Another two days spent down here, and my eyes and heart are two days wider. I'm afraid, though, that from my last post, I may have given too rosy an impression of the situation down here. There is a great deal of triumph and hope, but the challenges that World Shelters and the other relief organizations face, from the situation, from the government and from ourselves, are formidable.

Just as PODs, distributing food and supplies for free, are sprinkled throughout the towns, so too are parking lots piled high and wide with decaying boxes of clothing, donated by golden intentioned people from far away and then dumped to await the first rain, the mold and mildew that follow and the bulldozers and dumpsters that follow that. Many of the deployments we set out on turn out to be inappropriate to the shelters we offer, and breakdowns in communications between and within groups hobble our ability effectively deliver what the people here need.

Today, though, was a good, good day. We set out for Biloxi in two groups, with Sam, Dan and Brook in the "Shaggin' Wagon" and Chris, Mac and I in the Jeep (Thomas, Todd, Allegra and F'ing Jake stayed back at base in the hot sun cutting PVC and tarp, tying and locking in clips and wrapping kits for tomorrow's deployments).

Our first stop was at the Buddhist Temple in Biloxi, a POD run jointly by the monks, volunteers and several folks from the Burning Man core infrastructure crew. The temple compound is small, but immediately palpable as a center of calm and hope in a community battered and flattened by Katrina's assault. At the back stands a 40' geodesic dome covered with a red parachute (complements of the Burning Man crew) filled with tables of food, diapers, and soap. To the right of that are three long tents (built by World Shelters) housing supplies and acting as a command center for the POD. To the left of the dome sits the temple building and several tents housing volunteers and refugees.

Richard (aka "Big Stick", the crane operator from the Burning Man crew), greeted us warmly with a laugh and an energetic smile. After a quick tour of the POD, he handed us maps to the homes of three families that needed our help. Chris, Mac and I headed out to a house just a half dozen blocks away on Ester St.

The short drive to Ester, four days after my arrival here and almost six weeks after the storm, still just about brought tears to my eyes. You could clearly see the wake of the wind in the sweep of splinters and glass. We used my GPS to keep clear where we were, because the blocks where houses, yards, trees and gardens had recently stood were now virtually indistinguishable from the flat streets that once separated them. On some blockes, where the shoulder of the wind must have gusted to a peak, you could see clear through to the streets behind and again beyond that, undifferentiated rubble carpetting the ground. On other blocks, spared the brunt of the wind (but not the eight, ten and twelve foot flood waters), there were stil sloping hulks and sagging heaps of houses with the red spray-painted mark of FEMA's initial inspection. The number in the bottom quadrant indicates the number of dead found in the house. I feel blessed that we passed only zeroes, but I know that many, perhaps habituated to hurricane warnings or simply unable to conceive of the potential fury of nature fueled by a warming planet, tried to weather the storm here.

We pulled slowly past a sprinkling of tents posted between slumping porches and the street to Mrs. Smith's house, directly across from the railroad track. Her house was still standing and according to FEMA, repairable. The water line, clearly visible in the mold on the bare studs, reached almost to the ceiling of the first floor, but the second floor was virtually unscathed, "barely a picture tilted," she told us. She was able to live up there, but her friends were not as lucky and were still living in their cars. She ticked off the names and relations of the various people who would be moving into the shelters when they were built, then trailed off and sighed "I'll just round it off at 10."

She sat on the stoop and offered what help she could while watching her four shy but polite daughters and we started our business. It was Chris' first build since he had been on deployment two weeks previous, and a few things had changed in the construction technique since then. The three of us spent some time measuring and muttering about the yard, trying to figure the best placement for the tents to allow easy access, secure plumbing for the guy lines and protection from the elements. Finally, though, we decided to just raise the shelters in whatever configuration most convenient, then place them after they were constructed.

The three of us have the system down for erection of the structure pretty well learned, and operated as an occasionally sputtering but otherwise well-oiled machine, one man slipping a pole into the top feral and bending while the next slotted it into the bottom feral and the third slotting in the next pole in anticipation of the success of the first two. Once across for half the ceiling, round to the other side and again for the other half, back to the first side and across to raise the wall and then back around to the far wall to complete. Presto, done!

...with the easy part. The cover for the vented ceiling had changed design and required earlier steps than we anticipated, the door panels didn't quite fit, the guy lines, overtightened, pulled the structure out of kilter and we were mysteriously short poles for the inner arches.

We started at around 11:00 am and weren't finished until close to 3 pm, long after they had stopped serving lunch at the temple and LONG after we had eaten breakfast. Still, I took my time and enjoyed giving Mrs. Smith and her daughters a tour of their brand new shelters, how the doors tied up to allow easy entry and exit and how to keep the edges tucked to repel the rain. We piled our tools and supplies into the truck and headed back to the Buddhist temple to eat our bagged lunch, then off to Division Street to meet up with the others.

Sam's crew had erected three structures by the time we caught up with them and were assessing a house for a fourth. There was a family who had pitched a tent in a moldy building, supplies spread across the floor and bunkbeds in the corner. We sorely wanted to give them a safer place to live, but it was apparent that they wouldn't actually live in it, preferring to take their chances with the mold and use the shelter for other purposes, so we decided to head back to base and help the production crew meet quota (well, except for me, who started working on this blog :-))

I caught a quick point of ultimate frisbee with some firefighters out of Fairfax, Virginia and then headed over to Waveland to catch the tail end of dinner. It's funny the folks you meet here, all the different relief organizations, long hairs and crewcuts alike rubbing shoulders in the food lines in the tents at Waveland at night. Last night, I sat in a tent with a hodgepodge of relief workers and Rainbows as a gal from B.C. pushed and heaved away on a rickety accordian, belting out old folk tunes with a plain but plangent keening. Strange times.

The parallels and contrasts to Mississippi Summer in 1964, when waves of college students from the North came down to register black voters in the South, keep popping into my mind. The sense of social justice and purpose that resonates with us all connects me, but, of course, THIS TIME, we are welcomed almost universally. I'm also very aware of my religious identity here, seeing the Scientologists and the Seventh Day Adventists setting up year-long camps to help. I don't wear a Magen David, a chai or any other outward sign of my Judaism, but I want these people to know that many of us are here.

Now, though, dinner at Waveland is over and the others have gone over to listen to the local singer strum out John Prine, Dylan, Neil Young and Roger Miller. I'm going to join them. Sleep well.