Perspective adds much

Well we are on the way back from The Pass. Like normal I think everyone has mixed emotions. Of course we are all looking forward to our own beds, eating what and when we want, and not having to live out of a gym bag, but more than off setting that desire to be home is the wish to make more of a difference.

The last day of every trip is a nice time to recap and reflect on how big of difference the group did make. For all volunteers there is a great temptation to feel as if what they do does not matter much. This temptation is born of many factors but probably the most important is that each volunteer spends most of his/her day so focused on the single job that is being done (and in many cases redone after mistakes have been made), that the bigger picture is ignored.

And to take the time to step back and see the bigger picture when so much needs to be done always seems like an inappropriate luxury. So most volunteers do not take the time. Instead, they diligently work away on their assigned task. And when it is time to leave and go home, they do not, indeed can not, see how large of impact they actually made.

I was fortunate today to have to deliver joint compound to a team out drywalling at the Whavers. This afforded me the opportunity to see just how far the house had come from the beginning of the week. The progress had been substantial: from the shell of a house when the first group from Olean’s First Baptist Church arrived after Christmas; the plumbing had been completed (thanks especially to Dale Andersen for driving down from Olean when he heard there was a great need), the insulation was purchased (wigth the money BonaResponds raised) and installed, the drywall had largely been hung, and some mudding had been started. There was still much work remaining, but the progress had been significant and substantial.

I then drove by Carl’s house. Volunteers from Randy’s had been working on this home off and on since at least May. Scores and scores of volunteers had contributed to the creation of what will soon be a new home for Karl and his gamily. This week, volunteers from (OFBC), Asbury College, Boston College, and BonaResponds got a roof on the house, finished the siding, and advanced the dry wall effort to a great extent.

The team formerly known as the tree team, had downed and carted off about 15 trees and helped build a shed and also helped with drywall.

To view from the trenches, where each volunteer had labored long and hard, showed only the seemingly insignificant “I put up a few rows of shingles” or “I hung some drywall”, or “I cut some trees and picked up some branches”. But the view from a bit of distance showed a different story. It showed that the volunteers had accomplished much work this week and they advanced the recovery efforts. Sure there are years of work left, but for at least some of the “Prisoners of Katrina” recovery is a bit closer because of the work the volunteers this week.

Good day

Just have time for a few updates...

Quote of the day:

"It is like everything is happening but also like nothing. Look around, it is still 2 1/2 years afer Katina and there is still much to be done."


Shrimp Boil

* The shrimp boil at Kimballs went very well.

* All the other groups have now left. So it is just BonaResponds left. Which is a nice for a change. It created room for a game of charades.

* for those who built the shed, it was clearly the most fun job. Why? probably because we could see something concrete. The trees were good, but little interaction with local residents.

* the Gulfport-Biloxi airport looks much better ! Still seemingly not done, but really looking nice!

* Many are going to the coast to see the sunrise. Then work from about 8:30 to 3:00, eat around 5, and then head back.

* Still looking into more places to host volunteers in Feb/March . It seems like it is going to be difficult to find places for many volunteers, so sign up early if you want to go.

Mid day update

Figured I had a second (I did airport runs today, taking Christina, Rick, and Sean on an abbreviated tour and then dropping them off at airport).

* We had two drywall teams out this morning. In the afternoon we have three ( two drywall teams and one small shed-building team).

* The area had tornado watches last night but as far as I know there were no actual tornadoes in the immediate area.

* Carrie cut her thumb but is ok. It may impinge on her text messaging for a few days.

* Gas expenses have definitely been much higher than last year. The van I drive just took $86 of gas.

work time!

Hurry up and wait

I was thinking about Thurman Thomas today. For those of you who do not know, he is the hall of fame running back that helped lead the Buffalo Bills to four straight super bowls. He was not the fastest running back, probably not the strongest running back, but he had the patience to wait and wait for his blocks to develop.

Why was I thinking of Thurman Thomas? Because much of today was spent waiting, but when we got to work, we did get quite a bit done.

It started at breakfast which is usually followed by a meeting with Randy, but today he was busy so we waited for about 15 minutes before realizing he was not going to be able to make the meeting. For me, the day started by going back to finish a job we had started a few days before. After determining the property line, there was only really one tree to cut down, but it was probably the biggest tree I had ever cut down (something I have said at least three times this week).

But first we had to put a new chain on the saw. Oh, but wait, the only chain we had was the wrong size. No worries, we were working near the downtown hardware store. Oh wait, they do not have the right size. So a drive to Long Beach sets us back another 30 minutes. So the tree is so large that it takes at least thirty minutes to few fell it, then cut the branches, but since the trunk is about 2 miles across (no not a misprint, oh, ok, maybe ;) ) we finally gave up cutting it all.

But it is lunch time, so we go back to base. We are supposed to go to dry wall in the afternoon. The dry wall team has been working at the Whavers’ house for most of the week and need a hand today holding up drywall to the ceiling.

But before we leave, we get a different job. Randy wants us to go help build a shed, but we have to wait for him to get back to show where and how. But he is in the midst of about a hundred things so we have to wait for about an hour.

After yet another wait, we get to work on the shed with a team from Asbury College. Finally things click and the combined crews make about 50% of 14* 16 foot shed for a family still living in a FEMA trailer.

So in spite of much waiting, like Thurman Thomas, being a volunteer sometimes is much waiting and then a fast burst of activity.

Updates on other jobs/things:

* The roof at Karl’s is done! They finished it today.

* Met Jen from Asbury College today. She is from WNY! She lives in Freedom (near Arcade).

* The team from Boston College left today. Asbury leaves tomorrow.

* Most of the team went to Sonic for dinner. Those who stayed were treated to great bread and pizza made by Joe Coate. They also had spaghetti and a few other things made my me.

* tomorrow we will go to a Shrimp boil at Kimball’s.

Can't see the trees for the forest

The word of the day is trees.

This morning the BonaResponds team and the Group from Boston College went to see a giant Live Oak Tree in Long Beach. It is huge. Randy takes each group there to experience it. You can literally get lost in the size. Randy uses it in conjunction with the story he uses during his introduction for new volunteers. The story, now with an accompanying painting that hangs on the dining hall room, is that each volunteer brings is but a little dot, but put together, these dots make up an entire tree. The tree in Long Beach is meant to remind us the size of the recovery effort and that no one person can do it by him/her self.

After that I again worked with the tree team. With the help of Joe's drywall team in the AM, we cut 7 trees down and cleared others that were already down. In addition we had 4 people (Amanda, Ashley, Christina, and Ryan) learn how to safely use a chain saw.

Not sure how the two fit together, but the should. Maybe I will be able to figure it out after a good night's sleep.

************
In other news, the roofing crew has gotten a ton done on Carl's house VERY VERY impressive.

Bridgett, Rich, Christina, Tim and a few others (sorry I forget who went) worked at Barbara's sanding, painting, and doing some lawn work.

The drywall team did get to do some more this afternoon at the Whavers' house. This is the family we adopted. The money we raised went to the buy the insulation for the house.

Special Thank-yous!

I have to admit, there is something about working in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast that you just have to like. Oh sure there is the inevitable disappointment and despair at the slow pace of recovery, but there is also something very very good about being here.

I used to attribute "it", whatever it was, largely to being at HandsOnUSA (for instance see Have a HOUSA day). But I have learned that the same idea can be experienced at any of the hundreds of volunteer camps operating throughout the Gulf Coast.

What is "it"? "It" is hard to verbalize. But it has to have something with the unpredictableness and the constant ability to make a positive impact on the lives of others. Maybe it is both. Who knows and in the end who really cares?

What do I mean? There are probably more examples of this than there are people who have volunteered in the Gulf, but to make the idea more concrete Take the jobs my team have been working on for the past few days. It started out two days ago on a group of us went to cut down two dead trees. Before either tree was finished, a neighbor had stopped with an offer of hot tea (it was a very cold morning) for all of the volunteers. When drinking the tea we got talking and she asked whether we could cut some trees on her property. The trees were all dead and ranged from fairly large to rather small and something that we could handle, so a few phone calls and some paperwork later, we had agreed to cut five trees on her property.

And thus began yet an other rewarding, yet unplanned, adventure in volunteering.

The action in this story was fairly mundane: cut, chunk, and carry away five trees. It was, as the leader of a more skilled team so graciously reminded me "unskilled work". And it may be relative to some jobs, but that does not mean it is unimportant work or that the volunteers don't bring skills that are generally not considered necessary to cut trees.

So what made the job noteworthy? Lois. Over the course of the next day and a half, she won her way into the hearts of all of the volunteers. Not through the tea or hot, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies (although surely neither hurt), but with such kindness that is rarely felt in day to day life, but that is seemingly the norm in the course of a volunteer’s day.

Here we were helping a woman who lost her husband in the storm and whose life was turned entirely upside down, yet it was she that was offering volunteers the use of her car, baking cookies, and talking to each and every volunteer as if (s)/he were her long lost relative.

As we were leaving, Lois thanked us and told me that we probably saved her and her daughter over $2000 and that this was money that would be used to help put her grand daughter through college.

As I walked back to the van, my mind again wondered back to playing the roll of scorekeeper. Lois’s $2000 vs our cookies and tea and thank-yous.

You know what? It is a trade I would make any time. We definitely got the better end of this one.

So as a tribute to that idea, I decided to offer this commercial idea to MasterCard:

Boots and clothes for trip ----- $100

Sleeping on cots and eating what is served: $200

Getting a heartfelt thank-you from someone you helped

- Priceless.

Other Updates:

* The camp got much more crowded today as the swim teams from Asbury College got here. Actually it seems a bit too crowded, but it will work out fine.

*Drywall work got started at the Whavers house. They are out of money so may not be able to purchase the additional drywall.

* Ran with Pete this evening on the beach, alone this AM.

* Dinner was spaghetti but my real treat was a bowl of boiled peanuts.

Long day, good day!

This will have to be a short one. Not only is it late and I am tired, but my wireless card is not working at all. No idea why, but the computer will not even recognize it. So here goes...

Let's see where to start today? We had three teams that went out. A tree team, a roofing team, and an insulation team. All seemed to have good days.

From our meeting tonight we all learned that the insulation team completely insulated the walls of the Whavers' future home. They also saved me a trip to Bay St. Louis by getting the ceiling insulation as well. I did not get over to see it today, but by all reports they had a very successful day!

The second team did a portion of a roof. The roof was enormous. Jerry and crew did a great job of first taking some shingles off and then starting to putting the new shingles on. Did I mention the roof is on top of a house that is build on stilts? Great job!

The tree team was saddled with me, so they only got four trees cut down and carted off (for a bonfire--see below). They did a great job using less than stellar equipment and with a bumbling team leader.

Jen, Ariel, and Katie made dinner tonight. It was baked potatoes with various toppings from chili to cheddar.

Starting tomorrow we will also change the way post dinner clean-ups are done. We are assigning a team per day. For instance, the tree team does it one day, the roofing team the next etc. That way everyone "gets to" do it

In other news we got three new people today :) Christina, Rick, and Sean flew in and Tim performed admirably in the role we used to cal Ira at Handson of going to pick everyone up.

The tree team helped out Lois (not real name) who prior to the storm ran a bed and breakfast. She surviced the storm by hanging onto a large tree. She was such a joy to help. She served us tea, offered her car to us, and even asked all the females is they wanted to stay in her new home where they could "even get a bubble bath." She also offered us her lot to have a bonfire at night. Ironically, Henry (again not real name) who helps Lois a self proclaimed fire bug, agreed to help us start the fire.

And so a large fire was started out of one of the four large piles of wood the tree team helped make today.

Katie and I then went to pick up some groceries. Upon our return I was more than surprised by the two large infernos that were burning. But it was already late so we began to put it out.

Uh, yeah. How? no running water, no shovels etc. But somehow (with the help of a few shovels and a few pots found in the neighborhood), we got fire out just moments before the fire dept showed up at the bar across the street worried there was a fire.

What did I learn today? That with some team work and perseverance, volunteers can do pretty much everything!

Partial recovery but a long long ways to go

Keeping Score

As a sports fan and a finance professor I am used to keeping score. From miles run, to laps swum, to number of questions correct it is what I do. But I do not know how to keep score in the Gulf Coast.

On one hand much progress has been made on many fronts. I drove through Biloxi today to see how the city is coming along. And I am happy to report that it is making substantial improvements. Most of the houses we worked on during our first three or four trips have been completed and are now all occupied.

In Pass Christian the Bridge to Bay St. Louis is the big accomplishment and on almost every block a new home seems to be going up or just completed. (For comparison purposes, look around your own home town. Most streets (let alone blocks) have no new homes. So by these measures, the recovery from Katrina is strong.

It is heartwarming to see the rebuilding of cities, towns, and most importantly lives. And I must confess it was thrilling today to tour neighborhoods from East Biloxi to Pass Christian and see the impact that BonaResponds has had as we toured with volunteers who had worked on the houses on past trips. So at first glance it might appear that things are all rosy.

But while things are unquestionably MUCH better than they have been at any point since the storm, things are far from perfect. For instance on my run tonight it struck me how much still remains to be done. While it is true that on almost every block there is a new house going up, on many blocks it is the only house. Reread that. Not the only new house, the only house. The neighborhood may be composed of 8 slabs, an empty foundation, a deserted pool, a pile of debris, and a For Sale sign. Again look around your own neigborhood, how many debris piles? deserted properties, or foundations do you have.

So when I get home and people as me how things are in the Gulf, I will be sure to tell them that things are much better, but far far from perfect and much much work remains.