I’M GOING TO VISIT THE RAT for a week, so blogging will be light. A couple links before I pack: a blog all about the Church fathers (via Amy Welborn); and Emily from After Abortion on her relief work in hurricane-devastated areas:

…The church itself is gone except for the white steeple, which lies on its side in front of the site. Behind the steeple is a jury-rigged assortment of tents, trailers, quonset huts, pathways over the red mud built out of scrap wood. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Swiss Family Robinson”, that captures the flavor.

We were sent a mile down the road to work in the distribution center. This was in the abandoned gym of an elementary school that was destroyed by the storm. Nothing has been done to the school. The outer walls are intact. Walking through the interior of the school, one sees all of the debris from the school–desks, chairs, papers, books, bulletin boards, building materials–laying in odd contortions, covered with two inches of storm mud, now dry and cracking, all now covered with a dangerous looking mold. Two boats are in the courtyard where they were thrown by the storm. A vigorous spring bush has grown up through the hull of one of the boats.

Our operation was run by a guy in his late 30s named Al. Al was homeless in Wisconsin last year and rode his bicycle down to Bay St. Louis–which took 2 1/2 months–when he heard about the hurricane. He came with his dog Otis, and after several weeks of supervised volunteer work was put in charge of this entire operation–which includes sorting through all the food donations that go into feeding about 200 people 3 meals a day. He’s been doing it for months.

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