Post Hurricane

I went to move my car the other night. It was the eve of Savannah's Rock-n-Roll Marathon and downtown residents had been warned for a couple weeks about towing if cars interfered with the race course.  I saw Tess, my neighbor in the big house on the corner, returning from the same errand. It was dark and I barely made out her cropped blonde hair.

"Tess, Hi," I ventured.
"Why, Hi!"
Tess is amazingly friendly. She personifies Southern friendly for me -- or at least Savannah friendly. With a drawl she'll ask you all about yourself and tell you something about herself that's totally unexpected.

I asked her how she fared with the Hurricane. (Hurricane Matthew came through Savannah in mid-October.)
"Well, we stayed here."  Mah husband thought maybe we should go someplace but I thought about him in the front, driving, and drinking scotch and me in the back with the cats. I just hunkered down in my bed. Somehow, we were fine. Georgia's bigger than the hurricane and God's bigger than Georgia. That's what I say."

Tess also told me that she goes down to the cathedral and prays every morning. (Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, apparently known as "the Cathedral" is a huge French Gothic structure just north of Lafayette Square.) I imagined Tess as a fixture there, greeting everybody each morning.

"Tell me again where you work," she asked. "Oh yes, we used to have a Jewish neighbor that worked at SCAD. Very nice fella.

Soon after that, election season took hold and a Trump sign appeared in Tess's front yard, along with an American flag on the porch. I also noticed a "Pray to End Abortion" sign in a first floor window as I walked along the side of her house one day.

Fall in Savannah was marked by the hurricane and of course the election. One, if not both events were a way to get to know each other better.

Hurricane Recipes

I made it through the hurricane, just like everyone else but, I think, far better than everyone else. I didn't lose power, didn't have damage, and stayed in town with friends. I know that my day will come!

 Even though I escaped damage and inconvenience (I'm getting more scared of paybacks by the minute) I did play a small role for friends. They stayed at my house one night when their power went out and I cooked a few meals for them and a couple others who had lost power or wanted company or both. The following is the worst of my hurricane kitchen endeavors.

So many around me were camping out with friends, driving distances to inland Georgia, staying in odd circumstances, etc., I felt kind of bad being too comfortable -- and didn't want to be out-adventured. Thus I decided to use the small hibachi grill that I'd been ignoring on my porch to grill up the thawing packages of frozen fish in my refrigerator (inherited among many other refrigerated and frozen items from friends without power). I'm not a foodie, but I am a food snob. I don't buy frozen fish. I go to the local, incredible fish market, Russo's. Thus, the Kroger packages of Talapia and tuna were foreign to me, but, again, adventure. I marinated as my sister suggested and my friends took over just as I was on page six of the grill instructions and getting frustrated. They're master grillers (a la Green Egg) and I felt things were going well. We had drinks. Thankfully I had the good sense to make one "sure" thing, brown rice with chicken broth. I also made a salad out of a head of iceberg lettuce that didn't seem to go away, no matter how much I used it.

To me the fish tasted like lighter fluid that had gone bad. (Yes, my friends used lighter fluid when the grill instructions warned against it, pa. 6). "Is it supposed to taste like this?" I asked, amazed that they were eating everything on their plates. I tried to find all the rice on mine and didn't bring it up again. The next day we all reported in that we had stomach issues. I think that the fish had been in one too many freezers, then refrigerators over the course of the power outages.

Since then I've cleaned the grill -- another step in my recent quest to face the unknown or at least do something new each day. Maybe that is my personal, leftover effect from going just a little bit outside of my comfort zone during the Hurricane. I'm hoping!

Labor Day Talk

It's Labor Day weekend in Savannah and the crush is already on, it seems, of incoming students to SCAD for the fall, even though the quarter doesn't start for another week. Students have most likely already come back to the other schools in the area (Armstrong, Savannah State, Savannah Law), but SCAD is the largest and best known outside of Savannah and has the added, local presence of being spread out over downtown.

One of the many perks that I enjoy being a liberal arts professor there is a parking pass at lots around the city's crowded tourist spots. My favorite is on the south side of Liberty, one of the east - west corridors that marks off the historic area. I can park there, then pick my way across traffic and cut through the squares and clumps of students and tourists (feeling smugly local all the way). Today I headed to J.Crew to exchange a pair of pants. "I think I waited on you last time," the manager said. "Going up a size," she observed, flatly. I didn't say anything. Saying nothing is powerful. Most of all, it violates expectations to respond, and thus it takes some discipline on the part of the (non) speaker. I find it a challenge because I don't like making people feel uncomfortable, and thus sometimes use a non-verbal gesture instead -- a wave or a nod. That can defeat the purpose of a non-response but in some situations you want to respond, just not with what's expected. A non-response can say volumes, in this case probably more than I intended. I thought that her comment was a poor choice, though it could have been some type of compliment; I was just too hungry at the time to take part in small talk, especially something a little tricky like this. Mainly, I was sick of tight fitting pants around my thighs (I like to think of them as 'athletic'). As I sat down to lunch across the street, I felt a little regret for making the manager (and her trainee) uncomfortable (would I be embarrassed going in there again?), but sometimes it's worth the experiment.

Truth in writing

I've been working on this academic article on a partnership between a Reform synagogue and a Baptist church for more than some time now. I might be at the point of moving past the academic expectations and unthinking to some degree of truth. It's hard to do; we, or at least I, am so saddled with what should be and fear of judgment. Best to play it safe and sound like we should sound.

I'm taking a voice for performance class now. It's not that big of a deal, really, teaching three classes and taking one. Unless losing hair and gaining weight is a big deal. Viv, the instructor says that reality is "out there;" the truth is "in here" -- the performance hall, the stage, the classroom, the movie set. The class is a hell of a lot of work (200 level) and I'm convinced I would be a very mediocre actor. .

Truth is hard. It lies beneath layers of control and expectation. Another lesson from class: Self consciousness is our enemy. Meaning must be the reward.