Southern Comfort

Well, I’m starting to get ready to head out of here. Joe Raviele from the Berklee College of Music will be taking my place down here, at least in the short term. Actually, we’re starting to lose more and more people, so if any of you out there were thinking about coming down, it’s a great time to! Today was pretty productive. We got the link to Long Beach/Pass Christian put up, which reaches our west-most boundary. There’s still a little more work to be done on the tower, but it should be wrapped up by the weekend. That and our link out west to Mobile will hopefully be up then as well, bringing us another 6-10 MB of bandwidth. Joe and I worked a little more on the Cisco stuff. Apparently they really WANT to help us out, we just have to jump through the requisite hoops. They’ve expedited their grant process for us. The application was 15 pages, down from the normal 50. Guess it usually takes them a couple months to process, but we’ve been promised a decision within 24 hours. They’ve been very helpful, and we’re grateful for whatever assistance we can get. Now if Trango would just come through with the radios..... Also was able to finalize my travel arrangements, which was entirely too stressful. Apparently all three airports in this area (Gulfport, MS, New Orleans, and Mobile, AL) are completely booked for the next week. Looking online, I could see tickets for around $120, but after clicking on them it would either give me the "not found" error or the price would jump to $500. Ok, Plan B: rent a car. It looked to be only $300 or so, which was only about $200 more than I was needing to spend on the car anyway. BUT, after "taxes and fees," back up to $500. Not to mention the fact that they ALSO had no cars. Ended up being able to find a flight a flight out of Jackson, about 3 hours north, for only $140....on SOUTHWEST. I died a little inside. Let’s see if they don’t manage to utterly ruin this trip.

But on to what I really wanted to write a little about: the South. Things are different here. And that’s an understatement. For starters, EVERYONE smokes. And I do mean everyone. A Reverend just came into the shop, smoking. You go to someone’s house, they smoke. And, unlike Oregon, you can do it just about anywhere here. The whole state smells like a bar. But not an Oregon bar. The second thing is that there isn’t a "no shirt, no shoes, no service" rule. It’s completely common, even normal, to have guys everywhere - stores and all - without shirts on. And they’re a sweaty lot. Another NW rule I’m thankful for. Oh, and people are called Mr. or Miss Not sure how I feel about Mr. Matt, but it’s been my local name. Very respectful and courteous. You thank people for EVERYTHING, excuse yourself, etc. It’s nice actually having polite people around.

We had dinner two nights ago with the mother of the guy we’re working with here. Very southern. Chicken, beans, potato salad, the whole nine yards. (Note to Mom: So you know all the family jokes about your chicken? You’ve got nothing on her!) We got to talking afterwards about here, Katrina, New Orleans, and a bunch of other stuff. This area is very tight-knit. Subdivisions are named for the families who have lived there for over 100 years. All these houses and the associated heritage are gone. I think that’s what’s been the hardest on everyone.

The next topic was the disaster response, FEMA, etc. A lot of people ask me questions about how things really are going down here. As I’ve mentioned before, the response has been very limited. FEMA, Red Cross, Salvation Army, etc. are all here, but so long as "here" is a place you’ve heard of. Like Biloxi. Right across the bridge in D’Iberville, where they were hit much harder, there’s nothing. It really seems like a matter of press, which is very disappointing. Another characteristic of Southern people is their resilience. They’ve pretty much given up on other people helping and are buckling down and doing it themselves. So who’s to blame? I’m not really in a position to say. There’s a lot of misconceptions about FEMA’s job. Not to defend them, they did botch some stuff, but they can’t just show up and "fix it" like a lot of people were expecting. The scale of this disaster is so huge no one was prepared to deal with it. It’s a sad but true reality. Here in Mississippi, people seem to realize this. They know that no one else is going to fix their situation and if they want it better, they’re going to have to do something about it. That’s what it takes. People helping people, not expecting handouts or instant results. I can truly admire everyone working so hard here. Now New Orleans, on the other hand, is another problem. I’ve learned a lot in talking to locals that you just don’t hear on the news. I didn’t know a lot about this region before hand, so this has all been very enlightening. The bad news is I can’t take the time to tell the rest of this story tonight. (ooh, cliffhanger) There’s a lot of stuff I have to get ready for tomorrow, but I’ll see if I can finish it up while en route, wherever that might be. Thanks again for all of your ongoing support.

- Matt