18:01 May 25 2010
Times Read: 711
I'm definitely smelling it now. Because I'm a little more inland, it's not terribly strong, but at night, the air smells like the old kerosene lamps my grandmother pulled out during hurricane season.
For all things, there is a cost.
This is my state bird, only just removed from the endangered list 6 months ago. The brown pelican. The island is in Barataria Bay and it is exceptionally narrow. Hundreds of pelicans nest there, are nesting there. This guy is covered in oil, trying to fly.
That's one species of animal impacted...imagine the impact on our wetlands, still not recovered from Katrina. It's not like there's an abundance of coastal wetlands in our country. We're watching this treasure disappear...
Sometimes the cost is just too great. When?
17:34 May 09 2010
Times Read: 758
Stabb and I spent yesterday loading and unloading trucks filled with the food that people donated during the Stamp Out Hunger food drive that the letter carriers sponsor each year. It is a HUGE drive and we were on the Post Office dock from noon until 6:30 PM.
We collected 5 and a half TONS of food. Really. We could not sort it fast enough. It was mind-blowing. In the course of ONE day, we went from nearly empty shelves to abundance.
It sounds like food enough to last nearly forever, but that food will be gone before summer is out. It's such an important drive because food banks don't have school food drives to help sustain them during the summer. It is a day that makes the difference for us.
I hope you guys participated locally. If not, I hope you'll do so next year. The letter carriers are so fun to see, too. They are competitive with the others, trying to bring in the most. There's a spirit of fun competition as we get all the food unloaded, then roll the cart to the huge scale and weigh it.
After that, our volunteers and staff sort it right there on the dock, load pickup trucks and haul it to the Center. It's hot work and the boxes are sometimes pretty heavy, but everyone is so helpful and in a good mood. You can't help it when you see so much food growing around you that will help so many.
I have some pictures I'll try to post soon. If you have a girl or boy scout troop, a youth group, ladies' or men's group, or just your own kids and you'd like to be involved next year (great for service hours,) call your local food bank in April and I know they'll plug you in!
I'm so grateful to everyone who took the time to bag up a few cans and place them beside their mailbox. This is a classic example of everyone doing a little and seeing it add up to a LOT. 5 and a half TONS!!! How amazing people can be.
"My mom is a neverending song"
21:33 May 01 2010
Times Read: 871
Mother's Day is coming up next week and I'm thinking lots about my mom, the role she played in my life, and the woman I got to really know as an adult. We get hemmed in about our moms...we can spend our lives only seeing them as moms, but they are so much more.
My mom was a beautiful young girl who grew up in Pointe ala Hache, LA. I know you never heard of this town (unless you read my journal), but it's a little town along the Mississippi River. 2 main roads, one that runs alongside the levee that features heavily in a lot of the poetry that I write.
She was a mischievous, fun, and smart young lady who dreamed of more than the few traditional roles to which a female in her community could aspire. She dreamed of college. Nobody in her family had a college diploma. Her father was a hunter/trapper and drove the Belle Chasse ferry.
Her mother encouraged her to be a secretary after high school.
Instead, she enrolled in Southeastern Louisiana University and majored in Education. She met a dashing young man there...tall, dark, and handsome certainly, but creative and different from the young cajun boys she'd grown up with.
Richard was an artist, a dreamer, and a thinker. He was also majoring in Education. He also dreamed of college for himself when most of the young men he knew were happy to work as pipe insulators like his father did.
Together, they experienced a world through eyes that appreciated widening horizons. They married a year later and spent every summer traveling to places they dreamed of: The Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, Canada, Mexico, and so many others. They took their little girl along with them everywhere from the time she was a baby. They laughed when she complained that her legs would fall off if she had to hike another step. They encouraged her to keep going. They pointed out a world that was much bigger than the one they had grown up in. Her mother sang to her and her father drew and painted it all.
They became teachers. Mom was elementary and dad was high school. They both went back for Master's Degrees in their fields. They helped so many young people in and out of the classrooms, working sporting events, PTA meetings, and millions of after school events. They even taught for 5 years in a low socio-economic area where I was blessed to learn so many early life lessons about what really matters in this world.
My mom was always a great mom. Always. She was sought after as a friend because of her easy manner. She is at home in nearly any situation: cooking, out on the town, or just sitting home and talking. Don't get Martha Stewart in your head, though... this lady is made of cayenne pepper, joy, love, and naughty jokes. She will laugh louder than the prissy ladies at your jokes and she will kick the ass of anyone who threatens her family. She is real people.
My parents will celebrate their 36th anniversary next month, but it wasn't always smooth. It was a dynamic relationship filled with the richness of sacrifice and the fireworks of epic fights. My mother loved my father right past all those times and my father treasured my mom always.
They are retired now for a few years. They were diagnosed with Cancer a year ago and have each fought their personal battles and supported one another through that scariest period of our lives. They never got completely lost in themselves, though. Even ill, they stayed involved in the lives of their two daughters and their three grandchildren.
They built their dream home on 5 acres of beautiful land. My mom had kept the picture of that house from a magazine for years since she'd first fallen in love with it. My dad wanted to give that to her because she was his beautiful bride. They did as much of the work themselves as they could, only hiring contractors for the big stuff. I love seeing my mom move through the house she imagined and dreamed of. She has her big screened porch now and a garden where she grows vegetables you wouldn't believe.
She volunteers now at the Center where I work. As a former teacher, working with people in need just flows so naturally from her. She is a listener, an encourager, and a genuine person. It's an honor to work beside her, and humbling that she'd want to be here with me. I'm so proud to introduce her to people as my mother. She's told dad so much about it that he's begun coming, too. He's currently painting a gorgeous mural on one of our walls that illustrates Psalm 65.
"The streams of God are filled with water to provide the people with grain, for so you have ordained it. You drench its furrows and level its ridges; you soften it with showers and bless its crops. You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance."
How appropriate. They are a great abundance in my life and in those fortunate enough to know them. Mother's Day is a week away and Father's Day follows the month after. I am rich for the beginning they have given to me, and for the example they have set. I am fortunate to have them still here with me, but most of all, to know forever that these two remarkable humans love me and want more than anything for me to have a beautiful, meaningful and fulfilled life. I am so grateful to be your daughter. Love you both always.
COMMENTS
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imagesinwords
19:33 May 25 2010
I can't smell it yet. I moved from the Northshore into New Orleans 10 days ago... I am right on the bank of the Mississppi, Algiers Point area- the Naval Support Activity.
Joli
20:17 May 25 2010
I think it's all in the wind. I never smell it during the day, but around 10 or 10:30 at night, it's unmistakable - an ozone-like, kerosene smell. I'd imagine you will notice it even more distinctly where you are.
BLOODLIFE
20:20 May 25 2010
A terrible accident has to remind us just how fragile our planet is.
xxEmaeraldxx
23:28 May 25 2010
I think the oil company are handling this very badly, and also very slowly. I even wonder was the cause of the accident established so we can prevent it from happening again?
birra
04:44 May 26 2010
No, Bloodlife, the planet is hardly fragile - not to us and what we can do. At any moment, this planet can rear-up and kick our fat asses.
This is just human failure having a terrible impact on an ecosystem. Life will be destroyed - sea life, plant life, birds.. everything that relies on the waters and coastlines we just made a shambles of.
But in time, it will all come back - it always does.
We just might not be here to see it if we don't smarten up. That is the ever looming question; what mistake will we make that will eliminate US from the ecosystem?
Joli
17:56 May 26 2010
Birra just said with passion what I wanted to convey. We take so much for granted for our own wants and we hum along fat and happy until we get a solid kick to the face that INSISTS that we pay attention. I feel kicked. Louisiana feels kicked. We all should.
I am making changes.