Leading Off

Airport => Airplane => Plastic Platform Tent (POD) => Lower 9th ward, all in 24 hours. What a ride. Spirits are charged up, and the crew is ready to take off. It's becoming more an more clear that our true purpose here is not just to put in a few man hours of volunteer caliber construction, but to process and echo the lessons we learn. Sometimes it's tough to sort through all of it at once, but being a pat of an open like-minded group definitely makes things easier. Nonetheless on the ground you never really know what to expect. Here's an example:

Airplane. GA=>NOLA. Three seats per row. Aisle seat: 20 year old black kid in a tie casually glances at his iPod. Middle seat: me, 22 year old white dude from the Northeast pawing at Howard Zinn's history book, but really just wanting to chat climate change. Window seat: chubby white teenager with glasses, acne, and an a few straight black hairs on his upper lip.

So we talk talk talk talk. "So how about Katrina?" Aisle seat had a car, a house above sea level, and local family. He was fine. He thinks the city needs help, but the system needs to change too. He wants Obama in the white house, and Spike Lee with an Oscar in his hand. He sees the system as flawed and unfixable: if you want to survive a category five storm, you need a car, and a credit card, and that's tough, but it's the truth. New Orleans is just bound to encounter future catastrophe, so start saving now. Oh yeah, and oil companies are no good. Much sarcastic laughing.

So I'm listening - more sharing ensues

Next comes window seat: Window seat had a car, but lived in St. Bernard Parish, and left too late. He got as far as Mississippi, then stopped to weather the storm. He's been in a FEMA trailer camp for two years, and his parents are trying to relocate to downtown New Orleans, but utilities prices are high, and remodeled homes are scarce. His first time back to St. Bernard Parish, he waded through waste deep mud only to find nothing but a concrete slab where his home used to stand. He now shares a room in his aunt's house in Baton Rouge. His parents commute 50 miles to New Orleans and back each day, which takes 4 hours each day. They want nothing more than to move back home. Money is scarce, hope is high, and the FEMA check didn't come until 5 months ago. Didn't want to take a government loan for housing, because there was no housing to buy. Window Seat loved the parish, but says he can't move back there, even now.

"Why?" I ask

Oil spill. I wouldn't just need a new house, I'd need a new yard, and a new block. The soil just has too many chemicals in it now.

Aisle Seat: "Yeah, Hurricanes suck."

So what about Change? What about Hope? Window seat likes Mike Huckabee. He thinks that you "need a little God in you" if you want to fix a problem as big as New Orleans.

It's funny how I can see a person who has totally accepted something as horrible as Katrina, and be OK with it. Most days, saying that something "sucks" and moving on is no big deal. Then again, maybe that's the idea. At some point you'd like to think that dealing with catastrophe is "no big deal."

As we said goodbye, Window Seat stood up, smiled, and revealed that he was 14.