On Saturday I went to see Waiting for Godot. Co-sponsored by Creative Time and the Classical Theater of Harlem in partnership with local colleges, high schools, and community organizations, the show was free and open to anyone who wanted to come. There's excellent information about the production here:
Waiting for Godot ran for two weekends, and was staged in two different neighborhoods. The first two performances took place at an intersection in the Lower Ninth Ward. I saw it the second weekend, when it was staged in and around an abandoned house in the New Orleans neighborhood of Gentilly (in/near the Upper Ninth Ward depending on who you talk to). At each performance there was seating for about 600 people, and they were turning folks away by the hundreds every night. On the night that I went -- the last night -- there were probably about a thousand people hoping to get in who were unable to get seats.
My evening started at 4:45 p.m., when I arrived to wait in line for my ticket. They were planning to hand out tickets at six, and there were already about 40 people in line ahead of me. They ended up giving out tickets an hour early because the line was so long. At that point I was no longer waiting for my ticket to Waiting for Godot, I was waiting for gumbo: the free gumbo they served at 6:30 p.m. It was delicious—well worth the wait!
The crowd was huge and included a lot of people who weren’t from New Orleans: college students, tourists, volunteers like me, and people who'd traveled to New Orleans for the show. I wish that more locals had been present, since the show was largely directed at them and designed to address the experiences of people living with the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. The people from the New York theater companies were particularly conspicuous. They weren't trying to be rude – they were just behaving like New York theater people (unsurprising) – but in New Orleans their attitude was inappropriately cool and brusque. Ditto most of the college students.
At seven o'clock the Salty Dog jazz band started to play, and they were wonderful. They let us in a procession across a bridge spanning the London Avenue Canal, down the levee (where it breached), and up into the bleachers. By lucky chance I ended up sitting in the third row in a crowd of people from the Lower Ninth Ward and Gentilly – right behind Anthea Pierce, whose son Wendell Pierce (a prominent actor) played the leading role of Vladimir. Wendell Pierce grew up in Gentilly, and is definitely a local hero. Ms. Anthea helped introduce the play, reading a poem and inviting us all to enjoy not the show, but her son’s performance. She was a hit.
The show started a bit late (8:15 or so), so we got some extra music. The band played jazzy gospel hymns and we sang along. A few people got up and danced, and everyone was moving – especially for “Elijah Day” and "When the Saints Go Marching in."
The show was beautifully, sensitively acted and produced. Although understated, Waiting for Godot’s relevance to post-Katrina New Orleans was intrinsically unmistakable and underscored by skillful staging. Vladimir’s and Estragon’s pursuits involved quite a bit of beat boxing and hip-hop dance, which was a particularly nice touch. Though seemingly light of heart, the character’s attempts to fill their empty time become increasingly contrived as the play progresses. They desperately try to keep busy in order to distract themselves from their nightmares, their memories of a traumatic experience which remains undefined throughout the play, and from their growing awareness of the fact that their lives now consist entirely of marking time. They complain about the silence and desolation of their meeting point—and we listened from the silent wreckage of what used to be a thriving urban neighborhood, a neighborhood in which many people are now waiting now for Godot but for FEMA, for insurance money, for help of any kind.
Vladimir and Estragon long to change their situation, but are held by the conviction that when Godot finally comes, they'll be saved. As the wait increases they forget what this salvation will actually look like. They begin to question their conviction, their memories (did Godot actually agree to meet us here?), their sanity, even their existence. How can you exist if someone who holds so much power over your life can ignore you so completely?
One of the lines in Vladimir's final monologue reads, “The air is filled with our cries!” Pierce delivered this line leaning out the second-story window desperately waving a white handkerchief. A few moments later he flipped through a flood destroyed photo album, showing us pages and pages of unrecognizable pictures and delivering the line, "Everything is dead." Many audience members responded with murmurs of agreement, "Amen," and "yes, it is."
Needless to say we gave an enthusiastic – if tearful – standing ovation. Music is a fundamental part of the healing process down here, and as we finished clapping Pierce began singing an upbeat, joyful, gospel “I’ll Fly Away,” encouraging everyone to join in. We did.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Saturday, November 10, 2007
accepted into grad school!
I just heard from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia--they like me! Graduate Diploma in Bioethics. A very exciting program. Which I can attend! Yay! Yay!
Now I just have to hear back from my first-choice school, the University of Melbourne. But really, I'd be quite happy with Monash. (happy! happy!)
Now I just have to hear back from my first-choice school, the University of Melbourne. But really, I'd be quite happy with Monash. (happy! happy!)
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
animal rescue
I volunteered at the Animal Rescue of New Orleans, a no-kill animal shelter that has bravely taken in thousands of the animals abandoned from Katrina. The previous owners of many of these animals were killed in the hurricane, or were not able to evacuate the animals with them because of the limitations of the rescuers.
Most of the other shelters in the Gulf Coast area took in the thousands of abandoned pets immediately following the hurricane, but then had to put many of them down a year later because the shelters didn’t have the resources to support so many animals. This shelter was instrumental not only in taking on so many animals, but also in helping to get hundreds of animals transferred to other shelters around the country, where they have a greater chance of being adopted. There’s a great video about them here.
These animals are stressed. Some were traumatized by the terror of the hurricane, flooding, fires and their aftermath, and seem to have animal PTSD. Others were also messed up by the chemical sludge they had to swim in to survive. All are cramped for space, despite the organization’s best efforts. Almost all of the animals were totally sweet once they got a bit of love.
I spent most of the day handling the trouble animals: running miles with the dogs and their pent-up energy, crooning and stroking the quivering ones, nuzzling with the lonely cats, socializing the fiercest babies. It was an incredibly rewarding day. Tears actually came to my eyes when one of the angriest dogs there, who was lashing out and harshly biting anyone who came near him at the beginning of the day, crept over to me and curled up on my lap and licked my fingers after we went on a long run together.
The people here are just as messed up as the animals, but you can't walk up to a strange person and cuddle them until it's ok. It was wonderful to be able to give some of the New Orleans residents the love they need.
Most of the other shelters in the Gulf Coast area took in the thousands of abandoned pets immediately following the hurricane, but then had to put many of them down a year later because the shelters didn’t have the resources to support so many animals. This shelter was instrumental not only in taking on so many animals, but also in helping to get hundreds of animals transferred to other shelters around the country, where they have a greater chance of being adopted. There’s a great video about them here.
These animals are stressed. Some were traumatized by the terror of the hurricane, flooding, fires and their aftermath, and seem to have animal PTSD. Others were also messed up by the chemical sludge they had to swim in to survive. All are cramped for space, despite the organization’s best efforts. Almost all of the animals were totally sweet once they got a bit of love.
I spent most of the day handling the trouble animals: running miles with the dogs and their pent-up energy, crooning and stroking the quivering ones, nuzzling with the lonely cats, socializing the fiercest babies. It was an incredibly rewarding day. Tears actually came to my eyes when one of the angriest dogs there, who was lashing out and harshly biting anyone who came near him at the beginning of the day, crept over to me and curled up on my lap and licked my fingers after we went on a long run together.
The people here are just as messed up as the animals, but you can't walk up to a strange person and cuddle them until it's ok. It was wonderful to be able to give some of the New Orleans residents the love they need.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Lower 9th Ward
We visited the Lower 9th Ward today. I expected the devastation and desolation, but not the beauty. It was gorgeous. As we all have heard, the entire ward is below sea level, bounded by a canal on two sides and the Mississippi River on another, surrounded by ineffective levees, on damp and unstable ground, and has (not surprisingly) been frequently flooded. What I had missed amid all of these facts was the obvious: left to it’s own devices, the ward is a natural flood plain, a marsh. Having been wiped fairly clean and then left alone for two years, it’s of course quickly returning to its natural state. There were gorgeous rushes and reeds, marsh grasses, flowers, shrubs, and vines. And the birds: stalking egrets, skulking osprey, tiny timid doves, swallows darting and skimming about, a miniscule stripped bird of prey that was hunting grasshoppers with the intensity of an eagle, and more. Since many of the human residents were killed or displaced, and those who we saw were quiet and dignified, there were blissfully few noises except for those of the birds. It was as if we were spending the afternoon in a park—one with a looming tragedy.
The details of the human drama that played out on this “ground” (mud, really) of course were ever-present, and made my throat tighten with grief, but this did not translate into any antipathy toward nature’s force here. What it brought to light more than anything was how weak our claim on this earth is, and how unimaginably strong the forces of nature (both large and small) are. Water toppled steel, fire melted glass and wood, ivy shunts off siding, birds unravel cloth. The real tragedy is not the hurricane, which was an unfortunately-located natural phenomenon after all, but our inability to live in a more sustainable place in the natural world.
I hope to visit the ward often again before we leave. I know I have only just begun to explore this beautiful neighborhood. It is so full of life.
The details of the human drama that played out on this “ground” (mud, really) of course were ever-present, and made my throat tighten with grief, but this did not translate into any antipathy toward nature’s force here. What it brought to light more than anything was how weak our claim on this earth is, and how unimaginably strong the forces of nature (both large and small) are. Water toppled steel, fire melted glass and wood, ivy shunts off siding, birds unravel cloth. The real tragedy is not the hurricane, which was an unfortunately-located natural phenomenon after all, but our inability to live in a more sustainable place in the natural world.
I hope to visit the ward often again before we leave. I know I have only just begun to explore this beautiful neighborhood. It is so full of life.
themes and variations
There should be signs at the New Orleans city limits saying “Abandon Expectations, All Ye Who Enter Here.” To function here requires a certain suspension of disbelief. At first it seems that you can never know what you’ll find around the next corner, or what you’ll hear when the next person opens his or her mouth. But we’ve started to notice some recurring themes:
I’ve always heard that New Orleans has great live music—it’s what the city is most famous for. However, I suspect that it’s impossible to understand what that means without experiencing it. Obviously the jazz bands are incredible, but the excellence is not confined to this local specialty. Strolling down Bourbon Street on Wednesday night, we stumbled upon the best bagpipe player I’ve ever heard—in or out of the British Isles! After listening for several minutes in a state of delighted incredulity, we continued down the street, pausing to appreciate the fantastic 12-piece jazz band that had set up a few blocks down. The fact that none of these musicians looked older than 20 years old made their performance all the more impressive. Later that night, we stopped by the weekly open mike in the bar around the corner from our bunk house. (The bar is called the Buddha Belly, and is a combination watering hole and laundromat.) Every act was good, and our favorite was a crusty old man singing sweet gravely blues. We’ve been trying to figure out what accounts for this phenomenon. It’s not just that the musicians know how to play, it’s also that everyone knows how to listen. The good music has an appreciative audience and lots of community support. Furthermore, people’s tolerance for bad music is very low. Since coming down here, we’ve hardly heard any of the manufactured top 40 insipidness of the week that peppers the radio back home. This is more refreshing than we could have anticipated. We hadn’t realized how much canned poor music had poisoned our souls.
New Orleans is also famed as a welcoming and friendly city. We have found this to be overwhelmingly true. In passing encounters, people are genuinely nicer, warmer, and more polite than we ever are up north, even with our dearest acquaintances. The city also seems much more racially integrated than New England cities, though people tell me that racial tensions here have increased in the wake of the storm. We have certainly felt much more comfortable being in the racial minority down here than we ever do in similar circumstances at home. This is really good, since most of the time here we are the only white people around. We will sorely miss this relaxed camaraderie when we come back up north.
Live Oaks grow throughout the city, arching their branches over the boulevards. They are a favorite feature of our morning jogs. We wonder if there were other trees around before the storm that didn’t weather it, or if Live Oaks have always reigned supreme.
One strange thing we’ve notice is an absence of scent. Boston is always smelly in one way or another, whether you’re smelling the sea air, the nearest garbage bin, or a passing urbanite’s expensive cologne. Mostly New Orleans smells like nothing, even to Erika’s perceptive nose. It’s disconcerting—we feel deprived of a sense. Even scrabbling around face-first in rotten houses produces no smells. Our recent trip to the city dump was delightful for many reasons, one of which was the slight sulphurus scent that reminded us that we have noses.
Perhaps the saddest thing about New Orleans (at least in our stomachs’ opinions) is the diet’s remarkable lack of vegetables. Not even a collard green or brussel sprout in sight. It’s all chicken, sugar, seafood, sugar, rice, sugar, and beans (with sugar!). And some rum. All very tasty, mind you, but not conducive to digestive comfort or nutrition.
Tomorrow, I’m back at the library. I hope to have the new shelving system in place by Wednesday. The kids are adorable, and I’d love to gush on proudly about them for hours, but won’t now. Maybe next post.
I’ve always heard that New Orleans has great live music—it’s what the city is most famous for. However, I suspect that it’s impossible to understand what that means without experiencing it. Obviously the jazz bands are incredible, but the excellence is not confined to this local specialty. Strolling down Bourbon Street on Wednesday night, we stumbled upon the best bagpipe player I’ve ever heard—in or out of the British Isles! After listening for several minutes in a state of delighted incredulity, we continued down the street, pausing to appreciate the fantastic 12-piece jazz band that had set up a few blocks down. The fact that none of these musicians looked older than 20 years old made their performance all the more impressive. Later that night, we stopped by the weekly open mike in the bar around the corner from our bunk house. (The bar is called the Buddha Belly, and is a combination watering hole and laundromat.) Every act was good, and our favorite was a crusty old man singing sweet gravely blues. We’ve been trying to figure out what accounts for this phenomenon. It’s not just that the musicians know how to play, it’s also that everyone knows how to listen. The good music has an appreciative audience and lots of community support. Furthermore, people’s tolerance for bad music is very low. Since coming down here, we’ve hardly heard any of the manufactured top 40 insipidness of the week that peppers the radio back home. This is more refreshing than we could have anticipated. We hadn’t realized how much canned poor music had poisoned our souls.
New Orleans is also famed as a welcoming and friendly city. We have found this to be overwhelmingly true. In passing encounters, people are genuinely nicer, warmer, and more polite than we ever are up north, even with our dearest acquaintances. The city also seems much more racially integrated than New England cities, though people tell me that racial tensions here have increased in the wake of the storm. We have certainly felt much more comfortable being in the racial minority down here than we ever do in similar circumstances at home. This is really good, since most of the time here we are the only white people around. We will sorely miss this relaxed camaraderie when we come back up north.
Live Oaks grow throughout the city, arching their branches over the boulevards. They are a favorite feature of our morning jogs. We wonder if there were other trees around before the storm that didn’t weather it, or if Live Oaks have always reigned supreme.
One strange thing we’ve notice is an absence of scent. Boston is always smelly in one way or another, whether you’re smelling the sea air, the nearest garbage bin, or a passing urbanite’s expensive cologne. Mostly New Orleans smells like nothing, even to Erika’s perceptive nose. It’s disconcerting—we feel deprived of a sense. Even scrabbling around face-first in rotten houses produces no smells. Our recent trip to the city dump was delightful for many reasons, one of which was the slight sulphurus scent that reminded us that we have noses.
Perhaps the saddest thing about New Orleans (at least in our stomachs’ opinions) is the diet’s remarkable lack of vegetables. Not even a collard green or brussel sprout in sight. It’s all chicken, sugar, seafood, sugar, rice, sugar, and beans (with sugar!). And some rum. All very tasty, mind you, but not conducive to digestive comfort or nutrition.
Tomorrow, I’m back at the library. I hope to have the new shelving system in place by Wednesday. The kids are adorable, and I’d love to gush on proudly about them for hours, but won’t now. Maybe next post.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
food bank
Today I unpacked just shy of 4,000 pounds of food. I was one of three people unpacking boxes of donated food at a huge Gulf Coast regional food bank. All told, the team of nine of us unpacked, sorted, repacked, and prepared 11,850 pounds of food for distribution. That's more than 9,000 meals, 4% of their annual goal. We were psyched to be able to help, and had fun setting a fast pace.
The food bank, Second Harvest, was amazing. They serve hundreds of thousands of people throughout the entire Gulf Coast region. Their facilities, efficiency, dedication, etc., were inspiring. It was great to see a place equally good at logistics and ideals.
Last night Petra and I went down to Bourbon Street and Frenchman Street, the touristy and local centers of New Orleans night life, to witness the Halloween revelry. It was... out of control. Fun, though. There were tons of queer people around, which was refreshing, and a real mix of people: all ages, races, classes. Everyone was dressed up. I was a cowboy and Petra was a butterfly. Sorry, we forgot to take pictures. Most others' costumes defied convenient description. I played drums for a while in an awesome impromptu percussion jam. There was a lot of great street music--I mean really great. We look forward to exploring the French Quarter in the daylight. It seems strange and beautiful.
The food bank, Second Harvest, was amazing. They serve hundreds of thousands of people throughout the entire Gulf Coast region. Their facilities, efficiency, dedication, etc., were inspiring. It was great to see a place equally good at logistics and ideals.
Last night Petra and I went down to Bourbon Street and Frenchman Street, the touristy and local centers of New Orleans night life, to witness the Halloween revelry. It was... out of control. Fun, though. There were tons of queer people around, which was refreshing, and a real mix of people: all ages, races, classes. Everyone was dressed up. I was a cowboy and Petra was a butterfly. Sorry, we forgot to take pictures. Most others' costumes defied convenient description. I played drums for a while in an awesome impromptu percussion jam. There was a lot of great street music--I mean really great. We look forward to exploring the French Quarter in the daylight. It seems strange and beautiful.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
getting started
We've been in New Orleans for two full days, and we're settling in nicely. On Sunday we did chores and finished setting up our bunk bed area. We like our compact space-its simple and fun, and we’re right by the window.
My Sunday chores included a trip to the Verizon store. My cell phone - the one Erika and I are both using these days - died midway through Mississippi. It was a strange new kind of broken, and one that resulted in the irretrievable loss of all of the phone numbers stored in our cell phone contact list. Consequently, we can now call only the two phone numbers we still have memorized: our parents. If you are not they, please send us your phone numbers! E-mail us, call us, text us your name so we'll know it's you and can save the “unknown number” accordingly! My/our cell number is the same. Thanks in advance!
On Monday we started our projects! Erika’s rebuilding Miss Evelyn’s house, a two-storey Victorian. Miss Evelyn couldn’t get back into the city for months after the storm, and when she finally did she discovered that the storm had blown her roof off. Rain had been collecting in the house during her absence, ruining the interior. The house has been stripped to the studs now, but the volunteers were miraculously able to save some of the original wood details (which are very nice).
Erika accomplished a lot on Monday. She patched a big hole in the wall by installing new siding (slow but satisfying work), then cleared scrap wood from the house. Using a big car-style jack, she then jacked up a corner of the house to make it level (which was totally exciting). The end of the day found Erika tiered but satisfied. It will take some time to adjust to doing this kind of labor again - this is no desk job!
I’m currently staffing the library at a K-8th grade charter school not far from where we’re staying. Hands On volunteers established the library about a year ago, raising money and collecting donations of books. Prior to that, the school had no library and the book-to-child ratio in the neighborhood was something like one book for every twenty-four children. Today, I’d guess that the library’s got about 7,000 books-hooray! The shelving system seems to be a bit haphazard, so I’m reorganizing.
It’s disheartening to see how many children are reading well below grade level. Only two or three kids have checked out the kind of books I would expect them to be reading at their respective ages and grades, and I’ve only met one kid reading books I would consider advanced for her grade. There's a fourth-grade reading group that meets in the library every morning. Most of them couldn't make it through a Berenstain Bears book.
In spite of this melancholy reality, it's a pretty fun place to be. The kids are high-energy and friendly, and the novelty of the library has definitely not worn off. There also really excited about Halloween tomorrow. They get to wear their costumes to school, and most of the teachers (including me) will be giving out candy in their classrooms. I've stocked up on almond Hershey Kisses and Tootsie Rolls.
We're also excited about Halloween in New Orleans -- it's supposed to be quite the festival! This evening we went out for ice cream with a bunch of our fellow volunteers, and most of the houses we walked past were already decorated. The large stately mansions, many of which sport decorative gas lamps on their porches, and the enormous live oaks arching over the boulevard make for a very spooky setting indeed!
My Sunday chores included a trip to the Verizon store. My cell phone - the one Erika and I are both using these days - died midway through Mississippi. It was a strange new kind of broken, and one that resulted in the irretrievable loss of all of the phone numbers stored in our cell phone contact list. Consequently, we can now call only the two phone numbers we still have memorized: our parents. If you are not they, please send us your phone numbers! E-mail us, call us, text us your name so we'll know it's you and can save the “unknown number” accordingly! My/our cell number is the same. Thanks in advance!
On Monday we started our projects! Erika’s rebuilding Miss Evelyn’s house, a two-storey Victorian. Miss Evelyn couldn’t get back into the city for months after the storm, and when she finally did she discovered that the storm had blown her roof off. Rain had been collecting in the house during her absence, ruining the interior. The house has been stripped to the studs now, but the volunteers were miraculously able to save some of the original wood details (which are very nice).
Erika accomplished a lot on Monday. She patched a big hole in the wall by installing new siding (slow but satisfying work), then cleared scrap wood from the house. Using a big car-style jack, she then jacked up a corner of the house to make it level (which was totally exciting). The end of the day found Erika tiered but satisfied. It will take some time to adjust to doing this kind of labor again - this is no desk job!
I’m currently staffing the library at a K-8th grade charter school not far from where we’re staying. Hands On volunteers established the library about a year ago, raising money and collecting donations of books. Prior to that, the school had no library and the book-to-child ratio in the neighborhood was something like one book for every twenty-four children. Today, I’d guess that the library’s got about 7,000 books-hooray! The shelving system seems to be a bit haphazard, so I’m reorganizing.
It’s disheartening to see how many children are reading well below grade level. Only two or three kids have checked out the kind of books I would expect them to be reading at their respective ages and grades, and I’ve only met one kid reading books I would consider advanced for her grade. There's a fourth-grade reading group that meets in the library every morning. Most of them couldn't make it through a Berenstain Bears book.
In spite of this melancholy reality, it's a pretty fun place to be. The kids are high-energy and friendly, and the novelty of the library has definitely not worn off. There also really excited about Halloween tomorrow. They get to wear their costumes to school, and most of the teachers (including me) will be giving out candy in their classrooms. I've stocked up on almond Hershey Kisses and Tootsie Rolls.
We're also excited about Halloween in New Orleans -- it's supposed to be quite the festival! This evening we went out for ice cream with a bunch of our fellow volunteers, and most of the houses we walked past were already decorated. The large stately mansions, many of which sport decorative gas lamps on their porches, and the enormous live oaks arching over the boulevard make for a very spooky setting indeed!
Saturday, October 27, 2007
we're here!
We drove (by which I mean Petra drove and I doted on her) eleven hours straight today, leaving Knoxville at 6:30 am and arriving at the Hands On New Orleans building at 5:30 pm. Because we took great care of them, Petra's hands are doing fine. The drive went surprisingly quickly, thanks to a rather amazingly engrossing murder mystery book-on-tape my brother had loaned us. (Thanks, Reede! You saved the day!) We drove through half of Tennessee, a corner of Georgia, plus diagonally across Alabama and Mississippi and a snip of Louisianna. A little more than 600 miles today, making a grand total of 1,896 miles from Boston to here. Yes, mothers, we will change the oil now.
About 80 miles from the coast, we started noticing the wind damage. Trees stripped of limbs, mostly, and the bare skeletons of gas station signs. Then there was a weird mile of rolling fields full of thousands of brand new white gleaming trailers, unoccupied, locked up in chain-link enclosures. We assume this was FEMA's work. The closer we came to the city, the more bizzare mountains of rubble and abandoned bulidings and general damage there was. The neighborhood we're in is pretty posh--we're one block from Magazine Street in the Garden District--and seems pretty completely recovered, from what we can tell from a quick turn around the block. This building is chock full of volunteers, energy and laughter.
More tomorrow!
About 80 miles from the coast, we started noticing the wind damage. Trees stripped of limbs, mostly, and the bare skeletons of gas station signs. Then there was a weird mile of rolling fields full of thousands of brand new white gleaming trailers, unoccupied, locked up in chain-link enclosures. We assume this was FEMA's work. The closer we came to the city, the more bizzare mountains of rubble and abandoned bulidings and general damage there was. The neighborhood we're in is pretty posh--we're one block from Magazine Street in the Garden District--and seems pretty completely recovered, from what we can tell from a quick turn around the block. This building is chock full of volunteers, energy and laughter.
More tomorrow!
mountains and a revolutionary farm
Gorgeous drive yesterday out west all across North Carolina, up over the Great Smoky Mountains, and eventually down through Knoxville to Powell, Tennessee to our friend Elandria's house.
We stopped along the way in the mountains to drive up a random dirt road that came off the highway and discovered a lovely picnicing spot, a gorgeous river, an interesting hydroelectric water plant, and the Appalachian Trail. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to find a safe route from the road down into the river that was calling out to us, "Swim in me! Swim in me!" We're planning to come back to this place when we have more time. The Smoky Mountain foliage is truely beautiful, as are the mountains themselves.
Elandria took us to visit her place of employ, the Highlander Center, which was extremely exciting for me, since I'd heard about this place for years. It was amazing. Highlander is a revolutionary organizing center that supports progressive movements in the south. It's also on top of a mountain with one of the best views we've seen on the trip, complete with a herd of sweetly lowing calves artistically lit by the god-like rays of a pink sunset followed by a huge orange harvest moon. We could see for 100 miles across receeding ranges living up to their smoky reputation. Unfortunately, we discovered upon arrival that Erika had actually forgotten her camera at Elandria's! Oh bitter irony! We met a couple of Elandria's co-workers, who were kind, smart, funny, inspirational, and chill. And chili: we ate it on mangos. Yum. I'd be happy to have these people by my side come the revolution. :)
Then into downtown Knoxville for drinks and dinner. If you're ever in Knoxville, we recommend the Tomato Head for delicious local all-natural food that isn't too "out there." Our pizzas were awesome.
Overall, gorgeous scenery, fun people, and good food. We're definately coming back.
We stopped along the way in the mountains to drive up a random dirt road that came off the highway and discovered a lovely picnicing spot, a gorgeous river, an interesting hydroelectric water plant, and the Appalachian Trail. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to find a safe route from the road down into the river that was calling out to us, "Swim in me! Swim in me!" We're planning to come back to this place when we have more time. The Smoky Mountain foliage is truely beautiful, as are the mountains themselves.
Elandria took us to visit her place of employ, the Highlander Center, which was extremely exciting for me, since I'd heard about this place for years. It was amazing. Highlander is a revolutionary organizing center that supports progressive movements in the south. It's also on top of a mountain with one of the best views we've seen on the trip, complete with a herd of sweetly lowing calves artistically lit by the god-like rays of a pink sunset followed by a huge orange harvest moon. We could see for 100 miles across receeding ranges living up to their smoky reputation. Unfortunately, we discovered upon arrival that Erika had actually forgotten her camera at Elandria's! Oh bitter irony! We met a couple of Elandria's co-workers, who were kind, smart, funny, inspirational, and chill. And chili: we ate it on mangos. Yum. I'd be happy to have these people by my side come the revolution. :)
Then into downtown Knoxville for drinks and dinner. If you're ever in Knoxville, we recommend the Tomato Head for delicious local all-natural food that isn't too "out there." Our pizzas were awesome.
Overall, gorgeous scenery, fun people, and good food. We're definately coming back.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
mundania
Today we did chores, laundry, errands, and other fascinating things. It was great to spend time with Reed and Sue, catching up and watching a Sox game. I’m not looking forward to getting back in that car again tomorrow. I’m ready to be there already.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)