Friday June 29th, 2007

    1600 McLaurin. Well, there goes that plan the Governor and I came up with and with a paper trail going back to last September with the Mayor's name all over it and the verbal approval of all of the Aldermen. The lease arrived at the City of Waveland in January with the explicit intention of using it for Volunteer Housing - thats what the grant application outlined. The plan was to use those two great buildings for volunteer housing - solid as a rock, gutted and cleaned immediate on the storm negating mold development, and on "higher" ground so they only flooded 6" during the storm. But, "someone" opted for the route of "no scrutiny" and they were demolished without discussion so they could not be used by "anyone". This is going to be an interesting saga to continue to follow. Democracy and politics at its finest hour.

And for those of you who are regulars in here daily - I apologise for my tardy attention to the blog this week. Blame the volunteers - we were inundated with them from all sides. And what a great week it was!

And the week was a fabulous adventure in volunteerism. From the crew from New York to Needam Cares of Ma - we have had a fantastic week. My crew of Range Riders from Colorado are leaving today. What a fantastic month it has been with them. The Gulf Coast Recovery Team is working hard hanging sheetrock - they are going to be the sheetrock whiz kids before this is all over.

Right now the volunteers are hanging sheetrock in the volunteer housing as, after two years, we are opting to take care of home base so we can have some air conditioning here. This 100% humidity at 90 degrees is a bit much for the norhterner volunteers who come on down and those old hand fans were just not cutting the mustard any more. So, we are fixing home base here.

And I took the Range Riders crabbing this week - and no one fell off the pier into the water. An obvious success story. Although we had to retrieve Cory from the outside of the railing. But, then, what else would one expect from Cory!

John Sabo is down with his crew - hard working on OSB! Yes, we have lots of OSB (wafer board siding and roofing material).

And my gals in the office from Ohio Disaster Relief are now on top of the inventory inclusive of the sheetrock. Yes, we have sheetrock - about 100,000 sheets of the stuff at $4.00 per sheet. We have delivered about 8,000 sheets of it in about three weeks. Not a bad effort for an operation like ours.

My posting, this week, on the email based group regarding volunteers not tipping at a local resturant has sure prompted some interesting discussion. A few DRO's called to inquire regarding the incident and two of the DRO's are now going to include a reminder in their volunteer orientation as to the impact we have on local residents, good and bad, when wearing the "school" colors in public and the need to hold ourselves to the "higher" standard. Of course, there was the one lone standout who blasted me for my "opinion" and suggested that the local resturants should feed all the volunteers for free and, also, "tip" their own staff. An interesting perspective. I was wondering when reading it how these resturants down here were going to afford to feed 400,000 or so volunteers for "Free" these past twenty months? But, it was just one person's opinion afterall. The rest of us will continue to treat the waitressing staff here with the utmost of respect.

Trying to find space in the pace at the office is becoming more difficult as the public wanders in for help. We are fielding about a hundred calls a day here and there is always someone waiting in line it seems. It never lets up. I cant believe, after two years, that progress has not been better than this. But, then, the recovery plan is so flawed - there is no fixing anything at this time effectively. It is a "one nail at a time" plan - and it is so so slow.

The rest of the pictures from the week are in the Slide Show on the home page. Just press the "Start" button and it will get you going.

And that was our week - how was yours?

Saturday June 23rd

     It is Saturday - again. I am beyond exhausted as are all the other long term volunteers in camp. St. Mary's left this morning - and what a fabulous job they have done. How do you thank people for coming down and giving up their vacations to do this work? And how do you thank their "kids" who raised $16,000 to do this trip? What an awsome contribution!We are scrambling to get the camp ready for the next set of volunteers. They are due to start arriving on Saturday night - this is going to be fun. And Tim has a flat battery in Pass Christian, the sheetrock in Long Beach needs to be covered, and Victor Semino has cooked me some shrimp he wants me to stop by and pick up. Also we have the Peterson family working on his brand new home and I need to get pictures. And - this is my day off. Sigh.

I did get the beach party up online. You can check it out at: Beach Party

So, this is Saturday and I am off to the races again.

How is your weekend going?

Friday June 22nd

    What a productive week. Vics home at the beach is going to have the deck on today thanks to the Peterson family, 46 sheets of our OSB went into another project in order to get the siding on a home, Kenneth's home is set up for a siding job with the scaffolding all in place thanks to Gulf Coast Recovery, Needam Cares came thru with a fabulous grant for multiple people, the Range Riders cut enough grass in Bayside to bale and feed a herd of cows, and Blonde has found a home in Pittsburg and will be leaving over the next few days. That part is tough - I sure have learnt to love that silly dog. But she needs a home and family of her own.

The Beach Party for the St Marys group is tonight. Tim is getting all wound up over the details. This will be a fun adventure.

Else, we are overwhelmed with work. The chores at the house are mounting up since we lost Phil and Bill back to the real world. Poor Garrett is trying to keeping up with the running to the crews this week and the chores around here along with warehouse duties. A tough job at best. We so desperately need a full time warehouse person.

Last night was the meeting of the Martin Luther King Park Committee. The police representative failed to show as promised despite a reminder call 2 hours prior to the meeting. I thought that was interesting. The committee came up with several options for preventing vandalism at the Park including two work days that they will put in to fix the damage caused by the last round of vandalism. It was a very productive meeting.

We plan to get working on the new truck this weekend. I believe they said all it needs is a new battery and a change of oil. That should not be too tough. We sure need that truck.

Erica and Mary from Ohio Disaster Relief are settling into the office - its not an easy task to grasp the work at the pace this office goes all day long. They have opted to take Fridays off - and I agree with them. This is an exhausting pace in here. I am so excited they are here - we so desperately needed the office help.

And, I got some new pictures of this weeks happenings up on the slide show on the Home Page.

On a personal level. I am exhausted. But its Friday - and we are "closed" on Friday. The way thats works is that we are Closed - therefore everyone comes in to the office because they will be the "only one". Sigh.

So, how was your week?

Wednesday June 20th

     It has been a very hectic week so far. I have a large crew here at the house plus three crews out in other housing including the satelite. We are humming thru the work orders.

Of course, I am still exhausted from the "trip". But I did manage to get the pictures up.

Race to Pensacola

Again someone trashed the work we are doing at Martin Luther King Park. There is to be a community meeting tomorrow night to discuss options.

And, how is your week going?

Tuesday June 19th

I bet you wondered where I was? Well, I am back. I have been part of a crew racing a 36' sailing sloop to Pensacola over the weekend. A fantastic weekend adventure and I will bet pictures up today. Personally I was fried crisp - but had the time of my life.

The work has continued here at the Home Base - several teams in and more expected today. I had left work orders set up in advance with a "Control" center on my desk with plenty of work to keep everyone busy.

Will write more later. Hope all is well with you!