520208

As of Thursday night, 3,000 people have been arrested in Orleans Parish since I started work here on August 18th. That's 121 days. That's 24.8 people per day...I think we can safely round to 25. There are couple of things that stand out to me about this:

1.) Holy crap! I've been working here for four months already!

2.) If this rate keeps up, 9,000 arrests will happen in the year I spend working here. That doesn't quite mean 9,000 different people because some of those will be the same person getting arrested more than once in a year, but that seems to happen about once per day.

3.) If New Orleans' population is 485,000, that means that in the last 4 months 0.6% of the city was arrested. If it keeps up all year, 1.85% of the city will have been arrested. (As an aside, OPP's 6,800 average prison population represents roughly 1.5% of the city's population).

I'm going to take this opportunity to just throw out some musings about the work so far:

Most of the people come through first appearances for one of the following things:

-Domestic Abuse Battery

-Possession of illegal drugs

-Illegal possession of a gun, whether because of where you are, you're a convicted felon, you also have drugs on you, etc.

I just got the pricing list for things in prison. Some of it is reasonable, and some not so much. Ex:

Ramen - 68 cents

Bible - $5

Koran - $12

2 Ibuprofen pills - 49 cents

Toothbrush - $2.12

Boxers - $3.45

On my last intake day, which was Saturday, 24 people came through for First Appearances. We give practice levels for how serious a charge is, 1-5. 1 is a misdemeanor, while 5 is life without parole. No one that came through on Saturday had a level 4 or 5 charge. Even so, the total bond set for all 24 people was $389,500. If they all used a bondsman to get out, they would be paying between $50,635 and $58,425 total to be released. Not a single one of those 24 people had an income for their entire family unit that was even half of $50k.

All of those people who don't bond out will probably stay in jail for an average of 2 months before they even get arraigned (where they get to plead guilty or not guilty).

That's enough depressing stuff for now. I'm going home tomorrow morning, and I'll forget all about all of this. I'll have fun, visit people, laugh, and not give OPP a second thought. My clients, on the other hand, will be sitting in jail. They don't get the luxury of going on vacation, or going to see their families, or forgetting about how screwed up everything is. Because that's their life. It's just my past-time.

Taking a Year Off

Before I get into the article, I’d like to give a basic synopsis of what I’ve been up to for the last two months while I wasn’t updating this blog. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I can do it any justice. Taking two months of your life and focusing it into a few experiences, stories, or even themes is an uncompromisingly daunting task. I'll see what I can do to, in the words of Kipling, "splash at a 10-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair." We’ve had great times for the holidays, including:

-giant parties hosted by Steve’s work (Project Lazarus) for Halloween, overwhelmingly populated by flamboyant gay men

-Thanksgiving dinner of 11 people at our house, for which we all cooked something and I made the 2 turkeys (one original, one Cajun-style)

-Perhaps more importantly, a Thanksgiving-day football game in the part

-Certainly more importantly, I introduced the house to the traditional Fennellian fare of turkey slop

In general, life has been great and fairly busy. I work a lot, but I’m getting a lot done and I like the people I work with as well as most of the work I do. It looks like my job functions will start to change in about a month, when Virginia finishes at school and becomes a full-time employee and we get one more employee from Australia named Sam. From there I’ll be doing more work, in the most general terms, on building institutional knowledge. In practical terms, I’ll be doing a lot of training (both actual and materials), rebuilding and reformatting the office’s Wiki (which needs about as much work as a gutted home), and coordinating all the volunteers that will start coming in. That’s not all set in stone- like all things at my office, it’s sure to change based on what crises come up here and there. But the idea is that once I don’t have a full load of intake to be doing, I’ll have at least some time to devote to those things.

Apart from work, the home life is pretty good. My housemates and I still get along well, and we’re still making time to do things together even as we each start to have more things to be doing apart from the community as well. I’m starting to form some good relationships with some of my coworkers and one of my neighbors, which is a nice feeling. I’m making time to go to the gym a few times a week in the morning before I go to work. Marecca (from the other community) usually goes with me, which is nice because I don’t have quite enough motivation yet to get up by myself as often as I do because she’s going with me. Steve (also from the other community) and I have been chilling a lot recently too, and we’re starting to teach each other songs on the guitar. Pretty soon we’ll be able to have a pretty sweet jam session. We learned Nelly’s “Just a Dream” last night, which was a ton of fun. Yesterday we had a cookout in the backyard- it was 75 degrees and it was one of the first things that I organized in New Orleans that I felt like was really a success. It was just a perfect day, and everything fell into place like Amanda Pedro putting a puzzle together.

There are still tons of people around New Orleans that invite us to come see them, and we’re not very good at all about keeping in touch with them. It’s something that I wish we would take advantage of more, but since I’m not really the contact for any of the groups, it’s sufficiently inconvenient for me to do so that I usually just don’t bother. But we’ve gotten to hang out with the Duchense sisters, Sister Helen Prejean and the sisters of St Joseph, the Jesuit Residence at Loyola, a zillion different church communities, and about half a dozen service corps (ACE, TFA, CY, Americorps, and a few other religious groups).

In terms of news, I suppose there are a few updates that are worth sharing in case people don’t know, so that you can’t say I never told you:

-My computer is pretty much officially dead. One of my neighbors accidentally decided it was thirsty a few months ago, and it never recovered. Pretty much everything important was backed up on my external hard drive, it just makes it a little harder for me to update the blog and stuff. If I’m at work I’m too busy to do anything else, even if I stay late, so I just need to remember to ask a roommate to borrow a computer to do something like this while everyone else sleeps. I’m still the last to bed and one of the first to get up in the community. Steve says I’m a vampire.

-The van, most recently named the “Lean, Mean, Green, ‘Bama Machine” is also no more. One of my housemates got in an accident a few weeks ago. Everyone’s ok, but the car is definitely totaled. So that’s going to make road tripping a little harder.

-On that note, I’ll be flying home for Christmas. I’m getting into Charlotte on December 21^st, and then Matt and I are coming to Havelock on the 23^rd. I’ll be there til a stupid hour of the morning on the 28^th, when I fly back home to New Orleans out of New Bern.

I know that’s a terribly concise relation of my last two months, but no amount of writing at this point can really do justice to everything that’s gone on. Hopefully I can be better about it from now on. Moving on to the actual entry that I was meaning to write:

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The irony of an article whose title is about taking time off after not updating this for two months and preparing to go home for the holidays is not lost on me. It’s not necessarily intentional, but I suppose that it dovetails rather nicely. I’ll keep it relatively brief, since I’ve already written a lot today.

Most people have no idea what it is that I’m doing this year. It’s kind of a strange place to be, working but being called a “volunteer” and getting paid for what I do by the organization I work for. My coworkers say I’m on a fellowship, which isn’t quite true but close enough that it does a better job of explaining my role than anything else they could say. Among people that do have some familiarity with how my situation works, there are generally two different categories.

The first are the people who just don’t get it. They understand what I’m doing, but don’t understand why. They wonder why I would waste time doing something where I don’t make money, I’m not going to school, and I’m not going to advance.

The second are the people who sort of get it. They understand what I’m doing, and understand that the work is important and valuable to society. They’re excited that I’m doing something good for the less fortunate in society. They say things like “It’s so great of you to take a year off to help people.”

Clearly, these two groups have very different ideas of the importance of social work, and that’s fine. To be expected. Probably even good, to a certain degree, because cynicism is as necessary as idealism if you ever really want to get anything accomplished. I think the important thing to realize that in a very fundamental way, they are both terribly mistaken. Allow me to explain.

The first group of people basically see little value in investing your time, effort, and money (in terms of opportunity costs) in something that won’t help you personally. The second group sees great value in doing that while you’re young and you have a lot of both time and effort. But at some point, both groups agree that in the long run, there are more important life aspirations than to sacrifice everything to help others. For group 1 it’s explicit; for group 2 it’s implied by saying “taking a year off.” What is the year “off” from? It’s taking time away from what really matters, and what really matters to them is what really matters to most people, which is getting a good education so you can get a good job and have a good family life and be comfortable. And that’s a grand ideal. But that’s not what really matters.

For those of us that have read the bible and believe that some parts of it are, if not true, at least good guidance in justice or morality, we must demand more of ourselves and each other. The goal of our lives isn’t to make ourselves comfortable. Many amazing people that either haven’t read it or don’t assign it even that much credibility have reached a similar conclusion. What really matters might in an academic sense be bringing yourself happiness, but there should be no better way of doing that than working to bring God’s kingdom to earth, which can be done by secular means as effectively as (if not more than) by any others. Jesus would not have been remarkably sympathetic to the Invisible Hand argument for social optimization. We have an individual responsibility to actively bring justice to the oppressed. That is not negotiable. What could be a more important goal? What could one possibly value more?

So if you think about it, I’ve been taking the last 22 years of my life off. And if I go on from here to live a normal life, then I’ll be taking the rest of my life off too. I think that most people who “take a year off” have, in reality, only had one real year on. The rest is just sort of a break. Or a distraction. A tangent perhaps. But how can we justify the goal of human existence in terms of the individual struggle to achieve greatness, rather than in terms of the collective struggle to overcome misery? And in the end, coming from where we are right now, is it even possible to achieve one without achieving the other?

So from now on, whenever I hear about “taking time off” to do service, I’ll be asking myself the question “taking time off from what?” And if whatever it is requires you to take time off from it in order to do service, is it really something you should be doing at all?

Tales

It's an interesting situation, having tales to tell and no time with which to share them. The good news is that I've started keeping notes of the interesting client interactions I've had at work- my office is all going to compile them for the year, I think, and then we might make a book. We'd have to make the NYT Bestseller list to come close to making enough money to bring us back to minimum wage for the hours we work. I'm really diving into the whole thing though, and I love it. I don't think it's fair to say that any of the clients are really my friends yet, but I've had really good connections with a few of them, including some really warm smiles, a few that come try to talk to me even when they've been called up to talk to their lawyer or investigator and not me, and most recently, a fist bump (separated by 3 inches of plexiglass). Those are almost as rewarding as looking on the screen and seeing someone getting released. I have to be careful about getting too comfortable with them though- I'm beginning to convince myself that I understand what my clients are going through because I've talked about studied it and fought against it so much since I got here. But in reality I can never understand what these people are dealing with, because I've never been arrested (no matter how hard I've tried on certain occasions). I have to find a happy medium. Or maybe a not-so-happy medium, if I really got deep enough into their shoes.

Some interesting experiences since my last update:

• Volunteered at the Ritz Carlton for the 10-year anniversary of Cafe Reconcile, a job training center for at-risk youth that one of my roommates works at
• Went to Plaquemine's Parish for a Baptist church service, followed by a boil. It was amazing- they treated us just like family. I learned how to boil and how to do the bus stop (just a groovier version of the electric slide); Lester responded to that with "So that means you're black now!" It really felt like a compliment. I don't know how many other places in the US that would be true for people.
• Won our first work-league softball game...and lost like 3.
• Broke the door at a bar (but not permanently- it was screwed up before I got there, I promise!!!)
• Got stopped by a cop on the street while walking. Didn't get searched. Didn't get booked. He didn't even run my ID. How different my life is from my clients'.
• Had a great birthday that included a brass band concert (Soul Rebels- AMAZING), a block party in uptown for the Abita pubcrawl, some people over at the house to hang out afterwards with beverage sponsored by my wonderful brother, and a cookout sponsored by my amazing grandparents with my housemates. The whole thing was outstanding.
• Picnics on the Fly, which is this field on the banks of the Mississippi River, with the housemates
• Volunteering at the Good Shepherd Gala, which was a fundraiser for the charter school that Catherine, one of my roommates, works at.
• Listening to great live music on Frenchmen Street, including a sweet reggae band and the New Orleans legend known as Kermit Ruffins.
• Finishing up a set of cornhole boards and sewing the bags for the backyard.
• Impromptu Shirtless Mechanic Night, after one of the tires of the van popped.
• Actually, in the same week the van was out of commission because of the flat tire and my laptop was out of commission because a neighbor of mine decided that it was thirsty. That reminded me that my idea of simple living still needs some refining. I can get along just fine without them. I think I’d be pretty sad to lose my guitar though. I’ve been playing that a lot lately, especially once my roommates are sleeping. I definitely sleep the least of anyone in my house, so I just go out on the porch at night and play some.

In other news, I cut off all my hair. A few pictures are on Facebook.

Craziness

Here is a brief outline of some ridiculous things that have happened so far in Nawleans:

Midway to Mardi Gras- my first second-line ever. It was basically just a parade through the streets in our neighborhood, where we all got dressed up in ridiculous costumes and danced around. I made a dress out of a pillowcase. It was wonderful.

Chick-Fil-A Bowl- I went up to Atlanta over Labor Day Weekend to stay with the FOSAA boys. It was just like the old days- maybe even TOO much like the old days. We had a blast though, and the Atlanta JV's met us out on Sunday night, which was a lot of fun. Molly, Jordan, Bernadette, Jayne, Mackenzie, and Sarah all came to have a drink with us and chat. It seems like they're enjoying their time in ATL. If the city weren't so spread out it would probably be better for them, but they seem to be doing pretty well despite the sprawl. The game was epic. I was so giddy during the fourth quarter, I felt like a child. And pre-game tailgating with Michael, Britt, Dori, Hannah, Meagan, Lauren, Ryan, Kelly, and everyone else was exactly what I needed on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Office League Softball- I joined the team and we had our first game on Wednesday. We were quite bad, which is nice because I fit right in. Definitely room for improvement though- we're in training mode right now. Definitely. Just like all things we do at the office, we're understaffed and underresourced for our games. The other team had batting gloves. BATTING GLOVES. That's all you really need to know to understand the situation. It was super fun though, and most of the people on the team were very inviting to me, which is always appreciated. That's also where the other attorney, Carlotta, gave me/PTS props.

Who Dat Nation- my first experience in NOLA during a Saints' game. It was out of control- schools got out early and courts closed for the opening game. I mean...the game started at 7:30 and schools were letting out at 2. Sections of court closed for the afternoon. There are people in jail in New Orleans right now that have to wait extra days, weeks, or even months for their court date because it had to be rescheduled. That was pretty appalling. On the plus side, most of the housemates went out to a sports bar for the game and it was incredibly fun. Standing room only in a massive bar, and everyone was really excited. I ran into Donna, one of the public defenders at my office, randomly at the bar. It's true what they say about it being a small city. She's one of the 2 attorneys who has actually said to me, in a social setting outside of work, how appreciative she is of the work that I do at pretrial. It's really nice to get that kind of validation, but that's really just the culture of the office. When someone wins a case, another attorney in the office emails the entire staff listserv about it and your inbox is useless for the afternoon because it's just filled with congratulatory "reply all's" to them.

Police Interactions- I got pulled over by a cop yesterday while walking down a sidewalk, going home from work. The cop questioned me a little bit, and then once I finally "proved" I was coming home from work at OPD by showing him my ID badge, he told me I matched the description of someone they were looking for who was walking around and posing as an AT&T repairman to get into people's houses. I really squandered my golden opportunity to test out one of my favorite cop ploys: usually cops write in the police reports that someone they questioned was touching their pocket repeatedly, which they say gives them reasonable suspicion to search them for drugs. I kept meaning to pat my pockets repeatedly if I ever ran into a cop to see if they'd do it to a well-dressed white guy, but I completely forgot to do it in the heat of the moment. Even so, it's pretty clear that I got out of that incident easily. What if I didn't have a job I was coming from, or a way to prove it? Or even if I did...what if they didn't believe me and took me down to booking? And then if they haven't found the person yet, or the description includes something like "blue jeans and white t-shirt with dreadlocks" and you match it, you get booked. That's all there is to it. And then you spend 2 months in jail waiting to even get a chance to plead not guilty. And then wait another month or more to start trying to prove that it wasn't, in fact, you. That happens to a lot of people; just not to people who look like me.

Work Issues Generally- I had my first of a number of things. I had my first seriously mentally ill clients, I've done my first photo motions with the court, I've gotten my first medical release waivers together, I've gotten my first truly appreciative clients and families, as well as my first truly hostile ones. I've cost a guy about an extra month in prison. I've saved a guy months, too. In case you were wondering, it doesn't feel like it balances out. I'm finally getting the hang of innovating office processes and I'm starting to get things done more efficiently. I'm starting to codify policies that we're coming up with so that we don't have as much brain drain every time someone leaves or moves, which is especially important when we have so many volunteers coming in and out that need to be trained or retrained. I absolutely love my work. It's sort of a nice problem to have that I can look at the clock some days and have accidentally worked 11 hours, and then knowing that I have to go home to see my community even though I'd really like to just finish this one thing...plus this one other thing...and then this thing. It never ends.

Gotta run to catch a bus now for the 10-year anniversary of Cafe Reconcile- we're volunteering for it at the Ritz. Hillary's placement is there so we've been getting the low-down on everything. Can't wait!

"Man, that ain't even how it happened!" - 1/3 of my clients

The First Week of Nawleans

Yesterday marked my first full week in NOLA as a JV. There are tons of things to talk about, and I’m not really inculcated enough into any of them to give a very comprehensive account. I think that, for purposes of simplicity and concision, I’ll break down the experience thus far into 3 sections: work, community, and the city. I guess I should probably mention some things about orientation in Houston as well, so I’ll start with that.

Orientation: We were in a gorgeous retreat center called Circle Lake, outside of Houston. There were really nice cabins and the grounds were outstanding- lots of little walking paths, gardens, lakes, and wildlife. It was really peaceful. That’s where I met all of my fellow JVC-South participants, and fell in love. It was one of those places where I really felt like we were all there for the same reasons, and a lot of us seem to be in about the same place in life. That said...my community is definitely still the best. As an unbiased observer, I can say that with a reasonable degree of scientific certainty. Actually, we were kind of “that guy” collectively sometimes, but that’s just because we got along so well. We had some good talks by staff and presenters, also some less-than-good talks from the same, but lots of time to reflect and meet each other and do some community-building stuff. As much fun as it was, though, after 4 days of it I think we were all ready to get to our placements.

The City: I don’t really know that I’m able to comment too much on the city right now, even though we’ve been making a pretty conscious effort to go out and see as much of it as we can. I think that the biggest things that I can say about it so far are that the layout is a little confusing, being the Crescent City and all, and that the people here are super great. It’s like the traditional Southern and European hospitalities are working together to make most people here really friendly. I was a little bit worried that being in a big city would make that harder to find, but it seems like that was unfounded. There are so many beautiful houses and buildings; even in middle-income places you can find really sweet architecture. As my roommate Catherine put it, a lot of them look like beach houses- they look like they have themes and stuff.

Community: As long as I’m talking about one of my roommates, I’ll move on to a little discussion about the whole community. So, my house has 6 people: Ali, Brian, Catherine, Hillary, Lindsey, and me. The other side of the duplex is a different community, where Alex, Marecca, Maya, Nicky, and Steve live. So far we’ve been getting along really well- no major drama and we’ve been hanging out a lot, both within community and cross-community. We’ve gone out a few times to listen to live music, played some sports, gone for a run, gone to mass, meandered around the city, and just hung out around the house so far. I imagine there will be a lot more of all that this year. I’ve probably been the least accessible member of our community because I’ve been working so late, but whenever I’m home I’ve been doing what I can to spend time with people instead of going off and doing my own thing. Not that it’s really a sacrifice- I like these people a lot.

Work: I don’t really think there’s any way to describe my work without using the words “overwhelming” and “hectic.” And it’s not one of those things where that will change as I get more used to the work. I think that, in reality, it will get more overwhelming once I’m better at what I’m doing, because I’ll have more responsibilities. Right now people are going easy on me because I’m the new guy. Of course, “going easy on me” still involves working some 11-hour days, but there’s always so much to do and so few people to do it. And in a lot of cases, failure means that someone spends time in jail that they don’t have to. Or doesn’t get their medicine in jail while they’re there. Or goes back to jail instead of being free to go. Friday was my first experience where I realized that if I, personally, didn’t succeed at a very specific (and difficult) task, a person was going to jail. I was thinking that as I sat down and talked to him, and made phone calls trying to straighten the situation out. It’s a lot of responsibility to have on your third day of work. But everyone I work with is a generally excellent person- they’re motivated, they’re educated, and largely smarter than me. They keep me pretty much at capacity, which I’m very grateful for, because I realize how hard it is to give someone enough work to keep them busy, but not so much that things aren’t getting done. I have yet to make my first truly massive blunder, so be prepared for the post where I work my head through that whole experience. Don’t get me wrong- I’ve made plenty of mistakes. Just none that have cost anyone years of their lives yet. I figure it’s probably inevitable though. That’s all part of the job though. Starting today I have my own “cluster,” which means that 3 court rooms are essentially mine. For the next year. And all of the clients that work in those court rooms are also mine.

This is pretty long already, and I realize it’s very cursory, but I don’t want to write a novel here. I’ll try to be better about keeping this updated so that I don’t have to write 1000 words to say pretty much nothing next time.

“God’s salvation is open to EVERYONE.”- Priest at the gospel mass we went to today. I found it to be a useful reminder that as little as we know about how the world works, we know even less about how Heaven works. You never know who could be on their deathbed and see angels.

(Living) for God

I've been toying around with an idea for a long time, but was never really able to fully articulate it. Over time I kind of forgot about it, but every once in a while it resurfaces in my mind and I ponder it a bit more before I give up and mull something else over. Or just don't think about anything. I do that pretty frequently as well. Anyways, I was reminded of it a few weeks ago during a (surprisingly) good homily at my home parish and I've been meaning to get around to writing about it for a while. It seems like the kind of thing that might be appropriate for this type of blog. Without further ado, I'll get into it as best I can:

We hear a lot about how blessed we are that Jesus chose to die for our sins. Now, I won't say that we all "get" that and appreciate it as much as we can, because I don't think that as humans we are capable of understanding the full extent of what he did. But I think that most of us have gotten about all that we can out of that idea. Martyrdom is not specific to the Catholic, or even Christian, faith, and I think that we all have a pretty healthy respect for righteous martyrs. But I don't think that's the important part of the story of Jesus. It's easy to die for a person or a cause. It only takes one decision- one moment, one hour, maybe even one day, but then it's over. And through the course of that short period of time, you have the solace of knowing that you are making the greatest sacrifice you can make, and after you're done you never have to do it again.

What's truly inspiring about the story of Jesus is not that he died for us, but that he lived for us. Even to set aside the whole "leave an eternity of unbridled joy in fullness with God and become human" thing, which was probably a bigger sacrifice than experiencing a human death, Jesus was amazing because every single day he did all he could to save the people around him. It just so happened that it took him about 33 years for that to include death. But living for people is much harder than dying for them. When Jesus said that we have to take up our crosses and follow him, I think he meant that every single day we should be living for others as much as he lived for them, and as much as he died for them. He was telling us to do everything in our power to love God, and to love each other, and that it's not going to be easy. In fact, it's going to be very hard. At some points it's going to be a sacrifice of everything that you value, even your friends and your flesh and your dignity. That's what it means to pick up your cross the way that Jesus did when he died. And that's what it meant to pick up your cross the way that Jesus did even while he lived. Jesus didn't get free time, unless he ran off and hid in the desert- and even then Satan wouldn't leave him alone. Jesus didn't get to just hang out with his friends- he visited with sinners and sick people and tax collectors. He didn't have a job or a house- how often do you think he had to sleep on the dirt in the open, hungry from missing dinner? Living for God is harder than dying for God. It's harder because of all the uncertainty. You don't know if you're doing the right thing, or how much longer you should be doing it, or if you should be doing something else instead. Plus you have to see your failures and inadequacies. That leads to questioning. Confidence is hard to foster among people who live for others, because there are so many problems and so few flawless ways of dealing with them. You can tell yourself as much as you want that what really matters is that you're trying your best, but I doubt very many people are persuasive enough to truly believe themselves.

Unfortunately, we don't always get the opportunity to die for something we care about. For most of us, the best we can do is either find something to live for, or just stumble through a capricious existence that benefits from frequent returns but lacks any deeper value. I'm not convinced that there's one best answer that works for everyone. Because the truth is that living for something is hard, and the benefits are generally not tangible. I think this next year in New Orleans will be a good opportunity for me to decide which category I fall into. Unless I happen to find something to die for, I'll have to make the decision relatively soon. And spending a year trying to live for something will at least give me the taste for what that's like.

I hope that posts in the future are a little more upbeat than this one...I realize it's kind of a downer. Hopefully it was worth trudging through. Don't get me wrong or put me on suicide watch- I'm not trying to say that living is bad. I'm just trying to point out that living for something is hard work, and maybe we should reconsider the "important" parts of our faith tradition.

"Our deepest, most innately human desire is to sacrifice ourselves for someone else"- Fr. John Gillespie

Questions

So, a week or two ago I got a very thoughtful email from the person who is currently in the position I will have next year, introducing herself and offering to answer questions I have about the next year of my life. It's certainly something I want to take her up on, so I've been trying to put together a list of questions I want to ask her so that I don't have to keep bothering her with one thing at a time. Trying to come up with an exhaustive list of questions that you have for the future is sort of like trying to collect all of the oil in the Gulf with an eyedropper- you know it's important work, but you just don't really feel like you're ever going to get anywhere near finished. I guess if you're doing things right, you might never be finished. Asking questions about the future, that is.

As I'm putting together the list of questions, I find myself often wondering what that list says about me as a person, and how the JV answering my questions will judge me based on the questions I do and don't ask. I imagine you could learn a lot about someone based on their list of questions about the future. Specifically, here I'm thinking about ones that can actually be answered, like in my situation, not things like "When will I die?" (although that list would probably be very telling as well). So I'm trying to start using the questions I'm coming up with to decide what I really value. It seems sort of counter-intuitive- wouldn't it be a lot more productive to decide what you valued and then make sure you ask all the questions that address those things? Ideally, yes. But I'm not convinced that very many of us really know what we value. At best, I think we know what we feel like we should value, or that we wish we valued. But how close is that list to the list of things that we really do value? It would probably be very depressing to look at the list of the things that you actually seem to value and compare it to the list of things that you wish you valued.

For illustrative purposes, I've found that my list has way more questions about gyms and tennis courts than it does about churches/parishes and volunteer organizations. I guess, upon reflection, that isn't all that surprising to me. But before this epiphany, I would have definitely ranked faith higher than exercise in terms of my values. I also didn't have any questions about relationships, friend or otherwise, or how they met people in the area. I don't know if that's because I just assume it will happen for me, or if it's not something I value, but that certainly shows that it's not something I've been concerned with so far in my preparation.

I guess there's not a whole lot substantive to take out of this post, so I'll try to enumerate the things that might have been worth saying:

1. I'm still relatively new to introspection, and quite bad at it.
2. I'm excited about NOLA and trying to get all my thoughts together and ask the right questions so that I'm prepared for the next year.
3. We might not really value what we think we value, or at least as much as we'd like to.
4. You can learn from questions without answering them.

I'm going to start concluding all of my posts with quotes that are related to something. Maybe the post, maybe NOLA, maybe God, maybe the world. Here's the first: "You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions" - Naquib Mahfouz n

Getting Started

Surprisingly enough, "getting started" in JVC happens long before you actually arrive for the first day of work. I guess before I get too bogged down into details, we'll start with a useful key that will help explain some basic acronyms, and from there we'll go to more general information.

• JVC- Jesuit Volunteer Corps. This is the organization that I'll be working with for the next 1-2 years.
• JV- Jesuit Volunteer. That's what I am, and that's what everyone else working with JVC is called.
• NOLA- New Orleans, LA. That's where I'll be living for the next 1-2 years while I'm working with JVC. I will be living in a house with like 5 other JVs, and rumor has it that the house I'm staying in in NOLA is a duplex used by JVC, so I'll actually be living with like 11 other JVs. I'm taking a slow transition from being an RA.
• OPD- Orleans Public Defenders. That's the office I'll be working at in NOLA.

So, here's the basic deal: way back in January I applied to join JVC, which is a national volunteer placement agency affiliated with the Society of Jesus (read: Jesuits). Once I got accepted into the domestic program, I started looking at possible placement organizations that are partners with JVC. After sending JVC my preferences, they gave me interviews with some of the organizations, and that process continued until we found a placement that the JVC, the host organization, and I all thought would be a good match. For me, that happened in mid-May and it happened to be in the Orleans Public Defenders office in NOLA. I will now spend the next year working there and living with other JVs in a house in NOLA, and if I like it I can apply to do it again.

My first day of official work is August 18th. By August 10th, however, I have to be in Houston to do orientation for JVC. Even though I'm working at OPD, I'm still a JV and I still do a lot of retreats, orientation, and training with JVC. It's more than just a year working at an office- the year is an experience designed to focus on social justice, community, simple living, and spirituality. Which is cool, because right now I think that those are all things that I value, and I expect that increased exposure to them will only increase my ability to appreciate them.

So, I'm basically free until August 10th to do pretty much whatever I want. My only responsibilities to the organization until then are to figure out what I'm going to bring (simple living, remember, so probably not all that much) and do some fundraising before I get there. I have to raise at least $500 to help cover the costs of recruitment, screening, etc. before orientation begins. So, if anyone has a cool idea of something that might make a good fundraiser that doesn't rhyme with "shma-bake sale," I'd love tips. Right now my fundraising page with JVC is https://atl.etapestry.com/fundraiser/JesuitVolunteerCorps/CelebrateLA/individual.do?participationRef=2315.0.120310468, so if you could donate (or know other people who might be interested), any help would be greatly appreciated.

I haven't yet decided if I'll have my cell phone or my laptop while I'm doing JVC, which doesn't really affect you except that if I don't, I won't be able to text or Facebook chat or anything to keep up with you. My house will have a phone, so if you need to get a hold of me that option will still be available. I'll have internet access at work if nothing else, so you can email me at nathan.fennell@gmail.com and be sure to get a response within at least a few days. But the best way to keep up with what I'm doing and what JVC is doing in NOLA is probably going to be this blog. So check it out from time to time. And if I'm not updating it, send me an email and guilt me into keeping it up better. This will -not- be a vanity blog about my personal daily exploits, so don't worry about having to read pages of pointless musings and internal debates about what tie I should wear. This will just be about calm living, unconditional loving, and Cajun food. You know...the Bayou State of Mind.