Philadelphia Freedom!

(A few years ago, I went for my evening run. That song came on my ipod, and I got really enthusiastic about it, and totally wiped out, skinning my knees and hands. I still laugh about it, and can barely go to or talk about Philadelphia without adding "freedom" on the end of it.)



I've done some pretty crazy traveling. I've taken a 19 hour direct flight, and lived out of one carry on piece of luggage for two weeks. I once drove from northwestern NJ to Richmond for a day trip (680 mile round trip). I drove 3300 miles in ten days with a team of Europeans, traveling from NJ to visit Memphis and Chicago and everything in between. I drove from New Jersey to Seattle via Canada.

But I had never flown cross country for a single day before.

So when it became feasible to attend my good friend Amanda's bachelorette party in Philly from New Orleans (cheap flight+ savvy planning by her awesome maid of honor), I decided to do it. Not only would it make for a good story, but it would also probably be a really great trip.

I was at Louis Armstrong Airport before 6:00 AM CST on Saturday. Flight boarded on time, but got a late start taking off because it was excessively foggy. Turns out, a lot of flights had been cancelled the day before because it was too cold. They don't have de-icing equipment in New Orleans. As a result, it was a really full flight, which made it really fun when most of us were running late for our connecting flights in Atlanta, especially when one guy about halfway back in the cabin started yelling at everyone to get out of his way because HE had a connecting flight to make.

I had ten minutes to make it across an enormous airport that I'd never been to before. I made it. I ran onto the plane just before the closed the doors.

Landed in Philly a little late because it was actively snowing. Still made it to the hotel by 2:00 PM EST using a map I had drawn in my notebook of the few blocks surrounding City Hall. It was really great to catch up with friends while we waited for the bride, who was VERY surprised to see me-- I had told her I was going to be really busy on Saturday morning, but would talk to her in the evening during her party, which wasn't a lie, because I was busy trying to catch flights to Philadelphia.


We had a great view of the snow falling at City Hall!

We enjoyed dinner at La Viola, a lovely BYOB Italian bistro a short walk from City Hall. Amanda's almost husband has a gluten intolerance of sorts, so we try to pasta her up when we can. We spent the rest of the evening enjoying the lounge and the lanes at Lucky Strike, a bowling alley just a block or two from the hotel. After a while, the game stopped being about getting the most pins, and started being about playing for speed-- who could throw the fastest ball. We had a blast.


Jamie, Amanda and I with silly mustaches. They are also two of my bridesmaids, so I was stoked to see them!

The next morning, those who had spent the night had a full hot brunch in the hotel before taking various trains in different directions. I was exhausted but definitely had a great time seeing some friends and celebrating Amanda in a cool city!

As I waited outside on the platform at 30th Street Station waiting for the Regional Rail back to the airport, enjoying a little fresh, crisp, wintery air, I made two observations:

• The Saints hat that I was wearing because it was the only one I could find in New Orleans was probably going to get me in trouble after they knocked the Philadelphia Eagles out of the playoffs.
• I am so privileged that I can enjoy a breath of cold, fresh air before spending a day in airports and on planes. The gentleman asleep under the ratty blanket and pile of cardboard in the stairwell of the SEPTA station was probably not enjoying that same cold air.

Heading back to New Orleans via Atlanta, my layover was a bit longer. There are no real vegetarian options in that airport, which made it feel even longer. And then, after we boarded the plane, it actually got even longer, because a seat light needed to be repaired. I still made it home in New Orleans in time for dinner (thanks for cooking, Alex!).

So now that I have leveled up from "travel enthusiast" to "travel junkie", I'm looking forward to a few day trips to Baton Rouge in the next few weeks, a few days home in February for Amanda's wedding, the adventures that will certainly ensue with Abi visits in March, a conference in D.C. later that month, possibly another conference in Gainesville, FL in May... always on the go, this girl.


One of the other accomplishments of this crazy trip was to get my dress for Amanda's wedding to take back to New Orleans, since I failed to get it altered in December when I was home. Oops. Jamie kindly helped transport the gown, and left a little note for me. You know you travel a lot when: even your stuff has a travel itinerary!

Beasts of the Southern Wild

I was feeling a little run down last night, so I decided to curl up in my bed early with my laptop and watch a movie. I had just received a copy of Beasts of the Southern Wild, which I finally ordered last week after hearing about it for the dozenth or so time while working down the bayou. I had only heard criticism from the communities I've been working with, so I watched the movie with a pretty steep bias.

Ok, this is the part where I'm going to start discussing the film with reckless abandon, so if you are highly offended by spoilers and haven't seen it, go away (for now, I hope you'll come back another time to talk about this and other things). If you haven't seen it, I'd be more than happy to lend you my copy. Just send me your address.

Here, I'll stick a map in here so you don't have to see more words if you don't want to:


View Larger Map

So that long, skinny northeast-southwest line is the road to Isle de Jean Charles (the northish-southish oriented thing at the southwestern end of the road), one of the communities I'm working with through the First People's Conservation Council. It has recently been rebuilt, but it's still just a narrow two lane road with no kind of buffer on either side of it to protect it from high or rough water. (In fact, there was a temporary road put on the southern side of it, that is being removed-- why? Why spend the extra time and money to remove something that might potentially help? Sigh, bureaucracy.) And there is definitely plenty of water there, since various levees and flood walls have completely destroyed the wetlands as well as the island itself. Pointe-aux-Chenes, which I've mentioned once or twice, is what the road connects Isle de Jean Charles to. (And Montegut, just north of Pointe-aux-Chenes, is where the movie was filmed.)

Isle de Jean Charles is the place that bayou village Charles Doucet, which its citizens call The Bathtub, is based on. And while I think the movie did an adequate job of capturing the some of the joy and camaraderie that exists in little bayou camps, I could immediately see why the people of these real-life communities take exception to the movie's portrayal of them. The people of The Bathtub live in absolute squalor.

There were a lot of things I liked about the movie. For one, it's just beautifully filmed-- yes, literally filmed in a world where most major movies are made digitally. I like that the actors and actresses were mostly, if not all, from south Louisiana (and for many, this was their first time acting).

There's sort of this whimsical, mystical take on climate change, the melting ice caps, and the destruction of the bayou, and the main character, Hushpuppy, says a lot of things about the interconnectedness of the universe. "The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right."


I liked the honesty of the very sad, difficult, complicated story line of the storm's aftermath: this community trying to fend for itself by building a floating camp and blowing up the levee that was keeping their village under water; the fact that the mandatory evacuation enforced several weeks after the hurricane, with emphasis on the "force" part of "enforced"; the one way bus tickets issued to miscellaneous towns around the US. The storm in question wasn't called Katrina, but certainly carried a lot of her baggage.

I liked the inclusion of salt water intrusion, a subtle nod to the very real environmental problems of this region. "Two weeks later, everything started to die." Here's my picture from September of trees killed off by salt water in that neck of the bayou:


There was a lot about this movie that gave me mixed feelings. Like I said, the film portrays bayou camp dwellers as living in filth. I don't think that was especially true to real life, nor do I think it was relevant to the story. I'm sure there are some people who live in run down places amidst random junk, far beyond the grid, but that's not the norm. I've been in some homes that have an eclectic collection of things, but none of them have been so dirty.

I was also frustrated by the idea of the freedom of poverty. I don't think it was especially realistic. Yes, there is certainly some freedom for a culture that is not bound by bank accounts, but I suspect there are way more challenges than benefits (oh hey, super timely article "It Is Expensive to Be Poor"!). I'm not quite sure how Wink gets to the hospital, and back. And what about food? There are plenty of scenes that involve eating, whole chickens put on grills, plentiful seafood, hot peppers growing on the floating camp... in one scene, Hushpuppy is shown munching on some leaf. What about when the wetlands are killed by pollution or salt water? How did they get fresh water? What about oil? The BP Horizon disaster happened when this movie was being filmed. All kinds of environmental problems contribute to challenging food security. When you don't have a bank account, you can't just go buy what you can't catch.

The end scene with the community walking down the road to The Bathtub, which is the actual road to Isle de Jean Charles, and the waves splashing up across it... eerie. And so real. It doesn't even take a storm, just a stiff wind or a full moon. These are communities just about ready to fall off the earth, and with practically no attention or sympathy. I mean, in the movie, the authorities didn't notice the people still in The Bathtub until after they blew up a levee to let the water out. It took a literal explosion for anyone to check on them. That was probably relatively close to reality, because as it is, there is little to no local, state or federal government assistance for these precious places, or the people in them.

I guess that's where other people step in, take exception to an otherwise beautiful movie, and try their best to raise some awareness and get some help to these communities. There's a lot of good going on down here, but it seems there are infinite challenges for each positive step taken. I know I am barely scratching the surface. But, Hushpuppy said it, late in the film, "I see that I'm a little piece of a big, big universe. And that makes things right."

Grand Bayou

This past Monday, I visited my first water bound community in Louisiana, meaning, there aren't roads or paths between the houses-- just water and trembling prairie. There is one road that ends at one family's house, by the old school house, and that's it. They use boats to get around the neighborhood.


View Larger Map

I was in Grand Bayou for another session with the group I met with in Pointe-aux-Chenes, the Mobile Farm Market. This is one of the kindest communities I've worked with yet. I was welcomed warmly into the home of people I hadn't met before. The chief of Grand Bayou was recovering from a cold, and also doesn't do cold weather, so I didn't see her. She and I have been in contact though, and she has a lot of great conservation ideas for her community that I'm hoping to help with.





The community felt very peaceful despite the frigid, high winds. I'm looking forward to exploring more beyond the end of the road, but it was definitely not a good day for a boat ride.

Aside from the one home, there was an old schoolhouse at the end of the road. It was wrecked by Katrina. It still stands empty.


Another thing I found interesting was these raised garden beds that people were talking about. It turns out, the community couldn't get funding or approval to build up levees, but could get funding AND approval to create raised garden beds. So they have some very tall garden beds that they're trying to figure out what to do with.

Grand Bayou is a quiet, friendly place. I'm really looking forward to working with this community this spring.

the frozen tundra of South Louisiana

I hope wherever you are reading this from, you are keeping warm.


(from here)

This weather feels like January to me. I don't mind wearing a sweater and a scarf. That being said, I realize South Louisiana is absolutely not built for this.

We have been running our faucets as per our landlord's instructions for 30+ hours as of my writing this (the temperature never broke freezing here today). It's not even the sound of the running water that gets to me... you can imagine how this conservationist feels about it, especially in a region where salt water intrusion is such a threat to the water supply! But these homes were built with exposed pipes and very little insulation, and there have been reports of burst pipes all over New Orleans today.

The bayou is in the midst of citrus season, but likely lost the vast majority of their grapefruits, oranges and lemons in these two days of deep freeze. Folks were encouraged to pick fruit on Sunday, but you can only eat and share so much fruit at a time, and not everyone is able to pick too much themselves. This month's YAV service project was to glean in Bayou Blue on the 18th, to share with the community and local food  banks. Instead, it's looking like we'll be picking rotten fruit to keep the trees in production for next year.


As I drove across town to give a presentation last night, I saw a few people on some of the neutral grounds (the grassy median in the middle of most major streets), curled up under modest blankets. I heard there were several emergency cold weather shelters around the city, but clearly some of them didn't get the message. I hope they found out before too long and were able to get there.

I know South Louisiana doesn't have it that bad with lows in the upper 20s. I have my sweet winter coat and a Saints hat that I got for Mike when he was here for Thanksgiving (he didn't think he'd need it in the desert!). But thinking about the local context, the upper 20s are just as bad here as the single digits are at home in New Jersey and the sub-zero temperatures are elsewhere.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's predicted high of 48 and finally turning off the water in this house!

What even is my job?!

I arrived back in New Orleans yesterday. Even though I'm still trying to figure out which of the four time zones I've visited in the past week I left my brain in, I was back to work today. I met my supervisor at her house to take a ride down to Pointe-aux-Chenes for an evening meeting with a representative from the Intertribal Agricultural Council and the Mobile Farmers Market.

While she was getting ready to go, she asked about my time home and my travels. Somehow we got to talking about how I would go about answering relatives when they ask what I am doing in South Louisiana.

FUMBLE! (Sorry, watching the Saints game. I am back in South Louisiana.) (But also, that describes how I generally feel when trying to explain to people what my job is.)

Really, it's difficult to describe my work. The day to day is always different. Giving presentations, coordinating conservation efforts, planning and taking part in planting projects, connecting different organizations... some days I'm working from home in my pajamas, some days I'm dressed up and sitting in meetings (and some days I'm dressed down, I love working in natural resources conservation), some days I'm covered in mud. I'll let you guess which days are my favorites.

This meeting tonight was really good. There were about twenty people from the Pointe-aux-Chenes (Point-au-Chenes? Pointe-aux-Chien? I've seen it several different ways. Who knows.) to talk about first people's agricultural products. The Mobile Farmers Market gathers products from around the country-- there was blue corn flour and dried cholla blossoms from the southwest, cranberry syrup and organic corn from Minnesota and Wisconsin, silver and beaded jewlery, wild rice (real wild rice, which is very different from what they call wild rice in the grocery stores), salmon from the Pacific Northwest.

The goals of the program are not just reconnecting tribal trade routes and selling goods, but telling stories. The program has revived food traditions for many tribes, regardless of their federal or state recognition or lack thereof. The IAC works to help tribes gain better access to USDA programs, and seeks market outlets for their goods. Some very cool work going on.

I enjoyed sharing a meal and talking with more members of the community, especially since I've been partnering with the First People's Conservation Council. Tonight I met a man who invited me to work as a deck hand on his shrimping trawler this May. YES PLEASE! I have been able to have the most unique experiences here in South Louisiana. Even as a vegetarian, that sounds awesome. First day back, and I'd say I'm off to a good start!

time

I mentioned in my last post that my plans to travel back to New Orleans on New Year's Day had changed. Through some cosmic bank error, I received an email from the airline changing my flight from the 1st to the 3rd. Two extra days with Mike in the desert have been pretty wonderful.

After rushing around like a madwoman for two weeks, it's been nice to just relax. My brain has been all sorts of confused about time zones. It doesn't help that we are less than three miles from the time zone boundary. It also really doesn't help that as of tomorrow, I will have been in all four continental US time zones in nine days (Eastern time at home in New Jersey, Mountain time in Arizona and Utah, Pacific time in Nevada and California, Central time in Louisiana).

The extra time in Arizona allowed me to be part of something Mike and I have been planning for a while-- acquiring a small friend for our beloved Red. She's never been an only cat before, and we thought she might like a playmate since Mike is at school all day. Mike and I went looking for a cat before I knew about the flight change, and it was love at first cat when we saw this little guy in the shelter:



He had a holding period of a week after his Christmas Eve dropoff. We imagine he was a nixed Christmas present. We picked him up today, and he has been an absolute love. He only stopped purring when he fell asleep and when we bathed him, but that's about it.



We named him Palo Verde after the state tree of Arizona! But we've been calling him green cat, our little pal, orange cat, stripey baby cat, etc.

I fly back to New Orleans in the morning, and get back to work saving the wetlands, but will very much enjoying a little more time hanging out with Mike, Red and green cat first.


Red Oak, the state tree of New Jersey!