Renaissance Man

A lady named Joan wrote me and asked me to make some comments on what I thought about being a Renaissance human and connections to other people, life, writing, etc. She wanted this for a University of Nebraska at Omaha alumni letter. I sure hope she is a great editor, because I just emailed her some gibberish. I have been spending the past few days filling out excel spread sheets documenting each item we lost. I'm up to item 2011. That is a lot of stuff. But after writing all this excel spread sheet itemizing baloney, to think profound coherent thoughts about abstract ideas is awfully difficult. In the end, I sent Joan the following:

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the beermaid Siduri wisely advises the traveling king:

"As for you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full. Dance and be merry by day and night, by night and day make a feast of rejoicing, day and night dance and play. Let your garments be white, your head washed, bathe in water. Cherish the little child that holds your hand. Let your spouse delight in your embrace. For this too is the lot of humankind."

That is great advice, and something I need to be reminded of frequently. Nevertheless, we in higher education still have incredible goals. We have a unique and sacred responsibility to exercise minds to ultimately make the world a better place. We need to know what is going on in the world, and care about what happens to others. I find that travel, more than anything else, helps me to connect to humans (past and present) and makes me whole. I've found reassurance in that people all over the world share my concerns and goals. Additionally, the study of ancient history and my experience in field archaeology have helped me to connect to my ancestors. Education enhances and fine tunes an intrinsic curiosity to explore, and education provides the tools to effectively communicate. Writing is cathartic and can change the world. I don't think life is about being happy. I tell my students on the first day of class that a university education is not designed to make them happier. I also reinforce that the biblical authors were not writing for them. Rather, they were trying to record and make changes in their own lives. That is something that we should use as a model.

At UNO I was able to pursue a desire to become a polymath. I could take courses in astronomy, Greek language, French history, Child Psychology and Renaissance art, all in one semester. Then, I was no longer a kid from Omaha in the late 20th century. Instead, I was a human being, doing my best to connect to other people, appreciating their accomplishments while trying to understand its meaning for the future. Through studying the past, and writing about it for modern students, I am able to fight off a cultural amnesia.

Rebuilding New Orleans Sans Saints

I hate myself for being a fan of professional sports, especially now.

Tom Benson, the owner of the New Orleans Saints, has agreed to negotiate with San Antonio mayor Phil Hardberger about permanently moving the franchise to San Antonio. In the words of John DeShazier,

San Antonio wants to make the Saints' temporary relocation a permanent move, and Saints owner Tom Benson reportedly is willing to listen. And if there's a primal urge to grab each principal and scrub it with a Brillo Pad to scrape off a layer of the grime, join the crowd.
There's slimy, and there's this.
There's callous, and there's this.
There's kicking a city in its ribs when it's already down on its knees, and there's this.
But, apparently, "this" happens. Or will, as soon as the last second elapses on the 2005 season.

I remember Benson telling fans to be patient as the Saints rebuild. They've been rebuilding for more than 30 years in New Orleans. Now that New Orleans needs to rebuild, Benson's wallet seems to be pretty impatient itself.

Good Call Blanco

Norman C. Francis, the president of Xavier University, has been named chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority appointed by Gov. Blanco. They're trying to get businesses to move back to the state. It is a difficult job that they face, but I think Blanco chose wisely.

Better To Give Than To Receive

Since Hurricane Katrina, Therese and I have heard from so many of our friends and family. Some I have not corresponded with for 20 years, so it was great to hear from these voices from the past. My family especially has been very generous with helping us out mentally, financially and materially (food, clothes, furniture). I guess that is what families are supposed to do, sort of be a support net in case bad things happen. We are quite thankful to have such great families. But then more recently it seems friends have really gone to amazing lengths to help out. Yesterday I received an extremely generous check from Ron Tappy, director of the Zeitah Excavations, who had contacted donations from our friends through The Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and The American Schools of Oriental Research. The list of contributers was pretty remarkable, and I wanted to say thank you. Some of these people are starting out new families, they are the academically unemployed, and many I know are far from rich. Taking money from these people makes me very uneasy. I find it simple to accept money from the Red Cross and Fema. This is more complicated. So let me say thank you so much, and I sure hope that I never again find myself at this end of the donation continuum. I would rather write the check myself. I hope that doesn't sound ungrateful or smug, it's just that all of this is so emotionally difficult. Thank you.

Dry Bones Were Easier Than Soggy Walls and Soggier Moods

"Son of man, can these dry bones live?" Well sure they can, because they weren't soaking in toxic water for two weeks followed by the explosion of several types of mold and supervised by government inspectors. I got pretty depressed hanging around New Orleans for a week so I'm back in Omaha, where I'm still depressed and moreover, it is cold.

Everything about New Orleans centers on the destruction. New Orleans is full of signs about construction work, but my favorite was a class action law suit for Katrina victims against the city of New Orleans. Like New Orleans has any money. The radio is full of ads about being careful around the mold, what to do if you fall off the roof, how to find missing relatives and how to get a blue tarp roof on your house. I heard there were 52 million pounds of formerly frozen chickens rotting on Cold Storage Drive. Ick. My problems aren't so big as that. With Therese's help we got the contents cleaned out pretty good. But what got me so depressed was that I thought they would just turn on the electricity in my house and I'd be fine. I have to live there in the Spring to teach at Xavier, or so the plan goes. Turns out to get electricity turned on in my neighborhood, I need to pay an electrician about $10,000 to rewire my house. He won't do it until I gut the walls. Another contractor told me not to gut the walls, because the feds might wind up bulldozing the neighborhood and it would be a waste of time if I spent a few days ripping out plaster and paneling. Also, to get the gas turned on I need a plumber to come out to the 100 year old house and bring it all up to code, which would cost I estimate $400 and then I would need to pay the gas company $200 for showing up and agreeing with the plumber, and then two months later I might have gas coming to the house. Plus our house leans considerably, as you can see from the photos of our living room below, so it might not be worth saving. Oh yeah, and Therese is unemployed and I'm far from sure I'll get paid next month. So I'm going to try to focus on some academic work here in Omaha, and head back south if and when we hear from our homeowners insurance adjustor and an engineer who will look at the structural damage.

So Long "Stuff"

Therese and I had quite a bit of stuff in our house. I am frankly glad to be rid of most of it. We had a pretty large house in New Orleans and we just kept filling it up. Much of the stuff we had to get rid of was sentimental. There were things we collected from all over the world as we traveled, and even some bad taxidermy we collected. Here are some photos of our stuff all piled up in front of our house.


But the saddest part of the entire clean up for me was realizing that my childhood photo album was destroyed. Before Therese evacuated from Katrina I asked her about the photo albums, and she said they were upstairs. Only this one was buried behind some of Therese's textbooks. Here are some pictures, or what is left of them, from when I was growing up.

Where We Are Going

Tuesday night after Therese's class in Omaha we got into our rental car loaded with cleaning supplies. Therese said "We don't know where we are going." I said "Sure we do, I get on I-29 South, cut across to I-55 from KC to St Louis, and then I-55 South and in 18 hours we'll be in New Orleans." Therese said, "No, I meant where we're going with our whole lives." I said "Oh" and drove for 18 hours straight. Today with much help from my father-in-law we got much done. Our flood insurance adjustor Bob came by and took a couple photos and measured stuff. Then we cleaned out all kinds of things. It was Fung Shwe on crack. Tomorrow we're taking on the kitchen. Sunday we hope to take a break from all of this hard and disgusting work and go to a prison rodeo in Angola. Yee Haw. I heard the water in New Orleans is no longer contaminated, and you can bathe in it and even drink it. I think tomorrow night we'll stay at our house. We spend last night and will spend tonight at our friends the Gstohls. I pray electricity will be on in a week. That would be great. Unfortunately, it looks like because the mold is so bad I'll need to strip each wall down to the studs and spray them with a bleach solution. I had hoped it wouldn't have come to that. There are frogs living in our house, and some other nasty things that are probably not yet recorded. So any biologists looking to be famous are invited to 215 South Alexander Street. I'll be there at 6 AM tomorrow.

Allstate Called

On Sunday we received a call from Robert Mosher, who says that he will be our adjustor for Allstate. I don't know what happened to the other two, but we're overjoyed that we can start this process and begin cleaning our house. I'm going to meet him at our house on Thursday. That means today I need to finish an application for the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research regarding a 2006/2007 fellowship and figure out what car I can drive down south.

No Training Wheels 4 Spidey

Gilgamesh rode a bike sans training wheels the other day for the first time. He did pretty well. Notice the Spider Man costume. How cool is that?

Good Hands?

We are having a hell of a time contacting our insurance adjustor for AllState. On September 8th we were told his name was Steven Blethan. When we called his phone number we were told by a recording that he was in the Gulf Coast area and would return calls September 2nd. We called every day and left a message asking that he contact us. Then on September 22nd we called the 1-800 Allstate number and were told that we had a new adjustor for both wind and flood, and his name was John Dye. They said that he had been to our house on the 20th of September to take pictures. We have called him every day since the 22nd and left messages, and still no word from him. We tried desperately to get in touch with him while I was in New Orleans from the 23rd-26th of September. The thing is that we don't want to clean out our house until he sees firsthand the damage that the flood waters did to the interior. So because he hasn't contacted us, the mold is growing and ruining more of our house every day. We don't expect the claim to be settled at this point, but is it too much to ask for a freaking phone call? So John Dye, if you are reading this, please please please call us back.