After much anticipation and excitement, the Spring 2008 Tour has finally begun.
We spent the first few weeks at the home of Ethan’s Aunt Cathy and uncle Paul in Melbourne beach Florida, working hard on our new projects and preparing for the tour. Aunt Cathy’s hospitality was wonderful. We woke up to fresh coffee, cinnamon rolls, and a backyard pool, just down the street from the beach. We couldn’t have asked for a better work environment. While Ethan, Alan, Jenny, and Alan’s old friend and our
honorary crew-member Pete, took surf breaks at sunrise, sunset and even on one full moon.
I had time to reflect on our journey and my own experiences over the winter break. While home in Mexico my family and I visited my brother Domingo and his community
of indigenous people in the state of Oaxaca. I was amazed by the strong sense of solidarity, unity, and enthusiasm for working together that made the community thrive. Although the small town is becoming known as one of the top surf spots in the world, attracting many tourists every year, the community and their traditions remain strong, at least for now. My family was invited to the community’s yearly Christmas party.
My brother Domingo, one of three people not of indigenous decent in a town with a population of 900, gave us a brief tour of his new town and his life. It is abundant with papaya and coconut trees, and a communal fish pond for sustainably grown tilapia to help feed the community. The sounds of a loud brass band rang in the streets,
ushering people from their homes and into the town square for the Christmas party. We followed the music to the square where beautifully dressed indigenous women danced with each other while the men sat on the perimeter, watching and drinking mescal (the regional alcohol distilled from maguey plants, similar to tequila.) Eulolio (or Lolo), one of the town’s police officers, came to serve us some of the local spirits.
Not knowing that Lolo was a cop, I shared several mezcal shots with him and offered him some tequila in return. We drank, shared our stories, and had a splendid time. The dance and celebration continued and our group, including several families from the US who were staying in the bungalows next to ours, all thoroughly enjoyed a memorable Christmas party with the community. Later that night Isidro, and indigenous man, Jean Paul a French backpacker, and I sat down and shared stories and ideas over some local beers. Isidro was excited about sustainability.
He told us about his ideas to supply his town’s electrical needs with renewable energy and explained in detail his ideas to harness the power of the waves and currents of the ocean. Isidro’s innovative vision, and the depth of his knowledge about the subject amazed Jean Paul and me. Jean Paul and I talked excitedly about how to implement it and the positive impact it would have. Then Isidro gave us a heartbreaking reality check, “you know, I have the ideas well researched and ready to go. There’s just no way I can obtain the funding,” he said. “The local government won’t even provide us with funds to create roads (they built the concrete entryway to the town by themselves), and there are no foundations we know of that will assist us financially.”
I wanted to help him, to assure him that such an awesome idea had to be possible, to let him know that renewable energy initiatives like these would be supported in the future, that somehow I would help him out. But before I could find a solution I was back in the United States with BioTour, and the task of creating a sustainable future for this country has left me l with little time to think of Isidro. smoking fetish forums
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James pointed to a green line of algae running chest high across the mirror. “That’s the high water mark,” he said. We were in dance studio on the second floor of Lawless High School in the lower 9th ward of New Orleans.
We walked down two flights of stairs and onto the stage, looking out over an auditorium of empty seats, still caked in mud![]()
“Were there still people in here?” I asked
“1600 people died here bro, yeah there were people in here. Who knows how long they stayed alive for.
“I was here. I had my eighty-year old grandmother with me, an’ I gave my car keys to a total stranger. I said ‘man I never met you before in my life, but you get my grandmother outta here an you got a place to stay’, and he did he got her out.
“An I came down here sneaking past the military police to get to my grandmother’s house to find the whole thing just gone, nothing but my footlocker up in a tree an inside was a sawed off shot gun my fatigues and two golden eagle pistols. Just what I needed to survive and nothing else. Now how am I supposed to interpret that? What does that mean? Not a picture of my family, of my boys. Not food, but guns, weapons, and I had to use them right here two days later.
“So I was just going around clearing out houses and puttin’ up tarps one at a time. I would clean out a spot about as long as my body and lay down plastic on all sides, an that’s where I would sleep and work outward from there.
“I met these two kids, 17 year old black kids, they said ‘Everybody else left, we stayed. We don’t know where to go’ they were hurricane survivors. I said all right follow me and help me and you’ll stay fed.![]()
“You’d find a place to stay, and be there for a few days before you found out that there was some 70 year old lady dead under a bed.
“You seen the people on TV, the “looters” taking beer and liquor?
“I went into the grocery store, and I’m like Yes! I’m surrounded with all this food. The canned goods weren’t touched. There was all this water…but all the liquor was gone.
“Half the people here are uneducated. You get this Southern hospitality and manners ‘yes sir yes mam,’ and you won’t hear me slip. I had that beat across my knuckles. And then this Creole understanding of the world where in your life you’re given signs an you follow those and that’s you’re karma. And it’s supposed to work out good for you. Then the flood came an it was all washed away. There were dead bodies floating in the streets for weeks. For weeks. So people just drank and waited for their turn.”
We walked through the blown out churches and whole blocks with nothing left but concrete steps and rows empty lots. ![]()
That afternoon we shared Thanksgiving dinner with Common Ground—people from New Orleans and from all over the country, coming together in solidarity to rebuild a community in the lower 9th. Around the fire that night, on an empty lot in the shadow of the levy, we shared beers and stories.
James told me about his upbringing as a white kid in the lower 9th, fighting his way through life. And at 18 he becoming a soldier and eventually joined the Army’s special forces. After a firefight in the Iraqi desert, and countless stand offs with his commanding officers, he finally came home with a bullet in his leg and a strong skepticism about his mission. Then two months later Katrina happened and forced him into another war zone. His home was destroyed and his neighbors became refugees, scattered across the country.
The next day Ethan, Fernando, my brother, Will, and I all picked up machetes and helped the folks at Common Ground hack through the weeds in vacant lots so that the absent residents would not be fined, and their land reposed by the city.
At sunrise, on our last day in the lower 9th, Ethan, Will and I walked down to the Cypress Triangle. We climbed over the cement wall and watched pelicans glide between smokestacks and over the broken stumps of the cypress tree protruding from Lake Ponchartraine. Cypress trees used to be the first line of defense against hurricanes, breaking off in the floodwaters and creating a natural dam. But most of the trees were dead due to industrial pollution around Lake Ponchatraine, and now, the rest will never grow back. ![]()
Before we left New Orleans, I had to ask, “So what about the next hurricane? Rising ocean temperatures will create more intense storms. What about the next Katrina?”
“I’m not sure if I’m going to stay here,” James told me, “and I don’t know if everyone should come back. But they should be free to return to their homes. If they don’t have a choice, they’re not free.”
Heading South from Tuscaloosa, Alabama we pulled off the highway at a truck stop just over the border into Mississippi. With an old toothbrush and some biodiesel, I scrubbed the fuel filters, brushing out the particles of food from the metal screen. Alan spun off the final filter and replaced it with a fresh one. Nando grabbed the long handled squeegee/brush and wiped the gray highway dust from the windows. Jenny slept inside the bus, having just finished her shift behind the wheel.
“Whatcha got goin’ here?” a truck driver asked Fernando. The name “Joey” was stitched into the breast of his faded blue stripped shirt.
“We’re a sustainability education non-profit touring the country on this bus running on vegetable oil,” Nando answered pointing toward the bus with the dripping brush.
“You’re really running on vegetable oil?”
“Yeah, we use waste cooking oil from restaurants.”
“I want to buy y’all some dinner. They make a mean burger and fries here. The name’s Joey.”
“Fernando.” The two shook hands.
After waking Jenny for dinner and washing up we found Joey slowly carving away at his rib eye and picking at fries.
“Order what y’all like. The burgers and fries are good,” he repeated.
Yielding to local wisdom, we had Joey order four cheeseburgers with fries. We asked him about his route and his home over sodas. The waitress soon brought our dinner. Sinking my teeth into the burger I remembered I am an omnivore and how much I miss eating meat. Joey shared with Nando and Alan his experiences as a truck driver.
“Well I’m from ‘round the Gulf, least my folks are but I been haulin’ all over the country. My folks lost their home in the flood, but my wife and my step son live up north ‘round by here. My step son’s goin’ through a tough time. There ain’t much for him to do but get in trouble, and I’m tryin’ to help my folks out but they got me haulin’ so many miles I can’t be around as much as I’d like.”
“I appreciate what y’all are doing with global warming and all. We need to get off oil.” He said that he’d sure like to see some of those green jobs come to Mississippi.
His family lived in the Gulfport region and Katrina took their home. His parents were older and losing health and he worried for their well-being in a post-Katrina gulf region. After exchanging a few stories, Joey put down his fork and knife,
“You know, you guys are all right”, Joey stated. “What are your plans for Thanksgiving dinner? We aren’t terribly rich or anything, but my wife does cook a mean turkey and we’d love to have you all over.”
Before we could answer Joey’s generous and considerate invitation a lone uniformed soldier sat at the table next to us. The young man looked curiously at the odd assemblage of people at our table.
“Would you like to join us?” Jenny asked.“Sure,” he replied.
There were two conversations going at once. Alan and Nando spoke with Joey. The other conversation was between Jenny, Jake and me. Jake asked what we are up to and we told the BioTour story.
“Where ya headin’?” I asked.
“I’m driving back home to Alabama in a few days. I am driving my mom’s gas guzzler SUV, 93 octane. Gas is damn expensive!”
“Where have you served?”
“Most recently I was in Guam. I’m on leave right now. Don’t know where I am heading next. Maybe back to Iraq. I don’t know. What about you?”
“We’re heading to New Orleans from Tuscaloosa.”
“I served in New Orleans too, during Katrina. It was crazy.” He began telling the story in an excited mechanical fashion with the authoritative manner that I’d seen before when listening to soldiers tell their stories. “I was one of those guys on the bridge telling everyone to turn back. I’m sure y’all heard about it on TV.”
“What bridge was that?”
“It was a bridge New Orleans residents were trying to cross so they could get back into the city to search for their missing relatives. We were there to prevent them from going back. You know, I understand why they wanted to get over that bridge. I do. It’s family and they’re missing and possibly dead. But, if I let them go back in then there are more people missing and that makes our job harder. So I am on the bridge saying,” his tone became stern as if giving military orders, “‘I am here to keep you alive. I cannot let you cross this bridge.’” He paused for a moment. “New Orleans has gotten a lot better since I was there. People don’t often see the improvements. But, it’s still got some ways to go.”
He broke away from his story to take a sip from his root beer.
“What made you decide to join the military?” I asked.
“I was in ROTC when September 11th happened. Then one day, someone put a pipe bomb in school. Right then I enlisted.”“The guy who planted the pipe bomb, his mother was a Muslim,” he said with matter of fact tone, as if to imply, ‘Not all Muslim’s are terrorists, but…’
“I have done some reconnaissance missions for a few weeks at a time in Iraq. I don’t know if I’ll be ordered back or not.”
The conversation shifted to lighter topics. We all sat and talked life. During a pause in the conversation Jake put down his burger and said,
“You know, thirty-five years ago you wouldn’t have seen this: a soldier, a truck driver, and a bunch of environmentalists all sitting down together for dinner at a truck stop in Mississippi.”
‘It’s even a rare scene today,’ I thought to myself. I then looked to the table next to ours. There, a large black man, also a truck driver, sat alone. He kept his eyes away from our table and his demeanor sent a message of ‘I’m fine alone.’ Nando asked if he’d like to sit with us. He kindly refused. I got the feeling that some boundaries still remain strong in the South.