I can teach and I can gut, but I can't deal with City Hall.

I think I have said before that I have been too busy to maintain my blog. If I have, I feel like saying to my old self, "You? Busy? P-Shaw!"

That's because I am forreal busier than I think I have EVER been. I even had to say NO to something that I probably should have said YES to because it was one of those things-that-look-good-on-your-CV-when-you're-up-for-retention. But you know, I'd like to actually be able to do what I'm doing really well, and if someone asked me to do one more thing, I think this house of cards might come a-tumbling.

The real kicker is my online writing class. I teach writing every summer online, but Johns Hopkins does a really excellent job of creating and providing excellent curriculum and teaching materials, and in my class this semester, I'm on my own. That means I am having to spend hours upon hours typing lectures, posting, organizing, deleting, moving, revising, responding, writing, revising, etc., etc.

Now, having said that, I should say that I am really happy to be taking on this challenge. UNO offers just this one online section of composition, and I think that's going to have to change. I remember the first time I taught an all-online comp class...

It was the fall after Katrina. The class was a mess. I think I may have ruined lives. Who knows? I can't remember a damn thing from that semester. That's not true. I can. But it was hard, hard, hard, and there were breakdowns to be had, and nails to drive over, and it was really hard to teach.

Wait a second... all of those things are still true.

Anyway, I think there are benefits to teaching online, and I am trying to kick some butt with it and then share my experience with my colleagues. I've already learned a lot, and I've got some fascinating students: a man from Iran now living in Houston, a basketball star, and a hearing-impaired woman whose writing challenges are formidable. Lucky for all of them, I like a challenge.

In most cases, anyway.

The kind of challenge I don't like? Attitude-y outbursts from freshman not yet ready to behave like college students. I am struggling with a couple of eye-rolling, neck-cocking, teeth-tsking students in my onsite comp class, and I have had to work HARD to keep my cool. I think part of the problem is that I look like I could be their friend, and I also don't "sound like a teacher." That means I don't "whom" and "consequently" in class. I speak in language my students can understand. (In fact, in student evaluations, they regularly compliment my ability to communicate ideas clearly.) But some students mistake that casual approach to teaching as weakness, and they try to assert their own control by acting out.

I have a second theory: that the students who act out and who practice teacher-targeting and blame-games do so because it's easier to blame me than to take responsibility for their own failures. Anyway, I am really finding my comp-class challenging. Hopefully things will get better.

In house news...

We gutted the house, which led to our discovering several things. A) We have 12-foot wooden-plank ceilings. Beautiful. B) It takes more than one dumpster to contain 1800 square footage of gutting whatnot. C) I love to tear sh*t up! I mean, I had no idea how much I was going to love tearing down the lowered ceilings, cutting wires, and pulling nails. I loved it. I got so sore I could hardly move, and my hands hurt for days, but no matter! Sine I've discovered I like this sort of thing so much, I've ordered some Soy-based paint remover, and next I will take on scraping the windows and the trim.

Also in house news...

We are stalled. FEMA put the home's damage assessment at 51.74%. If you had more than 50% damage, you are required to prove a bunch of un-provable stuff, or raise your house (which we can't afford.)

I had the pleasure of visiting City Hall this week in order to contest the damage assessment (which erroneously reported that our floors, windows, doors, and cabinets were all "100% damaged,") where I had the pleasure of speaking with a very condescending, patronizing, no-sense making jerk of a man who I just about eye-rolled and neck-cocked and teeth-tsked. It appears that the kinds of things they were "letting slide" are now being scrutinized. It also appears that this kind of thing will prevent a whole lot of people from rebuilding. And what I don't understand? Our house is in a National Historic District, and therefore supposedly exempt from being forced to raise, but somehow dude was not having it. So we don't know what to do...

And I don't have time to handle it. In fact, I have to put this thing away and do some grading if I am to stay on top of things. AND... Mardi Gras is approaching, and it feels too soon and all kinds of wrong. I bought a silly wig and stuff to wear, but I am NOT feeling it! Which is sad because Mardi Gras day is my favorite day of the whole year.

Anyways, I'm staying afloat. Love to all.

We Human Beings

Yesterday, as I was having my morning coffee and getting ready to head to work, I heard a whole lotta cacophony at the neighbor's house next door. Someone had jumped their fence and was banging on their walls, calling out our neighbor's name. The guy looked a little seedy, so I rolled my eyes and added my cream.

I'm not sure what let me know "something's not right," what compelled me to look out the front window, but when I did, I saw this:

Folks were frantically banging on the house next door--the one where Miss Diane and her family lived before the storm, but I assured them that no one lived there. I was glad of it. I would have been tearing my hair out had my house been the one next to this raging fire. Our charming wooden houses, it seems, go up in mere minutes. The time stamp on my pictures tells me the first one was taken at 8:44 . I took this one at 8:46:
Mike, the guy who owns the forever-under-renovation house next door, told me that he'd just driven up when he saw the smoke seeping out of the roof's seams. He said he'd banged on the door and woke up "these Mexican guys" who he said he had to "fight to get 'em out" because they wanted to retrieve their passports. "F**k your passports, I tol' 'em. You gonna die."

As I took these pictures, I was just in awe. It happened so, so fast. These are from 8:54 and 8:55:

Here's the back of the house, where it started, once it was "over" at 9:05:

I don't know what I would have done had the fire been at our house.

Yes, I do. I would've been frantic, and I would've been crying, because I would've lost everything, just as the guys who were renting the space did.

When I went back in to get professional for work, I discovered that my coffee was still warm. It was that fast.

Evidently, the fire was electrical. And the Mexican workers who lived in the house were, in fact, Brazilian.

Before I left, I wrote my number and the number of the Hispanic Apostolate on a post-it, which I gave to one of the men. They all seemed pretty shocked. One of the firemen was following their instructions, searching for their passports. A guitar and two suitcases rested on the sidewalk. A Red Cross volunteer was filling out a case-study form, which I recognized from my own volunteer work as a case-worker for the Red Cross after Katrina.

When the hoses had again been stowed, I was able to leave, and on my way out, I saw two black women standing with the men. They looked like they were about my age. "You all right?" I asked. They were co-workers of some of the men--employees of the Best Western hotel. They'd come down as soon as they'd heard and were waiting for the Red Cross to finish so they could take the men to the hotel.

I explained that I'd given the men my number and the number of an aid agency for Hispanics and Latinos. That's when I learned they were from Brazil. (In retrospect, I should have known. I'd often hear them playing guitar and singing, and I remember saying to Simon once, "I think that's Portuguese.")

I asked if there was anything else I could do. I nodded to our little shoebox and said ruefully that I didn't think we had room to spare, but that I could ask around. Something told me that we were all these men had in the way of help: a neighbor who never spoke to them and a coworker whose position as a hotel employee virtually guaranteed that she wasn't in a position to help, either.

"Are any of them fluent in English?" I asked.

"He is," she said, nodding to the man I'd given my number. "I mean, he speaks pretty good English. They all understand, but he the only one who can really speak it."

We were both quiet.

"That'll make it hard for them," I said. "I mean, harder."

"Yeah."

"People don't seem to care much about the immigrants in town."

"I do," she said, smacking her lips against her gold teeth, disapprovingly. "They human beings."

"Yes, they are."

At work, I had that giddy electrical feeling that you get when something big has happened. It was dulled--or maybe "made achey" is a better way of putting it--by the knowledge that no one would much care if I told them about it. When I ran into a colleague who also lives down the street, he said, "That's too bad. I mean, the house wasn't a real historical gem or anything, but it'll be blighted." I found myself saying something I'd thought earlier but pushed down, deep down, 'cause I hated myself for it. "Yeah, it was as if everyone's home values on the block went up in flames, too." I hated myself again.

(In defense of my colleague, he did ask if the people who lived there were okay. And in defense of the vapid content of our conversation: I think it reflects both our cynicism when it comes to folks giving a shit about Hispanic workers, and about the concerns of our now super-gentrified neighborhood.)

When I got home yesterday, I got a message from the general manager of the hotel where three of the men worked. He'd been given my number and was trying to do something for them. He wanted to know if I knew of any resources.

I talked to Simon about his message before I called back. I didn't know of any resources. If the Red Cross couldn't help, what could I do? I worried that no one would care about a bunch of immigrant workers--that they'd blame them for the fire (as my deepest darkest bad-self had when I first learned of the nature of the fire.) I admitted to Simon that I'd given them the number for the Hispanic Apostolate only because I knew someone there would speak their language. But really, I knew that they'd likely NOT be able to help. After all, when I had served as a volunteer ESL teacher for the Apostolate, they'd been bemoaning the lack of resources and affordable housing available for Hispanic workers. And this was more than a year ago. Things had gotten worse, not better, for the expanding worker-population. What on earth could I do?

When I called Brian back, I felt helpless, and I said as much. He said the Red Cross had paid for three nights in the hotel, but that after that, the guys would be out in the cold. Did I know anywhere they could stay?

I thought about all the homeless who've been protesting on the local TV because their tent-city had been closed so that City Hall could repair its parking situation. I thought about UNITY (an aid organization for homeless,) who'd admitted it had begun to borrow money in order to pay for apartments it couldn't afford--about how they'd pleaded with landlords on TV, that they give people a break, a second chance.) I thought, "No."

What I said, thought, was that maybe we could contact the neighborhood association. Maybe I could ask around.

But I knew (again, deep down) that I couldn't do anything for them that the general manager of a hotel couldn't do. If a major corporation wasn't willing to forgo profits in order to house its employees until they could find homes, why would a landlord, who was but one person--whose insurance had doubled, who'd probably lost a lot, himself?

I suggested that it'd be helpful for him to 1) call the Red Cross and ask them to extend the vouchers, and 2) ask the men to make a list of their immediate needs. In the meantime, I would do the only thing I knew to do: I would email people; I would try to tell their story as convincingly as I could.

So, I posted on our neighborhood forum at Nola.com, and lo and behold, I got a response. One man emailed and said he had a temporary place that he could provide temporarily if the guys could find nothing else. Another suggested I establish a fund through a bank. Another emailed me and said he'd was collecting clothing and toiletries and would have something together by Friday. Another said he could donate clothing, too.

I'm waiting now to hear from the GM of the hotel. I feel hopeful, in the tiniest of senses--not because I think we really will be able to place these guys in a home, but because I learned that there are people out there who do, in fact, give two turds about a bunch of immigrant workers.

I feel good (ish) because I know that we're out there, and we're here: people who believe that, yes, They Human Beings!

The Resolution I'm Sticking To (so far!)

There's one resolution I didn't list in my New Year's post that I have managed (10 days in) to stick to with aplomb. It's not to use ANY new shopping bags this year.

Simon and I have always kept a pile of used Whole Foods paper bags in the trunk, but I almost always forget to take them in to the store. Then when I am finally "up" for checkout and I realize I've forgotten them, I glance back and realize that the beleaguered mothers behind me will not appreciate waiting for me to dash to the car. So I'd reluctantly add another to my ever- growing collection.

Brandi had told us that they made great bags for packing away all of those homeless nick-knacks that are lying around when you're ready to move, so I'd forgiven myself of some of my guilt when I'd collect yet another bag.

Here's a Not-So-Whole-Foods story:

One day, Simon and I went to WF, recycled bags in tow. We sat down to eat lunch beforehand (a good idea, of course, if you arrive at WF hungry) and put our bags down on a nearby ledge. We forgot the bags (of course,) and when I went back to retrieve them, the cashier in the cafe said she'd THROWN THEM AWAY. Wha-WHAT?! They weren't greasy, or even wrinkled! When I asked why she threw them away, she explained it was company policy. We are free to recycle our bags, but they won't reuse them--presumably because of some sort of liability issue. Whole-dooky!

Anyways, we'd found other ways to reuse our bags. We have a canvas sleeve where you can put plastic bags and then pull one conveniently from the bottom for use as a lunch bag or poo-sac for kitty litter. We rinse Ziploc bags. I even wrapped our Christmas gifts in recycled Whole Foods bags this year.

But by far the best solution to our bag-consumption problem has been the Acme Reusable Shopping Bag that each of us got in our stocking this year.

These bags are strong and hold a lot. Plus, I can report that they are not ugly. But the best part about them is that they easily fold up into themselves for storage in a purse, glove compartment, or wherever. I ordered four more from http://www.reusablebags.com/, and since the new year began, I am proud to say that I have not brought home a SINGLE new bag. And I have done my fair share of shopping.

Another neato thing about sticking to this resolution and using my Acme bags is that I have become an accidental environmental evangelist at every shopping exchange. When I say, "No bag, please," and whip out my 2-inch-square Acme bag, unfold it, and then manage to load a heap o' groceries into it, inevitably people ask about it--and inevitably they say, "What a great idea!" I tell them it's my resolution--even apologizing for messing with their pattern if they seem surprised at all to be stopped short of reaching for a bag--and I can see that they think about the number of bags they send out in the world, the number they use, and just how easy it would be to change that habit. Ladies can even get some cutely patterned ones! Stylish and environmentally-responsible(er) consumption. Whoo-HOO!

Okay, so I learned at http://www.reusablebags.com/ that over one billion plastic bags are used per minute. That's just the plastic ones. And that's crazy. In Taiwan, they use 900 bags per consumer annually. (Dude!) And in Australia, the average is 326 per consumer. I don't know the per-consumer use in the US, but I'd imagine it's somewhere in between these two figures--and well into the completely gross range.

So: get yo' Acme bag!

And a Big Thanks goes out to Mom, a.k.a. Santa, for the Acme bags.

Vapid post on my day of consumption

I don't want to jinx myself, but I do believe that I have emerged on the "well" side of this snotty funk that's been dragging me down since the fourth day of Christmas.

When we got back in townfrom our holiday in Atlanta, we went ahead and celebrated the New Year by going out, colds and all. (Actually, Simon wanted to stay in, but I pestered him into going out. then he got better quickly and I descended into sinusitis hell. I think that's what my mother would call Instant Karma!!!)

As it turns out, half the town had been sick over the holiday, and I am hoping that everyone, like me, will be well in time for next Monday's start of the spring semester.

I've been pretending to prepare for the semester by making a list of "things to do." On it:

1) Write a plagiarism contract

2) Compile handout on appropriate decorum for email

3) Compile handout on the purpose and practice of student-teacher conferences

4) Revise attendance policy and tardiness policy

5) Revise revisions policy

6) Clean office (bring in dustbuster and supplies)

7) File things

8) Get organized

9) Have margarita

I think the list is fairly doable, although it doesn't take into account any things-to-do related to my new responsibilities as an administrator, nor does it even touch the house-whatnot.

Oh, the house whatnot! The cabinet-choosing. The color-picking. The house-gutting. The mold-treating. The termite-killing. The landscaping. The tax-abatement-thingy-dealing. The lighting-plan making!

You get the idea...

Also on the roster of things to do: writing my paper for the 4Cs conference this April. Also: somehow getting up a website for the neighborhood association. And: I've gotten myself on another committee (which met last night) that's working on the Global Green Project, and I've promised to do some research on other environmentally-sustainable communities (kind of like co-ops or condo associations, but green.)

So since I have all of this to do, I figured today I'd go shopping!

The objective was to find some teacherly-clothing (meant to make me look as professorial as possible--p-shaw!), and to return our Bose iPod dock, which was a lovely gift we gave ourselves, but which was expensive and still sitting in a box.

Digression on the subject of iPods:
I have an iPod. When I got it, I was all "Yay! Now I can get rid of all of my CDs!" I have hundreds of CDs. I listen to maybe twenty of them. So I figured I'd download just the songs I like, and then get rid of the CDs, themselves. What I discovered was that it takes a long time to do that, and that it also requires additional organization (on iTunes), and that after all is said and done, you are still expected to save your files--on CDs. My attention-paying abilities don't allow me to listen to headphones as all of my students seem to do, and so essentially, I have this gizmo that has mabe three un-backed-up albums I've purchased on iTunes. These I listen to in my car. (Oh, and I do like some This American Life free podcasts.) What I'm getting at here is that this contraption seemed designed to streamline my music--and my life--and had I the time or the energy, I suppose it could. But, as with most things with a similar purpose and similar demands, my iPod has wound up feeling like another damn thing on my damned list. So I avoid it. (Interestingly, I don't buy much music anymore... I don't listen to as much, either. I hope this isn't a sign that I am becoming a stodgy ol' grownup.)

So, back to the shopping trip: I returned the docking station, and bought some made in China crapola shirts (because I was there and because I have a long list of things I have to do but will probably never do, and because I have no time to travel to some overpriced boutique on Magazine Street for American-made stuff where I can't also buy TP and Listerine in one fell swoop.)

Then, after my crap-buying, I had a lovely canteloupe and watermelon Bubble Tea from Frosty's Cafe. Next, I drove two strip malls down and bought a book at Barnes and Noble (rather than going to indie-bookstore for the same reason as crap-Chinese shirt-buying, see above.) Then, on the way home, I sang along to my thinly-populated iPod (if you can call my mucousy warble singing), thumbing my nose at the LSU SUV traffic crawling along on the outgoing side of the interstate.

Yes, it was a day.

Now, if only I could have managed to knock off something on my list.

Here's to the New Year...

Because it's c-c-cold here in New Orleans, and because I've had a cold, I've not been relishing the first moments of 2008. In fact, I've been doing a whole lot of exactly what I'd resolved to do less of: watching TV. I've just turned off some Travel Channel show about Jack Osbourne's mission to lose weight and climb mountains. Before that was a Top Model marathon on VH1. Last night: Project Runway (which has not been nearly so much fun to watch without the fine company of my friends who've moved to California.)

Last night, it was so cold that I woke up with all four cats piled on top of me, and with my hand trumpeting my nose so I could breathe something other than ice-cold, throat-burning air. I bought a new alarm clock from Brookstone, and it projects the time and temperature onto the ceiling, so I was awake, watching the red LED-flash of the seconds ticking and the temperature dropping: 48, 43, 36. As you might imagine, these wonderfully-charming old New Orleans homes lose a bit of their charm in the few weeks of winter. I fell in and out of sleep. Dreamt Simon wanted a divorce. Dreamt my car wouldn't start. Woke up coughing green loveliness. I suppose I can be forgiven, then, for doing nothing but boobing around all day. Right?

I also have found myself needing a bit more time than usual to recover from the holidays. I can recall detailing an argument that occurred last year while we were visiting family in Atlanta, and I might do the same this year were the subject of the fight not so painful and this blog not so public. Anyway, it was one of those arguments that rocks your world--the family sort of fight that you will never forget (try as you might.) One day I may find the head-space and heart-space to write about it, but for now, it's just a big ol' painful stain on the exit of 2007. Good riddance, '07!

In fact, the rest of our holiday was quite nice. My sister-in-law's belly is growing splendidly and beautifully. I gathered with old friends, held a baby, sang carols with my mother, and cooked and ate lots of wonderful food. Christmas day, itself, was particularly wonderful. My mom (a.k.a. Santa) spoiled us wonderfully, my dad was in good, picture-taking spirits, and we "kids" enjoyed a trip to suburbia-land to see "Sweeney Todd." Simon and I cooked a wonderful butternut squash lasagna, and we popped English "crackers" which contained whistles and crowns that were used with mucho-hilarity. It was nice to spend time with family--especially since this is the last Christmas where we "kids" will still be kids: come February, I will be an aunt! I sort of hope that Christmas doesn't change once the kiddies come along, and yet, I am also excited about how another generation will influence changes to our current traditions.

Anyway, with the new year comes reflection, and of course, resolutions. Simon and I made one: to recycle. Once upon a time, we had city-wide recycling here in New Orleans, but curbside pickup of recyclables was yet another casualty of the storm. In thinking about our new neighborhood's commitment to becoming carbon neutral, I've realized that in fact, we do very little to help. Partly, I think, because simply making it through the day continues to be a bit of a struggle. How can one commit to being carbon-neutral when one is trying hard to staying mentally stable?

I learned from some friends that we can pay to have curbside pickup using Phoenix Recycling. It sucks that we have to pay for what should not be considered a "luxury," but I suppose we've become accustomed (or resigned, rather) to paying more to live here in New Orleans.

Speaking of paying more--we sent off our first mortgage payment, and soon I'll write a hefty check for property taxes on a house that's nowhere near livable. I'm trying not to get crazy about what I can't control (read: the contractor's work-pace,) but our living-expenses during the renovation will be triple what they are now. It's gonna be tough. As a result, Simon and I made resolution #2: to get through the renovation and the move. And by "getting through," we mean that we hope to fight as little as possible, and approach every decision (of the hundreds we'll be making) as a TEAM. Yes, Team DeBacHand is in full effect for 2008. Go team!

In my personal life, I've resolved the following:

1) To write more thank you letters. Ideally I'd resolve to simply "write more"--perhaps even to write some fiction, or try to publish some--but the writing that gives me the most pleasure comes in thanking people. This may sounds strange, but it's true. I love to say thank you, to write it, and to send that happy message out in the mail. Even a thank you email works wonders for my soul and makes me feel rosy. Maybe my real resolution should be simply, to thank others more often--in writing and in speech. I do have so many people to thank!

2) To be more productive. I have so many things I want to accomplish, and not accomplishing them makes me feel like crapola. So, I want to:

• Write a kick-butt paper to present at four-C's.


• Learn how to manage a website (for the HCNA).


• Write more regularly for the Holy Cross newsletter and for http://www.helpholycross.org/, and


• Get my teaching-portfolio in order.

3) In order to do that, I will need to watch less TV. I am embarrassed to admit that I need to resolve to watch less TV, but there you go. Even worse: I love to watch the kind of crap that people make fun of us Americans for watching (see above).

Realistically, if I am able to accomplish 1 and 3, 2 will follow. So, I will focus on turning off the TV and saying thank you. Hey--I'm doing well with turning off the TV (since I turned it off to write this!) Next, onto the thank you's...

Since you are likely not all that interested in reading my resolutions, I'll share that Simon and I went to the bonfires on Orleans Ave to ring in the New Year, that there is a very vocal and un-neutered orange cat howling under the piers, and that I found a piece of newspaper in our new/old house that's dated December 15, 1927. Also: last night I made a delicious but forgettable broccoli raab pasta, and tonight I'll cook stir fried veggies with tofu. Two days ago, I sorted through hundreds of CDs and came up with 100+ to sell in a yard sale. Oh, and I found some lovely lighting fixtures at IKEA that were gifted to us by my mother, and which are now sitting in storage, waiting for installation.

That's the report. Now, happy new year, dammit.

Sarah.

The First Casualty of This Holiday Season...

Yes, folks, the first casualty of this holiday season--for me, at least--is not just my trim waistline (which is, thanks to teacherly/New Orleans-y anxiety-whatnot, rather trim,)--but also my regular-ish maintenance of my blog.

I did just post some pics from the HCNA party last week (see http://www.helpholycross.org/,) Mom, if you are aching to see a little something from NOLA-life (although I'll see you in a couple of days, so I guess blog-reading probably isn't tops on your list,) but generally, I have been away from my computer for two reasons: 1) sleep-getting, and 2) holiday shopping.

I guess I could add a little NOLA-related comment here: Simon and I just went to a holiday party in Gentilly where our friends own a 50's-style ranch--very small, very cute, and now, very high. They qualified for funds to raise their house and have placed a wonderful screened-in porch and workspace underneath the eight-foot-high cinderblock stilts that now support their house.

I want stilts!

But I've learned that because our home is in a National Historic District, it is exempt from the whole house-raising-bit. I may be wrong, but I think this means that we can't even qualify for the money that's available for house-raising.

Now, I know that maintaining the historic-fabric of our home is a Big Deal--and it's a deal we've entered knowingly--but I would like to think that it'd be just as historically significant at eight-feet-high as it is now at three. There may be some purists out there who would disagree, but I am guessing that the house was raised in 1928 (after the 1927 flood) because of flooding, and while it's true that this was some man-made flooding, wouldn't raising the home simply be a reflection of a response to the post-K reality? I know it would alter the house, but I think that alteration would reflect the cataclysmic change wrought by Katrina, no?

No?

Well, anyways, Happy Holidays, all! We're off to ATL for some rest, some family-time, and some IKEA-shopping (yes, I know that it is SO "not green," but YOU try furnishing an 1800 square foot house in a city with nary a piece of furniture in the second-hand stores--and on two teachers' salaries. Pshaw!)

Why couldn't I have been a MATH teacher (or something)?

If I were a math teacher (or a teacher of some subject involving Scantrons or multiple-choice tests), the end of the semester would be a much easier thing.

But I am an English teacher, and so at the end of every semester, I amass a pile of portfolios of student-writing the likes of which you've never seen.

Seriously. The picture doesn't do it justice. Maybe I should have piled the folders for maximum effect.

Just so you know, each of those folders (and that box-top is full of 'em) contains five essays, three of which are "new" to me (revised essays). In order to be eligible to have a revision considered for an extra grade, my students have to write "letters of reflection" to explain what they changed and why. So I read those, too. I also read their final "author's letter," which addresses their semester-long journey.

My point is, I have a heap o' reading and grading to do, and it's hard! (I'm not even going to try to omit the whiny tone. I wanna whine, dammit!)

But it's not the quantity that makes it difficult.

Wait, yes it is.

I mean that it's not only the quantity that makes the end-of-semester grading throw-down so difficult. It's also that I have to give it a grade, and doing that to my students' work--well sometimes it just about breaks my heart.

I spend a lot of one-on-one time with my students. I meet with each and every one of them for at least three conferences each semester. During that time, I try to establish "professional boundaries," but inevitably, tears fall, confessions are made, and I wind up playing the role of therapist/parent/friend to my students in addition to my role of teacher.

I'm working on a paper about some of this, actually. Since the storm, the confessions have become darker and more depressing (as you might imagine), and my own mood has plummeted, too. Professionals in the field have published plenty of advice for what to do in situations like these. I think they refer to the teacher-behavior that comes from our empathy for our students as "affect." They say that we should maintain a professional distance--that we should nod and go, "That must be hard for you," but then, wha-domp, slap that D on there, anyhow. After all, a D is a D is a D. Can't nothing be done about that!

But a D is not "just a D". I know it and my students know it. A "D" can determine whether or not they hang on to their scholarship-money, which can determine whether or not they stay in school, which can determine, well, a damn lot.

So when I get to the end of the semester and I see (as I so often do) that my D students--the ones I've grown to care about so much--haven't managed to pull it together, I feel awful! How could I have better served them? What could I have done differently?

Given my workload--and the nature of living here (or anywhere, I guess)--I'm not sure there's much I can do differently. I'm doing all I can do. I'm giving them as much of me as I can afford to give (and then some.) So I need to forgive myself for their failure. (Clearly, this is easier said than done.)

Because I want to give my failing-students a heads-up (so they re-work their schedules), I try to tackle the high-risk portfolios first. When I first start into the pile, I have energy and hope. My blue pen has ink, I have coffee, it's all good.

But today, several folders in, I found that I was taking on waaaay too much guilt. I was writing really long evaluation letters explaining why students had gotten the grades they did. This shouldn't happen, though. Right? I mean, my students should be prepared for the grades they'll get, and I shouldn't feel so guilt-stricken.

(Right?)

Yes, it's at times like these that I wish that I were a math teacher... or something, anything, else.

Do students make these confessions to math teachers? I doubt it. (Unless they're trying to explain their absences.) Do math teachers struggle over awarding grades? Probably not. Stick that thing in a Scantron machine and let it determine the fate, right?

Oh, sigh...

Maybe going to the neighborhood association meeting will make me feel better. I hope so!

The Debate on the Make It Right Houses

I've been reading some of the comments posted on nola.com in response to the prospective designs for the Make It Right houses.

I feel conflicted about the houses.

The poster that really gets it for me:

Many of the designs presented here seem too caught up in a "modern" aesthetic or a signature design flourish that really has nothing to do with being green. A little humility would go a long way toward improving them.

Here, a poster echoes my feelings about the "Escape House" (though with a bit more vitriol):

Insulting. What did these guys do, look at the wreckage after the storm and say, "Hey, let's make brand new houses that look like they were just hit by a hurricane and landed on their inhabitants car," just so we could relive all the memories? This is what I mean when I say architects are in it more for themselves that the people of N.O. They should be ashamed of themselves for even submitting this monstrosity.

Poster "deadguy" writes:

There's one thing that we need to keep in mind and as cliche as it may be "Form follows function." Most of the designs neglect to address the function that the houses, specifically the entry, have played in this community for the past 100 years. The front porch of a shotgun house is a stage; a place to see and be seen, to socialize. It must be readily accessible and visible from all sides.

He's right; I'm thinking of the house with the walled-in computerized BBQ in the Adjaye design.

"Stunola" writes:

The designs are evocative, but not of New Orleans.

Exactly.

Then again, I agree with poster "jhgator1":

As for the aesthetics, they are not for everyone. However, i am a firm believer that New Orleans needs a breath of fresh air from a design standpoint. Yes, you can honor the past, but when you start copying it, all you will wind up with is just that....a cheap copy. People need to be a little more open minded when it comes to designing a new New Orleans. This mentality seems to creep into everything we do here.

I'm sure this comment is something we've all heard before..."that isn't how we do things here", or "this is how it has always been done". That mentality is what is holding us back in New Orleans.

See? I'm conflicted.

I wouldn't call all of the homes a "miss," but I do wonder about the process that was referred to repeatedly in the press conference--the process of "listening" to the residents. From the MIR's Vision Statement:

Make It Right has had the good fortune of meeting many such resilient families throughout the process of helping to rebuild the neighborhood.

What happened at those meetings? Were residents asked what they liked about their former homes? What they'd like to see in new ones? What they'd like not to see? When I was walking through the containers at the site two days ago, I noticed that there was nothing on display to highlight the process. Given the appearance of these homes (and of their "sterile" interiors populated by prim settees and a preponderance of bookshelves), I just can't see the results of a good hard "listen" in the designs.

What bothers me (again) is that the designers seem so resolutely convinced that good design can be accomplished only by credentialed architects. But never have I lived in a design that more accurately reflected ME than when I was given the license to create. I wonder how the homes would look had the designers first solicited drawings and specs from the homeowners.

Wouldn't it be nice to know that the homeowners really did have a say in the creation of the homes' function AND aesthetic?

How did the creative/creation process really take place? I wish MIR had made that more clear.

Making It Right (at our house and in the Lower 9)

I am oh-so proud to report that I have accomplished what I was afraid I'd never, ever accomplish: I've settled on a floorplan! As our historic consultant pointed out (during my long phase of obsessive floorplan-drawing), any shotgun house requires compromises in the floorplan, especially when you are trying to preserve the historic fabric of the home. Our compromise was that we couldn't get the kitchen in the back (where we'd initially wanted it) without creating a "useless" room up front (a "formal" dining room that would likely never get used.) So, the kitchen will be in the second room, dining in the first, a reading room/study will go next to the dining room, separated by a chimney, and the rear of the house (on the south side) will be comprised of a large "family room" with french doors onto the rear porch.

This weekend, we had an exciting meeting with Tracy Nelson (Gulf Coast Coordinator for Architecture for Humanity and a historic preservationist). We toured our home together and she schooled us in all kinds of interesting facts about our home. She thinks it's a great house (as does everyone who' s seen it, which makes us feel way better about making the sometimes-scary decision to buy in the Lower Ninth Ward). She oohed and aahed over its plaster walls (in the un-gutted right side,) its bead-board ceiling in the rear porch, which she said is likely original to the house, its ornate mantels and Eastlake doors, and the remnants of the wallpaper, which we discovered was backed by issues of the Times-Picayune dating back to 1927! Meeting with her made us realize just how lucky we are to own a house that's more than 100 years old, and made us think about doing right by the house in our renovation. So as we move forward, we will need to find ways of modernizing it to our standards that will simultaneously honor the home's history.

Speaking of homes and of "doing right," another exciting "visit" to our neighborhood this week came in the form of a press conference for Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation. The foundation hosted a party last night to celebrate the launching of The Pink Project, which Brad Pitt described as a sort of "social disobedience."

The Pink Project is comprised of 429 "base volumes" that are scattered throughout several blocks of the Lower Ninth Ward near the site of the levee breach. Those "case volumes" look like hot-pink boxes and upended-roofs, and their scattering is meant to represent the scattering of the lives and homes in the wake of the levee breach (which, I might mention, was the reason for the devastation of the Lower Ninth--not, as many seem to believe, the typical "flooding" one might associate with a hurricane. In other words, this was a manmade disaster, folks.) Between now and January 7th, a fundraising effort will take place, and as monies are raised, the homes will be "righted." Check Do check out the link at the bottom of this page. There, you can see just how interesting (and odd) this art installation is.

I walked around the site yesterday afternoon, and I ran into two national guardsmen, Sergeant James Clark and Specialist Caleb Christianson. Seargent Clark asked what the deal was with the pink stuff, and I tried my best to explain (and felt a little silly doing it.) When I'd finished, he said that he'd been stationed in the area in the days and weeks following the storm, and that the scattered structures reminded him a lot of what he'd seen then, "Only pink." (Then, Clark and Christianson confessed that they'd really come down because one of their peers had sent a picture of Angelina Jolie from his cellphone. Where could they find her, they wanted to know. Ah, yes...)

At the press conference, Brad Pitt acknowledged that people would probably be a bit, um, bemused by the choice of the color pink. He didn't choose it because of the "little pink houses" that John Mellancamp refers to (in his classic song about the un-attainability of the American Dream), nor did he choose it to represent a "pink elephant in the room" (the obvious destruction of the Lower Ninth Ward and its neglect at the hands of the republican administration.) He chose pink, he said, because it "screams the loudest."

And scream it does. When I first crossed the Claiborne Avenue Bridge, I was thrown by the sight of the hot pink structures where I'd become so accustomed to seeing overgrown green fields. It's an arresting sight, and I hope that it inspires folks to contribute so that families who've received so little assistance can, in fact, return.

Now, the houses, themselves--the real ones that have been designed by 13 architects--are not altogether "right" in my mind. All pay homage to the tradition of the New Orleans shotgun, but as I heard one architect say at the party last night, that comes more from the need to deal with the long and skinny shape of the lots than it does from any real tribute to the style.

Here, the MIR staff explains the philosophy that went into the homes' design:

Because local cultural influences gave rise to the pre-Katrina architecture so emblematic of the area, preserving that identity remains vital in reclaiming the spirit of the neighborhood. MIR’s goal is to join the history of this tradition with creative new architectural solutions mindful of environmental and personal safety concerns in order to encourage both the evolution of aesthetic distinctiveness and the conscientious awareness of natural surroundings.

I think some of the groups got a bit carried away with their, uh, "creative new architectural solutions." You can check out some of the other odd birds here.

This one is called The Escape House. Now, I may be wrond, but I don't think anyone wants to live in a house that looks quite literally broken like a stick (we've had enough of that, thank you). I also don't think anyone wants their home to perpetually remind them that they may need, one day, to "escape." Overall, it's just plain difficult to imagine some of these houses comprising the future landscape of New Orleans, but I am trying to have an open mind:

I asked a group of neighbors last night what they thought of the houses. "They're different," they said. I couldn't tell if they meant different-good or different-bad. When I asked, they said it was "all good."

"Anything to help us get out of these trailers," they said.

True that!

Still, as I wandered through the three shipping containers that had been set up to display the designs, I kept wondering why the architects had to move so darn far away from our architectural style. Why not do something off-the-wall with the "lacework" that adorns our homes? Why not give the house "shutter-wings"? It just seemed like they wanted so badly to make some sort of a design "statement," they'd forgotten we like our history, and we see our historic homes as representative of that history. A long and skinny house doesn't a shotgun make, and these homes ain't shotguns in any sense other than the long and skinny.

I did like this design, though. It's got our Easter-egg color going on, and looks closer to the traditional shotgun than any of the others did.

But did the designers of this interior really have our population in mind? The delicate settee and the wall of books smacks of wishful thinking more than it represents who we really are:

You know, I think the architects belong to the school of though that the head-dude subscribes to. When he (William McDonough) spoke at the press conference yesterday, he talked about how he lives in a house designed by Thomas Jefferson. "The only things listed on his tombstone are the things he designed," said McDonough. His boy T.J. "recorded his legacies--the things he left behind--not his activities." McDonough said that what we do fades while what we create lives on.

But doesn't this fly in the face of the whole "cradle to cradle" concept? I mean, shouldn't we be doing more and leaving behind less? I don't get it...

McDonough went on to talk about breaking design for the Make It Right houses "down to the molecule."

"Design" he said, "is the first symbol of human intention." (Wha-what?)

It represents "our intention toward each other as a species." (Hmmm.)

I felt as I listened (and as I've read more about The Team at Make It Right) as though these folks have become a bit bowled over by their philosophies, which was completely confirmed by this, which I read on the MIR site (regarding the Pink House Project):

The simple legibility of the pink monopoly house reassembled from smaller individual components intentionally focus attention onto the problematic of manageable scale, allowing the individual to physically participate within the installation in real time. Filmic concepts drive the narrative of the installation, framing the architectural development. The scenes within the assembly create emotive and informative storyboards containing specific perspective rich with history and memorialization...

The tangram serves as a conceptual overlay for Pink... The tangram is a Chinese dissection puzzle consisting of a square cut into five triangles, a square and a rhomboid, to be reassembled into different figures. These pieces, called tans, can be combined so as to form a great variety of other figures. Upon reassembly, multiple graphic identities emerge.

The idea of the tangram was translated into a three dimensional expression in Pink. At the installation's commencement, the individual components lay haphazard throughout the site. It is only over time and through donation that the cohesive volumes are reassembled. The overall cohesive form is a synthesized representation of traditional New Orleans housing typologies: the shotgun house and the Creole cottage.

Obviously, sorting through the pretentious language here is tough (and if this were a freshman essay, I would've told them to revise with a clearer sense of audience in mind). What is clear to me is that these guys are in love with an idea, and that they see the Make It Right project as an opportunity to make a statement.

Resident Valerie Schexnayder, who I ran into outside of her trailer yesterday, seemed to agree. She was appreciative of the project, but said, "They all got their statements." I could tell she was a woman tired of statements, (if not of her own, which she'd displayed on signs in front of her trailer.)

And that's what I saw the most of yesterday: a lot of interest in the statement, but a lot of confusion, too.

How, exactly, were these pink things going to help get folks home? And how on Earth was a house like this going to be someones Lower Ninth Ward home?

I guess what I'm saying is that it appears the hearts of Brad & co are in the right place, but there's just something about the "synthesized representations" of the prospective homes that was a little... insulting?

The computerized barbecue on the walled-in front yard of this house (we don't wall in our porches, people)... the blast-off aesthetic of the "escape house"... the rows and rows of books that each designer planted in their Jetsonian interiors... who did they think we were? Who do they think we are?

At the end of the day--even after a gleeful night filled with free wine and a performance by Jerry Lee Lewis, I couldn't help feeling like it was all a bit, well, wrong. I felt like the Make It Right project was--and is--a wonderful dose of hope. But it was someone else's hope, not ours, and I went home sad that we were once again being forced to take what we can get.

We did it!

We bought a house!

Yes, we are now the proud owners of an 1800 square foot shotgun double in Holy Cross. Two afternoons ago, we met the sellers at the attorney's office and signed the next thirty years of our lives away. I signed and signed and signed until I got to the closing costs. Then, I signed and clenched my teeth. We could pay our rent for a year for what we paid in closing costs. And silly me, I thought those costs actually went toward the loan. Nooooooo. Gawd, that part was sickening.

In fact, I'm just really going to have to find ways of staying positive about money. The bid seems high, the loan seems high, the closing costs seem high, and until we are able to actually move into the house, our living expenses will be ridiculously high. As in 400% higher than they are now. So we need the contractor to work fast... and we've been told by everyone to go ahead and forget that idea.

But I want to stop thinking about all that negative stuff. I want to pick paint colors and furniture and fixtures. I want to landscape our backyard in my head. I want to swing on the imaginary swing I have hanging from the branch of our backyard's live oak tree. And most of all, I want to settled on a damn floor plan!

Simon's been making fun of me for pulling out the drawings I've made wherever I go. It is a little silly to ask so many people for opinions on floorplans, I guess. And the historic consultant we've hired to help manage the home-restoration thinks we need to hurry up and settle. But isn't the floorplan, like The Most Important Thing? I mean, we plan to live in this house forever, so we don't want to regret kitchen-placement, of all things.

I think I've already posted about this, which goes to show just how obsessed with floorplans I've become. But really, we need help deciding!

I know everyone wants to have these open floorplans these days, but I don't see why I'd want my kitchen to be in my living room. Kitchens are loud and messy, and living rooms are for reading and TV-watching. (My dad did point out, though, that we'd need to think about the arrival of kids, and in that sense, I guess having a kitchen-living combo would be good.)

Anyways, I'm going to shut up about that. But if anyone has a floorplan-issue related to your own house that you either love or hate, let me know. The consultant may push use to decide, but we can't afford to get this wrong.

I really just wanted to write to let folks know that we've bought the house and are now in the beginning stages of what promises to be an agonizingly long wait for the home's completion. (And I'm scared about money, too. But only parenthetically and only because I want to be able to furnish our home inexpensively and in an environmentally-sound way... that looks good.)

Back to meeting with my panicky students. Oh, the semester's end...

House Update

When I dressed this morning, I chose gray wool slacks and a silk and Lycra fuchsia blouse under a black fitted corduroy blazer. I looked lovely and grown-up, and it was all for what was supposed to be our house-closing.

ALAS! We have NOT closed, due to a glitch that I think can safely be blamed on the loan processor. Evidently, we needed to secure our builder's risk insurance 24 hours before closing (we were ready to show up with the paper work). Did anyone tell us that was the case? Why, no!

So we met with the owner today to draw up a joke-uva hand-written extension on the contract. Lucky for us, the owner is really nice and very understanding.

Closing is now slated for the same time tomorrow, but I think this time I'll go in jeans and a t-shirt.

In other house news... the great obsession over floorplans continues. An awkward side-entry makes the third of four rooms in our shotgun nearly-useless, and so that room will be "borrowed from" to create a guest bathroom. The debate: whether the kitchen should go in the rear, separated by a hallway from the front dining and living areas, or whether the family room should go in the rear, separated by a hallway from the front kitchen and dining areas. In most shotgun houses, the front room is a "parlor" that no one really uses, which makes the second room the first "real" one--but that also means that second room feels almost too exposed for a kitchen.

Argh. Our contractor wants us to hurry up and decide, and I know this probably ISN'T a big deal, but it feels like The Biggest Of Deals. I'd be grateful for advice...

Whoops!

Looks like I've neglected my blog... again. The problem? I've taken on too much, and am overextended.

I've agreed to be the website committee chair for the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, although I know next to nothing about websites. I guess in that sparsely-populated area, I am, right now, the big computery fish in their pond. HA!

So there's that. Then there's the Help Holy Cross blog, which I've promised to contribute to when I can. "When I can" feels like never, though, and I'm finding that the stories I'd like to cover can't get covered in a timely fashion because of other obligations...

Like house-buying, for instance, which has by now entered crazy-serious stage, wherein I meet with termite inspectors, structural engineers, call insurers, obsess over floorplans, email our loan officer daily, and generally feel like, "Holy kamoly, we are DOING THIS!"

Add to this: work. It's near the end of the semester, and so naturally my students are all collectively panicking. I don't ever want them to panic, but if they're going to, I don't know why they save it until the last minute--most of the students who are panicking now haven't gotten a non-panic-worthy grade so far this semester. I guess the whole revision-bit staves off panic until now. How can I make revision serve its purpose without its appearing to be a free pass to fail and then fix?

I guess it's too late now to talk about Waiting for Godot... is it?

I'd made that wonderful assignment. I'd had such a wonderful class. I was practically glowing with the idea of it, and then...

I couldn't get in. Nor could my students. I showed up more than an hour before ticket-issuing, got dutifully in line (a line that looked only marginally longer than the one I'd been in before--the one that got me in to see the play), and waited for an hour. Soon, a guy from Creativetime came over and said there was no way we'd be getting in. There were seats for 400, and that number had been reached a few folks before me.

Which doesn't explain how, when I decided to wait and got closer, I was told that there were only tickets for forty more people--and more than 80 people in front of me.

I checked out the "Gumbo Party" and noted that there was nowhere near 400 people in the reception, so something had to be up. A rumor began to circulate: there was a guest list, and we weren't on it. The woman behind me in line lived just a few blocks away and had lost her house; she wasn't on it. So who was?

When I saw Ann Pasternak, the director of Creativetime, apologizing to line-standers being turned away, I approached her. I told her that I thought she should know that a rumor was circulating that there was a "VIP list." She denied it, vehemently (and a little rudely, I might add). "The only people on our VIP list are national press, like the New Yorker and New York Times."

I had to wonder: if I were, say, the woman behind me in line and not myself, would she have brought up the New Yorker and New York Times?

She'd assumed that I cared about the national press--the same national press that swoops in whenever there's a "gumbo party" in the ghetto and calls it recovery. Bor-ring.

"I'm not accusing you of having a guest list," I explained. "I just thought you ought to know of the rumor."

She did explain that the actors had a guest list. Also, there was a list of organizations nearly a page long. I'm sure these volunteers managed to be VIPs, too (at least I hope so).

I explained that I'd built curriculum around the play. "Will you add an additional night, like last week's?" I asked.

"No," she said, again with the vehemence. "I'm at such a deficit with this project."

That's when I was like, "Okay, peace."

Deficit?! Sister wants to talk to someone who lives here about a deficit!?

Here's my real problem with her deficit:

Creativetime saw it more important to buy gallons of gumbo than to avoid said deficit. For the umpteenth time, people: we do not need you to feed us gumbo! Gumbo is expensive--all crabs and whatnot. Skip the freakin' gumbo!

Creativetime saw it more important to admit actor Isaiah Washington (of Gray's Anatomy and "fag"-mouthed fame) and his bevy of ladies to the play--on a VIP list--and to get his picture taken (for said national press) than to ensure locals were able to attend.

Creativetime also wanted so badly to appear to extend a hand to the communities that they prioritized free admission over widespread access (via additional performances). Free stuff is great--and many needed to take advantage of the free admission. Many more, however, didn't (Washington, for one) and could easily have "contributed" a few bones to ensure more widespread attendance.

Finally, Creativetime's Pasternak prioritized press coverage over public access. One might argue that they can't be blamed for that; after all, that same press coverage will keep their donors happy. But if their mission is genuine--and is geared toward providing access within the communities to site-specific art--those communities should have been priority number one, and I think there were better ways of handling the production than Pasternak's.

The truth is, I'm picking this bone because Ms. Pasternak was dismissive, and I think she was because she was making assumptions about who I am and what I value. Annoying.

The real, real truth is that I love, love, loved the play and think it needed to stay longer, and I am blaming Pasternak because she's an easy scapegoat for my cranky-crankness. I've been feeling this crankity-crankyness lots lately, and it's not Pasternak or some play that's doing it. It's the accumulation of it all.

So: I need a break, and I intend to take one. Happy Thanksgiving to all. You can read more pleasant and less self-absorbed whatnot at www.helpholycross.org.

Until I'm feeling more inspired AND have more time AND can cut it with the whining, I'm signing off (for a spell)...

Sarah

Preparing to wait (with my students) for Godot

I've just come from the Friday morning writing lab meeting with some of my freshman composition students.

Today, I decided to spend the 50-minute lab preparing them for seeing the Gentilly-area production of "Waiting for Godot." I realized that while the production rocked me to the core, my students may not be quite so willing to give themselves over to the ambiguity of the play. In fact, I had this vision of my students giggling with each other, eye-rolling, and then leaving before the second act, all "What the heck was THAT?!"

Before class began, I wrote a quotation from a recently-published (August, 2006) piece in the New Yorker: "Beckett's work can lay a strong claim to universality: not everyone has a God, but who doesn't have a Godot?"

When the students arrived, a few launched into excuses: "What if I can't go? I mean, some of us have to work."

I had to restrain myself. I mean, do they THINK I don't know about having to work?! Have I taught them NOTHING about audience-awareness?

Anyway, I explained that their final writing assignment would be to write an evaluation of something--a play, a movie, a restaurant, a book, an exhibit, a festival, this class, etc.--and that those who attended the play would have a built-in subject at their disposal. Those who couldn't would evaluate something else.

"But is that fair?" Christy asked.

Obviously, the question was rhetorical. What she meant to say was, "That's not FAIR!" I do have to applaud her for having enough awareness of her audience--enough self-restraint--to forego reverting to a straight-up whine.

"We'll use our common experience to talk specifically about writing an evaluation of the play," I explained, "but the tasks those who attend the play will engage in when writing their evaluations are no different from the ones you'll engage in."

Christy seemed placated, if not sure that it was, in fact, "fair."

Then, I passed out the play's program (last week, I'd been lucky to get my hands on one, so I made copies to distribute to my students--I figured reading star Wendell Pierce's bio would help inspire the nay-sayers to attend).

The students read paragraphs from the program's "Introduction" by Anne Pasternak, the President and Artistic Director of Creative Time:

"Creative Time is proud to present a site-specific outdoor production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, directed by Christopher McElroen [my student called him "Chris Mac-E"] of the Classical Theatre of Harlem with artistic direction by Paul Chan. More than a play, the project has evolved into a collaboration between local residents, artists, and community leaders on the subject of waiting. St in an intersection of the Lower Ninth Ward and a front yard in Gentilly, this production allows Beckett's play to contextualize the unfolding story of New Orleans as a controversial and renewing city."

We then read aloud the "Synopsis and Production History of Waiting for Godot":

"Two tramps meet on the side of the road. The two men remember that they are supposed to wait under a tree for a man named Godot. It appears they do not remember this man very well, but they think he was going to give them an answer to a question they don't know."

We also read about the play's many prison-stagings and its 1993 staging in war-torn Sarajevo ("war-torn" meant something to them, but Sarajevo didn't.) We talked about the play's 2006 production in Harlem, where rather than on a country road, Vladimir and Estragon waited atop a roof over water--like New Orleanians waiting for rescue after the storm.

"How do you think the staging in Gentilly will 'contextualize' the play?" I asked. "What does 'contextualize' mean, anyway?"

"To put into context," a student offered.

I then directed their attention to the quotation on the board: "Beckett's work can lay a strong claim to universality: not everyone has a God, but who doesn't have a Godot?"

"So," I said,"two tramps wait in Gentilly for a man named Godot who never comes. They think he is going to give them an answer to a question they don't know. Within the context of New Orleans, now, who is Godot, and what kind of answer are the men hoping for"?

"He's FEMA."

"He's the Road Home."

"He's their neighbors."

"They're hoping for help."

"For relief."

"For security."

Me: "Yes! But who was Godot for the prisoners in San Quentin?"

"The parole board."

"And who could it be if the two men are simply on a plain old, ambiguous country road on a darkened stage, with a twig of a tree? Who else could Godot be?"

"God?"

"Whoever."

"Intermission."

Laughter.

"The point is, the 'universality' means that the play can mean something to anyone--to everyone, because we all wait for something."

We then talked about Beckett, who explained at one point in his career that he felt a bit like the young girl Carl Jung mentioned in a lecture Beckett once attended, who "had never really been born." Beckett, author Benjamin Kunkel explains in his New Yorker piece, "Sam I Am," "was willing to confide to people throughout his life that he considered himself a similar case. The notion of an incomplete birth seemed to explain something of his feeling of unreality--many a Beckett character seems uncertain whether he really exists."

"What's that all about?" I asked. "Seems pretty absurd to me."

"Is that what he means by 'We are all born mad'?" Felecia asked, referring to a quotation from the play included before Beckett's biography in the program.

"What do you think?"

"Like, it's madness that we're here 'cuz we don't know why we're here?"

"Maybe so. Why don't we know we're here?"

"Because we're human!" yelled Blake from the back of the room.

"Yup! We sure are," I said. We talked about how maybe Beckett felt uncertain about whether he really existed because here he was, a human, but he didn't know why. We didn't ask to be born, after all. And given that truth--that we ARE but don't know WHY--what do we do with ourselves?

"We wait!"

"For what?" I asked.

"For Godot!"

"What's Godot got to give us?"

"We don't know!"

At this point, the absurd seemed to have taken over class, and we all broke down into a bit of "What THE?!!" But to me, it felt like an epiphany--like here we were, talking about art, about ourselves, and my students WEREN'T lost. They GOT it, ambiguity at all, and it was universal. It just made sense.

We ended class by reading Jarvis DeBerry's column from the T-P. One of my students said, when we were through, "Damn, that was good!" And, of course, I--the writing teacher--had to keep myself from cartwheeling: to hear a student say, "Damn, that was good" to a piece of writing!

As the students left, I distributed copies of Paul Chan's artist-statement (which has some remarkable similarlities in content to Susan Sontag's writing on her staging in Sarajevo), and Mapquest copies of the play's location. As the students filed on by, eye-rolling Christy stopped to say that she really wanted to go to the play, that was "on call" for work tonight and would try to go, but that she didn't want to go by herself. So, I've promised to meet Christy here on campus and to go to the play together. And really, I just can't wait. For real.

I can't wait to see the play again (this time I will hopefully hold myself together a little better!) I can't wait to stand in line with my students--to talk, to eat with them. I can't wait to sit next to Allie, who asked if she could ask me questiosn if she didn't "get it." I can't wait to see how my studentsabsorb the play--to see what they take from it. I promise to report on the experience, and to share more about how this play has impacted my teaching in this final unit of my freshman comp class.

Since I know most of you (Mom!) can't see the play, I recommend you watch this multi-media presentation on Nola.com. It was compiled using images and sounds from the night Simon and I attended the play.

Waiting for Godot

This weekend, Simon and I went down to the Lower Ninth Ward to see a wholly unique staging of Samuel Beckett's play, "Waiting for Godot," and I'm trying now to process the experience, which was--in a word--cathartic. (I like how Susan Sontag puts it in her piece reflecting on her 1993 staging of the play in Sarajevo: "In Sarajevo, as anywhere else, there are more than a few people who feel strengthened and consoled by having their sense of reality affirmed and transfigured by art."--Yes: what she said.)

I think I can recall reading the play (maybe in high school?). I recall its being boring, and wondering, Dear God, why we were being made to read such a thing!?

In it, nothing happens. Two men simply wait "for Godot." Who Godot is, or why they are waiting for him, you--and they--aren't exactly sure. You just know that you are waiting.

It's that wait that fuels the play's tension, and, like waiting, the tension you (and the characters) feel is fueled at times by promise, at times by fear, at times by frustration, exuberance, anger, dread.

You aren't even sure if what you're waiting for is, well, worth waiting for.

Still, waiting is what you do because waiting is, it seems, all there is to do.

That feeling of an interminable wait with only a very ambiguous promise at its end (if a promise, at all) is a lot like what it feels to live in New Orleans right now.

And so, when we went to see "Waiting for Godot" in a performance staged outdoors--at a street corner in an utterly devastated area of the Lower Ninth Ward--we felt as though the play were uniquely ours, in spite of its being written in France in the late 1940s.

I found the play so moving, in fact, that I cried my way through most of Vladimir's second-act soliloquy. As the fall evening breeze sent waves through the knee-high grasses that blanketed the scenery, as the ships blinked and groaned on the Industrial Canal that was the backdrop, as the sky overhead enveloped and mocked us, I cried and cried and cried. Frankly, it was a little embarrassing. But when the spirit moves you, right? You got to move.

VLADIMIR:

Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! (Pause. Vehemently.) Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? (Estragon says nothing.) It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflection, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is

clear. We are waiting for Godot to come—

We are waiting, and yet we don't know what the wait will bring, or even if it will bring any

reward.

We'd heard that there was a big turnout for the play, so we arrived at 6:00, only to discover that the line was already two blocks long. No matter.

We waited.

For two hours.

Gumbo was served (and now my question is why, Dear GAWD, always the GUMBO?) Cans of Deeps Woods OFF were distributed to protect our delicate skin from the vast swarms of evening mosquitoes come in from Bayou Bienvenue. The Rebirth Brass Band played. I drank wine from a screwtop bottle in a plastic cup, and waited.

Finally, we were seated. In front of me, Isaiah something-or-other (Dr. Burke from Gray's anatomy). He had with him beautiful women, and the whole lot of them got up too many times to pee. Hollywood.

But in spite of the play's being of super-high quality (with Equity actors, a Classical Theatre of Harlem director, and Paul Chan--another high-tech New Yorker--at the helm), it felt as though it were meant for, and bred in our city. It was, quite literally, The Most Moving Theatre Experience I Have Ever Had. I mean, I felt as though I were witnessing something wholly unique--something really special. It felt like ART and HISTORY, all in caps. Oh, Dear God, it was moving...

(David Cuthbert of the Times Picayune wrote an excellent review of the play that gets it right.)

This coming weekend, the play will again be staged, this time in Gentilly. I'm not sure how it can possibly match the intensity fueled by the backdrop of the Lower Ninth Ward (the levee and its infamous breach lurking in the background, both literally and heavily in our memories), but I look froward to seeing the play again. If I knew people who had the kind of money that would allow them to hop on a plane to come down for the performance, I would say DO IT. But I don't.

So I will tell you about that staging, too.

I'm taking my students to see it on Friday. Lordy, I hope they get it. I hope they don't think, as I once did, Dear God, why this play? I hope they can see how Paul Chan and Creative Time has made this play just exactly ours.

I plan to share with them his artist's statement, which I hope, hope, hope they can appreciate (even if they don't entirely get the play). It's clear that New Orleans moved artist Paul Chan, and I am incredibly grateful to him for envisioning the project and bringing it to New Orleans.

Here's an excerpt of Paul Chan's artist statement:

"What surprised me about seeing the city for the first time was that, from seeing what was
right in front of me, I still couldn't put together a complete picture of New Orleans. I
expected comparative contrasts but not wholesale contradictions. Some neighborhoods,
like the one around Tulane, seemed virtually untouched by Katrina. But in the Lower
Ninth Ward and parts of Gentilly, the barren landscape brooded in silence. The streets
were empty. There was still debris in lots where houses once stood. I didn’t hear a single
bird."

"I have seen landscapes scarred by disasters of all sorts. In Baghdad, I saw kids playing
soccer barefoot on a wide boulevard and around the concrete rubble that came from US
troops shelling the buildings near the Tigris River. I thought I saw the same kids playing
in the ghost town known as downtown Detroit on a side street during an enormous labor
demonstration in 1999—with shoes but no shirts. Life wants to live, even if it’s on
broken concrete."

"New Orleans was different. The streets were still, as if time had been swept away along
with the houses. Friends said the city now looks like the backdrop for a bleak science
fiction movie. Waiting for a ride to pick me up after visiting with some Common Ground
volunteers who were gutting houses in the Lower Ninth, I realized it didn’t look like a
movie set, but the stage for a play I have seen many times. It was unmistakable. The
empty road. The bare tree leaning precariously to one side with just enough leaves to
make it respectable. The silence. What’s more, there was a terrible symmetry between the
reality of New Orleans post-Katrina and the essence of this play, which expresses in stark
eloquence the cruel and funny things people do while they wait: for help, for food, for
hope. It was uncanny. Standing there at the intersection of North Prieur and Reynes, I
suddenly found myself in the middle of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot."

...

“'If you want to do this, you got to spend the dime, and you got to spend the time,'
someone said to me. The idea of staging Godot in New Orleans, of using the natural
collaborative process of producing a play with the necessary give and take of working on
the streets in order to reimagine how art—as the form freedom takes without the use of
force—can become the opening to enter and engage the myriad dimensions of life lived
in the midst of ruin, without succumbing to the easy graces of reducing it to either
knowledge or illustration of that life, began to take shape in a way that became
unpredictable, which is to say, new. It is fashionable today (still?) to claim that there is
nothing new beyond our horizon of art, that everything worth doing has been done. But
this seems to me an altogether specious claim, for it ignores the vast undiscovered
country of things that ought to be undone. In these great times, the terror of action and
inaction shapes the burden of history. Perhaps the task of art today is to remake this
burden anew by suspending the seemingly inexorable order of things (which gives the
burden its weight) for the potential of a clearing to take place, so that we can see and feel
what is in fact worthless, and what is in truth worth renewing.

Waiting for Godot has been staged on Broadway (in 1956), at a prison (San Quentin), and
in the middle of a war (during the Siege of Sarajevo, directed by Susan Sontag). It is a
simple story, told in two acts, about two tramps (we have other names for them today)
waiting for someone named Godot, who never comes. In New Orleans in 2007, Godot is
legion and it is not difficult to recognize the city through the play. Here, the burden of the
new is to realize the play through the city.

Paul Chan
June 2007
New York City"

So, my friends, if you have money to get here to see it, DO!!!!