Carter Work Project with Habitat for Humanity, Day 1

I got back from Biloxi on Saturday night. In short, it was an amazing trip. Approximately 2,000 volunteers worked on 200 new and rehabbed houses across the Gulf Coast. This despite some rain on Thursday and heavy rain (with a tornado warning and lots of lightning) on Friday morning. You can see videos, photos and read stories about the week on the Habitat website here.

I flew into Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans and took a bus over to Biloxi, MS. While I couldn't see much of the neighborhoods on the way, it's clear there's still a lot of work to be done. It also becomes quickly apparent that southern Mississippi is very flat, and southern Louisiana is even more so, comparable to southern Florida where my parents live except below sea level in parts. With the mighty Mississippi flowing past, you can see why it doesn't take much to flood the area. Apparently a proposal to make a single unified levee management system was voted down, so some of the weak points of the system are still there.

Biloxi, MS is an interesting town. The casinos are probably the largest employers in the area. Before Hurricane Katrina hit, most of them were on barges anchored just offshore. After Hurricane Katrina hit, most of them were on barges that were now onshore, having acted as battering rams against anything in their path. Almost 3 years later, most of the casinos are rebuilt, all onshore. Across the street from them, some businesses have repaired or rebuilt, but there are lots of empty foundations from former businesses and houses. I walked around a little further inland, and there were lots of damaged buildings still standing empty. In nearby neighborhoods, numerous empty foundations mark the location of former homes.
Sunday evening there was an opening ceremony and dinner held at Biloxi's Yankie Stadium. The area under the bleachers has been converted to housing for volunteers coming to the Gulf Coast to work with Habitat for Humanity, so it's the center for lots of activities. Hundreds of volunteers, President and Mrs. Carter, various VIP sponsors, Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood, the former president of Romania and former Senator John Edwards all enjoyed good food and some great music performed by the Mississippi Mass Choir and Anna Wilson, as well as a number of videos to get people geared up for the week. There was also a video honoring the Carters for their 25+ years of service with Habitat for Humanity.

Live from Biloxi...

...it's Sunday afternoon. Yesterday and today were check-in for the JRCWP 2008, and there's an opening ceremony this evening. Tomorrow at oh-dark-thirty, the shuttles start running to the worksites. Between the 2 hour time difference and the travel, waking up tomorrow is going to be a challenge.

The hotel we're staying at is nice. Too nice, in some ways. It's a glitzy casino, so most of the people traipsing through the lobby fall into 3 distinct groups: hotel staff, gamblers, and Habitat volunteers. Even without the plethora of Habitat t-shirts and hats from around the world, it's pretty easy to tell the 3 groups apart. It's kind of jarring to walk a couple blocks from the hotel and see how much work still needs to be done. I attended a service at a nearby church this morning. They're in the process of moving to a new location, about 10 miles NW of their current location. Partly because of the damage to the church, but mostly because a lot of people moved away after Katrina.

The bus ride from Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans didn't let us see too much, but it's clear that the whole area still needs a lot of work. It'll be interesting to see Pascagoula and points in between tomorrow on the way to our worksite.

Synchronicity

This story begins in the late 1800s in northern Sweden. Katarina's great uncle Alfred was one of a family of 13, and local prospects were "not good". So he strapped on his skis and skied across the mountains to Norway. He sold his skis for one crown to use for boat fare to England. He eventually made his way to San Francisco, where he was a tailor. Apparently when the 1906 earthquake hit, he grabbed his two most valuable possessions: his shoes and his violin.

Some years later, when Katarina's dad was a young man and had finished his studies at the Technical University in Stockholm, he came to the U.S. to visit his Uncle Alfred. He loved the Bay Area, and attended UC Berkeley to get his MBA. It was during this time he met and married Katarina's mom. They eventually moved to Sweden (where Katarina was born), and after living in Belgium and then Iran, they eventually returned to the Bay Area.

Somewhere along the line, the dining room table (shown above perched on top of the VW) went from Uncle Al to Katarina's parents. They had it for many years, and when they moved to a smaller place at retirement, some of their furniture was offered to Katarina and her siblings. We had no room for the table at the time, so Katarina's brother and sister-in-law took it. They recently got a new hand-me-down table, and at long last, the table came to us.

It didn't come without a struggle, though. None of my neighbors have a pickup, but the VW and I are no strangers to hauling large, strange loads. Katarina and I decided the logistics of loading the table onto the VW would be simpler than finding a vehicle to borrow. With a couple of 2x4s to support the middle, and some cardboard for padding, we set off for Berkeley to pick it up. With some assistance we got it on the VW. While I tied it on, Katarina and Azar loaded up the chairs and table leaves, and we set off for home.

I'd tied it quite securely, but we took surface streets just in case. Along the way, we were delayed by an odd sight: a double-bottom dump truck attempting to back up several blocks. If you've ever tried backing up with a trailer, you know how challenging that can be; this was times 2 and this guy was no expert. We pulled off to the side and got past it, and eventually made our way home.

Then came the challenge of getting the table from the carport down to the house. Katarina and I tried, but realized our first approach wouldn't work. It was too heavy to easily get around the bend in the steps. I had apheresis at the Red Cross in the afternoon, so we left the table in the carport.

The next day, I had the idea to take the table apart into two halves. Since it came most of the way apart for leaves, it was the fairly simple matter of removing half a dozen screws, et voilà! While I was working on that, one of my neighbors came home. I hadn't seen her in a while, so we chatted for a bit. While we were talking, a pickup drove up, and the guy asked me if I wanted to hire him to trim the monster tree (shown above, behind the VW). It's really supposed to be a bush, and I told him I wanted it hacked back like my neighbors had been, to a more manageable size. He gave me an estimate, I told him sure, and he attacked it with a frenzy.

When Katarina came home from work, she gaped in awe at the trimmed tree, and then we easily moved the table down, squeezed it through the front door, and put it in the living room. Reassembling the halves was a bit more of a challenge, but I eventually got it back together. We still don't really have room for it since the dining room and kitchen aren't done yet, but the timing and price were right. And it's a great table that's been in Katarina's family for quite a few years.

After moving the table down, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to a woman I didn't recognize, but she didn't look like she was selling anything. Turns out she's one of our neighbors up the street that we've never met, and she'd come over to thank us for trimming the bush and ask hopefully if we were going to trim the last bit (Note: I'm still waiting for Ray to return and finish. Hmm...)

And that's the story of how an 1800s ski trip led to our new dining room table, a half-trimmed tree and a 'new' neighbor.

Update: Ray came and finished up this afternoon. It ended up costing more than I thought, in part because there was another tree buried inside the monster bush, and in part because Ray played a little loose with the numbers. But not enough to argue about, and it's done!

...and not a drop to drink

California is facing another drought. It's not that surprising given that California is basically semiarid (the north coast gets more, and other areas get less) and has a large population and lots of agriculture. One bad precip year isn't generally a problem, but this is our second. Rainfall is only part of the equation, as we mostly rely on the melting snowpack to carry us through the summer and fall. We had a relatively warm, dry spring, so the snowpack is 1/3 below normal. So the various water districts are asking for voluntary cutbacks, and some (like our very own EBMUD) are considering mandatory rationing.

There's a nice write up over at TreeHugger with the unappetizing title, "How To Green Your Water" (better than some other colors, but...) We're already doing a lot of things on the lists (not eating meat is big), but that's not to say we couldn't do more. So I'm thinking again about some of the same water-saving ideas I was a while ago, namely a hot water recirc pump, and rain barrels or maybe even a cistern.

One big thing almost all of you can do is give up bottled water. Not only does it take a lot of water to make a plastic bottle, it takes a lot of energy and petroleum products to make it, transport it, and then (at best) recycle the bottle. Chances are you've already got better water coming out of the tap that costs a lot less. A reusable water bottle (avoiding hard plastic bottles with BPA, of course) is a much better idea in the long run. At Google, every Noogler (new Googler) gets a spiffy Google-labeled water bottle. Besides plug-in hybrids that employees can borrow and investing in alternative energy, it sounds like Google is moving towards banning bottled water on their campuses.

Even if you live somewhere that's not facing another drought, consider this: 3/4ths of our lovely home planet is covered in water. However, only 2.5% of that is fresh water, and most of that is in the glaciers and polar ice caps. Even if you disagree about the origins of global warming or even that there is such a thing, you can't argue with the fact that glaciers are melting at record rates and the polar ice caps are shrinking. That means we need to use what fresh water we've got wisely, and work towards affordable desalination systems. Those of course take energy to run, and that's in short supply, too.

Got Junk? Not any more!

We've had junk in the carport for a long time. And outside my office window. And even some by the basement door left from replacing the corroded plumbing. Then there's the stump that Edis and I dug out ages ago. Katarina has been very patient with living in a construction zone, but the piles of junk were starting to get to both of us. To top it off, the pile in the carport meant we couldn't get to the shed where our bikes are stored. Warm weather and $4 a gallon gas has us thinking about riding again.

Given my upcoming Habitat trip to Biloxi and ongoing recovery from tendinitis, bronchitis, and rhinitis (allergies), Katarina suggested hiring someone to haul the junk away. The cheapest option would be renting a truck, hauling the junk myself, and driving it to the transfer station and unloading, but by far the most work. I did some checking, and for the same price as a 14-yard dumpster (the smallest they said I could put construction debris in) from Waste Management where I hauled everything up to it, I could get a 3-yard truck from 1-800-got-junk? where they did all the work. A no-brainer decision...assuming I had 3 cubic yards or less of stuff. I knew I had about that much in the carport, but there was also the old drywall outside my office and the stump. I decided to go for it, and see how much was left afterwards.

The service from 1-800-got-junk? was great. Easy to book on their website and choose a 2-hour window on the day of my choice, and they said they'd call about 30 minutes before arriving. Given how well various utilities and delivery services do with time windows, I had low, nay, rock-bottom expectations on the timing. I was shocked to have the phone ring exactly 30 minutes before the expected window, saying they'd be there in 25-30 minutes. Which they were. Listening, SBC/AT&T?

Per their website, I just pointed at what I wanted hauled away, and they did the work. Well, except for the stump. I suspected it might be too heavy for them to move up to the carport (that's why it'd been sitting there), and it was. So my work consisted of taking an ax and a construction bar to it to break it up into manageable pieces. It'd been sitting there long enough (12+ years in the ground, 2+ years on the front path) that I could break it into 4 easier pieces.

Not the cheapest option, but great service, and they recycle what can be recycled (generally up to 60% of what they haul; probably less than that of our load because I'd already recycled most of what could be). I highly recommend them if you can't haul stuff yourself.