Existentialism on lunch break

This morning I was making the rounds with the volunteers. If I've met them already, I usually greet them, ask them how their day was, etc. We have three groups at the moment: Eight undergraduates from Berkeley, ten folks from a Baptist church in Ohio, and ten high school and undergraduates through the Job1 program (which, as far as I can tell, is a decades-old initiative run through the local government to employ youth during the summer).

I was talking with a middle-aged man from the Ohio church. He told me how he had met the homeowner at the house they were working on the day before, and how he'd had a long talk with her about her recent experiences moving back in. We agreed that listening to a homeowner's story is just as important as tiling or sheetrocking or flooring their house. I commented that I believed that the silver lining of Hurricane Katrina (I believe I referred to it as "the beauty of the storm" in a speech I gave in my freshman seminar for a certain favorite professor) involved the interaction of people across the country-- and the globe-- who otherwise never would have met. He immediately began nodding, and related that he felt that that was God's work. I found myself saying, "I agree."

My thoughts on God are complicatedly simple. I believe I spent most of elementary school liking that being, most of middle school angry at it, and most of high school and college being unable to believe in its existence but unable to discount it either. (Sorry for referring to God as "it," but the whole gendered deity thing throws me for a loop.) An idea that struck me while talking to that tattooed stranger was that God is what makes us do what we believe is right. That necessitates that God is in everyone. It also opens up a lot of wormholes and maintains the complicatedly simple quality of my beliefs. I'm not sure if this is an idea I'll accept, reject, hold onto. . .But it's the first one that's made some sense in a while.

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I've begun work on the NENA newsletter. I became quite excited about it the more I worked on it. Spreading information is one of the critical things that is necessary to help people recover from the storm. I hope to do that with the newsletter and, ideally, have people come to NENA and receive its service as a result.

We got about ten Job1 kids who started work for us today. Job1 is a government-run program focused on employing New Orleans citizens. As far as I can tell, it employs any youth who applies in an organization of their interest for $8.00 an hour (75 cents above the current Louisiana minimum wage; the minimum wage will actually be changing to $7.50 in October). In any case, the kids who are now working for NENA are awesome. Today I chaperoned them as they took censuses for the 9th Ward Beautification Program and got to watched as they charmed 9th Ward residents. They added a hefty number of applicants to our list and did it with incredible spirit. . .In the 105 degree weather.

Two silly and unrelated things:
1) I now understand the stereotype of Southern women having large hair. My hair is about four times more voluminous here than in Massachusetts.
2) Strangely, instantaneously, unbelievably, I stopped biting my nails (literally for the first time since I mastered the ability to chew) upon arriving to New Orleans. It was entirely subconscious. Now, however, I've started grinding my teeth. Problematic. (Suggestions?)