sign-language ability -- was the disabled one, not anyone who had been born without the ability to hear). I was forced to reflect on the experiential/epistemological difference between a hearing person and a deaf one. While we were at dinner one night, "Tiny Dancer" began playing on the restraunt radio. Pat, another volunteer who was able to hear, turned to me and said "Can you imagine going through life without ever having heard this song, or any song for that matter?" What does having no access to music do to your experiential framework? This is not a question of pity, but a question of philosophy. Much of the epistemology and philosophy of language I've encountered totally neglects the experience of a deaf person and their sign language. Are the rules different? How can they not be?

So thanks to all of the folks on the trip for helping me learn about deaf culture and giving me interesting food for philosophical thought. I enjoyed it!

Posted by Nakia at 09:33 AM | Comments (6)

June 15, 2006

"It's like the Old West"

Another anecdote from my New Orelans trip:

The same day as the encounter with the garbage men, I was performing my duty as an electrician's helper and son -- handing my dad the tools he needed to wire a junction box. While I was standing there, three guys come into the church fellowship hall where we're working. Since I am right inside the door, they direct a question to me: 'Hey, man, you guys got anyone doing the sheetrock work in here?"

"I don't know. It's a church and we're all just volunteers here for the week. I can go find out, though."

As I went to get the pastor, I heard the guy who had asked me about the sheetrock turn to one of his compatriots and say "gratis", as in we were doing all the work for free.

It took me a few minutes to find John and convey what was going on (he, and most of the people I tried to ask where he was, were deaf). But eventually we made our way back around to the fellowship hall. They sheetrock guys were nowhere to be found. I was puzzled, but really I was just naive. John explained to me (via interpreter) that LOTS of people will come by and say they're looking for work. While they wait for you to explain things, tell them no, or get the guy in charge, they are scoping out the job site for equipment. Later, they'll come back and steal all the stuff.

New Orleans post-hurricane makes me wonder if Hobbes was right. Deep down, we really are in a war of all against all; only a veneer of social contract keeps things from the state of nature. Home Depot keeps armed guards on site to help control crowds and prevent people from beating each other over sheets of plywood and 10 penny nails. My father's friend who lives just on the other side of the river told us how his neighbor, a guy who he knows and said hello to when they saw each other in the street, tried to steal gas cans out of his garage right after the hurricane.

Maybe misanthropy is the right attitude. I am just trying to be honest.

Posted by Nakia at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2006

F#$% You, I Live Here

Last Thursday, two things happened that showed the nastier side of what's been going on in the Big Easy.

Thursday is trash day in the Lakeshore neighborhood where the deaf church is located. Trash pickup in New Orelans is now akin to mucking out the Augean Stables. There are piles and piles of junk everywhere, from normal household garbage to sodden clothes, to bulding waste. Picking up that stuff has to be hard. It has to suck. And it would seem to be a vital step in the rebulding effort.

I happened to be out by the curb when the trash truck rolled by on Thursday. I really wasn't sure what to do. There was a big pile of crap outside the church, with bags of trash, carpet remanents that had been pulled up, and other debris. Did I help them toss it all in the back of the truck or would I just be getting in the way? Would they even let me help? There may be insurance or union issues that would get them into trouble if I did anything. (Can you tell I overthink things?). I opted for the "stay out of the way" strategy, but commented to the first guy off the truck that I thought he had the hardest job in New Orleans.

I'm not sure if the guy heard me or not becuase he was wearing headphones. He did give me this look, though, a look that said, well, "fuck you". I can understand that, actually. No one with a job that hard and that crappy needs some punk professor telling him it's hard. He knows. I felt like an idiot for saying anything. Then I saw his shirt.

It was black. On the front was some odd symbol I can't remember and didn't recognize, along with the tag: "Fuck You, I Live Here." When he turned around to toss a bag of trash into the garbage truck, I saw the back of the shirt: "Judge Not, Lest Yea Be Judged" (from Luke 6:37). An interesting juxtaposition, but I got it. If you lived there and dealt with all the crap from day one of the whole Katrina debacle, you were tired of everyone hashing out your behavior, calling you stupid for not leaving, blaming you for looting, and now blaming you for not cleaning up fast enough. I think I "got" the shirt, but I am not sure I wholly agree with the sentiment. There are some moral issues there I really don't want to touch right now.

As I was trying to take Trash Guy #1's shirt in, Trash Guy #2 comes around the corner. He was more talkative than the first, to my consternation. The exchange went something like this:

Trash Guy: This your stuff?
Me: Um, it's the chruch's trash. I'm just here helping out.
Guy: Why you gotta pile all this carpet and shit on top of the bags? I ain't taking those bags.
(apparently the construction material or big waste was taken care of by different people.)
Me: Er, um, well, uh . . .
My dad (to my rescue): Well, we can pull the bags out from under the other stuff.
(we pull the carpet off of the bags of trash. Guy goes to get trash bags. They are heavy because they are full of random debris and stuff).
Guy: Shit, these are heavy. Fuck this.

Bags stay behind as truck moves on down the road. For all I know, they are stil sitting there.

I kept turning over that incident in my head for the rest of the day. I'm still trying to deal with it, really. On one hand, I don't know what it's like to live there, to be the guy that deals with all this crap everyday. I can understand that one would fell abandoned and powerless and the presence of all these people who are trying to help just reinforces that sense of powerlessness. On the other hand, I was kinda angry at this guy. Part of me want to say "Look, dude. I understand you have a crappy job and have been thorough the wringer. I don't know what that feels like. But I am here to help in whatever small way I can. You can be pissed at me all you want. But at least take the five minutes and the little effort to haul away a small part of the piles of trash that are lying here. Do that. 'Cause if you, who live here, don't show an interest in making things better then it's never gonna happen. Or worse, it's gonna happen and you are gonna be further marginalized and forgotten." But I just stammered, because all of this conflict welled up within me in the space of five seconds.

I'll get to the other thing that happened Thursday later.

Posted by Nakia at 09:38 AM | Comments (3)

June 12, 2006

Back from New Orleans

I made it back to Rock Hill yesterday afternoon. It's good to be home. Sarah and I had not seen each other in 10 days, since she had gone to Charlottesville right before I left for New Orleans, so we had some catching up to do. I missed just talking to her and listening to her stories. Her real estate training is going very well; she's got another week and a half before she's "on the street".

I took a lot of notes and have a lot of things I want to write about in regards to my NO trip. I'm going to post those beginning this week. My class is also starting next Monday, so I have some thoughts there, and work procedes apace on the on-line course, so expect a lot of activity on Professorpope.com this week! Right this minute, though, I have to go finish all the laundry I brought back with me. Good times.

Posted by Nakia at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)

June 05, 2006

New Orleans, Initial Impressions

I'm hanging out at PJ's coffee house in Slidell, LA. They are great because they have free wireless and good vanilla creme frozen drinks. I only have about 10 minutes before they close and am feeling a bit overwhelmed by the day, so I'll just post some random thoughts which I will elaborate on later.

-- In some parts of the city, it's hard to believe it's been nine months. There is still debris everywhere.

-- The big thing is just the sheer amount of trash and debris, piled on roadsides, in mounds in parking lots. It's almost post-apocolyptic.

-- Contribiting to the post apocolyptic feel are these spray painted messages on homes throughout the city. There are numbers, codes, and letters. There are SPCA messages like "6 dogs seen here on 10/17." It's like something out of The Stand.

-- If you want a job, move here, especially if you work in the service industry. Every place is hiring at what looks like good wages. I saw a Wendy's that said they are hiring starting at $9/hr (which is pretty good for fast food). Copelands had a big sign that advertised a $2400 signing bonus for experienced kitchen help.

-- There are maybe 75 people here from some churches in Kansas. It's like summer camp, with all these 14 and 15 year old kids running around. I don't want to disparage anyone's charity, but what can a 13 year old girl contribute to the clean up effort?

-- At what point does charity become pity? Or relief some form of voyeurism? Or travel into tourism? I'm wrestling with all of those, especially the second one. I brought the video camera and am taping stuff. But when we visited (very, very, very briefly) the 9th Ward today, people got out and immediately began taking photos. Dad remarked that, if he lived there, he would be angry at people like us, who just come over the bridge, park in the first parking lot, take some photos of the ruin (and it's just as bad as it looks on TV), and then turn around. I think I agree. I stayed in the car.

-- Right now I am also wrestling with how I am supposed to shower in a place that has 4 stalls for 80 people, only has HOT water, and has no ventillation in the shower trailer.

More tomorrow, as we return to Canal Blvd and a deaf church to rewire the altar and worship hall.

Posted by Nakia at 08:48 PM | Comments (0)

June 03, 2006

To New Orelans

Soon, I'll be driving to Knoxville. Tomorrow, my father, Andrew and I will be headed to New Oreleans. My dad's church is sending a group of about 20 people down to help rebuild and clean up a church there.

I'll admit, I am a little aprehensive about the trip. While I am excited to hang out with my dad and Andrew and glad to be able to participate in the recovery effort, I am nervous about what things will be like. A lot of folks seem to have forgotten about the area. Recovery is going slowly, by all accounts. People are not really coming back. I wonder what it will be like to enounter all of this first hand. Plus, there is some general nervousness about going, working, eating, and sleeping for a week with a bunch of people I don't really know. This sounds a little petty, given what the people of the region are going through, but I'm just being honest.

I'm taking a wireless laptop, but have no idea how internet access will be down there. I hope to post some updates during the week. If I can't get on-line, I'll be back on Sunday with some reports. I can post date them and put them up when I get back.

Posted by Nakia at 10:07 AM | Comments (1)