Ole Miss mess

Today's adventures included a trip into Mississippi (about 10 minutes away) and on over to Gulfport. It looks like southern Lebanon - total destruction. Coastal buildings' facades sheered away, entire houses and restaurants missing with just foundations or parking spaces left behind. It's shocking. And I really need to get out my camera to show these things.

Borrowed the newspaper from Tami's mom and have some good leads, so I'm back at CC's with a cafe au lait and wireless connection to map them all to see. Tomorrow will be an intensive home-searching day ... looking through the ads for Target, etc. made me want to start stocking a home!

We went to Danny & Clyde's for a Po' Boy (Michele will love it because: "Danny & Clyde’s is simpy the best fresh and healthy food to go" - and she will ignore the fact of mayo and gravy dripping off white bread and 1/2 pound of meat). So many menu items to eat my way through - next will be the muffalettas (though, they are HUGE - half of the po' boy is still in the fridge, and will probably be too soggy to enjoy later). The problem is of course that it's all so much meat, and while I do eat meat it pretty much grosses me out [note: guy just walked past saying, "You go girl! I gotta get up to that typing speed, I really do!" - CC's has quite the little community of visitors]. Staying with Tami, an avid vegetarian and near-vegan, isn't helping me stomach the dead flesh any better (though, I guess eating it that way is better than eating live flesh), and she's even just about got me off milk. I'm so easily influenced by whomever I'm around.

Anyway, while there I stumbled upon brilliance. I will be stupid Yankee for the next three years. I will ask for chowder in all the public places, just to be sure to be identified. I will wear Alaska and Oregon t-shirts. When I am in that role, people are so damn friendly and helpful. At Danny and Clyde's, I had to stop the cashier from helping me too much, and she compromised with giving such explicit, clear directions. I think that's common here - I have not yet gotten lost anywhere because everybody's directions are so clear.

But another benefit to being Stupid Yankee is that it helps me circumvent some of the racism. Tami's mom today told of another po' boy place nearby, and how it had moved from Chalmette (which is a unique kind of place, which I'm familiar with because that's where we did Habitat work in April) and she really likes Chalmette so likes that place. To illustrate not the positive side of Chalmette, she said while in there they were talking about FEMA trailer A/C not working well and it being finally fixed because, "They finally sent a white man to take care of it!" My jaw dropped, of course. Led to conversation about racism and tensions between whites and blacks here, and I remembered how I played Stupid Yankee in the Atlanta airport and things were much better. See Stupid Yankee. She blind. Hey, if it helps me from being invited to a Klan meeting, then I'll play it.