On Monday, September 25, 2006, the Superdome was scheduled to reopen, with the Saints playing a Monday Night Football game. Southern's band was to do the halftime show, Irma Thomas and Allen Toussaint were to do the National Anthem, and Green Day and U2 were to sing some songs pre-game. Businesses were shutting down, schools were closing early (ours didn't, but we all got to wear black and gold or Saints clothes). It was a special day.
We tried to get free tickets through WWL. We wouldn't find out about them until a few days before the game.
The game was sold out. The only way to get seats this year is through buying season tickets. Unless we got tickets through Mark's job, we would not be going.
The weekend before, we waited. We heard nothing. Monday came. Mark went to work. He heard nothing. I wanted to go only to BE there. And to see U2. And since Reggie Bush is singlehandedly keeping me employed, I felt I should be there for him. I'm no football fan. I hate that sport. I'm a Saints fan in the sense that I feel happy for them when they win, and sad for them when they lose, but other than that, I know nothing about them. But I wanted "to be in that number when the Saints came marching in."
It would be an experience to remember for eternity, I thought. I was there, watching the roof of the Dome fly off during Katrina. I saw the lines of people snaking around the stadium, before the mists began. I saw them desperately trying to get in as the mists and outer bands started coating the city. I saw the people strolling around outside after the storm had passed. I saw the truckloads of people being carted through the early stages of flooding to the refuge of the Dome. I almost was stranded in the floodwaters between the Dome and the New Orleans Arena. The Dome was one of my last glimpses of the city as Spud drove us to the safety of Baton Rouge. And I wanted to be there as it reopened.
People all over the world criticized us for putting football high on our list of priorities. There are other authors more eloquent than I am, so I won't say much on that subject. I will include links to them at the end of this post if you think that what I say is unsatisfactory.
But first, we have been criticized for using millions of dollars to restore it. Most of that money came from FEMA and insurance. All of you critics in other states -- if a tornado ripped through your town, or a mudslide, or a hurricane, or an avalanche...I don't know what your specific potential natural disaster is, but imagine it happening to your home and your business. Now imagine applying for FEMA and collecting your insurance check. What are you supposed to use it on? Your next door neighbor's house? The grocery store down the street that you don't own? A cruise? (Put aside those who falsely applied for funding after the storm and who were caught..they are scum and do not count.) No. You HAVE to use that money to repair or restore your property. Same applies to the Dome.
Also, we need something for tourism. Our blossoming movie industry is non-existent now. Our convention center has a tainted scar from Katrina, too, and people are afraid to plan conventions here now, especially from June 1 to November 30. We have lost a lot of revenue from tourists and from residents who are too afraid and have packed up and moved on. Many companies have also deserted us in our hour of need. Some, like IHOP and MAC cosmetics have come to us, have appeared since the storm, have put faith in us. But many have left, including the headquarters of Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, which originated here. We need money. Desperately. And if we can get some tourists here for the games, then we'll take it. In addition, these tourists, these football teams with their entourages, can come here and see everything first-hand. They can see and they can go back and share.
And while this may seem even more superficial, we need something to DO. The parks are a mess. The Lakefront is a mess. Stores close early. Restaurants are still on the post-storm limited menus. The Hornets are in Oklahoma. The Voodoo haven't come back yet, but are about to. I have now been to two Saints games this season. I am a football hater. But being there was exciting, and it gave me something to DO. You don't know how important that is.
We also need a unity item. And if a bunch of overpaid athletes can give us something to talk about besides sheetrock, demolition, insurance, FEMA trailers, and places that have closed and friends that are gone, then goddammit, don't take them from us.
I've just given away the fact that we did, indeed, get tickets to that homecoming, er, DOMEcoming game. At 3 p.m. that Monday, I had a text from Mark. He just found out we had tickets. My friend Jen, who teaches down the hall from me, was going. She lives two minutes from school. I parked my car at her house, and the P.E. teacher picked us up there and dropped us off a few blocks from the Dome. We walked to it, then waited for Mark. He left the house at three. He did not get to the Dome and into a parking spot until 2 1/2 hours later. Jen and I met up with Over, who was recording Cowboy Mouth's set before the game. With no Mark in sight, and no other things to do, Jen and I accompanied Over to his car, which was all the way over at St. Patrick's Church, to put away his recording equipment. On the way back, Mark called to say he was there.
I tell you, it was more Mardi Gras than Mardi Gras downtown. People were everywhere. Everyone was in a good mood. Jazz musicians were on several corners. Block party ran into block party ran into block party. Booths were set up all over. Merchandise, contests, media broadcasts, food, the GooGoo Dolls, Cowboy Mouth... it was a madhouse.
At 5:30, they opened to doors and started letting people in. But not before they dropped a big black cloth off the Dome, revealing a sign that says, "Our home. Our team. Be a Saint." There was a huge countdown clock above the banner. It was like New Year's Eve, the way the huge crowd counted down together.
The pat-downs at the entrance were dragging, so by the time we got up there, the frisking before entry stopped.
Waiting in line to walk in was nerve-wracking. The anxiety levels and fear levels and sadness levels were high, but then, as soon as I walked in, it was like a triumph. Reopening the Dome is such a milestone. A small one, but one nonetheless. And I got teary-eyed. It was triumph, sadness, joy, fear, and awe all rolled into one.
We climbed to our free nose-bleed seats. We sat down in chairs that had (possibly) never been sat in before. We took in the view. It was still about half an hour before showtime, and the stadium was quickly filling up. The last Dome game I'd attended was when the Colts handed the Saints their rear ends on a silver platter. It was a dismal season, anyway, and it was so empty.
We saw them wheel out all of the stage pieces. The excitement level in the room was only rising. A voice came over the brand-new soundsystem. The noise level in the room dropped slightly so we could hear what was being said. Suddenly, on the new screens in the end zones, reporter Robin Roberts appeared. She is from the Gulf South, and has made it nationally. When her face appeared, the crowd erupted. If you saw the game on TV, you may have noticed she smiled wide while talking and then started yelling into the mic. This was because the crowd was so loud, you couldn't hear her at all. She introduced U2 and Green Day.
They played "Wake Me Up When September Ends," a song I can't ever hear anyway. Ever since we were evacuating and the song was stuck in my head, I haven't been able to hear it without crying. So, naturally, I did. Then they played their new joint effort, "The Saints Are Coming," which was raucous. Even the old people sitting around us were nodding their heads. They followed that with "Beautiful Day." Then Irma Thomas and Allen Toussaint played the national anthem.
And then, after clearing the stage, the Saints arrived. They ran out of an inflatable Saints tunnel and down a line of first-responders from the storm. Again, I cried. And the game got off to an amazing start, staying amazing the entire time. I never thought I'd enjoy a football game. But the mob mentality of enthusiasm was too infectious. It was so loud in there, I was holding my cell phone, which was on vibrate, and I couldn't hear it when I got texts. You could barely hear anything but a roar.
I will spare details of the game. Those can be found anywhere. And you already know they won.
In more ways than one.
For further opinions on the game, go to these articles by columnist Chris Rose. He is amazing. http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-6/1159337420130960.xml&coll=1
http://www.nola.com/rose/t-p/index.ssf?/base/living-0/1159508031169730.xml&coll=1
http://www.nola.com/rose/t-p/index.ssf?/base/living-0/1159890904114050.xml&coll=1
Showing posts with label Reggie Bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reggie Bush. Show all posts
Monday, October 09, 2006
Monday, August 21, 2006
Part 17: The Borderline Merry Ol' Month of May
In the first week of May, things did not seem so bleak. We took our 7th and 8th grade class trip concurrentl with the high school retreat. The retreat was scheduled to leave New Orleans the DAY that Hurricane Katrina hit us. Thankfully, they cancelled the trip ahead of time. Could you imagine having a brand-new high school, open for 8 days in all of history, and have every student ten hours away in Mentone, Ala., where cell reception is non-existant? Luckily, we had paid attention to the news enough that they got on the phone and alerted parents ahead of time.
This trip ended up being fun. Having the now significantly smaller high school with all of our 7/8s was more fun than we expected. We stayed at a sleep-away camp, where we split the two schools into two different areas. We only had the 8-hour train ride and 2-hour bus ride, as well as our closing-night campfire together. It worked out well, except for the sheer amounts of rain we had.
On the Wednesday of our trip, we had a surprise visit from Patty, the school president, and Mike, the Academy principal. Wiley, the high school principal, was on the trip with us. They interrupted all of our activities and called a meeting in the lodge. This is where we learned about our new patron Saint, Reggie Bush. Students and teachers and administrators alike wound up in absolute tears over the news. Happy tears, mind you...tears of relief....and we were all in absolulte shock over how wonderful he was. I managed to place a collect call home to Mark from a landline to share the news with him. And George W. thinks he's the Bush who's got the term "Shock and Awe" down pat.....he's grossly mistaken!
Melissa, who was my original teaching partner, was picked to go on the trip with us ot replace another teacher, Kerrie, who had daycare issues and was unable to join us. That also made the trip pleasant....especially since our train ended up being about 3 hours late arriving back in New Orleans.
Besides being a place where we learned fantastic news about our school's future, and a place to bond with my students, and a place where I got royal treatment by planning the trip with two other teachers (royal treatment being used here as a term to mean "sleeping in a special teacher building and getting chocolate ice cream one day"), as well as a place where I didn't have to work much with my current teaching partner, it was a wonderful escape. We left Louisiana. It was my first time out of state since my trip out West last summer with my travel camp. I stayed in New Orleans for the storm, evacuated to Baton Rouge and Morgan City right after the storm, went to school in Thibodaux for a few weeks, then came back to Metairie. I did not get the luxury of straying far from the destruction the way most people, my parents and brother included, did. I was able to leave the area and watch as the destruction levels decreased....until it reached an untainted perfection in, of all places, Northern Alabama. Until, at one point, on the train ride back to New Orleans, it started creeping back into our psyche and lines of vision.
There's really nothing more depressing than leaving the mess, going somewhere tranquil and beautiful, and then being faced with the stark reality of returning home.
On the train ride home, though, I was informed of the most excellent news I'd heard since August: my father's business was open again!!!! He was open for mild automotive services, like nails in tires, and had the convenience store open again. In a matter of days, they would start pumping gas again. The darkest days were over. A different mood came over the house. While my father came home very late, and usually aggravated, it was all very different from before my trip. He had some of his old complaints -- cranky customers, high gas prices (yes, even service station owners hate the raised prices!), and long hours. Each day was a new record high for gas, for service, and for food sales. The first day he opened, I drove almost 9 miles out of my way to get gas from him. He was the only person I would go to once again. I will fill up on Friday without needing to just in case I drive a lot on the weekend need gas, all because they close early on Saturday and are closed on Sunday.
Thank God.
Suddenly, the end of the school year was upon us. The week after the trip was the eighth graders' last real week of school. The next week was their exam week. Then, they graduated, leaving my classroom with a whopping 6 7th graders, assuming we had perfect attendance. Graduation was really nice. We were able to go to the church on our old campus to hold the Mass and ceremony. They all did so well, and it was a lovely day of happiness combined with sadness. Mark came to the graduation, because in April he switched from the overnight shift to 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. After the ceremony, we went to lunch at Semolina's. We tried to go to P.F. Chang's, but due to Katrina, they are still closed on Mondays. Ah well. I had the rest of the day off, which was nice. Then, it was back to the 7th graders to prepare them for their exams. Once those were over, we had to do report cards, and then we had to pack the entire school and the entire high school and move back to the other campus. We were being evicted, and the administration rearranged the school structure, really, to make us all fit in on the New Orleans campus.
The day of graduation, the school borrowing our campus, St. Dominic, was packing up. It was strange seeing them there. Good strange, though. Their campus had been repaired enough for them to move out. They will have a normal school year in the fall.
Also the week of graduation, we held our Annual Gala. It was a '70s theme: "Stairway to Heaven." They had a band, a silent auction (the adirondack chair my students painted and our room mother designed went for a couple hundred dollars, if I may say so...), and lots of food and spirits. They also worked out a deal for reduced prices on hotel rooms. Naturally, we took them up on that. It was a lovely hotel, and it was a nice break from our cramped quarters in my parents' house. The next day, we wandered around the French Quarter, giving local shops some business. They had given us the next day off, and Mark had taken the next day off, so we made good use of it. It was a nice distraction from the daily routine.
The following week, we had a barrage of parents and students needing service hours help us pack, caravan, lift, reach, and unpack. In a matter of three or four days, we were completely moved over. All that was left was unpacking and organizing.
However, in the midst of all of this, my maternal grandmother took a horrible turn. This is the grandmother who was in Houston for months and had been transferred to Hammond, La. She was 87 years old and suffered from Alzheimer's. She fell ot the bed and had a HORRIBLE black eye. My Uncle Mike flew in with his oldest, my cousin Cristina, who was going to be a college sophomore this year. He had been in around Easter with my aunt and their younger daughter, Stefanie, to visit, and he wanted Crissy to get one more visit in. One week later, roughly, he was back in town to say good-bye.
The last day I was supposed to report to school, I had a frantic call from my mother. Her youngest brother, David, called her to say that Granny would not make it through the night. My mother had already spent the weekend in Hammond watching over her. She needed me to bring her an hour away to Hammond, because my father could not leave work, and my brother had started a new job on the Westbank and couldn't leave. I ran downstairs, told Patty that I had to leave for the family emergency, and ran to my dad to get gas. I ran home, changed my clothes, freshened up, grabbed a snack, and flew out the door with my mom. When we got to Hammond, my grandmother was in horrible condition.
Part of Alzheimer's is that your body shuts down. As a result, your body undergoes physical changes. She was already working on being unrecognizable; with her black eye, vacant and glassy stare, and constantly open mouth breathing shallow, rasspy breaths, she wasn't even a shadow of what she once was. At one point, she was a hearty 5 foot 7. Over the course of her almost 10-year batle with the disease, she seemed to shrink in height, stature, and definitely weight. When the nurses came to turn her, she was literally skin and bones. She looked like the Civil War prisoners you see in pictures of the Andersonville camp. Barely alive and hardly human.
My brother got our messages and drove down, too. He met us there, and we bought food for my mother for dinner. She was staying the night in Hammond. My Uncle Dave came by for a while, too.
A few times, there were some freaky moments. She would seem to stop breathing for long periods of time, and then would start again. A couple of times, she tried to sit up, made a strange noise, and feebly lifted her arm while staring over our heads. What was she seeing?
I went to follow Geoff home, but he missed the turn to head back to New Orleans, and I didn't. I remembered where to turn. Nerd.
The next day, my grandmother was still alive. My mom's three brothers worked together to persuade her to go home, that maybe Granny was hanging on because she was around. Dave brought her home, and my mom was as okay with that as she could be. Sure enough, on June 7, my grandmother died. They checked on her hourly; the last time was 6 a.m. Mike called the Assisted Living Center a little after 7, and when they checked on her, she was gone.
The phone call came minutes before I had to wake up. I had just started back at JCC Camp, as assistant camp director, and it was our orientation week. Yet I got up, got dressed, and went to work feeling relieved.
Am I inhuman? No. If you had seen her....
In addition, my grandmother was not a very grandmotherly type. We were not close at all. She and my mother had a rotten relationship until Alzheimer's altered her personality completely.
The stresses her illness and longevity placed on our extended family was astounding. My mother and her oldest sister were no longer on speaking terms. But my grandmother's looming death ended most of the bitterness, and they were able to make up.
All of this was just in time to celebrate the birth of the fourth generation at the end of April. My oldest cousin, Erin, and her husband, Jim, had a baby...sweet little James. We met him at the funeral.
On June 9, we held the funeral at St. Philip -- the church I grew up in and was married in. In fact, our wedding was the last time our whole family had been in that church. Before that, it was Geoff's christening. We buried her in Greenwood Cemetery, then had an "Irish wake" at my Aunt Maureen and Uncle Lance's house. This means that from about 2 in the afternoon until midnight, my entire family ate, drank, and laughed. Everyone from my older aunts and uncles to my 15-year-old cousin was drunk. Even Erin, Jim, and James stayed until 11 p.m. He's a great baby. So good and so patient... It was a raucous time. All of my mother's cousins were there, and at one point, Geoff's two roommates and all of our friends showed up.
The day ended, at it was Saturday, June 10. My birthday. I didn't realize it was coming until about 2 weeks previously when Mark mentioned he was out birthday shopping for me. I was confused until i realized how close the day actually was.
We spent the day at Audubon Zoo. It looked good. A lot of trees were down, but otherwise, it looked okay. Almost all of the animals there survived Katrina, unlike the Aquarium, which lost almost everything. We went with Geoff, Alicia, Kurt, Mike, Jean, Crissy, and Steffi. That night, we set up Chris' inflatable waterslide at the Cabin and had a fun party. In all, it was a pretty nice birthday.
Monday was the first day of camp, which meant my days were fun and action-packed.
Stay tuned for the Summer months....
This trip ended up being fun. Having the now significantly smaller high school with all of our 7/8s was more fun than we expected. We stayed at a sleep-away camp, where we split the two schools into two different areas. We only had the 8-hour train ride and 2-hour bus ride, as well as our closing-night campfire together. It worked out well, except for the sheer amounts of rain we had.
On the Wednesday of our trip, we had a surprise visit from Patty, the school president, and Mike, the Academy principal. Wiley, the high school principal, was on the trip with us. They interrupted all of our activities and called a meeting in the lodge. This is where we learned about our new patron Saint, Reggie Bush. Students and teachers and administrators alike wound up in absolute tears over the news. Happy tears, mind you...tears of relief....and we were all in absolulte shock over how wonderful he was. I managed to place a collect call home to Mark from a landline to share the news with him. And George W. thinks he's the Bush who's got the term "Shock and Awe" down pat.....he's grossly mistaken!
Melissa, who was my original teaching partner, was picked to go on the trip with us ot replace another teacher, Kerrie, who had daycare issues and was unable to join us. That also made the trip pleasant....especially since our train ended up being about 3 hours late arriving back in New Orleans.
Besides being a place where we learned fantastic news about our school's future, and a place to bond with my students, and a place where I got royal treatment by planning the trip with two other teachers (royal treatment being used here as a term to mean "sleeping in a special teacher building and getting chocolate ice cream one day"), as well as a place where I didn't have to work much with my current teaching partner, it was a wonderful escape. We left Louisiana. It was my first time out of state since my trip out West last summer with my travel camp. I stayed in New Orleans for the storm, evacuated to Baton Rouge and Morgan City right after the storm, went to school in Thibodaux for a few weeks, then came back to Metairie. I did not get the luxury of straying far from the destruction the way most people, my parents and brother included, did. I was able to leave the area and watch as the destruction levels decreased....until it reached an untainted perfection in, of all places, Northern Alabama. Until, at one point, on the train ride back to New Orleans, it started creeping back into our psyche and lines of vision.
There's really nothing more depressing than leaving the mess, going somewhere tranquil and beautiful, and then being faced with the stark reality of returning home.
On the train ride home, though, I was informed of the most excellent news I'd heard since August: my father's business was open again!!!! He was open for mild automotive services, like nails in tires, and had the convenience store open again. In a matter of days, they would start pumping gas again. The darkest days were over. A different mood came over the house. While my father came home very late, and usually aggravated, it was all very different from before my trip. He had some of his old complaints -- cranky customers, high gas prices (yes, even service station owners hate the raised prices!), and long hours. Each day was a new record high for gas, for service, and for food sales. The first day he opened, I drove almost 9 miles out of my way to get gas from him. He was the only person I would go to once again. I will fill up on Friday without needing to just in case I drive a lot on the weekend need gas, all because they close early on Saturday and are closed on Sunday.
Thank God.
Suddenly, the end of the school year was upon us. The week after the trip was the eighth graders' last real week of school. The next week was their exam week. Then, they graduated, leaving my classroom with a whopping 6 7th graders, assuming we had perfect attendance. Graduation was really nice. We were able to go to the church on our old campus to hold the Mass and ceremony. They all did so well, and it was a lovely day of happiness combined with sadness. Mark came to the graduation, because in April he switched from the overnight shift to 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. After the ceremony, we went to lunch at Semolina's. We tried to go to P.F. Chang's, but due to Katrina, they are still closed on Mondays. Ah well. I had the rest of the day off, which was nice. Then, it was back to the 7th graders to prepare them for their exams. Once those were over, we had to do report cards, and then we had to pack the entire school and the entire high school and move back to the other campus. We were being evicted, and the administration rearranged the school structure, really, to make us all fit in on the New Orleans campus.
The day of graduation, the school borrowing our campus, St. Dominic, was packing up. It was strange seeing them there. Good strange, though. Their campus had been repaired enough for them to move out. They will have a normal school year in the fall.
Also the week of graduation, we held our Annual Gala. It was a '70s theme: "Stairway to Heaven." They had a band, a silent auction (the adirondack chair my students painted and our room mother designed went for a couple hundred dollars, if I may say so...), and lots of food and spirits. They also worked out a deal for reduced prices on hotel rooms. Naturally, we took them up on that. It was a lovely hotel, and it was a nice break from our cramped quarters in my parents' house. The next day, we wandered around the French Quarter, giving local shops some business. They had given us the next day off, and Mark had taken the next day off, so we made good use of it. It was a nice distraction from the daily routine.
The following week, we had a barrage of parents and students needing service hours help us pack, caravan, lift, reach, and unpack. In a matter of three or four days, we were completely moved over. All that was left was unpacking and organizing.
However, in the midst of all of this, my maternal grandmother took a horrible turn. This is the grandmother who was in Houston for months and had been transferred to Hammond, La. She was 87 years old and suffered from Alzheimer's. She fell ot the bed and had a HORRIBLE black eye. My Uncle Mike flew in with his oldest, my cousin Cristina, who was going to be a college sophomore this year. He had been in around Easter with my aunt and their younger daughter, Stefanie, to visit, and he wanted Crissy to get one more visit in. One week later, roughly, he was back in town to say good-bye.
The last day I was supposed to report to school, I had a frantic call from my mother. Her youngest brother, David, called her to say that Granny would not make it through the night. My mother had already spent the weekend in Hammond watching over her. She needed me to bring her an hour away to Hammond, because my father could not leave work, and my brother had started a new job on the Westbank and couldn't leave. I ran downstairs, told Patty that I had to leave for the family emergency, and ran to my dad to get gas. I ran home, changed my clothes, freshened up, grabbed a snack, and flew out the door with my mom. When we got to Hammond, my grandmother was in horrible condition.
Part of Alzheimer's is that your body shuts down. As a result, your body undergoes physical changes. She was already working on being unrecognizable; with her black eye, vacant and glassy stare, and constantly open mouth breathing shallow, rasspy breaths, she wasn't even a shadow of what she once was. At one point, she was a hearty 5 foot 7. Over the course of her almost 10-year batle with the disease, she seemed to shrink in height, stature, and definitely weight. When the nurses came to turn her, she was literally skin and bones. She looked like the Civil War prisoners you see in pictures of the Andersonville camp. Barely alive and hardly human.
My brother got our messages and drove down, too. He met us there, and we bought food for my mother for dinner. She was staying the night in Hammond. My Uncle Dave came by for a while, too.
A few times, there were some freaky moments. She would seem to stop breathing for long periods of time, and then would start again. A couple of times, she tried to sit up, made a strange noise, and feebly lifted her arm while staring over our heads. What was she seeing?
I went to follow Geoff home, but he missed the turn to head back to New Orleans, and I didn't. I remembered where to turn. Nerd.
The next day, my grandmother was still alive. My mom's three brothers worked together to persuade her to go home, that maybe Granny was hanging on because she was around. Dave brought her home, and my mom was as okay with that as she could be. Sure enough, on June 7, my grandmother died. They checked on her hourly; the last time was 6 a.m. Mike called the Assisted Living Center a little after 7, and when they checked on her, she was gone.
The phone call came minutes before I had to wake up. I had just started back at JCC Camp, as assistant camp director, and it was our orientation week. Yet I got up, got dressed, and went to work feeling relieved.
Am I inhuman? No. If you had seen her....
In addition, my grandmother was not a very grandmotherly type. We were not close at all. She and my mother had a rotten relationship until Alzheimer's altered her personality completely.
The stresses her illness and longevity placed on our extended family was astounding. My mother and her oldest sister were no longer on speaking terms. But my grandmother's looming death ended most of the bitterness, and they were able to make up.
All of this was just in time to celebrate the birth of the fourth generation at the end of April. My oldest cousin, Erin, and her husband, Jim, had a baby...sweet little James. We met him at the funeral.
On June 9, we held the funeral at St. Philip -- the church I grew up in and was married in. In fact, our wedding was the last time our whole family had been in that church. Before that, it was Geoff's christening. We buried her in Greenwood Cemetery, then had an "Irish wake" at my Aunt Maureen and Uncle Lance's house. This means that from about 2 in the afternoon until midnight, my entire family ate, drank, and laughed. Everyone from my older aunts and uncles to my 15-year-old cousin was drunk. Even Erin, Jim, and James stayed until 11 p.m. He's a great baby. So good and so patient... It was a raucous time. All of my mother's cousins were there, and at one point, Geoff's two roommates and all of our friends showed up.
The day ended, at it was Saturday, June 10. My birthday. I didn't realize it was coming until about 2 weeks previously when Mark mentioned he was out birthday shopping for me. I was confused until i realized how close the day actually was.
We spent the day at Audubon Zoo. It looked good. A lot of trees were down, but otherwise, it looked okay. Almost all of the animals there survived Katrina, unlike the Aquarium, which lost almost everything. We went with Geoff, Alicia, Kurt, Mike, Jean, Crissy, and Steffi. That night, we set up Chris' inflatable waterslide at the Cabin and had a fun party. In all, it was a pretty nice birthday.
Monday was the first day of camp, which meant my days were fun and action-packed.
Stay tuned for the Summer months....
Monday, August 14, 2006
Part 16: More thrills, chills, and spills than Disney World.
Recap: Last time, we had a smaller, but (mostly) very fun Mardi Gras experience, and things seemed to be looking up.
But now it was April, and we were still moving my dad's reopening date back. He had originally expected to be open by mid-February. And now it was April. Things felt bleaker once more.
And it was my second sinus infection of the year. It was right on the heels of the first. Fun.
April 1 was on a Saturday. Apparently it was a tradition at school to really "get" the principal. He went to Tulane University and is, therefore, a huge Tulane fan. Tulane fans tend to not be LSU fans. So, since his children's school was destroyed by the storm, and they were attending our school for the year, his children were pawns in the game.
One of the teachers had a pet snake in her classroom, and the youngest son loved it. So she had him pose with a picture that said, "Tigers" and wrapped the snake around him. The older son was handed a sign that said, "Geaux."
Quick lesson in south Louisiana culture: Many Cajun surnames end in "-eaux." Boudreaux, Thibodaux, Gautreaux, etc. This letter configuration makes an "o" sound. And so, many people find it "fun" to make words that end in an "o" sound end in "-eaux." One such instance is LSU, which has signs and merchandise labelled "Geaux Tigers!" End note.
The older son was only in 4th grade and didn't know the "Geaux" thing. The younger son was in kindergarten, and he couldn't read "tigers" yet. They had no idea what they were being asked to do.
A big banner, decorated by the teacher's clss was hung outside the building, anf the two pictures of the sons with the signs flanked it. His office was covered in taunting handmade signs, courtesy of that class. He was a better sport about it than his sons, who, upon being told why their pictures were hanging up, went to the teacher and yelled, "YOU USED US!" Haha.
April 6 was our 4th wedding anniversary. I went to work and had a normal day, and then came home. My mom had stayed home from work that day with an intestinal problem. I got home from work and found her car gone. I called her cell and had no answer. Mark and I were going out to dinner somewhere that night, and so I set about getting ready after leaving her a voice mail, accusing her of being a faker.
As I got out of the shower, the phone rang. It was my father, informing me that my mother had been passing blood, and she called the gastroenterologist, who told her to get to the emergency room. She had to drive herself there because my dad couldn't leave work. Something big was going on. He met her there later. Come to find out, all of her digestive problems, which developed in the last month or so prior, were being caused by, not only acid reflux, but an ulcer. Neither condition was around more than a few months. Once more, my family felt the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. My mom was being kept at least overnight for observations, we were not to worry, and we were to have a nice time at dinner.
Mark came home with news of where we would be eating. His radio station is a news-talk-sports format, and they have a food critic, Tom Fitzmorris. He asked Tom for a nice restaurant in a certain price range in Metairie. Tom immediately named Impastato's. What's more, he called in the reservations for us. So at 8, we went to enjoy our evening.
First, they had a nice table ready for us. Then, as we were ordering dinner, one of the staff came over to congratulate us on our anniversary and to present us with a bottle of champagne. It was very sweet, but very good. A little while later, they came over and presented me with a dozen red roses. The food came and was absolutely delicious. It sort of reminded me of Tony Angelo's, a place that was cattycorner from our house. It was a multiple-course Italian meal that was to die for. I still remember my meal: an appetizer of shrimp au gratin, a salad, panéed veal topped with crabmeat, artichokes, and shrimp and crawfish with a divine sauce on it, pasta alfredo, and, for dessert, a slice or Oreo cheesecake. I don't remember what Mark had...I think it was soft-shell crabs with a topping similar to mine. Either way, we thoroughly enjoyed our meal. All night, there was a jazz combo with an elderly man singing for them. While we were waiting for our desserts, the old man came over to our table, carrying a single peach rose, which happens to be my favorite. He greeted us, wished us a happy anniversary, and asked if he could sing a song for us. He asked if we'd ever seen "Sleepless in Seattle," then told us that the song was in that movie. He sang, "When I Fall in Love." It was a highly embarrassing moment, as he made us hold hands across the table. We wanted to die from holding in our laughter. It was all very nice, though, even if I could have done without the serenade. In all, it was a very lovely evening. My dad left me a voice mail asking if we could stop by the hospital to bring my mom's car home, so we did.
My mom ended up with some trouble, so she stayed in the hospital a little longer than expected. She didn't come home until either Sunday or Monday. It was a gloomy period, yet again.
Ah, April. Formerly a month to enjoy, now tainted with my mom's illness, as well as living with my parents, still. And then, when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I almost lost one of the most important parts of my being able to go on after Katrina.
We'd had our observations and performance reviews. We were supposed to have our contracts soon. But the contracts never came.
They called a staff meeting, and things seemed bleak. Through my friend, who was on the high school staff, I learned that the Archdiocese wanted to "restructure" the school, and that the principal for the high school, a man I was excited to be working under the next school year, would be leaving. See, in my evaluation session, I was awarded the chance to stay at the High School's campus. Same president, different principal. And as much as I enjoyed working for the Academy's principal, I'd heard good things about working under the High School's. And now that I knew which campus was employing me the next year, we could look at neighborhoods to move to.
However, a lot of speculation lead to a lot of fear. All we knew was that when the superintendant of Catholic schools came, trouble was ahead. What made it worse was that our administration honestly didn't know what was going to happen to us. They were kept out of the loop.
The day of the meeting finally arrived, and no one was in a good mood. We knew people were getting the axe. But who?
The meeting happened, and it was worse than we thought.
Our president called the meeting "one big, not funny episode of 'Seinfeld.'" She rules. Anyway, it was, as you may have guessed, a meeting about nothing. But it wasn't exactly nothing. It was a lot of bad stuff, but we had almost as many questions after as we did before.
Fr. M started the meeting saying how much he admired us, blah blah blah...and how he loves the program and always supported it 100 percent (note: he called us a program instead of a school, and he used past tense. He continued to use past tense for the first half of the meeting.)
For the first 10 minutes of talking about nothing, really, it sounded like everyone was out of a job. This is where we learned that apparently the administration was telling us the truth, because they had genuine reactions to everything he said.
Then he said that what he was saying wasn't affecting the majority of the room. And we started suspecting that he meant the high school. And he was.
They opened the school this year. No building costs, per se, because they took over an abandoned school. But it needed Internet wiring, phone lines, fire drills, P.A. system, paint, remodeling in places, repairs in places, etc. Plus furniture. Plus supplies. Grand total of opening costs, post-Katrina? 1.5 million. Not bad, right?
Well, in the Post-K world, huge deal, apparently. However, you gotta spend money to make money. Pre-K (Katrina, not the grade level!) the HS had 50-something kids. Post, they had 32. Here's where the president officially stopped liking him: he said, and I quote, "That makes the per-student cost over $57,000. If you can meet the lofty goal of 65 students for next year, and that's if, then you will have a per student cost of $21,000, approximately."
First off, he said we had only 29 students. So, he was wrong there. We had 32. Second, we had accepted 66 students already for next year. I'm not so good at math, but I am pretty sure that that means that we are pretty much above that "lofty aspiration."
Second, when the Academy opened, there were 36 students. The next year, they doubled it to 60 something students. The next year, they doubled it to 120 something students. They decided doubling at that point would break them, so they took in another 60. The following year, they tried to keep it the same, but ended up with 204. This year, Pre-K, we had 230-something. Post, we had more than 100, but less than 200. We even took in a lot of students whose schools were nonexistent Post-K. And when people came back at the end of the school year from wherever they'd evacuated...who knew what would happen. Plus, we always, apparently, end up with new students registering after the first day. My 3/4 class grew by 3 kids before the storm. That was 2 weeks of school. So, the growth potential IS there.
Third, the budget projections had us paying off the start-up loan by the 5th year of existence. They told the Archdiocese that they would have it paid off by year 6, but that was a just-in-case cushion. They were expecting it no later than year 5, but, barring any more major national disasters, possibly year 4.
So he talked in circles, told us that they couldn't offer contracts to any high school employees, that it would take "several" weeks to come up with a solution. Meanwhile, our administration had been kept in the dark about everything. EVERYTHING. They truly did hear it all for the first time that day.
At this point, many people were crying. We passed around a Kleenex box. The rest were seething.
He said they were "looking at several options for a possible solution," but only told us one. And it wasn't a good one:
They wanted to make us a "School within a school" at 5 other Catholic schools in the area. Um, NO. Our kids are with us because they can't hack it in a regular learning environment. They learn differently. They need to be taught differently. And if we're a school within 5 schools, the kids will be divided. Two are single sex schools. So that right there divides them. As does geography.
Plus, where would that leave us? Yeah, we'd all find some sort of job, somewhere, eventually, but what about those kids? Who would help them? They would be labelled and ostracized. Not necessarily by the schools, but definitely by the kids. They would be looked at as special ed. And they are NOT.
So one of the teachers, whose son has dyslexia and was in 6th grade at the Academy, asked what the other options would be, because she had a very personal interest in the school. She made me cry when she asked where her son was supposed to go. She's one of my friends, and she is such an eloquent speaker. She had several people crying.
Only other option was to go K-12. But that wouldn't work. We'd need new space anyway. We're too needed, and our presence is growing in the city.
Did I mention that they cancelled a parents' meeting at the request of the Office of Catholic Schools? They feared the parents. I said unleash the parents on them. They'd see how important we are.
So then he told us he can't really answer a lot of questions and gives us about "10-15 minutes." People ask a lot of questions. The parish priest, a man he called by the wrong name the entire time, got up, near tears, and plead to let us be part of the planning process.
He also, let me note, referred to the H.S. principal by the wrong name the whole time.
He left after 5 p.m., Pres walked him out and came back. No one moved, but everyone was upset and/or angry. She came back and watched out the window as he walked away. She slammed the door on her way in. She was raging. At that moment, I truly loved her.
She said, "I told him I would be e-mailing him corrections for all of his inaccuracies."
Boo and yah.
We talked about how blindsided and hurt we felt. We started thinking of solutions. We raged. We united. It felt a little better.
Then she said that apparently, the Academy is to remain as is. And that anyone hired to teach 7/8 at the High School will slide to the Academy, so apparently, I, too, was safe. Where I'd be, I didn't know. And we wanted to start looking at houses, but couldn't apply for a loan until we knew what my salary would be next year.
As a staff, we followed Dylan Thomas' words.
We left at 6 p.m. Father was STILL THERE. Sitting in what would have been my classroom if I had stayed 3/4. When he left, we learned that the woman he talked to was a REPORTER. We assumed she was with the Archdiocesan public relations newspaper. How ballsy of him to leave us to interview, most likely about us, on our OWN CAMPUS.
They had the H.S. current staff stay behind. There is a letter. I find out later that it is basically a condensed version of what was just said regarding how the H.S. can't get contracts yet because the school and its budget are under review. Something the admin didn't know about until the meeting. Pres's eyebrows shot up when he said that.
This letter was not on letterhead. It was on regular paper. No signatures or seals or logos or anything. They passed out copies to the staff. When they finished, Pres let hers drop to the floor, while the H.S. principal crumpled his and threw it behind him.
I love this administration.
So, we didn''t really know any more than we knew that morning, other than I apparently would be employed...but where?
I was sad and furious all at once.
Jazz Fest is very close to my school, and as it falls on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we use Jazz Fest as a chance to raise money. We sell our parking spaces for $25 per car. This is cheap, actually. We don't have school those two Fridays. We filled 88 spaces in less than 2 hours. We did it again the next Friday. And everyone who was there seemed positive that we would beat this. We just weren't sure how.
So they had the parents' meeting the next Tuesday night, and the parents, understandably, were outraged. They pulled out their checkbooks. A contractor offered his comapny's services to hold a raffle for a house gutting and sheetrocking (this, if it happened, would have been a huge success, as many homes still have not been gutted post-K). By the end of the evening, over $50,000 had been collected.
That day, there was a meeting telling us that they came up with a comprehensive plan to let the Academy return the High School's favor by hosting them under one roof for one or two years. Money was the only obstacle, other than Archdiocesan approval. Then they collected money that night, and donations were in full-force.
At the teacher appreciation luncheon, they announced that money was no longer an obstacle to moving and keeping us operable next year. The only issue is having the Archdiocese okay the plan to move us together. As one teacher said, "He'd better have a damned good reason for teling us no."
However, it would take a few million to keep us at our current site. Sigh.
The next week was the 7/8 grade class trip. Our high schoolers were supposed to go on a school retreat in Alabama near Tennessee at a sleepaway camp. The were scheduled to leave Monday, August 29, 2005. The day Katrina hit New Orleans. Obviously, they cancelled the trip. Thank goodness they were smart enough for that...
Our 7/8 trip was supposed to be swimming with the manatees in Florida -- something I would have killed to do! But they feared parents wouldn't be able to afford a trip like that, so they picked a less-expensive idea: joining the high school in Alabama. Two seperate trips at one location at the same time.
The trip was a lot of fun. We took a train for 8 hours, which was followed by a two-hour bus ride. It was in the mountains, and it was so nic to see green spaces and trees that weren't creacked or twisted or dead from hurricane-force winds. It was like paradise. The last night of the trip, we had a campfire with a singalong, and the rain held out just long enough for us all to have a magical night of bonding as one.
But I'm a little ahead of myself....
Our president and the Academy's president DROVE to the camp to hand-deliver some news.
THE MOST AMAZING THING HAPPENED!!!!!!!!!!!!
First off, we were all going to be okay. The parents and several corporations/anonymous donors stepped up. I don't know the total now, but the $100,000 it would take to move the High School to the Academy was no longer an issue. The H.S. would occupy the second floor of the Academy with 7th and 8th. The lower grades will take over some storage space and church-owned rooms downstairs. We would all be together again for one, maybe two years, and then, the Archdiocese said we can pick a campus to move to.
That in and of itself is incredibly amazing. BUT....
We got our very own patron Saint. Yes, I capitalized that one word for a reason. As you may have heard, the Saints drafted Reggie Bush this year. He is committed to helping rebuild our city, and wanted to help a school damaged by Katrina. While our physical campus was fine, our school itself was falling victim 8 months later. One of the kindergarten parents got in touch with the Saints and Reggie, and he checked out our website and talked to people, and came to the conclusion that a school like ours, which was open for a grand total of 8 days before Katrina hit, could not fall victim to her again. He pledged matching funds for most of what the parents have raised, and also a long-term commitment/partnership to our school!!!!!
WE'RE ALL GOING TO BE OKAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
May 15 was a special day....Reggie Bush Day....we were covered in ESPN, the Associated Press, MSN.com, Yahoo.com, local news outlets, and other national news outlets. We even had a big mention in the Washington Post over the summer. Reggie came out and presented teh first of what will be many checks: this one for $50,000. He was so humble and so wonderful. We all took a huge group photo with him, and the NFL channel used the positioning as stock footage in a story about him over this past weekend, when the Saints played their first pre-season game.
I hate football. I usually hate pro-athletes. But all of a sudden...I'm a pretty big fan of Saint number 25...
Stay tuned to the month of May...
But now it was April, and we were still moving my dad's reopening date back. He had originally expected to be open by mid-February. And now it was April. Things felt bleaker once more.
And it was my second sinus infection of the year. It was right on the heels of the first. Fun.
April 1 was on a Saturday. Apparently it was a tradition at school to really "get" the principal. He went to Tulane University and is, therefore, a huge Tulane fan. Tulane fans tend to not be LSU fans. So, since his children's school was destroyed by the storm, and they were attending our school for the year, his children were pawns in the game.
One of the teachers had a pet snake in her classroom, and the youngest son loved it. So she had him pose with a picture that said, "Tigers" and wrapped the snake around him. The older son was handed a sign that said, "Geaux."
Quick lesson in south Louisiana culture: Many Cajun surnames end in "-eaux." Boudreaux, Thibodaux, Gautreaux, etc. This letter configuration makes an "o" sound. And so, many people find it "fun" to make words that end in an "o" sound end in "-eaux." One such instance is LSU, which has signs and merchandise labelled "Geaux Tigers!" End note.
The older son was only in 4th grade and didn't know the "Geaux" thing. The younger son was in kindergarten, and he couldn't read "tigers" yet. They had no idea what they were being asked to do.
A big banner, decorated by the teacher's clss was hung outside the building, anf the two pictures of the sons with the signs flanked it. His office was covered in taunting handmade signs, courtesy of that class. He was a better sport about it than his sons, who, upon being told why their pictures were hanging up, went to the teacher and yelled, "YOU USED US!" Haha.
April 6 was our 4th wedding anniversary. I went to work and had a normal day, and then came home. My mom had stayed home from work that day with an intestinal problem. I got home from work and found her car gone. I called her cell and had no answer. Mark and I were going out to dinner somewhere that night, and so I set about getting ready after leaving her a voice mail, accusing her of being a faker.
As I got out of the shower, the phone rang. It was my father, informing me that my mother had been passing blood, and she called the gastroenterologist, who told her to get to the emergency room. She had to drive herself there because my dad couldn't leave work. Something big was going on. He met her there later. Come to find out, all of her digestive problems, which developed in the last month or so prior, were being caused by, not only acid reflux, but an ulcer. Neither condition was around more than a few months. Once more, my family felt the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. My mom was being kept at least overnight for observations, we were not to worry, and we were to have a nice time at dinner.
Mark came home with news of where we would be eating. His radio station is a news-talk-sports format, and they have a food critic, Tom Fitzmorris. He asked Tom for a nice restaurant in a certain price range in Metairie. Tom immediately named Impastato's. What's more, he called in the reservations for us. So at 8, we went to enjoy our evening.
First, they had a nice table ready for us. Then, as we were ordering dinner, one of the staff came over to congratulate us on our anniversary and to present us with a bottle of champagne. It was very sweet, but very good. A little while later, they came over and presented me with a dozen red roses. The food came and was absolutely delicious. It sort of reminded me of Tony Angelo's, a place that was cattycorner from our house. It was a multiple-course Italian meal that was to die for. I still remember my meal: an appetizer of shrimp au gratin, a salad, panéed veal topped with crabmeat, artichokes, and shrimp and crawfish with a divine sauce on it, pasta alfredo, and, for dessert, a slice or Oreo cheesecake. I don't remember what Mark had...I think it was soft-shell crabs with a topping similar to mine. Either way, we thoroughly enjoyed our meal. All night, there was a jazz combo with an elderly man singing for them. While we were waiting for our desserts, the old man came over to our table, carrying a single peach rose, which happens to be my favorite. He greeted us, wished us a happy anniversary, and asked if he could sing a song for us. He asked if we'd ever seen "Sleepless in Seattle," then told us that the song was in that movie. He sang, "When I Fall in Love." It was a highly embarrassing moment, as he made us hold hands across the table. We wanted to die from holding in our laughter. It was all very nice, though, even if I could have done without the serenade. In all, it was a very lovely evening. My dad left me a voice mail asking if we could stop by the hospital to bring my mom's car home, so we did.
My mom ended up with some trouble, so she stayed in the hospital a little longer than expected. She didn't come home until either Sunday or Monday. It was a gloomy period, yet again.
Ah, April. Formerly a month to enjoy, now tainted with my mom's illness, as well as living with my parents, still. And then, when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I almost lost one of the most important parts of my being able to go on after Katrina.
We'd had our observations and performance reviews. We were supposed to have our contracts soon. But the contracts never came.
They called a staff meeting, and things seemed bleak. Through my friend, who was on the high school staff, I learned that the Archdiocese wanted to "restructure" the school, and that the principal for the high school, a man I was excited to be working under the next school year, would be leaving. See, in my evaluation session, I was awarded the chance to stay at the High School's campus. Same president, different principal. And as much as I enjoyed working for the Academy's principal, I'd heard good things about working under the High School's. And now that I knew which campus was employing me the next year, we could look at neighborhoods to move to.
However, a lot of speculation lead to a lot of fear. All we knew was that when the superintendant of Catholic schools came, trouble was ahead. What made it worse was that our administration honestly didn't know what was going to happen to us. They were kept out of the loop.
The day of the meeting finally arrived, and no one was in a good mood. We knew people were getting the axe. But who?
The meeting happened, and it was worse than we thought.
Our president called the meeting "one big, not funny episode of 'Seinfeld.'" She rules. Anyway, it was, as you may have guessed, a meeting about nothing. But it wasn't exactly nothing. It was a lot of bad stuff, but we had almost as many questions after as we did before.
Fr. M started the meeting saying how much he admired us, blah blah blah...and how he loves the program and always supported it 100 percent (note: he called us a program instead of a school, and he used past tense. He continued to use past tense for the first half of the meeting.)
For the first 10 minutes of talking about nothing, really, it sounded like everyone was out of a job. This is where we learned that apparently the administration was telling us the truth, because they had genuine reactions to everything he said.
Then he said that what he was saying wasn't affecting the majority of the room. And we started suspecting that he meant the high school. And he was.
They opened the school this year. No building costs, per se, because they took over an abandoned school. But it needed Internet wiring, phone lines, fire drills, P.A. system, paint, remodeling in places, repairs in places, etc. Plus furniture. Plus supplies. Grand total of opening costs, post-Katrina? 1.5 million. Not bad, right?
Well, in the Post-K world, huge deal, apparently. However, you gotta spend money to make money. Pre-K (Katrina, not the grade level!) the HS had 50-something kids. Post, they had 32. Here's where the president officially stopped liking him: he said, and I quote, "That makes the per-student cost over $57,000. If you can meet the lofty goal of 65 students for next year, and that's if, then you will have a per student cost of $21,000, approximately."
First off, he said we had only 29 students. So, he was wrong there. We had 32. Second, we had accepted 66 students already for next year. I'm not so good at math, but I am pretty sure that that means that we are pretty much above that "lofty aspiration."
Second, when the Academy opened, there were 36 students. The next year, they doubled it to 60 something students. The next year, they doubled it to 120 something students. They decided doubling at that point would break them, so they took in another 60. The following year, they tried to keep it the same, but ended up with 204. This year, Pre-K, we had 230-something. Post, we had more than 100, but less than 200. We even took in a lot of students whose schools were nonexistent Post-K. And when people came back at the end of the school year from wherever they'd evacuated...who knew what would happen. Plus, we always, apparently, end up with new students registering after the first day. My 3/4 class grew by 3 kids before the storm. That was 2 weeks of school. So, the growth potential IS there.
Third, the budget projections had us paying off the start-up loan by the 5th year of existence. They told the Archdiocese that they would have it paid off by year 6, but that was a just-in-case cushion. They were expecting it no later than year 5, but, barring any more major national disasters, possibly year 4.
So he talked in circles, told us that they couldn't offer contracts to any high school employees, that it would take "several" weeks to come up with a solution. Meanwhile, our administration had been kept in the dark about everything. EVERYTHING. They truly did hear it all for the first time that day.
At this point, many people were crying. We passed around a Kleenex box. The rest were seething.
He said they were "looking at several options for a possible solution," but only told us one. And it wasn't a good one:
They wanted to make us a "School within a school" at 5 other Catholic schools in the area. Um, NO. Our kids are with us because they can't hack it in a regular learning environment. They learn differently. They need to be taught differently. And if we're a school within 5 schools, the kids will be divided. Two are single sex schools. So that right there divides them. As does geography.
Plus, where would that leave us? Yeah, we'd all find some sort of job, somewhere, eventually, but what about those kids? Who would help them? They would be labelled and ostracized. Not necessarily by the schools, but definitely by the kids. They would be looked at as special ed. And they are NOT.
So one of the teachers, whose son has dyslexia and was in 6th grade at the Academy, asked what the other options would be, because she had a very personal interest in the school. She made me cry when she asked where her son was supposed to go. She's one of my friends, and she is such an eloquent speaker. She had several people crying.
Only other option was to go K-12. But that wouldn't work. We'd need new space anyway. We're too needed, and our presence is growing in the city.
Did I mention that they cancelled a parents' meeting at the request of the Office of Catholic Schools? They feared the parents. I said unleash the parents on them. They'd see how important we are.
So then he told us he can't really answer a lot of questions and gives us about "10-15 minutes." People ask a lot of questions. The parish priest, a man he called by the wrong name the entire time, got up, near tears, and plead to let us be part of the planning process.
He also, let me note, referred to the H.S. principal by the wrong name the whole time.
He left after 5 p.m., Pres walked him out and came back. No one moved, but everyone was upset and/or angry. She came back and watched out the window as he walked away. She slammed the door on her way in. She was raging. At that moment, I truly loved her.
She said, "I told him I would be e-mailing him corrections for all of his inaccuracies."
Boo and yah.
We talked about how blindsided and hurt we felt. We started thinking of solutions. We raged. We united. It felt a little better.
Then she said that apparently, the Academy is to remain as is. And that anyone hired to teach 7/8 at the High School will slide to the Academy, so apparently, I, too, was safe. Where I'd be, I didn't know. And we wanted to start looking at houses, but couldn't apply for a loan until we knew what my salary would be next year.
As a staff, we followed Dylan Thomas' words.
We left at 6 p.m. Father was STILL THERE. Sitting in what would have been my classroom if I had stayed 3/4. When he left, we learned that the woman he talked to was a REPORTER. We assumed she was with the Archdiocesan public relations newspaper. How ballsy of him to leave us to interview, most likely about us, on our OWN CAMPUS.
They had the H.S. current staff stay behind. There is a letter. I find out later that it is basically a condensed version of what was just said regarding how the H.S. can't get contracts yet because the school and its budget are under review. Something the admin didn't know about until the meeting. Pres's eyebrows shot up when he said that.
This letter was not on letterhead. It was on regular paper. No signatures or seals or logos or anything. They passed out copies to the staff. When they finished, Pres let hers drop to the floor, while the H.S. principal crumpled his and threw it behind him.
I love this administration.
So, we didn''t really know any more than we knew that morning, other than I apparently would be employed...but where?
I was sad and furious all at once.
Jazz Fest is very close to my school, and as it falls on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we use Jazz Fest as a chance to raise money. We sell our parking spaces for $25 per car. This is cheap, actually. We don't have school those two Fridays. We filled 88 spaces in less than 2 hours. We did it again the next Friday. And everyone who was there seemed positive that we would beat this. We just weren't sure how.
So they had the parents' meeting the next Tuesday night, and the parents, understandably, were outraged. They pulled out their checkbooks. A contractor offered his comapny's services to hold a raffle for a house gutting and sheetrocking (this, if it happened, would have been a huge success, as many homes still have not been gutted post-K). By the end of the evening, over $50,000 had been collected.
That day, there was a meeting telling us that they came up with a comprehensive plan to let the Academy return the High School's favor by hosting them under one roof for one or two years. Money was the only obstacle, other than Archdiocesan approval. Then they collected money that night, and donations were in full-force.
At the teacher appreciation luncheon, they announced that money was no longer an obstacle to moving and keeping us operable next year. The only issue is having the Archdiocese okay the plan to move us together. As one teacher said, "He'd better have a damned good reason for teling us no."
However, it would take a few million to keep us at our current site. Sigh.
The next week was the 7/8 grade class trip. Our high schoolers were supposed to go on a school retreat in Alabama near Tennessee at a sleepaway camp. The were scheduled to leave Monday, August 29, 2005. The day Katrina hit New Orleans. Obviously, they cancelled the trip. Thank goodness they were smart enough for that...
Our 7/8 trip was supposed to be swimming with the manatees in Florida -- something I would have killed to do! But they feared parents wouldn't be able to afford a trip like that, so they picked a less-expensive idea: joining the high school in Alabama. Two seperate trips at one location at the same time.
The trip was a lot of fun. We took a train for 8 hours, which was followed by a two-hour bus ride. It was in the mountains, and it was so nic to see green spaces and trees that weren't creacked or twisted or dead from hurricane-force winds. It was like paradise. The last night of the trip, we had a campfire with a singalong, and the rain held out just long enough for us all to have a magical night of bonding as one.
But I'm a little ahead of myself....
Our president and the Academy's president DROVE to the camp to hand-deliver some news.
THE MOST AMAZING THING HAPPENED!!!!!!!!!!!!
First off, we were all going to be okay. The parents and several corporations/anonymous donors stepped up. I don't know the total now, but the $100,000 it would take to move the High School to the Academy was no longer an issue. The H.S. would occupy the second floor of the Academy with 7th and 8th. The lower grades will take over some storage space and church-owned rooms downstairs. We would all be together again for one, maybe two years, and then, the Archdiocese said we can pick a campus to move to.
That in and of itself is incredibly amazing. BUT....
We got our very own patron Saint. Yes, I capitalized that one word for a reason. As you may have heard, the Saints drafted Reggie Bush this year. He is committed to helping rebuild our city, and wanted to help a school damaged by Katrina. While our physical campus was fine, our school itself was falling victim 8 months later. One of the kindergarten parents got in touch with the Saints and Reggie, and he checked out our website and talked to people, and came to the conclusion that a school like ours, which was open for a grand total of 8 days before Katrina hit, could not fall victim to her again. He pledged matching funds for most of what the parents have raised, and also a long-term commitment/partnership to our school!!!!!
WE'RE ALL GOING TO BE OKAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
May 15 was a special day....Reggie Bush Day....we were covered in ESPN, the Associated Press, MSN.com, Yahoo.com, local news outlets, and other national news outlets. We even had a big mention in the Washington Post over the summer. Reggie came out and presented teh first of what will be many checks: this one for $50,000. He was so humble and so wonderful. We all took a huge group photo with him, and the NFL channel used the positioning as stock footage in a story about him over this past weekend, when the Saints played their first pre-season game.
I hate football. I usually hate pro-athletes. But all of a sudden...I'm a pretty big fan of Saint number 25...
Stay tuned to the month of May...
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