damn you guys - Thank You very much...but honestly, what I did is just a drop in the ocean and is nothing compared to the folks who have been doing it for 6 months straight. there's also these older folks who go around in their RVs from site to site staying for a few weeks working and then moving on to the next build site. they're like Dead heads!
so much happened - I gotta process it all and then take the time this weekend to write it all out.
Someone needs to photoshop a pic of Jean Luc Picard chillin' on that roof.
Miss Bassie is good peoples. You have to respect someone who follows through on their word & who's willing to make sacrifices to help out other folks. I never knew you're so handy. Lemme know if you're free in May - I've got a roof that's leaking like a sieve.
I have been trying to convince my fianc?? that I need all of these power tools because we are buying a house, but she is not really feeling the circular saw. She says its because I am a hemophiliac, but I think she just doesn't want me to have fun.
when i was a kid i thought hemophiliacs were cool as shit.
i've always liked the word hemophiliac.
While I am really lucky they didn't know I had it until the 90's a lot of the kids my age who had it got AIDS because blood companies didn't test blood and in fact mixed it all together so if one person in 1,000(or however many peoples blood they mixed) had HIV or AIDS all of the blood in that batch became infected. Thus hemophiliacs, who had a greater likelihood of getting blood transfusions, also got AIDS in huge numbers. I once met a kid who lost all three of his brothers to AIDS, and he to was dying. They were all hemophiliacs. I have only had to get human blood once which still caries some risk, but not nearly the risk that existed in the 80's. I count myself as very lucky to have had such inept doctors as a child.
when i was a kid i thought hemophiliacs were cool as shit.
i've always liked the word hemophiliac.
While I am really lucky they didn't know I had it until the 90's a lot of the kids my age who had it got AIDS because blood companies didn't test blood and in fact mixed it all together so if one person in 1,000(or however many peoples blood they mixed) had HIV or AIDS all of the blood in that batch became infected. Thus hemophiliacs, who had a greater likelihood of getting blood transfusions, also got AIDS in huge numbers. I once met a kid who lost all three of his brothers to AIDS, and he to was dying. They were all hemophiliacs. I have only had to get human blood once which still caries some risk, but not nearly the risk that existed in the 80's. I count myself as very lucky to have had such inept doctors as a child.[/b]
sarcasm?
this mistake is so horrible and f*cked up...this happened in Ontario on a huge scale with the Red Cross (they did not test the blood and lawsuits and compensation followed). A family member has Hep C from tainted blood from the Red Cross after she was in a terrbile car accident.
I am glad you were lucky to not have such inept doctors!
when i was a kid i thought hemophiliacs were cool as shit.
i've always liked the word hemophiliac.
While I am really lucky they didn't know I had it until the 90's a lot of the kids my age who had it got AIDS because blood companies didn't test blood and in fact mixed it all together so if one person in 1,000(or however many peoples blood they mixed) had HIV or AIDS all of the blood in that batch became infected. Thus hemophiliacs, who had a greater likelihood of getting blood transfusions, also got AIDS in huge numbers. I once met a kid who lost all three of his brothers to AIDS, and he to was dying. They were all hemophiliacs. I have only had to get human blood once which still caries some risk, but not nearly the risk that existed in the 80's. I count myself as very lucky to have had such inept doctors as a child.[/b]
sarcasm?
this mistake is so horrible and f*cked up...this happened in Ontario on a huge scale with the Red Cross (they did not test the blood and lawsuits and compensation followed). A family member has Hep C from tainted blood from the Red Cross after she was in a terrbile car accident.
I am glad you were lucky to not have such inept doctors!
Oh I ment inept as in they didn't figure out what I had until I was 13. If they had been good doctors they would have seen the signs much earlier which actually would not have been good.
is this for habitat for humanity? i missed this thread. my ex-roommate invited me to do this in july, but it's like $1000 i need to raise. share more please
yea it was with H4H and i know, the $$ is a killer. not sure how it works in the US, but here, half our fees could be donated by friends and family and they get tax receipts out of it. as well, i'll get a tax receipt for my airfare.
i felt a little hesitant at first because they are a religious organization, but ulitmately, the things we had in common were more important than the things we didn't, you know? and i wasn't doing it for them, but for the families. the Toronto H4H folks are pretty low-key about the religion aspect, but in Louisiana, as you can imagine, it was more present. every morning started with a Biblical passage, a talk on how the passage related to the work we were doing and then prayer. out of the five days, only two were heavy on the God and Jesus tip, the other prayers (they call them devotions) were just universal messages of love, kindness, helping fellow humans, etc. I didn't have to take part, but it was worth listening to and i didn't do the whole bow your head and take your hat off for it. i wasn't the only one and no one gave any weird vibes for it either.
So, the hardest part of this was not the work in 100 degree weather or having to share one bathroom with six other women or bunking in one house with nine strangers or even having to work on a half empty stomach cause there was nothing for a non-meat eater like me to eat. It was the tour through the Katrina-hit sites.
The drive by the stadium was chilling. It just looks like a monument to horror and driving through the streets where you know dead bodies lay and thousands of people lined-up waiting to get in???I don???t know what to say about it, it was surreal and terrible.
As soon as we got on to the school bus, I felt sick to my stomach. The idea of driving through those areas, on a tour, a bunch of camera-heavy tourists, I knew it was going to be fucked. Even before we got on, I had already decided to not take my camera. It just did not feel right to me. The absolute worst was all the people on the bus snapping away like they were on a tour through a zoo. In some areas, people were outside, cleaning up or sitting on the porch ??? and people kept taking pictures. Some people on the bus waved but no one waved back. I felt downright ashamed.
We first started out in the flooded areas, the buildings have water lines on them, FEMA condemnation codes indicating dates of searches and number of bodies found. There are also eerie spray-painted notes from the SPCA ??? ???dog prints found inside???, ???2 cats???, ???pitbull barking???. There are blocks and blocks of this.
There are dozens of abandoned cars beneath the underpasses.
There are whole sides of hotels gone, exposing the staircases.
We cross a bridge and begin to enter the Ninth Ward, it gets progressively worse with roofs missing, whole sides of homes crushed or blown off, and overturned cars. People???s belongings are strewn in the streets, some in piles, in other places just scattered. Some houses, you can see right in and other than the blown off wall, the living room or bedroom sits almost perfectly in order, everything in place like a giant dollhouse. I feel embarrassed seeing personal belongings. We see what seems like an inordinate amount of children???s toys everywhere. Some of the houses have ???Baghdad??? spray-painted on them. Some people have moved back in and set up trailers in front of the former homes. There are also blocks and blocks of this.
We then get to the area right by where one of the levees broke, by this time there are no water marks or condemnations codes because the whole area was underwater. The levee wall is ridiculously low. It is not even as tall as the office building I work in which is only four stories tall. The water first gushed over the wall and then broke out from underneath from the weight.
There are houses in the middle of the street and you can???t tell where they came from. There are houses broken off from their front porches, sitting askew about 12 feet past the front steps. There are foundations, but you can???t see where the main building is. There is rubble and personal belongings and broken trees and bent traffic signs everywhere. Other than the construction on the levees in the distance, it is quiet except that there are a lot of birds singing. I guess when the humans leave, the animals take over. The guy who drove us around said that since the grass and weeds have been left to grow and summer is coming, the rats and snakes will soon move in, too.
It is a lot of feelings at once. Anger over the fact that it was preventable, awe at the magnitude of destruction, the overwhelming sadness of being surrounded by death, the shame of being on a tour through people???s misery, and again, anger that not a motherfucking thing has been done to clean it up. Just out respect to all those people, you???d think they would at least clean up something, anything. Just pretend you care for fuck???s sake, do it for appearances. But no, it???s left as a huge garbage dump. The homes may have not been mansions, but for some, it and the land that the house was on is all they had, but it???s just left a huge rotting mess.
Uhg ??? I am getting too upset just writing this and I am running out of words.
Those packs of shingle things are so doggone heavy... especially after you have carried about thirty of them.
it was pretty scary carrying them around that high off the ground too - I didn't have my roof legs at first and I was so scared I'd lose my balance, fall off and get crushed under a pack of those things...OK , maybe not exactly like that. but I did think I would fall off from losing my balance carrying those around.
sheetrocking/drywalling, I actually really liked. doing the ceiling was hard as f*ck though...what do you mean lift that above my head, climb the ladder and then hold it in place until you get to my end of the sheet with the drill? but i did it (after three tries).
Comments
Seriously, welcome back.
so much happened - I gotta process it all and then take the time this weekend to write it all out.
did I mention that power tools rule?
I think I might have ur xmas gift idea! But I'll be expecting custom shelves or something...
this one was my favourite:
Someone needs to photoshop a pic of Jean Luc Picard chillin' on that roof.
Miss Bassie is good peoples. You have to respect someone who follows through on their word & who's willing to make sacrifices to help out other folks. I never knew you're so handy. Lemme know if you're free in May - I've got a roof that's leaking like a sieve.
I have been trying to convince my fianc?? that I need all of these power tools because we are buying a house, but she is not really feeling the circular saw. She says its because I am a hemophiliac, but I think she just doesn't want me to have fun.
Dawg, you a hemophiliac? really?
A really mild form nothing serious, unless I cut my arm off with a power saw.
cool.
when i was a kid i thought hemophiliacs were cool as shit.
i was a weird kid.
ill stop talking now then shall i...
i've always liked the word hemophiliac.
While I am really lucky they didn't know I had it until the 90's a lot of the kids my age who had it got AIDS because blood companies didn't test blood and in fact mixed it all together so if one person in 1,000(or however many peoples blood they mixed) had HIV or AIDS all of the blood in that batch became infected. Thus hemophiliacs, who had a greater likelihood of getting blood transfusions, also got AIDS in huge numbers. I once met a kid who lost all three of his brothers to AIDS, and he to was dying. They were all hemophiliacs. I have only had to get human blood once which still caries some risk, but not nearly the risk that existed in the 80's. I count myself as very lucky to have had such inept doctors as a child.
sarcasm?
this mistake is so horrible and f*cked up...this happened in Ontario on a huge scale with the Red Cross (they did not test the blood and lawsuits and compensation followed). A family member has Hep C from tainted blood from the Red Cross after she was in a terrbile car accident.
I am glad you were lucky to not have such inept doctors!
Oh I ment inept as in they didn't figure out what I had until I was 13. If they had been good doctors they would have seen the signs much earlier which actually would not have been good.
yea it was with H4H and i know, the $$ is a killer. not sure how it works in the US, but here, half our fees could be donated by friends and family and they get tax receipts out of it. as well, i'll get a tax receipt for my airfare.
i felt a little hesitant at first because they are a religious organization, but ulitmately, the things we had in common were more important than the things we didn't, you know? and i wasn't doing it for them, but for the families. the Toronto H4H folks are pretty low-key about the religion aspect, but in Louisiana, as you can imagine, it was more present. every morning started with a Biblical passage, a talk on how the passage related to the work we were doing and then prayer. out of the five days, only two were heavy on the God and Jesus tip, the other prayers (they call them devotions) were just universal messages of love, kindness, helping fellow humans, etc. I didn't have to take part, but it was worth listening to and i didn't do the whole bow your head and take your hat off for it. i wasn't the only one and no one gave any weird vibes for it either.
The drive by the stadium was chilling. It just looks like a monument to horror and driving through the streets where you know dead bodies lay and thousands of people lined-up waiting to get in???I don???t know what to say about it, it was surreal and terrible.
As soon as we got on to the school bus, I felt sick to my stomach. The idea of driving through those areas, on a tour, a bunch of camera-heavy tourists, I knew it was going to be fucked. Even before we got on, I had already decided to not take my camera. It just did not feel right to me. The absolute worst was all the people on the bus snapping away like they were on a tour through a zoo. In some areas, people were outside, cleaning up or sitting on the porch ??? and people kept taking pictures. Some people on the bus waved but no one waved back. I felt downright ashamed.
We first started out in the flooded areas, the buildings have water lines on them, FEMA condemnation codes indicating dates of searches and number of bodies found. There are also eerie spray-painted notes from the SPCA ??? ???dog prints found inside???, ???2 cats???, ???pitbull barking???. There are blocks and blocks of this.
There are dozens of abandoned cars beneath the underpasses.
There are whole sides of hotels gone, exposing the staircases.
We cross a bridge and begin to enter the Ninth Ward, it gets progressively worse with roofs missing, whole sides of homes crushed or blown off, and overturned cars. People???s belongings are strewn in the streets, some in piles, in other places just scattered. Some houses, you can see right in and other than the blown off wall, the living room or bedroom sits almost perfectly in order, everything in place like a giant dollhouse. I feel embarrassed seeing personal belongings. We see what seems like an inordinate amount of children???s toys everywhere. Some of the houses have ???Baghdad??? spray-painted on them. Some people have moved back in and set up trailers in front of the former homes. There are also blocks and blocks of this.
We then get to the area right by where one of the levees broke, by this time there are no water marks or condemnations codes because the whole area was underwater. The levee wall is ridiculously low. It is not even as tall as the office building I work in which is only four stories tall. The water first gushed over the wall and then broke out from underneath from the weight.
There are houses in the middle of the street and you can???t tell where they came from. There are houses broken off from their front porches, sitting askew about 12 feet past the front steps. There are foundations, but you can???t see where the main building is. There is rubble and personal belongings and broken trees and bent traffic signs everywhere. Other than the construction on the levees in the distance, it is quiet except that there are a lot of birds singing. I guess when the humans leave, the animals take over. The guy who drove us around said that since the grass and weeds have been left to grow and summer is coming, the rats and snakes will soon move in, too.
It is a lot of feelings at once. Anger over the fact that it was preventable, awe at the magnitude of destruction, the overwhelming sadness of being surrounded by death, the shame of being on a tour through people???s misery, and again, anger that not a motherfucking thing has been done to clean it up. Just out respect to all those people, you???d think they would at least clean up something, anything. Just pretend you care for fuck???s sake, do it for appearances. But no, it???s left as a huge garbage dump. The homes may have not been mansions, but for some, it and the land that the house was on is all they had, but it???s just left a huge rotting mess.
Uhg ??? I am getting too upset just writing this and I am running out of words.
Those packs of shingle things are so doggone heavy... especially after you have carried about thirty of them.
hey missb. thanks for the report. its good to know what's going on down there from a source i can trust.
Yo I want to... an Underground Philly emcee does that for a living and he is skinny... but he looks tired alot when we are trying to record.
it was pretty scary carrying them around that high off the ground too - I didn't have my roof legs at first and I was so scared I'd lose my balance, fall off and get crushed under a pack of those things...OK , maybe not exactly like that. but I did think I would fall off from losing my balance carrying those around.
sheetrocking/drywalling, I actually really liked. doing the ceiling was hard as f*ck though...what do you mean lift that above my head, climb the ladder and then hold it in place until you get to my end of the sheet with the drill? but i did it (after three tries).