Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Our Seattle group just left today, they got a lot done, painting, mudding, sheet rocking and much more. I'm in the diocese office right now, I just finished building shelves in their storage facilities in the back. I'm sending a couple pictures you and St. James might enjoy.

This is a hotel that is directly across a street from the Gulf.
The windows are blown out and the furniture is still in the rooms a year later.

The beaches here are still closed because of the excessive hurricane debris
(water heaters bathtubs cars...pretty much everything you can imagine)...a year later

These are some sort of seagulls that were enjoying the beach.

This is robin serving us gumbo, Texas toast and potato salad.  The diocese bought her a trailer so she
and her two daughters would have room to live. But the trailer was leaking so the bishop
decided we should put at roof on and replace several parts of the floor. I spent my first week here.

At Mrs. Robins again.

This is a sugar cane field outside of New Orleans, with a bridge behind it.

These are old slave quarters with oak trees, I went inside one of the houses and
it seemed no one had been inside in over 50 years...

Monday, October 16, 2006

Greetings from the south! It's been extraordinarily hot and humid down here, a noticeable change from Seattle. Today it did storm nearly all day. The rain fall was so strong we would hardly see three car lengths in from of us, and the wind was so strong I could hardly open my door! People still drove and many exceeded the speed limit on the high way so I think this may not be very unordinary weather. The after shocks/ rain drizzles of the storm and the unwavering gray tint of the sky reminded me of Seattle and brought a smile to my face (I felt a little bit home sick).

I had quite an action packed day yesterday. It started with 9 o clock mass. The church here is about 1000 feet from the retreat center we are staying at. The Dedeaux Church (pronounces by the locals as dee-doe) holds about 80 people and the priest is an elderly Vietnamese fellow who nearly always starts the mass by requesting a play by play of each imaginary birthday party that took place during the week and why on earth wasn't he invited. After singing happy birthday southern style to any petitioner whose birthday is remotely close and thanking the visitors and volunteers for coming, the mass continues as usual with some bluegrass and some country singing scattered in between.

After church, I laundered the blue disaster relief shirts we wear here and began to watch the beginning of the football game between the saints and the eagles all by my lonesome (everyone else had ventured into New Orleans). While I was watching the games, the Volunteer Crew Chief, Larry, invited me to his house for lunch, and even though I had just finished an entire box of left-over pizza, I obliged (its true what they say about southern cooking). On the way to his house, we detoured around the surrounding area to take in the cattle, with a play by play of the breed and health of each (I had never expected there were so many breeds) and then to retrieve a shrimp pot he has left at his cousin's or sister in-law�s the night before. At his house he lost no time in producing about 20 pounds of blue-crab we ate for about 10 minutes (Mr. Larry is a rather large fellow) and Larry expertly showed me how to receive every bit of crab meat. Soon after I thought I was full, we were joined by a two others and I was served a second barrage of crab.

After the couple left, Mr. Larry and I retired to the living room to admire the deer heads over his mantle and watched the Saint's games at a volume that well exceeded any amount of raised voices. Larry's cousin came, and then left, out of frustration when it seemed the saints would loose but returned to watch the very end. After the game was done with Mr. Larry announced it was high time to "get us some shrimp" and we made our way outside, admired some white trout his cousin had caught, and left for our destination. There we bought about 200 dollars worth of shrimp at some man�s house. The shrimp filled more that 4 large coolers. After dropping the shrimp off, we went to a nearby house where about 7 or 8 camouflaged men were catching doves in the cross-fire over their nearly plowed field, while the spectators kicked back in garden chairs and drank beer and the toddlers practiced their wrestling moves on each other (and some times me.)

The traditional country music was being blasted outside by an old speaker about 5 feet tall. I had some wonderful banana pudding and Mr. Larry helped himself to some bbq, jambalaya (a mixture of beans rice meat and such) and quite a bit else. After watching the men blast the doves out of the air for a bit, we left for the airport where we were to pick up a volunteer who happens to be blind at 7:30pm. Unfortunately after leaving our car unattended directly in front of a police car and searching all two of the terminals, we found out he was not to arrive for another 2 hours. We passed the time in a sports store were I bought some running shoes and scoured the fishing, hunting and cooking sections we returned to the airport were we sat in silence eating sunflower seeds, just two country boys.

Today Johnny and his dog Cash and I built a work table together. It is truly amazing how much John knows about carpentry and also his surroundings (a number of times I misplaced a tool and only after several minutes of desperate searching he told me with a smile exactly were it was�).

Well, I'd like very much to tell you all about the other experiences I've had down here but that will have to wait until I finish the summary of arrival to present!

Stephen, (the damn Yankee)

Volunteer Stephen Gannon with Father Ryan