the children of abraham

A post about me - about prayer, about Brooklyn and of course Mama Sue. How all of these are intertwined for me.

Mama Sue, for newcomers, is the subject of a documentary, called Mama Sue's Garden, that I'm in the throes of completing.

But starting with prayer. I'm Jewish and I belong to a (fabulous) congregation here in Park Slope Brooklyn -- Kolot Chayeinu, which translated from the Hebrew means, Voices of our Lives. But...I seldom go to services of my wonderful congregation. Instead I go to their Palestinian-Israeli study group meetings where we discuss books written by Palestinian and Israeli, and occasionally American and French writers. (more on this group later.)

But there are times that I want to go, and when I do, I feel at sea, even though I have a great time. I find myself singing along -- the songs in ancient Hebrew are actually catchy. And I love the usually witty and smart dvar (discourse) on the week's Torah portion, the way I liked analyzing a good novel in high school English class. At these visits to my *house of prayer,* though, I'm uncomfortably aware that I don't know how to pray. I marvel at how my friends down in St. Bernard, La. seem to be able to pray at the drop of a hat and indeed they're always praying. Not pretend prayer, not obligatory, conformist prayer on days alotted for it, but through an intimate, deeply felt, believing sense of connection to a spiritual, all-seeing, caring being. Mama Sue has a direct line to "God." When she knew the storm, that is, Katrina, was going to be bad, she sat on her daughter's bed and had a little "talk with god." And throughout one of the most harrowing tales I've ever heard, she told me she'd kept up a running conversation. She thanked God when a wooden boat -- which became her bed for two nights and her shelter during the scorching days -- floated by her rooftop. "You're sending me a boat? Thank you, God!!" One day she turned to me and asked -- did I think God was male or female?

No, I'm not going to get into what religion means/doesn't mean to me, or what gender my god is, if I have a god, and if god has a gender. But I don't rule any of it out. If I were to try to define it at all, it's oddly, a "label" that reaches to my core. It's the source of anger at some groups I don't agree with. I'm angry in this way, at these groups, because I'm Jewish. Those guys are "crazy," and those over there are more "reasonable." It's a deep and rich part of my identity, but I can't figure out where faith comes into it.

Sometimes, though, things seem clear. And it felt incredibly clear when Rabbi Lippman sent out notices to everyone that on June 10, we were invited to participate in the seventh annual Children of Abraham Peace Walk, I made a mental note -- this was something I had to attend. The Children of Abraham -- great name isn't it? -- Muslim, Christian, Jew. Every year, the three offspring of that mythic patriarch join hands, figuratively, and walk through a few neighborhoods in this polyglot, amazingly diverse place called Brooklyn. The organizers didn't envision it being anything more than this, though getting reps from three of the world's quarreling religions together in a cooperative stroll doesn't seem trivial. Still, it wasn't political -- nothing about the Middle East in there, no speeches about *unity* or 9/11. Simple declarations of ... brother/sisterhood. That's how it appeared to me, and the comments of the first priest who spoke that day confirmed that.

Before we set out, we (well more than 100 of us) took seats in the pews of a Korean Methodist church for some talking to -- I think it was for some unity, without calling it by name. Looking around, I noticed we were covered alternately in head scarves [the muslim women], baseball caps [me and a lot of the kids] sun hats, rain hats and no head coverings at all. Father Perry's talk was brief and I thought brilliant about this plainly evident diversity. All he said was -- "the differences that I see in this room today God does not see. "

(Memory may have made a change or two in his sentence, but its import and message I'm positive I've recorded accurately.) Anyway, that was it. That was the beginning and end of Father Perry's talk to us. Then we were on to the minister, who spoke for a much longer time but I confess I don't remember any of it. Ellen Lippman, my rabbi, was suffering from a very bad case of laryngitis and couldn't say anything.

But the speakers didn't make a big deal about the protest and solidarity that would mark this year's walk. We were going to leave this charmingly peeling church and walk about a mile over to the site of a proposed mosque, smack dab in the heart of a Russian immigrant neighborhood. Church, mosque, both in Sheepshead Bay. (The church we were originally supposed to meet at had bowed out of the ritual walk for some reason.)

Rabbi Lippman has cautioned me not to see the area as monolithically Russian. Of course it isn't. Happily, there really isn't any place in Brooklyn that you'd say is monolithically anything. You're really forced to be tolerant. (OK OK, not saying that every last Brooklynite is such a paragon.) But the high density of our housing makes us have to ... make room. It's humorous in it way -- how we all, with all our really minor differences are made to cohabit, kind of like first year college roommates. You get along, you complain to yourself, roll your eyes, and somehow, jeez, get along. NOT SO FAST.

One of the first things I saw when I emerged that afternoon from the Sheepshead Bay subway station was a Citibank, with a sign declaring -- Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Italian spoken here. So the Russian neighborhood where we heading was definitely not entirely Russian. And among those Russians, they most likely were not entirely Jewish, in spite of their emphatic insistence. But in whatever ethnic mixture the nabe within a nabe was, they were not looking forward to the mosque being built. They had hired lawyers, in fact, and through sputterings about "traffic" ... "masses of people praying in the middle of the street" ... "a nearby school," they were and are attempting to block its construction.

So we were going to walk calmly along the bay's shore, past large apartment buildings and into this neighborhood, which consists of strips of squat brick row houses. We would end up at the narrow dirt lot, that interrupts this string of homes, where a local Iman is proposing that a small mosque be built. Now, he told me, they had to travel out to Bay Ridge to find a mosque, a trip of about an hour by subway. To placate the community, he'd agreed that there would be no electronically amplified -- or any outdoor -- calls to prayer.

When we wound up at Voorhies Avenue., we were met by a wall of hand-written signs attached to the fences. The residents were out on their tiny lawns glumly watching the head scarves, prelate collars and baseball caps amble towards our obvious destination. I was glad we weren't shouting any slogans, and extremely glad that they weren't saying-- or chanting -- anything either.

And I was glad when a friend from Kolot whispered, " I get it." That is, she got why the neighbors were so upset. I had to make my thinking catch up to my walking companion's. What was Betsy seeing? I peered at our surroundings. We were on an entirely uniform residential block. The houses -- the people themselves -- seemed clustered together. They had come to the curb and they stared at us silently, uncomfortably, mouths closed tightly, for the time being. I surmised that these people shared a language, a background, a history -- an outlook.

After I'd scarfed my cheese sandwich, I crossed the street to meet these neighbors. They were only to happy to talk to me. Well, talk isn't the right verb. They were almost wailing, shouting, pleading, imploring me to, what. To sympathize? To see their point of view? To agree. These are some of the things they said. I'm quoting them in no particular order and the lines don't necessarily have a relationship with one another:

*** A school is on the corner! *** Remember 9-11? *** Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim. ***

Myself: I suggested that we had home-grown, non-Mulsim terrorists as well. We had the Oklahoma City bomber for example.

*That was only one!* someone countered.

*Would you like to have a mosque in the middle of your neighborhood?* someone said, getting uncomfortably close.

I thought maybe I could throw a little levity into the conversation. "Well, this is what Brooklyn is! We're all on top of each other!" I intertwined my fingers and tried to shrug, like 'hey, lighten up,' without saying it.

They were envisioning a horde of men, prostrating themselves in the middle of their block, perhaps many tmes a day. And had that been the future of this new community, I think I too might have been a little wary. But when I returned to *my* side of the street and asked whether there'd be any street prostrations, a Muslim woman replied -- what was the point of building a mosque if you were going to pray outside. They were fully intending to use the interior of the mosque.

The angry neighbors across the street were envisioning harm being done to the children who came to the corner school. And then I remembered. Those who had come from Russia no doubt remembered when some crazed Chechen psychopath had snuck into an elementary school in Belsan one morning and opened fire with an automatic rifle, killing dozens of children and teachers. The carnage was horrible. There had been other incidents. And Russian draftees were sent to Chechenya province, where they were despised and -- if the revolutionary or state-building or sesessionist Chechens -- however you wanted to see it -- could manage it, they were killed.

I'll lump the neighbors into one unified group for a moment in the interest of making a point. See what making a point made me do? Already I know I'm distorting the situation. I'm tempted to go there -- into how I know I'm getting heavy into guesswork. But I know that no one would read this blog if I started writing about how easy it is to be inaccurate. How life almost dictates it. Couldn't hardly talk otherwise. But I wonder if those "irate" neighbors were mistrustful because they saw history and ethnicity through a distinctively Russian lens, with its unique way of dividing people into "the crazies" and "the reasonable. "

I was beginning to see what Betsy had noticed immediately. The task at hand, of inserting a new group, and not just any group, into their midst, involved more than a march of solidarity. One angry woman startled me when she asked, rhetorically perhaps, why hadn't we invited them to join us at the conclusion of our walk, on our dirt plot, home of the proposed mosque? Why weren't they breaking bread with us? Indeed, why hadn't we? Even if she didn't really mean it (guessing again), wasn't our task to begin to break down these invisible, fear-driven divisions, imported intact from somewhere else? You can't do that only through confrontation and marching -- how we might have appeared at first blush to have arrived -- marching. And maybe we seemed massive, I don't know. Though we were pretty much a hodge podge, we might have looked like a weird -- clan, laughing in headscarves and baseball caps over our thick submarine sandwiches.

Lettie Lee Asks a Question, the movie

As promised -- Lettie Lee asks a Question, the movie. Lettie made it as part of a documentary workshop, which I ran back in Spring, 2007 for survivors of Hurricane Katrina. It may be the only funny Katrina film you'll see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paSpP0iCgeI

Danger: Men at Work

Danger:

Men at Work

My mother and I had a private joke about that oft-displayed warning sign, DANGER: MEN AT WORK placed at the edges of construction sites. I notice that it's not used as much these days, probably because it would violate the Equal Opportunity in Employment laws. And yes, of course, women might do something as stupid as all those guys working for BP, but it's still a good bit of dark humor, I think.

Though, if you pressed me, I think there was some machismo and very traditional boss-man on underling power play at work in the decision to push on through known weaknesses in those systems we've been hearing about ad nauseum -- the blowback prevention system and well casing. Watch the red, terrified faces of the engineers responding to Congressional questioning. They knew. They knew! And they were forced to go on. The BP staffer in command -- I believe someone w/o any real knowledge of things geological and deepwater engineering -- said, in spite of just being told 'this is risky,' DO IT. (that is, drill baby and shut up)

The question tickling my brain insistently, mosquitolike is -- why? Why override the recommendatiaons of the guys who knew? The engineers with their eyes glued to the pressure gauges, water flow rates, oil flow rates, that troubling spot on the monitor, glaring at them like an enlarged wart.... the experts. OK, maybe it wasn't machismo. It was, some will say, pure and simple -- greed. That's black gold down there... I guess it doesn't matter. In the end.

Rudy, who cuts my hair occasionally, and prattles non-stop about his latest projects -- these charming black paper masks, Barcelona and lately geology -- wonders whether we're not disturbing something vital by sucking so much oil out of the earth. Maybe that's what keeps the techtonic plates from crashing into one another he muses. snip. snip. Earthquakes seem common lately. Or is it just a coincidence? We'll find out later. Snip.

He happened to be cutting a client's hair, he told me today, and she happened to be a geologist. From the Middle East. I stopped watching how much hair he was snipping off, to my later regret. 'And I led her through telling me what she does' he went on, clearly proud of his drawing out technique. 'She consults for oil companies. ' It must be great to have them asking you for your advice.' Rudy finally, as he was gelling her bangs, asked this geologist client what she thought about sucking all this oil out of the earth's crust. Was it a risk? She didn't know. And if she doesn't know, who does? Rudy said, gelling my bangs.

That oil isn't there so we can drive SUVs he pronounced. No, it's not. Where do we start? I thought that one entryway into revising 'how we do things' is through, well, the basics. Like attitude. Back to the lowly engineer, doing his job, but without any say-so, authority. Without respect, aauughhh, it sounds so beside the point, complaining about the lack of respect awarded a man on the bottom rung of the ladder, when an ecology is being killed. But maybe it isn't. Ignoring that man had huge consequences. Yes, there were formal precuations that should have been place. Rules. And maybe they will be installed (as always, after the horse has bolted). But there will always be crises, moments when you've gone past the chance for thoughtful, bureucratic review. You're up against it. And there are two, three ten of you. What happened was the failure to really inbibe what was being said, and to respond... The head is cut off from the body. And the body, well, dies.

I recommend you see the film, Secret of the Eyes, (Secreto de los Ojos. From Argentina, it won the Academy Award this year for best foreign film.) where the filmmaker makes a concerted point -- amid several subtle and wonderfully suspenseful, intertwining plots -- about this kind of bullying top down, and poor fellow/drunkards attempting to bully up, and just, well, between and among all these guys, half the time ending in threats and blows. These tipos. In this film, whenever two or more guys talk with one another it's to shrink their supposed opponent to the dimensions of a worm. But moments of friendship -- kind, warm relating between men -- happen, and when they do -- as between the main (Pacino-like) protagonist, Benjamin Esposito and his office-mate, Senor Sandoval -- it's like an oasis, a respite in this otherwise brutal assaulting mode of conversation.

Here's to oases.

!hasta luego

Lettie during an interview

marching in a Second Line

I haven't written much about Lettie Lee, yet as you can see from the photo on the left, Lettie is one of those people who gets involved.

Or to put another way, Lettie Lee is fully engaged, but unlike many engagists, she does it in an utterly unassuming cheerful way, knowing to the minute what's going on in her Parish, St. Bernard, where she was born and has lived her entire 70+ years. Engaged in working for councilmembers, the sheriff candidate she supports, staffing the election tables.

Whenever I go down for a visit, she gives me a large paper bag to take home, full of unexpected things -- newspaper clippings, beads, travel brochures, tee shirts. She'll give you anything of hers too, if you admire it for longer than a second.

I met Lettie while I was living down in "da Parish" as it's known, where I was drumming up business for a documentary film class I was offering, thinking I'd offer people a way to give voice to their lives, firsthand. Thought it wasn't my job to make a film as an outsider looking in, though that in the end is what I've wound up doing.

In the end a dozen people signed up, maybe two thirds of whom actually came regularly -- all of them hesitant, having come out of curiosity or hope. I'd say without a doubt that they were all overwhelmed. James T, a truck driver came to the introductory session, brimming with religious fervor and but it turned out absolutely no interest in giving voice to anything but the Almighty and James didn't come back, though he lived across the street from me and gave me a huge smile and a wave whenever I walked past. A young woman who spoke in a voice that barely rose above a whisper hoped she'd find a way out of her depression. She never came back. A high school student showed up, who'd had an extra family move in with his into their FEMA trailer. Many came for a class or two, leave, maybe return for another class. About five hung with the full ten weeks. (I should give a huge thank you to the New Orleans Video Access Center, NOVAC, who loaned me four cameras for this workshop. www.novacvideo.org)

While I was wondering whether what I'd begun was really a good idea, Lettie Lee, who I don't think ever owned a camera, called and left a message on my voice mail. Carefully enunciating her words and in a loud voice she asked if she could register for my workshop. I knew this woman! She sounded just like the elderly Jewish women from the Borough Park section of Brooklyn where I used to work as a tenant organizer. As she spelled her name, and repeated her phone number, I could see her neat as a pin home, curtains and windows closed, smell her lingering smells of cooking...

Lettie Lee is not Jewish. She's a descendant of the Islenos, 18th century immigrants from the Canary Islands. The Islenos came to St. Bernard because it was warm, because they could, because it was surrounded by water and they knew how to fish. Proud Spaniards, they became Southern to the core, and they rooted themselves in the Parish, giving names like Nunez and Perez to the roads and schools. Lettie does not keep a neat home, she doesn't like to cook.

Like everyone down in this part of the world, it seems, Lettie has a very long name (Lettie Anne-Marie, something something Lee Henderson...) a few middle names, a name received at Communion, a maiden name, a married name. None are foresaken. But she calls herself Lettie Lee.

When I met her I immediately felt like Lettie was family, from the side that's rock solid. Reliable, emotionally stable. Lettie always looks and sounds as though she's had a good night's sleep. Of course I was wrong. One afternoon, her broad, sunny face relaxed and grew drawn, as she mumbled, barely in earshot -- 'Katrina ruined everything.'

She spoke these words as she was heading into her tin can of a FEMA trailer, where she lived alone. Lettie's husband died in the 60's from an electrical explosion on the job. Lettie makes ends meet now by working as a driver for Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Lettie's trailer was lined up with 150 others in a flat, featureless FEMA trailer park. Dreary, like in refugee camp dreary. How come there was not the smallest amenity? Like -- a bench? These homes were small. You needed a place outside to sit, and to find companionship. The place could use a planter I thought, with geraniums. 'Temporary' rang out from every detail, although the residents of this FEMA park had been there for over a year, so you'd think that temporary wasn't the right attitude on the part of the government who'd doled them out, painfully slowly, often years after the storm. I'm a complainer. Lettie does not often complain. It's a roof over my head she'd say. without a hint of despair as she moved her clothes over so she could get into bed at night (there was no other place to store her clothes, so they were arranged in no particular order on one half of the bed)

The first assignment, that chestnut beloved by documentary teachers -- the vox populi, voice of the people "man on the street" interview. Ask a half dozen people the exact same (single) question.

OK everybody. You're going to work in partners, one person holding the camera, the other handling the social aspect of the project -- deciding on a question, choosing the spot you'll stand to find your populi, the people, and then ingratiating yourself with these total strangers and convincing them to stop for a moment and talk to you. Then you'll switch roles.

I paired Lettie up with a man about the same age, whose name I no longer remember, though I remember his shiny bald head, his sad smile. Like Lettie, unfailingly polite. He called me in the afternoon to apologize. He couldn't accompany Lettie on her assignment that evening. He sounded tired. Because he'd had a heart attack that morning. He was very sorry.

So I went with Lettie that evening, taking the job of cameraperson. The place she wanted to start was her FEMA trailer park. Under a bright street light (I forgot. There was one amenity. Blazing lights which went on at dusk, and flooded the park with light till dawn) Lettie found a security guard. Would he talk to us? I was sure I knew the answer, but Lettie would never assume. She asked would he talk to us. No. He wouldn't answer any questions, especially (as I'd asked) not the name of his employer, whether it was the same outfit -- Blackwater -- that was earning notoriety in Iraq. (It was.)

But we weren't there to investigate. Lettie was there for what she's best at -- coaxing conversation through gentle and genuine interest and a touch of hilarity. We left the park in search of a subject, and we found one after another outside the Walgreens, at the busy intersection of Judge Perez and Paris Road. Who would have guessed that Lettie -- my little old Jewish lady student -- would be so magnificently suited to this kind of activity.

"Do you have a junk drawer?"

I don't think there will ever be a better vox populi question. Not ever.

A couple stopped and happily responded to this apparently innocent query.

Man: 'Yes, it's where I keep keys, socks, photos of old girlfriends ... and many many slides.'

After I go, my hope is that my wife [whose standing right next to him] will go through them.

Wife: I plan on getting remarried.

Lettie: How will you find the time to find someone if you're going through all those slides?

Second interview subject: My FEMA trailer is a junk drawer. Entergy promises to turn on the electricity soon. Hey Herman (calling over to a grizzled toothless man standing by their car, a dozen yards from us) You gotta junk drawer?

Yes ma'am.

Whaddya got in it?

Junk. [grin]

A heavyset man who calls himself Slim pulls a pair of crab forks out of his pocket. I forget why he did this but you can tell he adores his crab forks. Lettie talked to Slim and his eerily cheerful wife, Elsie, until she found out they couldn't return to their home because of some bureaucratic detail -- like no deed for the trailer they'd lived in for their entired married life. I heard of a woman who drowned in the attempt to return home to retrieve her documents.

And so Lettie, as she would unfailingly do every time she encountered a stranger who was overwhelmed by the problems of returning home, offered to help. If I find something out, she tells Slim and Elsie, I'll come find you. Tell me where do you live? She smiles, laughs, Slim and Elsie laugh, roar even.

I promise to post a piece of the interview -- which we edited down to a 15 minute film that won 2nd place in the shorts category at that year's Nunez College - sponsored Pelican D'Or Film Fesitval.

Lettie, of course, gave me the statue of a pelican she received.

These amazing stockings were spotted at the Broadway-Lafayette station, waiting for the F train.

And this photos has nothing to do with the continuing saga of the Garden of H.O.P.E. (Helping People With Everything) and the work to finish Mama Sue's Garden, my film about three people recovering each in his or her own way from Hurricane Katrina. And St. Bernard Parish.

I just loved this beautiful pose against the grit of the subway. This is where I live, but I'm spending a lot of time looking at the people of my film, subjects, we filmmakers call them, as they were three years ago. Strange, to be living in the recent past like this. They're moving forward, and I'm kind of stuck.

Today I logged a tape of Mama Sue sitting on her front porch -- of a very unfinished house -- dragging away on her cigarette as she explains how different she is from her husband Lou. In two weeks I hope to go into the editing room.

But we're all together in the present, fantacizing about our garden, drafting proposals (one is going off to Post Cereal and I hope you vote for it. It's one of those) and until just two weeks ago, that felt great. Then...I get a call from August, who is called in the proposal .. master gardener. He's some gardener. He really is.

August's voice -- far away, there's a frantic note.

"Call me. Please. " Followed by a lot of inaudible noise. "We might have to postpone this garden." He leaves a second and a third message, before I get the first one.

He's referring to the oil spill that's spreading like a curse across the Gulf of Mexico. Tonight's news doesn't say where the oil is any more. They're talking about whose to blame. When I look at the diagrams of the area, it seems to be heading in the direction of St. Bernard Parish. But they only mention the Chandleur Islands. St. Bernard lies behind them. And unlike those barrier Islands, St. Bernard is inhabited, and fishing is a way of life, not just for the fishermen and their families, but for everyone. One afternoon I remember seeing a boy commandeer a pirogue -- a little wooden motor boat. This one was painted, in intricate henna like designs - out on the 40 aubit canal. I assume he was headed down into the bayous. It was in the afternoon, and I thought -- wow! This is what kids do after school? He looked so calm, centered, strong -- likeHuck Finn. It's a strong belief of mine that all boys at the age of 13 should be sent down the Mississippi in a raft. Keep 'em out of trouble. The scene I remember of this teenage boy looking so utterly serene proves me right I think.

St. Bernard -- where I filmed for four months and where I dove, willy nilly, without much careful thought into the creation of a community garden on empty land. There's so much empty land now -- where houses used to stand. We thought...this is a good idea! We've battled the exhaustion, illnesses, entropy of this parish. It's hard for people to sign on to this project, Lettie Lee keeps telling me. People don't have the energy. They don't have the time But we want them to, all of us -- Mama Sue, World (World is August's nickname, gotten from his DJ days cause he was World-wise) Lettie Lee, David, and me -- even though we really don't know how we're going to accomplish it.

So I called August back and he didn't pick up. I called again, and again, no answer.

I wondered -- is it because I didn't call back soon enough? Is he so bummed out by what's threatening to happen to his Parish (even though he badmouths St. Bernard for being behind the times, a bastion of racism and so on, it's a haven for the likes of World, who spends long stretches of time on the banks of a bayou, pulling one catfish out after another) that he can't even talk about how he feels? He's pissed, I imagine. Or he's just completely depressed. One of these days he'll pick up the phone and I"ll find out.

To have your home and land die twice. That's a good excuse for anything.

It's been way too long, I know, between posts. Since the last post, Al and I travelled down to Nicaragua. A working vacation, we stayed in a small language school/inn and studied Spanish and toured the countryside with our wonderful hosts. A plug. I must. Escuela de Espanole de Mariposa. (oh dear. I'm sure I've done the grammar wrong on this. My Spanish is still, I'm afriad, very shaky) Paulette Goudge runs the school, and is one of those unusual people who does good things for her community, while seemingly having a wonderful time. She's got an understated British sense of humor, that made me not mind getting up at 7 a.m. for class, knowing she'd be at the breakfast table, chugging her coffee, cigarette in hand, with a sardonic twinkle in her eye. She pays her staff well -- and they taught us well! -- rescues horses, dogs, whatever and they loll about everywhere in her lushly planted mini jungle. (Not the horses. The dogs and cats loll.) And plows whatever profit she earns into the very poor lives of her surrounding neighbors, meanwhile demonstrating to them the benefits of solar energy and chemical toilets. In other words, Paulette really really rocks.

After a week at La Mariposa, we headed down to Granada and then to the Pacific coast.

Our first night in Granada, in the central square, we stopped to listen to a small band of troubadors serenading a little girl on her birthday. Just a little family gathering, and three or four musicians. Her father (I'm assuming) noticed us, and of course noted we were gringos. Was it because of that that he, smiling from ear to ear, sent us via one of his nieces, or whomever, a huge piece of birthday cake each and a cup of soda? This was lucky because that night, as on at least one other, a blackout plunged the city in darkness for about two hours, Without the cake, we would have had no dinner at all. Lack of electricity (and water) throughout the country are doggedly intractable problems.

Despite people all over Nica. adopting American dress and names (One of my teachers was named Jimmy, whose son was Steve, e.g.) it's got roots back in Europe, from a long ago century. Kind of like New Orleans. In fact, I remember telling Al -- Granada has something of the feel of New Orleans. The width of the streets, height of curbs, central square all brought me back to my adopted city. And when a group of churchmen, headed down the street with a statue of Jesus, playing a cacaphonous, dark, dirge-like brass number , reminiscent of a Second Line (but without any of New Orleanian irreverence and hi jinx) the link had been secured.

Next post: We got the land! We got the land! the Garden of H.O.P.E. signed the contract!

more to follow.....

The First Time

The first time I went down to New Orleans, it was with a common purpose. I travelled down like thousands of others wanting do something concrete, with my own hands, to add a tiny smidgen of relief. It was 2006, and a year, to the week, after Hurricane Katrina. I went down with Al, my husband and comrade, driving from New York, for what we figured would be a week's worth of something physical. Maybe so many people wanted to "get physical" because they [we] were so angry. A new way to give meaning to "if I had a hammer." Because Al is asthmatic, we couldn't sign on with Habitat for Humanity

This is Al. you'll have to tilt your head to the

left, I'm afraid. Can't figure out how to

rotate my pics yet. They came un-done once

uploaded. Beginning blogger, what can I say?

to do house gutting which would put us in contact with vast amounts of mold, dust and unnamed harmful substances. We perused our options on the web. We found an easygoing, come-on-give-us-what you-can little organization called Emergency Communities. We liked what we read. Come chop onions, serve the residents up glop, serve the house gutting Habitat people, bring your own tools, massage tables, hands, songs...They were the next generation hippies? Myself from the Baby Boomer Generation, they sounded like our people. We took our time getting down there, as we wanted to explore some of the South. We stopped in at Lexington, Va, visited the tomb of Stonewall Jackson, a dark tall monument in the local graveyard -- I always go to the gravesites of famous people. Something always...happens -- and checked in on in one of the houses he'd lived in briefly. I asked the guide, who I guessed was retired, and a volunteer, whether Jackson -- who was a widower by then -- had slept with his house slave. Something about the situation there... Him alone, a woman devoted to his care...I would have been surprised if things were otherwise. Mr. Volunteer Guide grew taciturn and hustled us out of the tour so fast. We strolled through a Fiddler's Convention in Galax, Va. If you go, don't bother with the competition performances. The performers seem so nervous to be on stage and not in the comfort of their front porches, They stand stiffly, seem to want to close their eyes to avoid seeing the hundreds of people in folding chairs in front of them, and saw, or painfully plunk their way through three minutes of music they've...rehearsed. You don't want to witness rehearsed fiddling. Go instead to the trailers, where the musicians live and jam, at night. You'll find the same people you saw in the afternoon, but they're alive. They stand around in the light spilling out of the trailers, or prop up a flashlight and in small pick up bands fiddle, strum, sing their hearts out. Requests? Salty Dog! I shouted. It was glorious! From there we drove down to Birmingham and visited the Civil Rights Museum, listened as the congregation of the 16th Street Baptist Church, where the four African American girls had been killed by a bomb nearly fifty years prior, just a block from the Museum, belted forth its Sunday Gospel. Though a latecomer beckoned us inside, we wavered. I should say, Al wavered. I would have dashed through the doors. But Al said, no, we're not meant to be there. Al, a student -- in the depest sense -- of American history knows the story of the Civil Rights movement in complete detail. As full recall as though he'd been present at each march and act of civil disobedience, sit in and strike. Al isn't a tourist or voyeur when it comes to living history. I didn't question his judgement. We stayed outside, as the church doors closed.

Picture of church was intended for this spot. How DO you put a second pic up

with blogger? It's a small, red brick church, on the corner, with a white steeple. It's pretty but normally, you wouldn't look twice.

We drove on, stopping in Montgomery, Ala for the night. Snapped a pic of a really beautiful monument outside the office of the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) -- and I'll get that up too, once I've mastered the system -- and then headed for lunch at this famous diner/restaurant in Mobile -- lot of b&w photos of previous owners, you know the format. Then headed due West on Rte 90 right on the edge of the Gulf through Missippipi, where out to the left we saw nothing but white sand where dozens of gambling resorts had once stood. We detoured around Bay St. Louie where the bridge was still down a year later, and on the sixth day drove into New Orleans.