Thursday, April 20, 2006
Which of your teachers are always with you?
My first grade teacher speaks to me nearly every day—in my mind. Almost any time I am walking down stairs, I hear her say, "Never walk down stairs with your hands in your pockets." Because, obviously, if you tripped, you'd be screwed and you'd probably smash your face all up at the bottom. It's a common sense thing, but her face speaking those words always pops into my mind when I'm on the staircase, especially when I have my hands in my pockets (which I then promptly remove). Funny, because she wasn't even particularly one of my favorite teachers.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Naked Sunday!
From: Faith Church
Subject: No Air Conditioning on Sunday
We just learned that the installation of the new air conditioners will not be finished by this Sunday. Dress accordingly.
[I guess this goes along right nicely with Good Friday...it's as if the celebration has been extended by divine intervention.]
.
Subject: No Air Conditioning on Sunday
We just learned that the installation of the new air conditioners will not be finished by this Sunday. Dress accordingly.
[I guess this goes along right nicely with Good Friday...it's as if the celebration has been extended by divine intervention.]
.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Students:
Sometime last night, significant vandalism occurred in Haury. A fire extinguisher was released in the stairwell near faculty offices (the north side). Needless to say, it is everywhere! In addition to that, some of the new plastic convo and chapel sign holders were broken. Lastly, these vandals threw a bicycle into Patty Shelly's window and broke it.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Impressions of Mennonite Disaster Service
See also Impressions of New Orleans
As mentioned below, I spent a week with Mennonite Disaster Service working on hurricane/flood cleanup in New Orleans. One of the reasons it ranks up there as one of the best experiences of my life is due to MDS. MDS is really quite a unique organization since it involves/is supported by so many different varieties of Mennonites/Anabaptists. Our group was made up of 15 college students and three staff members. The other groups in our unit for that week were a group made up mostly of middle-aged couples from Eden Mennonite Church and a group of seven new order Amish young men, as well as their sponsor/driver, a 43-year-old former Amish man. Our leaders were Mennonites from Canada and Colorado, and also a Weaverland Conference couple from Pennsylvania. What a great mix of people! It was so fun to watch all of the groups come together as one, and we had a blast together. A couple of nights, the Amish guys and the college kids went down to the French Quarter and Bourbon Street, and I heard lots of memories shared from the college students in our room at night and on the van ride home about the great time they had with the Amish guys. The best new friendships I made were with Dan (of the Weaverland Conference couple) and Lister (the sponsor/driver for the Amish group).
Some might say that MDS is not as organized as it could be. However, I enjoyed this more relaxed style. Not to say that our days were relaxing though! We put in full 8- to 9-hour days of manual labor. The “relaxed style” I was referring to is that in the mornings, everyone would sort of be in charge of assigning him/herself to a work group, you might not know what tools are going to which work site, etc. So the feel was both relaxed and hardworking at the same time. We also had a lot of fun at our work sites. The work may have been hard and sometimes gross and always dirty, but we all enjoyed each other. Some of the Amish guys had volunteered with another Christian organization and commented that they strongly preferred working with MDS. Apparently with this other organization, you are treated more like an employee—hours are incredibly strict and you are expected to get a certain amount of work done each day. You might get to socialize for a bit after supper, but people are expected to be in bed early, and there is a “lights out.” Not so with MDS! :) I mean, we were respectful of a 10:30 quiet time, but that was not really much of a problem since we were all pretty tuckered out after a day’s work, and the next day would begin again in just a few hours.
Anyway, I loved working with MDS and hope to do it again when I can. I would also love to “retire” into MDS.
See also Impressions of New Orleans
As mentioned below, I spent a week with Mennonite Disaster Service working on hurricane/flood cleanup in New Orleans. One of the reasons it ranks up there as one of the best experiences of my life is due to MDS. MDS is really quite a unique organization since it involves/is supported by so many different varieties of Mennonites/Anabaptists. Our group was made up of 15 college students and three staff members. The other groups in our unit for that week were a group made up mostly of middle-aged couples from Eden Mennonite Church and a group of seven new order Amish young men, as well as their sponsor/driver, a 43-year-old former Amish man. Our leaders were Mennonites from Canada and Colorado, and also a Weaverland Conference couple from Pennsylvania. What a great mix of people! It was so fun to watch all of the groups come together as one, and we had a blast together. A couple of nights, the Amish guys and the college kids went down to the French Quarter and Bourbon Street, and I heard lots of memories shared from the college students in our room at night and on the van ride home about the great time they had with the Amish guys. The best new friendships I made were with Dan (of the Weaverland Conference couple) and Lister (the sponsor/driver for the Amish group).
Some might say that MDS is not as organized as it could be. However, I enjoyed this more relaxed style. Not to say that our days were relaxing though! We put in full 8- to 9-hour days of manual labor. The “relaxed style” I was referring to is that in the mornings, everyone would sort of be in charge of assigning him/herself to a work group, you might not know what tools are going to which work site, etc. So the feel was both relaxed and hardworking at the same time. We also had a lot of fun at our work sites. The work may have been hard and sometimes gross and always dirty, but we all enjoyed each other. Some of the Amish guys had volunteered with another Christian organization and commented that they strongly preferred working with MDS. Apparently with this other organization, you are treated more like an employee—hours are incredibly strict and you are expected to get a certain amount of work done each day. You might get to socialize for a bit after supper, but people are expected to be in bed early, and there is a “lights out.” Not so with MDS! :) I mean, we were respectful of a 10:30 quiet time, but that was not really much of a problem since we were all pretty tuckered out after a day’s work, and the next day would begin again in just a few hours.
Anyway, I loved working with MDS and hope to do it again when I can. I would also love to “retire” into MDS.
See also Impressions of New Orleans
Impressions of New Orleans
See also Impressions of Mennonite Disaster Service
[I typed this up last week and am finally getting around to posting it.] Late Saturday (March 25) I returned from a week long trip to New Orleans, doing hurricane/flood clean-up with Mennonite Disaster Service. It was one of those things that makes my “best things I’ve done in my life” list. Here are some of my impressions of the city as of March 2006.
It’s difficult to believe that the hurricane was seven months ago. One month ago would maybe be believable. Can you believe that much of the city still does not have electricity? Many intersections without stoplights; many streets without streetlights. Neighborhoods are pitch black at night. If you can still call them neighborhoods. Much of the city is pretty much a ghost town. The neighborhoods in which we stayed and worked were mostly devoid of people; sort of eerie, really. You can understand why many people are afraid to stay in their paper-thin FEMA trailers...on streets with no one else around and that remain unlit after the sun goes down. Would you believe that many of the houses have not even been entered except for by search and rescue teams? Most of the apartments and houses our group entered were just as they had been left seven months prior...tables set for family meals, laundry in the washing machine, dogs (now no longer living, of course) shut into a garage where I’m sure the owners believed they would be safe. Those particular owners hadn’t even been inside to find out if their dogs had made it out or not; students in our group had to inform the husband. His response was, “Don’t tell my wife.” We would go into an apartment or a house, and belongings would look fairly normal but nothing was. Couches and carpets are still seven months later wet from flood waters. Houses have been shut up this long and the air there is so humid that nothing has had the chance to dry out. Suddenly, people’s entire possessions become trash. An entire city’s possessions out on the curb. Where will it even all be dumped? Virtually nothing can be kept because it is all covered in mold. Mold climbs the walls from floor to ceiling in many cases. It all has to go. So we would enter these houses, discard of all of their belongings, tear out their floors/ceilings/walls, and eight hours to two and a half days later, all that is left is a shell of a house. Will people even be able to come back and rebuild? Will the mold removal chemicals work well enough on the studs that houses will be safe to live in once rebuilt?
A whole other factor all together is the lower 9th ward. This area lies right below one of the main levee breaks and is also a poorer section of the city. This was the first time I’d heard the rumor that the government blew up the levee here in order to divert the water away from the French Quarter and the Garden District. I don’t subscribe to this belief, but some people definitely do. This area is more or less flattened. Others observed that it looks like tornado damage, except that many trees are still standing and the area of damage is larger. Houses were washed clean off of their foundations. You can see the foundations but can’t spot the houses. The image that comes immediately to mind when I think of my tour through the lower 9th ward is of a house that was picked up off of its foundation and some time later set back down on it. But between the house and its foundation is an upside down pickup truck. The afternoon we were there, we saw search and rescue teams and dogs. As we came back by that location later, there were many flashing lights. That evening at a restaurant, the tv news reported that the body of a child had been found that afternoon in the lower 9th.
See also Impressions of Mennonite Disaster Service
[I typed this up last week and am finally getting around to posting it.] Late Saturday (March 25) I returned from a week long trip to New Orleans, doing hurricane/flood clean-up with Mennonite Disaster Service. It was one of those things that makes my “best things I’ve done in my life” list. Here are some of my impressions of the city as of March 2006.
It’s difficult to believe that the hurricane was seven months ago. One month ago would maybe be believable. Can you believe that much of the city still does not have electricity? Many intersections without stoplights; many streets without streetlights. Neighborhoods are pitch black at night. If you can still call them neighborhoods. Much of the city is pretty much a ghost town. The neighborhoods in which we stayed and worked were mostly devoid of people; sort of eerie, really. You can understand why many people are afraid to stay in their paper-thin FEMA trailers...on streets with no one else around and that remain unlit after the sun goes down. Would you believe that many of the houses have not even been entered except for by search and rescue teams? Most of the apartments and houses our group entered were just as they had been left seven months prior...tables set for family meals, laundry in the washing machine, dogs (now no longer living, of course) shut into a garage where I’m sure the owners believed they would be safe. Those particular owners hadn’t even been inside to find out if their dogs had made it out or not; students in our group had to inform the husband. His response was, “Don’t tell my wife.” We would go into an apartment or a house, and belongings would look fairly normal but nothing was. Couches and carpets are still seven months later wet from flood waters. Houses have been shut up this long and the air there is so humid that nothing has had the chance to dry out. Suddenly, people’s entire possessions become trash. An entire city’s possessions out on the curb. Where will it even all be dumped? Virtually nothing can be kept because it is all covered in mold. Mold climbs the walls from floor to ceiling in many cases. It all has to go. So we would enter these houses, discard of all of their belongings, tear out their floors/ceilings/walls, and eight hours to two and a half days later, all that is left is a shell of a house. Will people even be able to come back and rebuild? Will the mold removal chemicals work well enough on the studs that houses will be safe to live in once rebuilt?
A whole other factor all together is the lower 9th ward. This area lies right below one of the main levee breaks and is also a poorer section of the city. This was the first time I’d heard the rumor that the government blew up the levee here in order to divert the water away from the French Quarter and the Garden District. I don’t subscribe to this belief, but some people definitely do. This area is more or less flattened. Others observed that it looks like tornado damage, except that many trees are still standing and the area of damage is larger. Houses were washed clean off of their foundations. You can see the foundations but can’t spot the houses. The image that comes immediately to mind when I think of my tour through the lower 9th ward is of a house that was picked up off of its foundation and some time later set back down on it. But between the house and its foundation is an upside down pickup truck. The afternoon we were there, we saw search and rescue teams and dogs. As we came back by that location later, there were many flashing lights. That evening at a restaurant, the tv news reported that the body of a child had been found that afternoon in the lower 9th.
See also Impressions of Mennonite Disaster Service
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