Of Course She's a Kotleba Girl

My cousin Anne is amazing. After college, which she attended on a basketball scholarship, she joined AmeriCorps and eventually ended up working for an organization called Hands On Gulf Coast. She has lived in and worked to rebuild Biloxi, Mississippi, for the past two years and runs a non-profit there where adolescent criminal offenders can attend art and community service classes in lieu of doing time in juvenile hall.

Or, that is what she usually does at least. Not right now. Right now she has been evacuated from her brand-new apartment on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, protected wetlands right outside her door and all. She is directing a shelter in Biloxi for family who are complying with the mandatory evacuation order, reporting directly to the executive director of the American Red Cross. In her most recent text message she not only sent me this image of Hurricane Gustav looming on the horizon this evening but also wanted me to know that based on donations from local businesses and organizations it looked like tomorrow's breakfast will be Pop Tarts.

Anne and I often joke that our brothers are Kotlebas in captivity and we are Kotlebas in the wild. Nathan and Steve have wives and homes and retirement funds and dogs. As for now, at least, neither Anne nor I even have health insurance. But while we respect our brothers' choices, we know that we are living what is to each of us a meaningful life doing righteous work.

The last I heard from her was just before dinner when she reported that the phones were out but text messaging was still working. Some places had power but some did not. A few of the gas stations were out of fuel, unable to continue to meet the demand of people filling their tanks to drive further inland. I asked her if she was afraid and she said no, that she had chosen to stay because if she didn't it would make her nuts to wonder what was going on at home, in the community she'd be leaving behind. She asked me to send this photo along to our family, and I thought I'd post it for all of you to see too. My phone is on and available for middle-of-the night SMS and my fingers are crossed. And, I know it's never as bad to be in an adventurous place as it is to be the person hearing about being in the adventurous place. I've lived in Israel, remember? But this time the tables are turned and even though she's not worried, I am. She's my partner in gone away somewhere-style crime. I hope you get some sleep and that whatever Pop Tarts you get for breakfast are your favorite flavor, girlfriend. Rock on. You will, you already do, have amazing and extreme stories to tell.

Almost Over

It's been weeks since I've written and I'm sure by now you're sick of stopping by to check and see if anything's new and once again, seeing a photo of me sitting in my office eating a peach. The reason for the pause in posts has been twofold: first, I've been working anywhere from twelve to fourteen hours a day every day for the past three weeks since I got back from camp. No really. Yesterday was my first day NOT at school since August 18th, and the only break the week before was a twenty four-hour relay up to the mountains and back for the last night of Session Four and for closing down camp. Getting ready for any new school year is busy, but a new school year at a new school with all new teachers and a new principal? Overwhelmingly time-consuming. I'm headed back over there today. Sigh...my carrot at the end of the stick is laps in the pool after I'm done (ha! done?) working: free access to the Mills College pool, aw yeah--one of the reasons I took the job.

So yes, this year's adventures are drawing to a close, slowly but surely. I now own a car and have firmly established my professional identity at my new job. The apartment hunt continues but is almost over, I can tell. The upcoming final post of this blog exists already in draft form, awaiting the addition of many recent photographs I've been taking in the process of documenting my new life.

For whom am I taking all these pictures? Me, to remind myself of how far I've come and to prove to myself that with incredible effort and energy, with the investment of a lot of time and strength, I am indeed pulling it off--for the past fifteen months I have been reinventing my entire life and while of course I will need to keep working, as we all do, at making it my own life and not other people's every single day the foundation has been laid and from here I just get to build it up into whatever I want.

What have I done, who have I met? Where all did I really go when I went away? These are questions I am asking myself now. In some ways it seems like I did everything I planned on and then some, in other ways it seems like I did nothing at all that I'd expected. I met wise teachers and strong families and new friends. I fell in love--who wouldn't on an adventure like this?--but like many other things about this year's journey, that connection did not sustain itself once I left the place it had been found.

So now it is almost Septemeber and I am almost home. I am seeing many ways to reflect on my travels: if I choose I can sit and think deeply, reflect upon the lessons learned and taught, the intention behind the trips I did or did not take throughout the course of the year. I can look through photographs and artifacts, I can send email or talk on Skype to people I've met and then left behind or who moved on themselves. I learn from all of that, from my thoughts and reflections and memories but also I see another way I can experience everything I've done since I first went away somewhere: I can take everything that is now history from this year gone by and put all I've learned into practice into my life going forward as I continue to make it just that: my life. No one else's. Terrifying. Liberating. I'm ready. Off I go, or perhaps onward is a better word, somewhere, to continue to grow into myself.

Coming soon: fin.

What I Look Like Today, What I'm Thinking About Now

I have been living at camp for eight and a half weeks. I am dirty and ready to go home. At the same time it is beautiful here and the community is like none other and I never want to leave.

My new job at Mills starts on Tuesday. I still have no apartment in the East Bay and I realize that I need to buy a car. Between now and when I leave I have to pack, clean my office, prepare an end-of-season report, debrief with the participants of a fellowship I've been mentoring, evaluate both my supervisor and my supervisee, lead services, run an all-camp program, and say farewell for now to people who won't be around when I get back. This is it: the nomadic life I've been living the past 15 months is really about to come to an end.

With that I am starting to think this blog's shelf life might be about to expire, too. It was created to tell the stories of my year away from what had become my life, of my adventures and exploits everywhere from the tall tall trees to the occupied territories and beyond. Soon I'm just plain going to live in Oakland and be a teacher again, before long I will eat off my plates and sleep in my bed and get dressed in clothes I've forgotten I even own. Is any of that still blogworthy? Not in the same way, that's for sure. Teaching is an adventure but there are already tons of blogs that talk about that--I've even had one, myself. Do I want to keep writing? Does anyone want to keep reading? What is the value to writing if all you have to tell are everyday stories, not global adventures?

These are all things to consider. In the meanwhile, as Debby would say, here is a photo of me from earlier today taken while I was eating a juicy late-summer peach and talking on Skype to one of the people who has been instrumental in not just my success this year but in my growing up as a whole: my younger brother Nathan. Love you, funk soul brotha, and I can't wait to see you again soon. Thank you for all you've done for me this year and always.

Coming Soon: Home Sweet Home?

Last week I got email from Jen with an incredibly warm and supportive reminder that I have been writing this blog for twelve whole months. It was July 14, Bastille Day, last summer that I began telling the story of this year and now--almost without me even realizing it--this experience of going away is almost over and soon it will be time to come home.

What does that mean, where is my next home? I am not sure. I spent three days last weekend looking at what felt like dozens of apartments everywhere from North Berkeley to Alameda and yet my goal to return to the mountains Sunday afternoon with a brand-new set of keys in my hand went unmet. My stuff still lives in a storage space on Webster Street and by the time I get to sleep in my own bed once again fifteen months will have passed since I last pulled up the covers and closed my eyes for one last night of sleep on Judah Street, two springs ago now.

I am trying not to be impatient, I am trying not to stress out about wanting to know where I will next cook my own dinner and scrub my own bathtub but it is hard at times. For now I relish the familiarity of drifting off to dream at night in my little camp house among the tall trees but at the same time I know soon the time will come for me to pack up and move once again, to leave this place for one last as-of-yet-unknown destination. Do I want to be settled? Yes. Will the time come, perhaps sooner than I could even imagine, that I will once again yearn for the nomadic life I've lived this past year? Yes. I am sure of it.

Back In Chicago

During my time in Chicago I rode the train downtown to meet up with my cousin Kristine. We hadn't seen each other in a ridiculously long time so it was great to eat piles of sushi and drink a few bottles of Ichiban beer and swap stories of our lives. On my way back to Union Station I walked by the Sears Tower. Whoa--tall.

Blog Silence

I just got back to camp tonight after being gone for a week. Last Sunday night I left at 8 p.m. and got to San Francisco at 1 a.m. The next morning at 10 I was on a plane to Chicago. My grandmother Florence, now of blessed memory, had passed away on Saturday morning and I went back to be with my family for everything from ordering sandwich trays at Jewel to weeping at the sound of my brother's bagpipes during her funeral Mass.

I have to say, she was quite an amazing lady. The last time I saw Grandma was in January, the most recent time I went to Chicago, when they first told us she was dying. Half a year later I returned to honor her life and her memory. I have many more stories to tell about her but right now I've been up since the local equivalent of 4 a.m. and after two flights and a 4.5 hour car ride back to Yosemite I am ready to get some sleep. So, more later.

But first I want to publicly thank my grandmother for having been part of our family, for having been a Kotleba and for helping to make me one too. May her memory be a blessing and may my father, who is her son, and his siblings be comforted with the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

What I've Done So Far On My Day Off

Wednesday night my first official day off of the summer began--the break between sessions two weeks ago when I rode my bike to Hetch Hetchy didn't really count since there were no campers so everyone had time off and we all just laid around--but this time is a real, honest-to-goodness, "ha ha you are working but I am not because it is my day off" day off.

That night at the staff meeting during the "rides" section I raised my hand and said "I'm sure no one is going to the bay this close to session break but I am actually on my day off starting about half an hour ago and would love to go to the city tomorrow if anyone is going...?" And I was so sure no one would be until at the end of the meeting when Michael, one of the drivers, came up and told me that he was leaving at 9 the next morning, Thursday morning, to drive to Berkeley and pick up the new kiln that Arts and Crafts had ordered and did I want to come with him?

Um, YES PLEASE.

So I did laundry and packed my backpack and straightened my office and cleaned my house (all of which I thought I'd probably do on Thursday and Friday during my day off while I was still in camp, before anyone would have a chance to leave and take me back) and slept for a few hours and got up and threw my stuff into the huge camp vehicle and began the even-longer-than-usual trip back to Berkeley...the statewide speed limit is 55 miles an hour when towing a trailer, you see.

I got to the city yesterday afternoon around 4:30 and in a perfectly orchestrated ballet of time got Nalini's extra set of keys from Sara and let myself into the apartment I have been so generously lent for the weekend and promptly fell asleep on the couch. Dinner was a huge magnificent pile of sushi from Deep and I spent the evening catching up with friends and then took an Actual Bath--the first tubful of water was horrifyingly beige from my accumulated dirt so I got up, scrubbed out the tub, and took bath #2--before sleeping in a real, true, non-futon, non-fold out sofa, genuine bed for the first time since New Hampshire in October.

Since waking up at 8 I have been sitting in one place, right here, remembering that I love the fog of the city because it buffers time in a way that my overactive mind and overambitious to-do list find very calming. The light has not shifted, the view outside the window has not changed during the two hours I've been, very deservedly I might add, sitting here and reading and writing and watching a movie. Soon I will get up and get dressed, go hunt down some breakfast and start in on my task of running errands and collecting things I need to bring back to camp: flannel shirts and recycled jeans at Crossroads/Goodwill, wrap-around skirts from India via Haight Street, some random silver ring to fill up the weirdly empty space left on my finger when I lost my ring in the laundry room a week or so ago, cold medicine from Walgreens, coconut oil and the darkest of chocolate from Trader Joe's. Until then I will proudly say that I have spent what feels like the first two real hours of my day off doing just what the picture shows, and I couldn't be happier about it.

Yom Yisrael, Israel Day

The mishlachat, or delegation of Israeli counselors, stayed up until 3 in the morning on Sunday after an already-busy weekend to put the finishing touches on the "60 Years" museum they created in the dining hall for Israel Day yesterday. The two oldest groups of kids participated in a self-guided tour and filled out an opinion survey based on what they learned in the exhibits. Afterwards, they met in large groups to talk about the content presented at the various stations. It was impressive to say the least. The museum was too large to show all of it here, but below are a few photos to give you an idea.

Fiery Sunrise

It's hard to tell in this picture, but the sun rises very red outside my front door every morning from the smoke that now constantly fills the sky. Today I drove with Nora to Groveland to get pizza and we passed two fire camps alongside the road. One is much smaller and is a staging area for fire trucks and other vehicles where they can go to get refueled and repaired. The other is much larger and looks like something FEMA would set up, with everything from a large field kitchen and outdoor dining area to portable showers inside trailers to rows upon rows of individual tents where firefighters and other rescue personnel are living.

Okay Actually

I thought of three people who are neither married nor having a baby--not as far as I know of, at least. But three is still not that many compared to everyone else I know.

It Seems

...as if I am the absolutely very last person I know who is neither married, nor having a baby, nor some combination of the two.

Just an observation.

The fact that I am living in the woods for the summer with a bunch of unwashed hippies who are all ten years younger than me is probably not helping my situation very much, if at all.

Hmm.

Oh Right, Real Life

Today I was cleaning out a box that I brought with me to camp. It is filled with all kinds of paperwork that I did not have a chance to process before I left Berkeley, and contains everything from old mail that needs to be sorted, recycled, and shredded to far more pertinent things like...my teaching contract for the fall that I realized I'd never signed and returned. Oops.

Real life can be hard to keep up with here at camp, for two reasons: first, it (accurately) seems far away and second, it can be difficult to access what with the one phone line connecting us to the real world as well as the fact that the Internet comes via satellite. So tomorrow I am going to spend some of my time off addressing everything from my expiring health care coverage to my unpaid post office box fees to my recently-unearthed employment paperwork.

Next tasks: finding a new apartment in the East Bay, and considering the possibility that I might actually (gulp) need to become an automobile owner once again.

Fire

On Saturday after I got back to camp from riding into the park, the weather shifted and instead of being hot and sunny like in the picture of my bike and the Yosemite sign, there was a storm. It was very surreal because it never rains in the summer at camp. There was a short but fierce burst of rain, lots of thunder, and even lightning which started a pair of forest fires not far from camp.

The fire has grown and its smoke hangs over us much of the day, most noticeably in the morning when the sun rises red through the thick air. It always smells like a campfire, usually a fun and cozy fragrance in camp but now a reminder that nature is revitalizing itself in a powerful way not far from where we live. Yesterday our camp's director gave the local Department of Forestry office permission to send firefighters into our camp to use the showers and to rest. Four years ago during an even larger fire the firefighters lived in our camp for a short time. I wonder if that will happen again?

Day Off

Saturday was my first day off since arriving at camp almost three weeks ago. So, I was a little bit ready for time to myself. I woke up early, had breakfast, packed myself a big sack lunch, and got on my bicycle to ride into the park.

It took me an hour to ride the eight miles to Camp Mather which was discouraging until the woman at the General Store there--where I stopped for a strawberry milkshake--reminded me that the road from our camp to theirs is a 2% grade uphill the entire way and then I felt better. I rode to Hetch Hetchy, where much of California's water comes from, and then I rode home. The return trip, being mostly downhill, took only about half as long and required very little pedaling. I am glad the hard part was on the way there and not on the way back!

Stopping By For a Visit

Look who I found outside the door to my camp house! I neither screamed nor smashed her with a broom but instead just peacefully took this photograph. I must say, I have made a lot of progress as far as interacting with nature is concerned compared to when I first moved to camp last summer. I clearly recall my first and only trip into the Tuolumne River last June, where only moments after I bravely jumped off the dam at Pipeline a fish swam up to me and touched my leg and I had to get out. See? So co-habitating with a lizard is really not that big of a deal.

Now a lizard *in* my house? That would be a problem but fortunately is not one that has as of yet presented itself.

My Camp House

the view from the porch



looking out from my bedroom to the deck


Not too many exciting photos I know, but first of all my camp house is not that big and also--did I not tell you I connect to the Internet via satellite? This post took 15 minutes to publish! More later when the Earth turns far enough on its axis that I can get a faster connection...

Just A Satellite Away

A week and a half ago I moved to Yosemite for the summer. I live in a little house just up the hill from the Tuolumne River. It is cold at night and hot in the day and my feet are still relatively clean but I know that won't last for long. There are mosquitoes and lizards and I eat with hundreds of other people at every meal. Finally I have figured out when the showers actually have hot water. Perhaps most importantly of all, I passed the swim test and am now allowed to go unaccompanied into the pool.

I am living at a summer camp and working as an educator there for the next ten weeks. It is beautiful here but very remote so email that I get from my colleagues, educators at other camps, makes me laugh: "What's your mobile number? We should talk during rest hour some day and compare notes!" Maybe that works at a camp just outside Cleveland but here in the Sierra Nevada mountains the nearest cell service is an hour away if not more, as is any restaurant or store or movie theater or medical facility of any size. Being here can feel very isolating sometimes.

How then, with only one phone line into camp, am I writing this post? Our Internet access comes to us via satellite, I learned yesterday. Fascinating. So access is very slow and sometimes if too many people are checking their email or actually trying to get work done you can't get online at all...which is why I am writing this at 7:30 in the morning, not even having gotten out of my sleeping bag yet, while most other people are getting ready for breakfast and the Internet is available all for me. So while I feel very distant from the rest of my life, it is somehow reassuring that the outside world is just a satellite away.

And, a Special Note to my teaching colleagues and dear friends whose life is measured by the academic calendar: Happy summer vacation--you made it :)

Signs It's Almost Time For Camp

1. Song session with hundreds of other people reappears as a regular and predictable part of daily life.



2. Suddenly you start seeing more hippies with guitars.



3. You get a chance to meet up with friends you haven't seen since August.



4. There's lots of spontaneous embracing.



5. You start tying things to your body with hemp.



6. You trade your grown-up steel watch for your water-resistant, light-up rubber watch.



7. Instead of furniture in your bedroom you just have huge piles everywhere on top of what used to be your desk, your bookshelf, your chair...



8. Your bed itself looks like this and you're forced to pack because otherwise you can't go to sleep.


Sing it with me:
Take me home down country roads
To the place I belong--
Camp Tawonga, California!
Take me home down country roads...

Make New Friends (But Keep The Old...)

I am writing this on a Southwest flight from BWI to Oakland (the People’s Airport, as Nalini calls it, and I couldn’t agree more—sigh—SFO, I miss you…), heading home after a week at Capital Camps in Pennsylvania for the Foundation for Jewish Camp’s pre-season Cornerstone Fellowship conference.

On Thursday I woke up and packed half of what I have kept out of my storage space for the summer into my massive REI backpack. After working in Berkeley for a few hours I took the BART to OAK where I boarded a flight to Denver and then on to Baltimore, arriving at 12:30 a.m. I took a taxi to the hotel where I stayed up even later, having my very own bathtub and queen-sized bed all to myself after months of getting clean in stand-up shower stalls and sleeping on everything from a variety of futonim to a sofa permanently folded out into an extra-wide cot. I woke up and repacked, had breakfast, and took the hotel’s shuttle back to the airport with two people who I quickly learned were headed to the same conference I was. Back at BWI my airport shuttlemates Saul and Reuven (no hint there that they work for Jewish agencies) and I met up with the rest of the folks who had arrived just that morning from destinations much closer than the West Coast, and all of us together boarded a mini-bus headed for Pennsylvania.

Two hours later I disembarked on the grounds of a very beautiful camp and got registered for the week’s events. One of the staff handed me a key and a map, pointing out the dining hall’s doors at the building that would be my home for the next five nights. Lodge Alef, room 9 was my housing assignment and I shlepped my bags across the parking lot and up the stairs into the building where I found my room empty of people but filled with signs of life that my roommate had already arrived.

At the opening session I met Mara and our third roommate, Julie, who had been accidentally assigned to an upper bunk in another room and wanted to sleep closer to the ground so was moving in with us. After a few false starts in which I stole Mara’s conference materials without meaning to and boldly unpacked a week’s worth of Ziploc bags filled with pre-matched top-and-bottom combos for the next days (once again, I’m down with OCD—yeah you know me) into one entire dresser leaving Julie with nowhere to put her clothes we all fell promptly in love with one another.

I have gotten very little sleep this past week because of all the late-night pillow talk--with Julie participating fully until she would suddenly and completely without warning fall asleep, leaving Mara and I to visit until all hours of the early morning. We shared meals and acrostics and pre-presentation jitters and a bathroom, we learned about each other’s camps and professional backgrounds and love lives and plans for the summer. Yesterday morning when it was time to pack up our bags and unmake our beds, to say our farewells and go our separate ways I was surprisingly really sad. Never having been a camper myself, I hadn’t understood the overwhelming emotions I observed last summer at the end of every session as weepy campers would spend what seemed like hours hugging absolutely everyone from their own bunkmates and counselors to the kitchen staff goodbye before getting on the bus to go back home, but saying goodbye to Mara and Julie felt a lot like that had looked all those months ago in Yosemite. Now we’re Facebook friends and I’ve already sent them both mail for when they get back to their own camps next week, but it is just not the same as telling stories until two a.m. I’ll see Mara at CAJE in August and we’ve already made plans to be roommates again, and Julie offered to be my hostess anytime I am in DC, but the bittersweetness of saying farewell lingers and I will just need to console myself as the Tawongan campers do, by saying “There’s always next summer, there’s always next year…”

Messages Everywhere, Reprise

Tonight I was walking home from work, something I never do because I always ride my bike, but in this case I'd left my bike at my office since I will be out of town at this conference the next few days. This graffiti on 4th Street caught my eye and just as I was capturing the image with the use of my phone's camera, the phone rang and it was my dear, dear friend Jason whom I've known since 1999---almost a decade, practically an eternity. He had spotted my boarding pass here on my blog and he wanted to know if during my time in Baltimore I'd be able to make a 50-minute detour to see him and his family in Silver Spring, Maryland. YES, please. We were in grad school together for two years and taught together for three more after that and when he said it's been two and a half years since we said farewell to one another at the Ferry Building in San Francisco during their last trip here, about eighteen months after they moved away, I could not believe it.

The lesson: Making what might seem at the time like a random, self-indulgent blog posts such as the image of one's boarding pass for a business trip can sometimes be the catalyst for an amazing bi-coastal reunion. See you next week, Mr. O!