Dear Friends and Family, I am now on my way to NYC and Massachusetts...I should be there by Friday night. It is a little strange right now to be in places where there is normalcy....no piles of trash in the streets, houses are where they belong, businesses are busy. My first afternoon out of Katrina zone, I was in Mobile Alabama and the sight of this normalcy was shocking...now it is just strange, and I imagine that in a few more days, normal will be, well, normal. We run the risk of forgetting what happened on the South Coast. Our newspapers headlines change day to day and the Katrina story is no longer "sexy"...no floods, no people on roofs reaching for helicopters....but Katrina's legacy continues and will do so for many years, possibly decades. The numbers of people dead or displaced, the health care system collapsed, the failures of our government agencies, the long rebuilding of a major American city and surrounding region, will be going on behind the scenes throughout our lifetimes. Please remember the people of the South Coast, continue to send financial support, go to the region to volunteer either with an organized group or on your own. What happened in the New Orleans area could happen anywhere; it could be any of our lives next. We need to remember, to understand, to plan and to help. Misty and I are planning to return to the Gulf Coast after Thanksgiving. For anyone interested, Common Ground is making a massive call for volunteers from November 20th through the 27th to help clean up and rebuild the 9th Ward. Go to commongroundrelief.org for more information. I hope you enjoy the following, Sharon and Misty November 1-6, 2005 South Coast, Mississippi.
I turned off Interstate 10, about 60 miles east of New Orleans and as if by Cruise Control and GPS, I found myself on Main Street of Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, my attention caught by a wall sized Coca-Cola mural on the side of a building. To its right was a sign for Clay Creations, a ceramic art studio, a sign that read, "Open by Luck" . I had just driven 5 or 6 miles from the highway and was the first building I had seen that was not blown apart by Katrina. With the exception of 2 gas stations, I hadn't seen any other business on the 4 lane coastal highway that was open for business. Piles of wet insulation and drywall-filled rubbish, signs for "Debris Clearing" "Roofing", "Tree Cutting", "House Guttin", and other services lined the road. Mile after mile of broken or missing windows, couches, chairs, file cabinets, refrigerators and mattresses in the streets, blue roofs and oddly bent and leaning buildings spoke of something wicked having passed this way.
This is an other Katrina, the non- New Orleans Katrina that does not get much news coverage. The entire coast of Mississippi has been changed irrevocably by a 30 plus foot wall of water that came surging in as Katrina's date, accompanied by high winds and tornadoes. Entire towns are gone. Gone. In Waveland there are steps leading up to what used to be City Hall. There is no building attached to those steps, only a ceramic mural depicting happier days. A few feet from the steps stands a plaque thanking the volunteers who helped rebuild Waveland in the aftermath of Hurricane Camille in 1968. Oddly, Katrina didn't take this with her, proving the lasting power of thank you notes. Essentially every house within ¼ mile of the ocean is gone and beyond that zone probably 80% of those still standing are either severely damaged or destroyed. People say that when they returned home from evacuating they couldn't recognize their streets or driveways. There were no familiar landmarks. The beach was strewn with litter, broken sidewalks, exposed sewer and water infrastructure, pieces of metal and wood, trees. The shape of the coastline was different. Almost every tree was broken or bent and hung with debris. Like some demented Tibetan Prayer Flags, colorful swaths of cloth still hang in the trees. One man told me that he and his wife passed the turnoff for their street 3 times. When they finally decided where to try to look for their home and lot, they could barely drive down the streets. The streets were covered with high mounds of sand, broken power poles and trees that were forced to surrender to the wind and whose branches were ultimately carried off in the dark by the storm surge. These two people had 2 Oaks standing as sentinels by their driveway, trees so old and historic they had been registered with the state, protecting them forever from a chain saw. The oaks had been tagged, and the presence of those tags identified the property. Every house between the beach and theirs was demolished and the storm surge pushed the remains onto their lot. The pile of lumber was mountainous, with a couple of roofs from neighbors homes lying on top of whatever might remain of their material possessions, their memories of birthdays, anniversaries, trips and a lifetime of experiences. All around are little pieces of memories; a ceramic cup, a doll, a shoe, a trophy. Reminders that this is not just a surreal pile of debris, but a place where once before people lived in a community.
My friend Nancy lived in this area. The storm surge tore through her property dissembling her house and moving its parts inland a few hundred feet. She is sure her furniture is in her neighbor's pool...a murky brown green stew of water and vegetation that smells so bad it discourages anyone from standing near. The gray siding from her house is strewn around other neighbors lots. She is searching for one of her husband's ties...the one they bought in Scotland...she says she will be satisfied if she can find that one tie in the 10 foot inverted cone of branches and lumber upon which lie twisted up, other less important ties. That one holds special memories.
Her neighbors across the street are the Koons, a husband and wife, who moved to Waveland after he retired from a job in the off-shore drilling business out of New Orleans. They built a granny unit for his mother, Martha, who celebrated her 94th birthday there earlier this year. Martha had broken her hip twice and twice recovered. She had evacuated 3 times in 3 years before Katrina, each time putting her 200 year old punch bowl set in the dishwasher for safe keeping and each time returning to an undisturbed home where she replaced her punchbowl set to its place of honor. She did the same this time however, the home was destroyed in the storm. Her daughter-in-law found the dishwasher some distance from the house, still closed. When they opened it up, it was filled with mud, mud that protected her precious family heirloom. Not a single piece was broken. The lessons here...in case of emergency, put your valuables in the dishwasher...and buy a Kenmore.
Not everyone was so lucky. Many people chose not to evacuate, but to ride out this storm as they had done many times before. An estimated 1500 people lost their lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Last week the body of an elderly woman was found under the rubble. There are likely more to be found as crews have yet to clear every pile that was once a home. There are so many homesites to clear; it cannot be done all at once. It is so hard to wait.
On the lighter side, Bay Saint Louis (BSL) is still very much a community despite having most of its buildings damaged or destroyed. The public schools opened in trailers on November 7th, the busses are running, the hospital is a MASH like unit and people are working on clearing up the mess and recovering. This was a resort town, a little more than an hours' drive from New Orleans, so a lot of New Orleanians had second houses here or had moved here permanently. They like to party. Many of them lost houses here *and* in the city.
There was a thriving art community in BSL that is dealing with losing its studio spaces, customers, materials for creating, etc. in addition to personal losses. My friends Jenise and Mark's home and studio, Clay Creations, sustained relatively minor damage (as compared with many of their neighbors) so they have been able to reopen her business. Several artists show in her studio space which is on Main Street, but besides providing a space for showing, the opening of any business becomes an anchor for a community, a hopefulness. Last night was "Second Saturday"...actually it was the first Saturday but since reopening, the arts community has decided to do Second Saturday every Saturday in order to show support. The studio was open all night and there was food, wine and beer, live music, dancing, some sales, and a lot of community. Over the course of the evening there were probably 50-60 people having a good time on the corner of Main and Toulme Streets. Life goes on, we have no choice.
At the Train Depot Park, another higher ground spot in town that didn't get flooded, Randall and Olivia, a couple of Hollywood stunt artists have set up a large screen for showing movies. Tonight it is "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". Every weekend night they show a family- type movie. They wanted to provide the community with something akin to normalcy, an opportunity to laugh, and a way to relieve stress. They themselves cleaned up all the debris in the park and set out tarps for people to sit on. Folks of all ages come, kids in pjs. They give out popcorn, chips, water, stuffed animals and OFF...the mosquitoes are vicious here. They came originally with a Church group and were doing mass feeding. When they returned home they decided that they wanted to do something more so they came back and began showing movies.
Individuals and non-governmental groups have been successful in advancing the recovery and aide work. Perhaps it is because they do not have to wait for answers from the historically massive and slow federal and state bureaucracies. Like sailboats as compared with ocean liners, they can change direction quickly, and in this catastrophe, the ability to move quickly and change quickly has been essential. In a strip mall parking lot in Waveland is a Tent City set up and managed by a combination on Hippies and Churchies. The Rainbow People, a loose organization of free spirits who hold their meetings in National Forests, convened in Alexandria, LA shortly after Katrina struck. They brought with them skills for wilderness mass feeding, first aid and sanitation, set up a huge Geodesic Dome tent for feeding, and others for food preparation, a computer bank, traditional and alternative health care and more. They were joined by various Church groups, supplied by contributions from Volunteers for Peace (now under the umbrella of SOS: Saving Our Selves), a multitude of Churches, and other organizations and individuals, and began supporting the people who remained in the area. They were the first on the scene in this part of the disaster zone. At its peak, they were feeding and supplying up to 4000 people per day at the "Rainbow Café". Now it is about 1500. Truck loads of food, personal care items, household cleaning supplies, clothing, tents, etc. fill the parking lot and are unloaded constantly throughout the day. There are National Guardsmen driving forklifts with pallets of supplies to the various locations within the "city". The materials go to whichever tent is handling that type of supply. There are 2 large tented "markets" where supplies are given out. Everything is free...meals, health care, computer assistance, supplies. Everyone keeping the "Rainbow Tents" going are volunteers. There are several "Hippie Busses" in the parking lot...which on closer inspection, are Church busses. The collaboration between the groups has brought dialogue between people who might never have spoken to each other and who likely had many pre-conceived notions about the other. With any luck, this will go on. Again, the theme of Common Ground comes in the aftermath of the storm. There is so much work to do in the Gulf Coast, so much potential for a fresh start. It is a frontier where people with vision, people with skills, people with hope can build new communities that will be examples of how to promote better living for all. There is also the potential for people of self interest and greed to carpetbag. Call in the experts for ideas and plans for rebuilding. Call in the residents for input and approval. At an art fair in Ocean Springs, MS the other day I saw a sign that read:
DO THE NEXT RIGHT THING
The recovery of the Gulf Coast is a great opportunity for this.