A Childhood NIghtmare Apart

While the President of the United States and hundreds of media types were marking the first anniversary of Katrina in her home town of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, Mary Kay Deen was watching her three grandsons play on the beach. The boys were racing back and forth to the edge of the water and quickly running back out.
The water was a little cooler than that to which the boys were accustomed.
Still the three boys – all under 10 – frolicked in the clear blue water as if it were their first time ever at a beach.
This was NOT the beach near grandmother’s home where they once frolicked endlessly. This was the waterfront at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Washington, not exactly a tropical paradise – even on this late August day. “There’s still too much debris in the water at home,” Mary Kay noted, as she watched the boys. “They haven’t been able to get in the water at home since the storm hit.”
Somewhere in all the hand wringing surrounding the first anniversary of Katrina’s landfall, one key element of the long-term story has been missed. Katrina’s impact on childhood innocence was greater than a single day of destruction. The beach that once was a place where sand castles and shells ruled was now as condemned as the hundreds of homes that had lined the Gulf of Mexico. This beach that welcomed youngsters with warm water and tropical trees was now a burial ground for debris and dead marine creatures.
Tonight, the kids were able to be in a “place apart” from the disaster area they call home. They were the special guests of the Port Townsend/Bay St. Louis Sister City Project which was commemorating its first year as a clearinghouse for practical and impractical post-disaster help. Just days after Katrina dumped a thirty-foot storm surge on the Bay St. Louis waterfront, a team of caring folks loaded a bus with blankets, volunteers and bio-diesel and headed to the front of the relief line. Among the first to make land fall in Bay St. Louis was a Port Townsend fisherman named Scott Landis.
On this first anniversary, Landis was busy watching salmon smoking on an open fire, giving out and receiving hundreds of hugs from the people that he had inspired to travel to Bay St. Louis and the Gulf Coast to bring various levels of expertise. Volunteers from Port Townsend have served food, removed debris and even joined in the reconstruction of dozens of damaged homes. Members of the Sister City project have camped out in front of the Bay St. Louis Senior Center since last September.
While under their breaths residents of Bay St. Louis fume at the mention of the federal government or local insurance companies, the Port Townsend/Bay St. Louis Sister City Project brings sparkle into their speech. “I want to thank all of you here for thinking and caring about us,” Mary Kay says.
There are emails and telephone calls from the city’s leadership and simple heroes who withstood Katrina’s wrath. The crowd is reminded that the need for help is far from over – even one year later. There are calls for more volunteers – especially those with specific construction skills – to join the conveyor belt that has been moving between the two artist communities since last September. Landis will make his fourth trip to Bay St. Louis on September 14.
Judy Alexander, the voice of the project tells people that the effort will not end anytime soon. In fact, the group is attempting to create an entrepreneurial project that will both unite the citizens of the two communities and become a financial backbone for the long-term health of the project. The organization projects the possibility of manufacturing a needed product, a picnic table for example that would first fill a need, make it possible for teams in both communities (young and old) to work together on its construction, and ultimately make the product available to the public in an effort to raise money.
On a day when America continues to wonder about the unnatural aspects of this natural disaster, there is a natural bonding in this waterfront gathering. There is hope here that the failings of adults will be cleared through the hopes of our children. The time will come when Mary Kay’s grandchildren will be free to run through a debris-free beach once again.
Hopefully, they’ll remember that people who live near cold water can be very warm.

Katrina by the Numbers

Tonight marks a full year since Katrina left her mark on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. We still recall the images of dead bodies in wheel chairs, thousands of poor with no means of evacuation, trapped in the Superdome. There were pictures after pictures of suffering residents of the Ninth Ward hanging on to life on a rooftop.
The richest country in the world was caught demonstrating that its government was poor and unable or unwilling to respond. The message of Katrina was more than a photo-op of human suffering. It was a powerful story of the haves leaving the have nots behind in standing water and knee-deep waste.
Now, a comprehensive report from Southern Exposure, the magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies, forces us to take a look at all that went wrong beginning on the morning of August 29, 2005. The report combines individual stories in thirteen sections over 100 pages. Along with the individual stories are collective numbers that coldly calculate the cost of Katrina to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Page after page, number after number, this is difficult reading. Story after story, this is must reading.
Every media outlet will tell you that more than a million displaced residents were forced out of the state of Louisiana in the wake of Katrina. Yet, how many sources will document that only six New Orleans musicians out of the 61 who have applied, have been approved for Housing in the celebrated “Musician’s Village” being constructed by Habitat for Humanity? How many sources can tell you that more than 6,000 New Orleans inmates have been sitting in jail since Katrina hit and have no trial date, or have not been able to see an attorney?
From politics, to the role of women in the aftermath of Katrina, the Southern Exposure report brings us up to date on the status of the empty words of George W. Bush, spoken two weeks after Katrina hit:

"Tonight, I also offer this pledge to the American people: Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.”

The report also takes pains to point out that Katrina gave comfort to the already comfortable. Local energy utilities and government contractors are making huge profits while thousands remain unable to return to the city they love.
Finally, the report makes it clear that should Katrina be followed by another storm, local officials have no assurance that they are any safer now than they were a year ago.
The first wave of Katrina motion pictures are being released this week. Before you see any of them, read through this report.

Celebration or Commemoration?

August 29, 2005 is a day that will forever live in infamy.
It is a day that the U.S. government shamed itself.
It is a day on which few official people did a "heckuva" job.
A powerfully violent storm named Katrina left its imprint on New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast forever. More than a thousand people died, many in their own homes. Thousands of others will never go home again.
Is this any reason to celebrate?
It is, if you are the Port Townsend/Bay St. Louis Sister-City project. This Tuesday — exactly one year after the flood waters pounded the Gulf Coast — the dozens of generous Port Townsend residents who have given their time, surrendered their comforts and shared their wealth with their fellow artists in Mississippi will come together at a simple summer barbecue to honor those who brought Northwest sunshine into the Old South.
Among those celebrating Tuesday will be the New Old Time Chautauqua troupe that entertained through the region last April.
Once again, our mission is to deliver joy and laughs.
Once again, we stand ready to meet the demand.
Come, celebrate with us. Check out the Sister Cities Web site, and join us along with some Mississippi residents at Fort Word.
It is time we dried our tears.

The Power of YES! Thinking

Some of my friends have asked why this precious blog space has been empty for more than three months.
I used this space for a week in April to bring the YES! audience closer to one of the more unique experiences in both my journalism and comedy careers. I traveled with New Old Time Chautauqua through a troubled region still suffering the effects of Hurricane Katrina some eight months after the storm.
It was an experience I’ll never forget.
Since then, I’ve focused on my work as Online Editor for a publication as different from the mass media as New Orleans is different from Baghdad. Both these cities are difficult destinations these days, both are being studied by diverse publications, but leave it to YES! to find hope in both places.
I have been a part of the YES! team for just less than a year, and I remain a practicing carnivore and continue to inflict carbon monoxide emissions on the Puget Sound atmosphere. A part of me remains a cynical newspaper reporter who covered violence on the streets of Los Angeles in the 1970’s, and a part of me wants to believe that David Korten and Joanna Macy are correct in predicting an end to 5,000 years of Empire.
Like Nobel laureate Betty Williams of Ireland, I know that certain truths are self-evident. Ms. Williams was fired into action by witnessing a horrific act of violence on the streets of Dublin. The result was a coalition of thousands of mothers and children that sought peace for troubled Northern Island. In 1977, she was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
Yet, she says she is not necessarily a non-violent person. This week, as she attended an Earth Dialogue in Brisbane, Australia, she was back in the news noting that “I could kill George Bush,” for what he has done to the children of Iraq.
In its declarations, the Earth Dialogues conference made clear the challenge optimists here at YES! and elsewhere face in bringing about a just and sustainable world.

1. There can be no sustainable peace while the majority of the world's population lives in poverty.
2. There can be no sustainable peace if we fail to rise to the global challenge presented by climate change.
3. There can be no sustainable peace while military spending takes precedence over human development."

As we enter a time of unprecedented tensions in the world, we all face a trial from our inner skeptic. Even our non-violent passions will be tested, just as they were for Betty Williams.
I feel better knowing that I live in an environment of optimism here at YES! Whenever I think a cynical thought, a team of my colleagues comes around to infuse me with a thought of optimism.
I no longer think violent thoughts of George W. Bush. He has, after all, done something I thought would never be possible.
He has made me think positive thoughts about Richard Nixon.

Pulling Up Stakes, Leaving the Warmest Thoughts

Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, April 23 – The Jambalaya Vaudeville Tour is breaking camp in Mississippi, after an unprecedented week of delight and desolation. There is delight in job well done, as the final Mississippi show brings out many of Bay St. Louis’ best and brightest to languish one last time in the music and madness that we have brought to a town still in need of a basic grocery store eight months after the storm.
Tonight, there will be one last show on the tour. A show in downtown New Orleans that will bring together dialysis patients who struggled to survive and were forced to travel to Baton Rouge when electrical power literally left them for dead in the Crescent City.
Those of us who left our comfortable homes to entertain and share our skills with those who look to the coming hurricane season with great apprehension had no idea of the bravery, boldness and passion we would find here. “See, we’re wearing shoes,” one Bay St. Louis resident showed us -- just in case we brought any “Yankee” prejudice to these parts.
The people here are wearing more than shoes. They are wearing their Mississippi pride with color and conscience. Another woman in the audience wears a t-shirt simply expressing the thoughts of those with confidence in this devastated area’s future. “Waveland,” the t-shirt simply says, identifying the artist community adjacent to Bay St. Louis. “Sometimes, the waves come on to the ground.”
For every child that sees magic in the illusions of Joey Pipia and “Magical Mystical Michael” there is an adult who is captivated by the enchantment of a community shaken, but not stirred by recent events. There are many here still living in tiny FEMA trailers as they do battle with insurance companies that take comfort in holding up claims to decide if damage came from a 30-foot storm surge (therefore uninsured “flood damage) or the 140-mile-per-hour winds that accompanied the storm as it moved inland through Bay St. Louis’ Gulf Coast.
These are survivors here. Things can be slow here in the South. But all things come to those who wait.
The only thing they don’t want to see come is another hurricane.

Fashioning Bay St. Louis Arts

Carter Church (right) looks on as members of the Jambalaya Vaudeville Tour try on some of his lavish costumes.

Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, April 22 – Before the eye of Katrina passed over this place eight months ago, this town was primarily known as a place where the arts culture of New Orleans took refuge by the sea.

Bay St. Louis was populated by a creative, colorful and conscientious community, always ready to explode into an artistic passion at the drop of a paintbrush or sewing needle. One of its most passionate residents remains Carter Church, who lives in what seems like a large FEMA trailer in present-day Bay St. Louis, but this pre-fab structure that houses his workshop survived Katrina far better than his own home. Flood water crept into the workshop, but there was no damage to the costumes that have draped the famous and fashioned Mardi Gras unlike anything else. Church has become known as the "costumer of Mardi Gras."
Katrina did diminish the call for costumes for this year's restrained celebration. But Church's artistry continues to pour out designs that will flavor Mardi Gras celebrations for years to come.
On a wooden workbench, books are filled with designs for costumes that have brought Mardi gras royalty back to the ruffles and flourishes of an era dozens of major hurricanes ago. The costumes have won Church rewards from Mardi Gras officials and have brought attention from movie stars like Carol Channing. Channing who who has made a career of modeling some of the most exquisite turn of the 19th/20th Century fashions in movies and on Broadway relied on Church to recreate pieces for her wardrobe.
Recently, Church’s creations traveled to the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, as part of an exhibition to highlight the work of Bay St. Louis artists. Artists are independent contractors who earn a living only when they are able to sell their work. Old Town Bay St. Louis before Katrina was the marketplace for residents of New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities to buy local art. In the immediate future, the market here will be closed and artists will need to find new venues. Already, communities in Minnesota and Port Townsend, Washington have brought art treasures back to local galleries to support Bay St. Louis artists.
If there is a Mardi Gras celebration at the Clinton Library next year, you can blame Carter Church.

St, Bernard – A City in Need of Help

St Bernard Parish, Louisiana, April 21 – As you drive down Judge Perez Blvd through the main commercial district of St. Bernard Parish time appears to have stopped still. A half-demolished multiplex marquee still advertises movies that were playing on August 29, 2005 when Katrina swept a disastrous path through the blue collar town that sits on the edge of New Orleans’ now infamous lower Ninth Ward. Gas still remains at $2.37 at a half-demolished station near the main access road to the Parish.
Not a single business is untouched by the storm. Not “Barbara’s Place,” a small café, not the town’s new Wal-Mart Supercenter. The drive down the boulevard of broken brick seems like a tour of a bombed-out European city during World War II. At the center of the business district, a handwritten sign invites the community to share free food three times per day. Hundreds still gather each day for food that is impossible to buy. Even in the city of New Orleans, supermarkets are rare, and if available, operate under restricted hours.
At Emergency Communities those who need help gather at a Geodesic dome and surrounding tents where they can get not only food, but clothing and other needed services like medical care. What was once a huge parking lot for an off-track betting parlor now serves as a diverse tent city that feeds, sleeps, and entertains.
Friday, the entertainment was underscored by bolts of lightning and some heavy – but short rainfall. The thunder, lightning. and rain did not interrupt the impromptu parade by the Fighting Instruments of Karma Chamber Marching Band/Orchestra. The skies cleared long enough for the Jambalaya Vaudeville Tour to make its now regularly scheduled impromptu entrance. For a few minutes, the April heat wave cooled, and laughter out-thundered the fast-moving storm.
Emergency Communities grew out of the Waveland Rainbow Kitchen, one of the first post-Katrina volunteer responses to the overwhelming need here. The St. Bernard Parish facility opened in December 2005, and plans to stay open until June 15th of this year.
Originally, the facility had been scheduled to run for just 12 weeks. Even after the recovery begins here, there will continue to be a need for a helping hand to all those who continue to suffer the ill effects of the devastating storm here.
Wal-Mart is close to re-opening its super-center here. It already offers the only available gas station in the central business district. There is no definite word yet how long it will take for the mom and pop businesses here to get the help they need.

Dancing in the Streets of the Ninth Ward

New Orleans, April 20 – There is dancing on the streets of the Ninth Ward!
In a neighborhood that resembles a ghost town, a neighborhood where each and every house is crudely marked with painted dates and a listing of the numbers of bodies found, dancing returned on a hot April night.
In the place of temporarily displaced residents, young college students filled the streets to the rhythm of “Down by the Riverside,” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Dozens of relief workers at the Common Ground clinic were able to throw off their face masks and house-gutting tools under and follow The Fighting Instruments of Karma Marching Chamber Band/Orchestra into dark and quiet streets. “This is a Chautauqua moment,” cried out Even Sprinsock , the band’s conductor.” This is what we work for…”
For Common Ground Founder Malik Rahim, it was just another measure of love that has been generated for Common Ground from the New England Journal of Medicine to cable news channels. “Thank you for coming all the way here to help,” Rahim greets his visitors and volunteers with a smile and a hug.
New Orleans was the latest stop for the Jambalaya Vaudeville Tour that has already seen welcome laughs in towns all around the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Here in a former Catholic school building where water filled the first floor just eight months ago, volunteers both young and old experience organized chaos at its finest. Rahim fashioned Common Ground out of necessity in the post-Katrina madness. As hospitals closed down and doctors fled the city, Rahim created a clinic operation in Algiers -- an area of the city left mostly untouched by Katrina.
As the post-storm recovery lumbered on, Common Ground took on more intense duties, such as providing food and lodging to volunteers who come from all around the US. He also offered lodging and food for displaced residents. Volunteers perform the hazardous duty of gutting the homes and saving the infrastructure for homeowners. The work is important as government officials continue plans to demolish homes that fail to meet certain structural requirements.
During the recent Spring Break, Common Ground was overflowing with more than 1,000 volunteers serving the rebuilding effort. Now, during an unbearable April heat wave, more than 200 volunteers are here. All are struck by the depressing nature of the job at hand, and the value of turning this forgotten neighborhood toward a chance at life. It is a cause for dancing in the street. It is a time to tap toes, sing along, and laugh at the Flying Karamazov brothers who incite the audience with their energy.
It’s time -- Even in a place still hoping to hear the immortal words: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”

A Health Clinic Grows in Algiers

New Orleans, Louisiana, April 20, 2006 – If you are not aware that New Orleans is in a health care crisis, a quick trip to the city’s Algiers section will quickly remind you. Here sits a health clinic like none other, a health clinic spontaneously designed by the people for the people.
Algiers is one of the few places in New Orleans seemingly unaffected by Katrina. Still, there was need in this particularly poor area of Algiers for medical care once provided by the Emergency Room at Charity Hospital. Eight months after the storm, that hospital remains closed.
Algiers was the first part of the city opened to the public after the storm. But not everybody came back.
Especially not the doctors.
Especially not the doctors who provide community health care for the poor.
In those first days when life returned to the streets of New Orleans, people needed care. Those who took on the gutting of flood-damaged homes needed treatment for everything from cuts to respiration problems caused by breathing the air of mold, destruction and death.
Some simply required treatment for post-traumatic stress. Others had medical conditions that never go away, such as sexually transmitted diseases.
For these noble purposes, the Common Ground Collective was formed. The clinic began as a first-aid station staffed by volunteers that flooded into New Orleans immediately after the storm. The clinic took up residence in a mosque across the street from its present location where founder Malik Rahim was a member.
As medical professionals came into the city, the clinic added more services. As more neighborhoods were re-opened, the clinic’s patient load became heavier. Calls went out to medical schools across the country to send their best and brightest to this oasis within a professionally parched city.
Medical students are still coming. They’re coming from all over the US and from countries around the globe. Local doctors are also starting to come back home and taking up the Common Ground Collective challenge.
The Common Ground clinic begun out of desperation has now taken on permanent status in a small building all its own. The clinic has filed for 501-c (non-profit) status and expects to become a permanent fixture at its Algiers location. The clinic will continue to serve its patients for free and rely on donations to its Web site.