I came back to the city after Hurricane Katrina on September 5th, 2005 and drove my car to
Houston. I had no job and New Orleans Public Schools had no plans of paying me, for the days I had worked, anytime soon. I went to the Astrodome, looking. I went to the Convention Center in Baton Rouge, looking. I was looking for my students for my students who were in the 9th ward during the storm. The former year, I had woke up every morning and fought fifteen over-aged eighth graders so that they would pass the Louisiana Educational Assessment Plan (LEAP21) test. Colton Renaissance Middle School was the lowest performing middle school in the city and the most violent. In other words, it was the lowest performing middle school in the state and the country. It was a Third World school. While I was teaching we could hear the glass shatter and watch children break windows across the court way on the second floor. We saw a young Caucasian teacher choked and dragged across the chalkboard. I was called a “Fucking Bitch” by all but one girl in my classroom. Several of my students came to me reading on a third grade level and several of them had learning disabilities, to say the least. Only two were reading on level. However, my students’ LEAP scores were the highest in the school where only twenty-three percent of the school passed the test to enter high school. Three months later, my students were drowning.
After the storm, I was one of the first teachers to be rehired in New Orleans in Algiers. O. Perry Walker was the first high school to re-open after the storm. While I worked there, I met every week with people from the Ninth Ward to help re-open Frederick Douglass High School as the school for the Ninth Ward. Residents in the neighborhood believed that the levees had been intentionally blown up and that developers would be turning the Ninth Ward into golf courses and condominium sites. The Frederick Douglass Community Coalition believed, rightfully so, that if Frederick Douglass High School were to re-open, the people would come back and rebuild the Ninth Ward. So we met with the Superintendent from Baton Rouge, organized a re-union for the students and teachers and re-registered students during Election Day at two different voting sites.
When I went to pass out flyers for the reunion to the five public high schools that were currently open, it was then that I saw one of my former students who attended McMain’s night school. He was the only child out of my fifteen students that was back in the city. I would later find out that one was in Harvey. That summer my class would find each other. I found three students on myspace and they sent me to one of my other student’s house in the Ninth Ward. I had met one of her friends when we were passing out flyers for the reunion and she took me to Valencia’s house. Valencia was the only child who did not pass any section of the LEAP test, partly because she had been suspended a total of six times and because her grandmother, who was like her mother, had passed a week before the test. When Valencia called me she said: “I wanted to call you to tell you I got found.” She had luckily made it to high school. We were reunited and our web page is www.myspace.com/coltongirls. Most recently, my students from Colton graduated from tenth grade with 4.0’s in cities such as, Houston, Dallas and Jackson. That year at Colton taught me why I could never leave the city and if I were to teach anywhere else, even if it was on the other side of the Mississippi in Algiers, it would not be the same.
September 2006, a year after the storm the state and federal government would spend 180 million dollars to rebuild the Superdome. At the same time, Douglass would reopen as a night school while its building was being renovated. John McDonogh Senior High would open as a Louisiana Recovery School District (RSD) school without a library, a kitchen, textbooks, water, bathroom stall doors, a gym, chalk, pen, paper, etc. It had no special education students so special education students would just roam the halls and repeatedly get suspended. One fifth of the student population was classified under special education. The school would open for 1000 plus students with only twenty-three teachers, thirty-nine security guards, five police officers and several retired CIA agents. The RSD had a 20 million contract with the Guidry Group while the children would eat bologna sandwiches that were frozen in the middle. In 2003 there was a murder in the school, everyone feared this would occur again.
Instead, the children developed resiliency and called press conferences to tell the world about the injustices that reminded them of life in the Superdome after Katrina. We were on Channels 4,6,8 and we were featured in The New York Times, The Times Picayune, The Louisiana Weekly, Data News Weekly, etc. Furthermore, I took my students on a field trip to the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) meeting. Students made four demands: special education services as required by federal law, fifteen to one student to teacher ratio, a two year moratorium on LEAP and less security guards and more social workers and interventionist. The school board decided in our favor and we made news all over the state. However when I returned home, the RSD was waiting for me and they would interrogate and harass me for the next three months over the field trip. Three months later, I was escorted out of the building with an armed guard because of the field trip and was told that I would be arrested if I crossed Esplanade Avenue. However, because of the support I received from lawyers, parents and community members, both locally and nationally, within ten days I was brought back to the school.
So why did I come back to New Orleans when even though I nearly have a Masters in Education, I have no job security? When I loose myself in my job and come home in exhaustion and frustration many evenings? Why did I come back? Why do I stay?

WATER TOWN
by
Ohio Charles

Without A Sign Or A Warning
Raging Water Just Kept Coming
Rising Up Streets Thru Our Home
Over Lone Road By Country Farm
Cats And Dogs Meow And Howling
Horses Cows In Barn Walls Falling
Cars Trucks Buses Boats Overturn
As Muddy Rapids Choke And Churn
Broken Bloody Bodies Bleeding
Rooftop Arms Are Waves Of Pleading
Sad Of Soul Drown In Tears To Pray
An Old World Being Washed Away
Water Town A Breath Cries Mercy
Hear It Sigh Hunger Wet Thirsty
Know A Sea And Lake Were As One
Renewed In Love A Dove Will Come
For Those By Storm Tide A Capture
Let Them Rest In Peace Hereafter
Those Unbroken Spirit Unbound
Dream Far Beyond A Water Town
(Sept 2005) 8/27/07

I had to spend this 2nd anniversary in New Orleans with friends, teachers and the students. I have been coming for almost 1 1/2 years now, and I still cherish each time I stay.

My last visit in May and June 2007 was hard. I could feel the tension, frustration and anger in answers to my questions, the daily conversations I heard or had with people. In two months, and especially with this anniversary, I am hearing something different. Hope. Appreciation. Hard realizations. What a difference a couple of months makes.

Last Friday, I attended the convocation for the Recovery School Districct, and what a wonderful celebration about the work done and the work to be done. Again, I heard hard work…. hope.
There was dancing, music, celebration, as could only happen in New Orleans.

For this yankee, it was one of the best opening meetings I have ever attended, and I’ve taught in schools all over the United States.

with the music, a couple of teachers opened their umbrellas and started dancing. This went on for quite a while. It was energizing, invigorating, colorful. That’s what I have come to love about New Orleans– its colors, its people and its cultures. It is a jewel in the crown worth saving, polishing and rebuilding.

My research and teaching here have become labors of love.

One year ago, I was fighting my own battles with health, a new job and a new place to live, so Hurricane Katrina was a momentary news marker, or so I thought. As the tragedy magnified, I watched the news night after night, mesmerized by the stories of courage, compassion, violence, governmental ineptitude and man’s continuing saga of inhumanity to man. I felt helpless to do anything. Then, I met Ken and his wife Denise.

Ken and Denise were two people caught in the New Orleans diaspora, who found a safe harbor in Delaware until they could return home. In a casual but sincere comment one day, I told Ken that if there was anything I could do to help, all he had to do was ask. I was working with adolescent literacy, writing and violence, abuse and natural disaster. I wanted to do something. Before he left Delaware to return home to New Orleans, Ken gave me an opportunity to make good on my offer. So, in June I packed up my seminar materials, computer and a month’s worth of clothing for a hot and humid climate, and headed to New Orleans.

Denise and Ken showed me the New Orleans they love– the good, the bad, the sad, the troubled and the generous creative cultural city they’d never leave.

I think there are all kinds of synchronicities related to geographical place and the people who cross our paths in meaningful relationships. My mom and dad took their honeymoon in New Orleans 50+ years ago. As a child, I remember a little figurine of a man dressed in black and white holding a sign that said “Bourbon Street.” It was the one memento mom brought back from their trip. It sat among the bar items in our various homes throughout the years. Now, I have that little figurine. Who would have thought that years later that little figure would herald a future connection to New Orleans. There are other moments– I dated a young man in high school who went to LSUNO, now University of New Orleans. He drove to Arizona State over Spring break and brought me a bucket full of Mardi Gras beads. At the time, the significance of the beads and the color illuded me.

On this one year anniversary, I thought that it was important to say something about all the stories on this blog. Each one is written by a teacher from New Orleans working with all ages from babies in day care to college–each one with stories to tell because teachers have two sets of stories: their own families and a second family in the children/adolescents they teach. This whole blog is dedicated to the narratives about what happened to them before, during and after they were “katrina’ed.” Some are still being written with each day; some aren’t ready to tell. Eventually, I want this blog to contain the stories of adolescents, children and others who are connected to New Orleans through Katrina’s broad reaching effects; maybe they are volunteers from other areas of the US; maybe they are the first response teams to deliver water and food; maybe they are the people who spent days in the Superdome. I am counting on the 6 degress of separation to help this blog locate Katrina stories from teachers, adolescents, children and any others with a story to tell because they too are connected to the wonderful city of New Orleans and want to share in the collective memory about what happened and what is happening as the New Orleans community rebuilds. The days we mark with memorials and anniversary celebrations are forever the geographical and historical markers that shape who we are and what we remember because they shape the humanitarian core of our identity.

As you already know, I am not from New Orleans, and Hurricane Katrina was a news story. So, my story of Katrina is one about the people I met during my first seminar on trauma, adolescent literacy and natural disasters. Talking to this group was one of the hardest things I have ever done. These were people, teachers, who were rebuilding their lives and trying to find a sense of normal in, what one student referred to as, an “absurd theatre” scene. One of the students left everyday at lunchtime. At first, I didn’t question his leaving because he said he had to work on his house. I naively thought he meant that he was repairing some broken windows or putting in some tile. It only dawned on me after two days and some classroom conversation that his “work” on his house was gutting it. His home had been flooded and he had to tear it apart, down to the studs.

This same student on the last day of class presented me with a fleur d’ lis pin he had made, and said that the class was giving it to me to make me an honorary citizen of the city of New Orleans. I was overcome because I had grown to really like the people in my seminar, the city, the people I met on the street and just started conversations with, the colors of people and the city, the food, the troubles that made New Orleans unique. Now, I felt as if I had a new place to call home, and for someone who had lived in 14 different locations by the time she was in high school and in 5 different states in the last 20 years, finding and being home was what I have longed for all my life–a place to belong. New Orleans people had shown me kindness, friendship and vulnerability. I loved the mix of race and heritages that give New Orleans its uniqueness and its problems. I understood why so many who are from New Orleans want to return, or never want to leave even in the face of disaster. It is a fabulous city of music, color and life, and for this newly minted citizen, I can’t wait to return.

If you know someone who is a teacher in the city of New Orleans, we are interested in the stories you and your students have to tell. Please contact Deb or Ken at dmalva@udel.edu or krayes@uno.edu. We are attempting to collect as many stories as we can from the teachers and children who lived and live in New Orleans or anyone with a moving story to tell about some aspect of Katrina.

August 29, 2006

But For a Drop of Sludge

These words are

 

My pain

My tears

My fears

My anger

My home and my job I no longer have

because wind storms wreak havoc on cities and buildings,

because they destroy life and families

and memories and hope and dreams.

 

If you are lucky,

You live to be confused, angry, and depressed,

and you are left with the job of trying to move on

in spite of the all that has happened

in spite of the people who died because

they had faith in a system of levees that breached their trust

in spite of cement slabs that once supported homes

in spite of the homes flooded

in spite of the suffering, the crime, and the death.

 

In the morning when I rise from a sleep I did not get,

I work,

I work not at the office

But at that image in my mind

Of a glass empty but for a drop of the sludge that invaded the streets

And I work,

I work until I am tired from trying,

until I go to bed and spend another night

in disbelief and tears,

I work to transform that glass

into one half full of water - clear and sparkling.

 

And so that I can work at that Image

And because these words are the only home and job I have

I house

My pain

My confusion

My sadness

Here, in these words,

So I can continue,

In spite of all that has happened.

 

Barbara Molnar - January, 2006

�

 

Jazz Funeral for Katrina

 - Ken Rayes

 

 

The first line of mourners:

Mother, Sister, Cousin, Brother

Close family where the hurt and loss

is clear, strong, solid. 

Dark etched lines

of sorrow

on faces. 

 

The music is slow and mournful 

Crying trumpets, sobbing tubas

desperate beat of bass drum

marking the hard shuffling steps

Plodding one

then the other

then the other.

Handkerchiefs

On sweaty brows

 

The second line of mourners:

Friend, neighbor, curious bystander

Extended family where the hurt and loss

is bright, light, brassy. 

We mourn

by moving.

  

The joy and sheer abandon that smiles

Quick clicking steps

Uptown whirling dervishes

The music is fast, unable to be contained

Bright squawking trombones,

Silvery lines of trumpets cutting through the air

Bass drum pounding like a heart, sounding

so alive

not looking back. 

 

We mourn at first by staggering

beneath the loss,

not knowing what we can do,

not feeling anything but sorrow. 

the blues.

 

But at some point we realize

that we as mourners are alive. 

And that sometimes in this life

we will plod

through the dark,

mournful,

missing what was.

 

The joyful sounds of the second line

sing that we are here.

We breathe the swampy fetid air

of Gentilly, Lakeview, the Lower Ninth.      

We hear the bluesy bleating sounds

of Kermit and Shorty and Wynton.

We feel the insistent beat

of drum, tambourine and fan.

It speeds us and propels us on

without control. 

We are caught up in the music

until we again are caught up in life. 

�

I’m not from here.  I’m a teacher who rents, and all I have in New Orleans are some good friends and my 100+ students at John Mac High School, a typical Orleans Parish public school, if you know what that means.  These John Mac kids are my life.  I love them and had planned on seeing at least the first set of them graduate from high school.  Nothing else felt so good as that first or second week back to school, as I patrolled the hallways, managing the chaos of pushing, shoving, swearing, untucked shirts and other funny business mixed in with gleeful yells, hugs, and high-fives to the tune of “Ms. Cheee-yen!!” or “Wazzup, Ms. Chi-zzz-en!”  Groups of girls and boys: former students, current students, and students I’d never taught; students who passed and students who failed (and were retaking my English II class); scurried over to me to tell me about their summers, their new hairstyles or simply to comment on my “new look” or to congratulate me for not wearing Birkenstocks.

I should’ve known that paradise is too good to last because shortly afterwards, the Hurricane happened, and I lost it all.  I didn’t really “lose it all” in the same way that others had lost everything in their lives.  But, it still felt huge since my students were pretty much all I had.  When Orleans Parish put all its teachers on disaster leave, and I realized my kids weren’t coming back, and John Mac wasn’t reopening this year, I went to Harvard’s education school and stayed in one of their houses free of charge as part of the Katrina Refugee Package Deal.  They didn’t even look at my resume; they just took me in.

The first day I get back in town–Jan. 13th, I think it was, I find myself at a new school surrounded by mostly unfamiliar faces in a very unfamiliar school setting.  We are all gathered in the library to be recipients of a white binder containing the “Healing Curriculum” that we would be administering to our students.  I had just driven into town the night before with my sister after two days straight on the road from Cambridge, MA, with four final papers still left to complete.  I had decided last-minute to leave Cambridge in the middle of Reading Period (a week before finals) as soon as I found out I had a job I could return to.

The facilitator from Tulane begins to talk us through the different lessons we are to administer to the students, and she asks that we try the first lesson together in our groups.  Mr. M_, the new Spanish teacher who had been teaching at McMain, begins describing the time he spent glued to the television watching the flood waters come down Carrollton.  My throat tightens up as he’s talking, which surprises me because I had barely cried or felt overly emotional the entire time of my Harvard tenure.  I know that teary-eyed feeling will pass if I don’t have to say anything.  But, as soon as Mr. M_ is finished talking, everyone turns to look expectantly at me.  I give it my best effort, and I try to talk, but I say three words, and I’ve lost it and am sobbing uncontrollably in three seconds to a roomful of strangers.  How am I supposed to teach kids to talk about their Katrina experiences when I can’t even talk about my own?

Eventually, I do make it through the school year.  I don’t break down in front of the students.  I teach them novels and essay writing.  They write their Katrina memoirs, I get over the culture shock of being in a functional school, I finish all four final papers, and I become genuinely attached to these new students.  But, somehow, my heart is still with John Mac.  The new school just isn’t the same, and at the end of the year, I know that I must leave.  I know it’s probably unwise to look to recreate the past, but all I want is for those kids to be back in English II with me.

     “Yossarian felt his heart stop, and then pound so violently he found it difficult to breathe.  Snowdon was wounded inside his flak suit.  Yossarian ripped open the snaps of Snowden’s flak suit and heard himself scream wildly as Snowden’s insides slithered down to the floor in a soggy pile…
     ‘I’m cold,’ Snowden whimpered.  ‘I’m cold.’
     ‘There, there,’ Yossarian mumbled mechanically in a voice too low to be heard.  ‘There, there.’�?
–Joseph Heller CATCH-22
     I am late getting my homework done for this class.  I was just flat out going to refuse, and then probably drop the class.  But I desperately need the six hours, so I feel backed into a corner.  I considered dropping out of graduate school, too.  But I am too old for such foolishness, or at least I am trying to convince myself that I am.  I have had a very difficult time with this class because I did not expect to jump right out of the gate and delve into some rather intense emotions that I have struggled with since August 28th, maybe even the 27th.  The emotional distress begins before the storm makes landfall.  I also did not expect, in the middle of this upheaval known as Katrina, to be asked to go back and look at all of my past traumas.  That was a bit overwhelming for me on the second day of class.  Here are 10-12 strangers, tell them about the bad things that have happened to you.  What is this, Oprah?  Montel Williams?  “Hey, your life really sucks a lot right now, oh, look at that—how fortunate—your life has really sucked rocks since you were born, why don’t you tell us about it.  Remember, tears really push the ratings. And we’re live in five, four, three…”
     My greatest concern and my biggest warning for taking items from this seminar into the classroom is that before anyone dares to pull at sutures (not band-aids) and remove flak jackets to see how deeply either kids or adults are wounded, trust has to be established in the classroom.  And before anyone dares to ask about trauma, you need to know a little more about each student’s personal narrative.  Especially in a destroyed city.  Many of us no longer have support systems; many have lost friends, families, teachers, and professors who were the social and emotional infrastructure of our lives.  Many of our support systems who live outside the city cannot fathom the day to day fortitude that it takes to exist here, and how exhausting that is.  We are standing in the ICU waiting to hear whether our city, our friends, our homes, our lives here will survive.  For many of us, we are not ready to cry, not ready to be that introspective, and only we have the right to say when, where, how, and with whom we will grieve and cry.   Many who had fine support systems before the storm are overwhelmed because those people are gone either physically or emotionally.  Teachers are care-takers; we are often the main support system for friends and family and very quickly become overburdened ourselves and feel that there is no place to go with these intense emotions, and after we get out of the ICU waiting room, then we will cry, privately, not publicly.  I know a little (and I mean that facetiously) about trauma, post traumatic stress disorder, severe depression, the psychology of the abnormal masquerading as normal–it is all hard-wired into my dna.  Did I want to write about Katrina in a public forum of total strangers?  No, I would rather be subjected to the rule of thumb.  Did I want to write about other traumas in a public forum and post it on a blog for dog and everybody?  No, I would as soon have my father and my ex-husband come and live with me.  But since I am in a class, and this is an assignment (not a choice), and for a grade, and since I am desperate for the hours, I wrote about Katrina and posted it onto the blog.  I haven’t slept since; I’m crying and crying and crying.  I feel like I have been forced to expose myself in a peep show, and I don’t even know when people are looking, just that they are or can.  If I haven’t established trust with the ten people I have been in class with for a whopping three days, I am really positive that I have no trust with millions of internet users many of whom called me and my city really bad names, publicly, vehemently, and repeatedly.  So I come to class quite angry every day and more than a little irritated that I have been put in this position.  I feel like I’ve been sucker-punched, and I hope that none of my students ever feels this way and that when they need to look at their scars, sutures, and band-aids that it will be in a classroom of trust and hope with an established relationship between peers and between teacher and student.  And if they are wounded so deeply beneath their flak jackets from repeated traumas that I have the sense and grace to have the tools, resources, and people on hand to help them when and if they are ever ready to remove that jacket and let their wounds become public on their terms, not on mine.�
     Getting people to open up about trauma is a tremendous responsibility and is not to be entered into lightly.  There is no cookie cutter blanket to be wrapped around the traumatized to make them whole.  There are some things that can only be distanced not healed.  Is it good to give people a safe place to explore trauma?  Most definitely, but you must do the leg-work and make sure that you understand what is on the other side of the door you want to kick down or have someone open to you and others.  Especially with kids, who have poor impulse control and such great need.  Tearing off the flak jacket before trust is established and before you know the extent of the injury could so easily result in death either soul or physical.  You cannot control what happens if you open these doors too quickly or without enough back-ground information.  You will be with these kids for a school year or more, not three days, and your actions in these delicate situations have lasting effects.  Be careful out there.
     Dawn
Cold rapid hands
draw back one by one
the bandages of dark
I open my eyes
                   still
I am living
          at the center
of a wound still fresh
     Octavio Paz  �

   We all grieve differently when something or someone  we cherish, love and care about is gone.  The story about the loss of Bertha was compelling; it shows us that it takes time to acknowledge and accept the loss of that special someone that once was part of our lives-it’s no longer with us.

   When I first heard Bertha’s story, it brought childhood memories of my own; it seemed to be the same woman in a different time, in a different country. 

   Mourning takes time.  Months after the storm has passed throughout our lives, and the waters slowly resided, thousands of people are still mourning, sobbing quietly about their loss.  It is the loss of their homes,  the loss of their community, the loss of their friendships, and their loved ones. And to that, the loss of a loved one, probably we all can relate too well.

   As my grandmother used to say, time cures everything or “el tiempo lo cura todo.” Probably so.  But…How long would it take? Would it be six months,  five  years, or longer than that?Time will tell.  But in the mean time, it is important to take time for ourselves, reflect and keep God in our lives.  He will always be there-in the good times or in the bad times, listening, taking care of us.

�

Dedicated To:  Jo Ann Moinet

 

     To Youth

Who among us cannot remember

the spring-bud-time of our own youth.

What joys and agonies our minds and hearts

endured; what  depths of blue funk fear,

frozen, was fostered by the real and

the imagined, and times when loneliness

swept over like an evening tide, and

lovelessness scorched hotter than red desert

sands at noon; when neither parents nor siblings

could offer relief, we sought a friend.

 

For students at S. J. Green and Eleanor McMain

bogged down in their own despair, seeking

for “self”, you became the one whose heart,

already full, opened to listen and understand that

which other adults refused, or had not ears

to hear.  The library was their refuge, and

you, the librarian, became their friend.

Your counsel, more an ear to receive

than a voice to give words.  You helped

unlock many chambers of youthful rage.

 

     II

To Teachers and All Others

We needed only present the kernel of an idea

and you, dear librarian, would say, “Sure, honey,

we can do that.”  Those were not idle words:

out came the fresh pad of paper, the calendar,

and an invitation to sit; the plan for a new

adventure in learning had egun.  Always generous

with time, you brought warmth and specia talent

into our classrooms.  A booktalk was not just a talk,

it was an invitation to dance, to laugh, and cry with

some character.  You made us want to listen, because

you made reading fun.

The infecctious power of your personality

took over the staid atmosphere of a library.

I tried to resist it, to keep my students still,

but I soon gave up, something good happened.

You created a place of welcome for children

to fall in love with books; a comfort place

for those who wished to keep their book-love

life alive.  You took a shy, sweet, Vietnamese

young woman, our Mia, to work beside you;

befriended her and tried, mightily, to help

her spread her wings.

 

When your book is written, whole chapters will

recite the numerous works you do to make the

world a more tolerant and loving place.  You have

walked hundreds, no, thousands of miles for

sufferers of AIDS, you give hours in the HIV/AIDS

office.  You take your quick step and kindness

to the old and senile, and you make us smile

when you tell  us that you think that they are cute.

Those are but a few of the things you do; you are

a woman of extraordinary giving.

 

     III

To Pat

You might not agree with me on this; but

the honest expressions to be “You” in the

different phases of life I’ve witnessed you go

through, made me more relaxed in who I am.

You possess such elements of kindness in

your stardust, that the rest of us receive

more luster in our own from your presence.

 

Perhaps, I speak for many.

The mind cannot deny the facct of Hurricane Katrina,

whose name is now retired.  The harsh reality of

our city torn apart:  our houses, our families,

our jos, our land — the very streets that formed

the nuclei of our neighborhoods; the basis of what

we knew as home, and not least of all, the security

of our place of work and fellowship, our school.

 

Jo Ann, thank you!

You helped haul out sheetrock, furniture, and all

sorts of flood debris from my home.  You dug

through molded clothing tossed deep and high

on the neutral ground to rescue my favorite

dashiki, you said it was your favorite, too.

I had counted it lost, but you took it home

and my shirt was cared for as tenderly as one

of the rescue dogs you have concern for.  You

washed it, ironed it, and brought it back, to me.

 

Your gift, the gift to help others before requests

are even  formed into words, has touched us all.

When I return to our city, if I wilt before the tasks,

become overwhelmed by the enormous work

to rebuild; when my heart weeps in loneliness

and pain, if I falter, send me the fullness of your

spirit, so that I will hear your voice say:

“Sure, honey, we can do this.”

                                                –Patricia A. Ward

                                                   May 7, 2006

 

�