I made it all the way through yesterday without wishing someone a happy Valentine’s Day or otherwise acknowledging it. It’s not that I don’t care about anyone; I do. I just think the holiday is distasteful and that expressions of affection given on that day are diluted somewhat.

When the last VD (an unfortunate acronym, yes?) rolled around, I was on the Katrina relief trip. When I announced to my ex, whom I was still “seeing” at the time — or something…I’m not sure what we were at that stage — that I would be in Mississippi rebuilding homes for that week, she got mad. Apparently that wasn’t an acceptable reason for missing her Valentine’s Day.

I called her from Pass Christian on Feb. 14th to wish her a happy V-Day and to tell her that I loved her, but she didn’t answer her phone because she was on a date with someone else. Aww, isn’t that sweet?

I think the idea behind Valentine’s Day is great. I also think it can be genuinely expressed without being such a financial windfall for sellers of flowers, chocolates, and greeting cards — 1 billion cards every year. Some people even like to give and receive plush things that make noise (common at Walgreens).

Ahh, sweet catharsis.

from the Washington Post:

One of the three programs within AmeriCorps, the National Civilian Community Corps, will have its budget cut from $27 million to $5 million. This comes at a time when the functions provided by this specific arm are needed most:

AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps, which brings more than 1,100 18- to 24-year-olds together on five residential campuses to spend 10 months working on service projects, with an emphasis on homeland security and disaster relief.

These days, about half of all participants are in Mississippi and Louisiana at any given time, pitching in with Hurricane Katrina rebuilding efforts for eight-to-nine-week stints, Eisner said.

We encountered a group of AmeriCorps kids while we were eating lunch at the FEMA tent while working on the child care tents in Pass Christian, MS. The Bush administration calls the program “ineffective.”

President Bush, who embraced AmeriCorps as part of his “compassionate conservative” agenda in 2001, now wants to shut down a part of the national service program that his administration has deemed “ineffective.”

The fact that he’s not a conservative is apparent from the massive expansion of the federal government during his presidency. The fact that he’s not compassionate in any sense of the word is demonstrated by most of his other actions, including this one.

Doug Moe’s column in today’s Capital Times described our group’s trip to Pass Christian. It appears that a certain uncredited blog was used as a source:

The Baraboo group was there for eight days. They slept at the Pass Christian Library, where the books were gone, the shelves too, replaced by cots and propane heaters and stockpiles of food, building materials and water. A makeshift cafeteria nearby - dubbed God’s Katrina Kitchen - served between 600-700 at meal time, as many as 2,000 free meals in a day.

That’s the magic of paraphrase, folks. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Anyway…it’s great that the story is getting some exposure.

The following is a newsletter that I wrote for St. Paul’s church, the church that provided the opportunity for my dad and me to participate in this hurricane relief effort:

St. Paul’s joined other volunteers from southern Wisconsin for a week of hurricane relief and reconstruction in Pass Christian, Mississippi, from Feb. 10th through Feb. 17th. If you speak to anyone from the group, you’ll hear many different stories, but you’ll hear a few things again and again: the experience had a profound spiritual effect on everyone, and you truly must see it for yourself to understand the devastating loss the residents experienced and the phenomenal work of the people who are giving back what the storm took away.

I spoke to Ken Hagmann, the work coordinator, about the staggering number of projects undertaken and the incredible amount of work that was completed by the volunteers this week.

Here is a partial list:

• Removed old roof shingles and installed new ones.
• Hung, mudded, taped, and sanded drywall.
• Finished projects that had been started by previous volunteer groups.
• Painted all the way up to the peak of the sanctuary of the Episcopal church.
• Removed old wiring and devices, nailed new boxes, pulled and stapled Romex, and installed lights and bathroom fans.
• Washed dishes, chopped hundreds of pounds of onions, and hauled food and equipment for God’s Katrina Kitchen (some volunteers started at 6:00 AM).
• Ran the computer to keep records at the local food distribution tents.
• Erected 2 steel-and-kevlar buildings to serve as a day care center for the residents of the FEMA tent city. Caulked to weatherproof the base of the walls, laid flooring, built a 4-foot knee wall to protect the kids from the sharp steel edges inside, roughed in electrical outlets and conduit for lighting, and built a deck between the two buildings.
• Laid tile in bathrooms and kitchens in several homes.
• Hung kitchen cabinets.
• Installed siding.
• Accompanied some Vietnamese residents to Home Depot and helped them find the materials that they would need for their reconstruction projects.
• Visited a nursing home on Valentine’s Day. Bonita Favre was there visiting her mother, and she made a point of telling us how wonderful the people are from Wisconsin. You may have heard of her son; he plays football.
• Visited one of the FEMA trailer parks on Valentine’s Day and distributed valentines to residents.
• Made contacts with the medical clinic, the fire department, and local EMS that will help with future volunteer relief efforts.
• Served as helpers for some of the contractors that have come to live and work in Pass Christian for a few months at a time.
• Organized the tool room, sharpened tools and chainsaws, and made improvements to the front door and other parts of the library.
• Found the communion bells and cups for a local church and used Scotch Brite to clean and restore them.
• Delivered buckets of drywall mud and tape, electrical boxes, wire, ladders…everything that goes into building or remodeling a home.
• Delivered 4′ x 8′ storage sheds to residents. There is a great need for storage space, since a FEMA trailer will barely fit a family of four, leaving no room for their stuff. A gentleman here has been selling screen printed t-shirts and using the profits to build these sheds, which are then donated to residents.
• Helped a resident move some large beams from his mother’s house that had great sentimental value to him. They were in a pile of debris, and without our help they would have been destroyed. He’ll be able to use them when he rebuilds.

Many of the skilled volunteer tradespeople provided training in their area of expertise to the other volunteers. We learned a great deal from each other, and we had a great time helping the residents put their homes and their lives back together.

During 4 full days of work, Ken received only two calls from people that had run out of work and were looking for something to do. Everyone stayed busy all day long, every day. The volunteers showed a great deal of independence, creativity, and perseverance.

About 45 of us slept at the Pass Christian Library, which Campus Crusade for Christ has used to provide temporary lodging for many volunteer groups over the last 5 months. What remained of the books and shelves was removed, and cots and propane heaters took their place. At one point, as many as 200 (a group of Haitians) had used the library for lodging. The library is “central command,” with wireless Internet, CCC’s project-tracking computers, and stockpiles of water, building materials, and tools.

We would have had a hard time finding food without God’s Katrina Kitchen, which serves 600-700 people per meal – an average of 2000 meals per day. Donations are accepted; however, anyone is welcome to eat. Many residents and volunteers rely on GKK for all of their meals.

All of us wish that we could have stayed longer. There is still a lot of work to be done, but the torch must now be passed to other groups. One of the pastors in our group will be returning in April with about 40 youth volunteers. It is likely that some of us will return as well.

The list of work is impressive, but far more significant was the willingness of the volunteers to lend their ears and their hearts to the displaced residents, who shared their stories and tears with them. It is one thing to lose all of your possessions and your home. It is quite another for your entire town – your neighbors’ lives as well as your own – to be obliterated in 12 hours of savage destruction.

Just knowing that people from thousands of miles away put their own lives on hold to help Pass Christian’s people rebuild, shoulder some of their burden, and show their compassion moved them beyond power of speech – but those who found their voice used it to express their sincere gratitude and praise the spirit that brought us there.

Hundreds of photos were taken and thousands of words were written about the week that has had a profound effect on all of us. Two blogs have chronicled the trip:

• http://wikatrinamissions.blogspot.com
• http://johnsonroad.net

4:25 PM - Seen on a set of 3 Burma Shave signs 15 miles south of Bloomington, IL, on I-55:

ROAD TO FREEDOM
FROM FOREIGN OIL
SOY BIODIESEL
ilsoy.org

2:08 PM - We just crossed the bridge into Illinois.

11:34 AM - We just crossed into MO. I shot some photos of a power plant to the east of the interstate.

10:13 AM - We’re back to full speed. There’s still some slush on the road, but not where the tires are traveling…as long as we keep the steering wheel steady.

I just saw some graffiti on an overpass that read GODPROVEN.COM. I checked out the site. It’s a meandering, specious “scientific proof” for the existence of the Christian god. The author is apparently not familiar with the scientific method. Arguments like these that try to glue together the worlds of faith and science detract from the legitimacy of both.

9:38 AM - We’ve been driving for 30 minutes and have traveled 17 miles. Average speed is about 40 mph. *sigh*

9:08 AM - We just crossed a bridge from Tennessee into Arkansas. There is still a lot of ice on the road despite all of the salt they’ve laid.