The Haversian Canal

I was riding my bike home tonight about 8 pm when a young man in a white polo shirt and khaki shorts waved me down and asked me to go find security because a man was beating up a woman by the parking garage. I told him to call 911 and pedaled around the corner of the parking garage (technically on a small drive called Lamar Fleming Avenue) to the scene. I first saw the woman storming away from the man. I never saw anyone lay a hand on someone else. She saw me, came over and asked to use my phone to call 911 and the man (Anthony) came up and started yelling at the other witness (Stan), who actually saw Anthony push his wife to the ground. She gave me my phone back saying it wouldn't dial 911. I successfully called 911 at 8:13, she (I didn't get a name) started yelling at Anthony, walked right up to him, gesticulating as much as he was, and then she walked briskly off into the night. I was wearing cycling shoes with cleats so I tried to walk after her but she out-paced me. I figured her departure wasn't a bad thing, considering the basic goal was to separate the two of them, so I returned to check on Stan and Anthony. Anthony then yelled at me for a few minutes while I talked to the 911 dispatcher, then I gave the phone to Anthony and he yelled at the dispatcher and gave the phone back to me, impressively shifting the subject of his yelling seamlessly from me to the dispatcher back to me again. He pointed out his fat lip from where his wife hit him. He told me about how she divorced him and came back to him, how she stabbed him frequently, hit him often, and he'd just had enough of it. Somewhere during this the dispatcher assured me an officer was on the way and she hung up. After another minute a couple more minutes Anthony started walking away, still yelling at us. And then Stan, the witness left. At 8:23, 10 minutes after placing the call to 911, the dispatcher called me back to make sure the patrol car had come, and it hadn't, which surprised her, and she asked if a car still needed to come. I said apparently not, as everyone, including the other witness, had left, so that was it. Moral of the story: sketchy folk around here after dark, and the police response could be better.

I rode away wondering if that's what I should I done. I keep replaying the scenario and coming to no better conclusion. Meanwhile, the reason I stayed late, to study anatomy before the upcoming test, hasn't gone away. Histology exam Thursday, Gross Anatomy on Monday. Gotta go.

This is an interesting idea outside Texas A&M's bookstore. The placard looks like it's been in use for some time. The cameraphone picture is poor, so I'll explain, but its purpose is self-evident to the average passer-by.

If you have room in your car, you can jot your information down your information on a scrap of paper and drop it in the bin associated with your region of Texas or the country. Riders can do the same. If a match already exists, then the second person can simply take up the other person's information, thus the bins are self-clearing. If several scraps of paper, for, say, rides to region 1, are still in the bin, then it's fairly obvious that another request for a ride to that region may be wishful thinking.

Do other colleges do this and I've just lived a sheltered life? It seems to effective to have not caught on elsewhere.

When you send something through the US Mail, don't write your phone number or anything else with five digits under your address. Turns out the scanners read your address from bottom to top and assume the numbers in the bottom right is the zip code. Best case scenario, the machine can't match the numbers with a real zip code, rejects your package and a person has to manually figure out where it's supposed to go, and the cost of mailing a package is still higher. If those numbers align with a legitimate zip code, your mail will be misrouted. To Grand Central Station if the last five digits of your phone number are 1-0017.

We took our friends to Chili's for dinner on Saturday in Harvey, a West Bank suburb of New Orleans. We had to wait for an hour. He's a contractor (recently went from a one-man operation to ten workers, can't imagine why). She's a registered nurse with a real estate license. She about quit both real estate and nursing to work at Burger King when she heard about the $6500 signing bonus, but it's paid out over several months, so not exactly a great deal in the long run. McDonalds probably does need to pay $13/hour, because, the one we went to, which was paying $10/hour, took thirty minutes to deliver the food. Not a big fan of the golden arches, but when you're hungry and you gotta get on the road, and there's no food at home because you're living there, you do what you gotta do. But $10/hour isn't enough to hire burger-flippers! Wow. Hey, more power to 'em, I say, but, wow.

Pictures of the Lower Ninth Ward (which flooded twice) and Lakeview (where the levee broke, shots include the new construction) will be up on Flickr soon. Also need to get a link to the video of me directing traffic to clear a flooded on ramp this evening. The story will tell itself.

We went to the Bacchus parade on St Charles Street on Sunday evening after having some excellent falafel from the Lebanese Cafe on South Carollton in Uptown. The theme was the Wizard of Oz. That was the most intense parade I have ever been too, in part due to some scary low standards of organization. The cops were coming through in between some of the floats, walking, driving, riding horses, but always physically pushing the crowd back, keeping the path clear. Why were there no baracades? Are there normally baracades? I can excuse this year, maybe, but I hope they normally use baracades for crowd control before relying on physical contact between officers and parade-goers. The people on the floats were basically bead dispensers, with thousands of strings of beads, each, to throw. And unlike the Macy's parade, the float riders weren't off-Broadway dancers showing some leg. These were were a mix of well-intentioned, macabre, and slothful babyboomers from around the country dressed in gowns and hoods, with masks. Hmmmmm, gowns and hoods, masks, in the South. Yeah, I'm thinking the proprieter of the Kool King Karwash* was on one of those floats. My daughter sat on my shoulders and for some reason didn't want to wear the beads, she just kept handing them down to my wife. This of course worked out fairly well, as the people on the floats would look down and see the cute little girl one her daddy's shoulders with no evidence of any beads, so the they'd throw more beads to her. She's slick for four-year-old.

The flashing lights, passing out drunks, and crush of thousands of bodies, however, got to her after about half an hour, so we left. An hour to find parking, twenty minutes to walk to the parade, 30 minutes at the parade, twenty minutes back to the car. I was never in the band, but I can't imagine being a kid in one of those marching bands, marching seven or eight miles over several hours, and then trying to get up for school the next day.

The walk itself was interesting. We walked down several blocks that still didn't have power, a music store that had been ransacked (because looting requires tunes?!), and through puddles of stuff I care not to describe. There was a burned out shell of a house, a building with a collapsed brick wall, which revealed the old wood exterior the brick had covered up, a wind-fallen tree with no remaining branches smaller than eight inches in diameter, and a pharmacy operating out of a trailer. Marked improvement over the last time I was here a month ago. All in all, the krewes put a lot of hard work into their floats and, with the city, put together a unique show. I saw the city's sordid past come to life and hope for the future.

We're going to a more family-oriented parade in Metarie tomorrow morning more on that later.

*The Kool King Karwash actually exists. It's on Route 90 between Houma and Lafayette. Many business owners in the KKK, a pathetic organization committed to a despicable cause, encorporate Ks into their business names and logos.
Edit, 7 March: In additional research since posting this I found that Elaine Frantz Parsons recently wrote about the connections of the KKK to Mardi Gras in the Journal of American History, Vol 92, No 3.

A hit-and-run driver killed Toby Beaugh, probably intentionally, over Mardi Gras. Please keep reading. This is a letter from a friend of the family, soliciting information. Here is a link to recent news stories Google has found about it. The reporting has been relatively scant, perhaps due to the press focus on Mardi Gras that week. If you have any information, please call Crimestoppers (504-822-1111) or e-mail Kim Tracey.

Hello everyone,

I am emailing this information to see if anyone can help us out.

Toby Beaugh, a very close friend of Ryan and mine died this past week. He was killed, deliberately, by a hit-and-run driver on Magazine Street.

He was recently married to Melissa Vanderbrook Beaugh. Many of you saw this tragic incident on the news already, but for those who have not heard about it, please read the attached document which includes the Times Picayune article. I've also included a photo of Toby. Many of you may remember him since he ushered at our 2002 wedding.

The hit-and-run driver of the black pick-up truck (with tinted windows)has NOT been found. We do not want this person to get away with the murder of our friend. Due to Mardi Gras, this did NOT get much publicity with the media, so we are now taking our own actions to help catch this person.

Here is how we NEED help. First, we are taking donations through Crimestoppers for a reward. (Information on how to give is below). We also need donations to pay for the advertising of the reward. This can all be done through Crimestoppers.

Secondly, we need volunteers to help distribute fliers to advertise the reward & incident information. Volunteers are also needed to fax local body shops and car dealerships, so that we may find the car (in case it was turned in for repair or sold). If you have a home or work fax, please let me know if you can fax 5, 10, 20 whatever!

Lastly, we are looking for anyone to assist with getting this advertised. If you have a contact with a print shop/copy shop (to make copies of fliers) OR any contacts with local media (newspaper, billboards, radio, TV, etc.) or media in Texas, Baton Rouge, or Mississippi, please let me know. Also, if you know any politicians that may be able to assist with our efforts, please let me know. We also need contact information for any reporters that may be able to give us "free" advertising through an article regarding our efforts.

For those out-of-town, I sent this to you as well since this person may have fled to your state. I would appreciate it if everyone could send this information out to everyone they know so that there is more awareness of this incident. We need everyone to be on the lookout for this possibly damaged black truck. This was a murder, not an accident, and it unfortunately was not well-publicized. We hope to catch this person with the combined efforts of the NOPD and Melissa and Toby's dedicated friends.

Thanks, in advance, for any help you can give us. Please feel free to email me with any suggestions, contacts, etc. or ways in which you can help us.

Sincerely,

Cherie

REWARD DONATION INFO: Crimestoppers is a New Orleans organization which supports the NOPD in gathering crime-related tips. This reward money may be given to any person providing tips leading to an indictment. Melissa's friend, Kim Tracey, is organizing the various pledges for Crimestoppers. Please contact Kim if you or your business would like to assist: ktracey@burglass.com, or you can contact Crimestoppers directly at 504-822-1111.

Came back up sometime between 6:45 and 7:30. So maybe down for an hour or two.

I was studying at Barnes and Noble, and an old man was sitting next to the window. Outside, on the other side of the window was his dog. Amidst the chatter, which is the reason I go to there, I overheard him tell another fellow the dog was 150 pounds. It was huge. And lean. I could see its ribs and muscles, the ridges of the vertebrae protruding under the skin. Not a fat dog, 150 pounds of muscle and bone. Laying in the shade, next to the window, unrestrained. Obedient. From stage right a woman walked the sidewalk toward her gold Lexus SUV, parked in front of the dog. Her hair was nearly the same hue as the car's. Behind her, like a lone duckling, her daughter followed. Her hair was a shade lighter than her mother's and longer, possibly all the hair she had grown in her short life.

Mom needed to put her purchases in the car, so she left her daughter at the curb, opening the driver's door. The door was now between her and her daughter. Nothing was between her daughter and the dog. Daughter saw the doggy. And waved. And smiled. Mom reached into the back seat. Daughter, in her white cotton sundress and white sandels, took a wobbly step toward the dog. The old man looked up. And rapped on the glass. Daughter looked up and saw him. And smiled even more. Two friends! A doggy and a grandpa! Yay! He rapped on the glass repeatedly. She stepped closer, halving the distance between her and the dog. His head came up. The man was pounding the glass and waving his hands. Shaking his head. I was about to run out to the curb. I should have run earlier. The dog cocked his head a bit to one side. Daughter's gaze caught the dog's. Everyone was looking. Daughter leaned her head toward the dog, reaching up to pet him with her left hand. His ears were bigger than her hand. Mom stood up. Still looking in the car. She turned. Stepped. Closed the car door. Smiled. Daughter looked up and back, over her shoulder, at Mom. And smiled. And reaching out her hand, pointed to the dog. She must have felt the dog's breath on her finger. The old man had stopped waving. Daughter and Mom stepped toward each other and away they went, down the sidewalk, toward the framing store.

We went to the the Algiers Commissary (map) yesterday and the produce, particularly the leafy greens, like lettuce and cilantro, were horrid. Ho-rrid. Turns out the man in plain clothes next to us was the produce manager, Bruce. Apparently they'll be closed today and Tuesday while tthey tear down all the shelves and put up new ones, but he also said, if we ever need anything that we don't see out, tto just ask. He brought out fresh lettuce for us and some of the most beautiful cilantro I've ever seen. Bruce, Mr Produce. Good person to know, particularly if you're on a Health Professions Scholarship in New Orleans.

I strongly recommend students who are considering entering a historical essay contest consider starting by taking a oral history of a notable person at the school or in the community. Everyone has a story and many of them go unappreciated. For medical students, in particular, it is an excellent opportunity to explore interviewing from a different perspective. Here are some resources I wish I'd found and explored before I started:

Oral History Tips from geneaology.com.
Oral History Resources from PBS, compiled for their series The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow.
Institute for Oral History at Baylor University
Oral History Association
Regional Oral History Office at Berkeley
The Art of Interviewing, a collection of short articles at journalism.org.

There are, of course other types of interviewing, job interviewing, medical interviewing, criminal interviewing, accident interviewing, and I haven't collected resources on all of the here. If you have excellent resources for these, please let others and I both know by posting them in the comments section.

Now go talk with, learn about, and share with us, the great people you see every day.

Is there are journal for the stay-at-home-parent profession? Staying at home with the kids this summer has been an illuminating experience. It's not that it's particularly harder than a day job, although it is more physically demanding. I find it to be most like standing watch on a ship.

Similarities:
1) You're responsible for what happens.
2) It can be mind-numbingly boring
3) You can easily slip behind the schedule if you let the boredom lull you into a sense of 'just passing time'.
4) There is a real chance of people getting hurt, even if you're careful.
5) There may be a greater chance of people getting hurt if you're too careful.
6) Your legal authority is tremendous, but your actual influence is a matter of personal rapport.
7) Decisions have to be made in real time.

Differences:
1) A stay-at-home parent is responsible for fewer people.
2) A stay-at-home parent gets remarkably less respect. I think this may be associated sociologically with the number of people the parent is in charge of. Isn't a parent of 12 held in higher esteem that a parent of 2? There aren't many stay-at-home parents of 100.
3) The equipment is much more mundane: the dryer just isn't as exciting as a missile launcher or turbine engine, although the proper functioning of the dryer is surely a more significant day-to-day concern.
4) I'm not aware of many professional journals of stay-at-home parenting or advanced degrees in stay-at-home parenting.
5) The stay-at-home parent's shift is longer (16-18 hours a day vs 4 to 7 hours for a deck watch), but the sleep schedule is more regular.
6) The typical American stay-at-home parent isn't part of a day-to-day institutional organization, like a ship or a hospital, that brings many practitioners into close contact and facilitates the exchange of ideas. Pockets do exist, notably military base housing, where parents are able to share lessons and stories on the playgrounds, in social contexts, etc, as a part of their daily routine. In retrospect, this a phenomenal advantage of base housing, and community planners should look to it as a model.

Decisions have to be made in real time, but there aren't any professional journals and there aren't a large number of practitioners within a local, physical institution with whom to share stories and lessons. Researchers seem to make a rather nihilistic assumption that people raise their children as they were raised. Well, that's probably true, but it's not the whole story. Stay-at-home parenting, parenting in general, seems to be lacking a lot of the standardized indoctrination that virtually all other fields provide their neophytes.

Apparently you can get fresh fish on Saturday mornings, straight off the boat, at the Westwego Shrimp Lot. I'll try to get down there.

Sprint provides the WiFi at Houston's William P Hobby Airport, but as I sit here, I can't get a common laptop, a Dell, to connect with either of the most common browsers, Internet Explorer and Firefox. Every time I fill out the form I get kicked back for an invalid "CCV2, CVC2, or CID", though no field on the form is labeled thusly. Once, the first time I tried with Internet Explorer, I got a different error, that my username was either invalid or already in use. Between the two browsers, I've tried several different usernames and passwords; the credit card number is valid. Grrrrrrr.

This is from my friend, Frank Norcross. He's a submarine officer now stationed in Afghanistan. We raced bicycles together at the Naval Academy. Read on if you want to learn how to help about 4300 kids who live next door to him.

My regrets on the delay of this email…the focus of my free time in the past few months has been on the completion of graduate school applications, which are finally coming due. Fortunately, I’ve now had the time to sit down and compose my thoughts on what I’ve been up to...hopefully it proves to be sufficient fodder for impassioned Neapolitan café discussion. Then again, most anything does.

I arrived in Kabul in mid-September, and reported to Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan (CFC-A), Civil Affairs directorate. CFC-A is the hat for a US Army three star that up until the beginning of October ran operations in Afghanistan. As you might remember, these are the people I was to work with, supporting the efforts of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). As luck would have it, I was arriving at a time of transition, as CFC-A turned over authority to International Security Assistance Force Nine (ISAF IX), the ninth generation of the NATO force deployed to support operations in Afghanistan. For the those keeping score at home, this the first time that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (an organization formed to deter the spread of communist influence led by the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations….a country NATO now engages in cooperative military efforts with) has deployed forces since deciding that an attack on any NATO nation constitutes an attack on NATO. ISAF IX is under the command of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, a mainly UK-populated NATO command based out of Rheindahlen, Germany. However, there are contributions from the 26 NATO member nations and 11 PfP (Partnership for Peace) nations.

I have been assigned to work with Joint Visits Bureau (JVB), which is responsible for arranging all the particulars (transport, lodging, security, meetings, social events) surrounding the visit of VIPs. As you might imagine, there is a healthy stream of folks who want to come out here to get an understanding of the current situation. Some of the higher profile folks have included Tony Blair, Princess Anne, Gen Jones (Supreme Allied Commander Europe…a post formerly held by Eisenhower), DEA Director, FBI Director, several Under Secretaries of Defense, and a gaggle of General/Admirals and other big wigs. My job involves interacting with the respective entourages to set schedules and arrange logistics (like coffee & tea…not kidding). I have very limited interaction with any of these folks.

I think my time in Italy taught me to immerse myself in and appreciate foreign cultures, and I came to Afghanistan with the expectation of doing that on a somewhat limited basis. Yet in reality there is almost a complete disconnect between ISAF HQ and Afghanistan….even though we are in the middle of Kabul. This excerpt from an article in UK paper does the best to describe the atmosphere:

Many of the rest-the ones who do the maintenance on equipment and aircraft, the catering, the administration-barely see the real Afghanistan. They fly in to bases, serve their six months behind the Hesco barriers, and fly back to Europe. Away from the badlands like Sangin, life can be tiresome, claustrophobic and hot, but not hard.

In the Gereshk camp, there is desert all around, but you can’t see it. Inside the ramparts, the troops live in roomy, well-lit, air-conditioned tents. There are hot showers and gleaming stainless-steel toilets, cleaned by imported south Asian labor. The scoff house serves freshly cooked food, up to steak and gateaux, three times a day. Birthday cakes on request. There’s a large gym. Premiership games on Sky, a shop, internet terminals and surprising absence of dust. Apart from the odd interpreter, and the sky, there is nothing Afghan there at all. ——The Guardian Weekend, 14 October 2006

Of course, this disconnect is driven by the security situation. This time last year, folks could eat out in town, stroll about the local markets on a limited basis…actually engage with the populace. Now every time I have to walk out in to the neighborhood which encompasses ISAF HQ, the Presidential Palace, and Camp Eggers (home to CFC-A)...a veritable warren of barriers, gates, concertina wire, and contracted guards with AK-47s…I have to carry a 9mm and wear body armor with my Kevlar helmet (you didn’t hear that Mom). It is a difficult balance, because this clearly creates tension with the local populace and reflects an inherent distrust which is difficult to surmount. You have to worry about force protection, but at the same time it is difficult to engage with the population and build trust when you hide behind barriers and only come out when armed, or all “kit-ed up” as the Brits would have it.

That doesn’t even begin to speak to the tribal and ethnic influences that still dominate this country, the poppy production (AF is back on top on that count), the abject poverty, or the resurgence of the Taliban. The Afghan people are like anyone else…they want stability, whoever it comes from. I remember the words of one officer in Civil Military Affairs out here: “The Afghans want us to win. But they want to be sure we will win.” To say it is a difficult job is a huge understatement.

Of course, with resources being allocated to another area of operations, this difficulty is compounded.

Alright, enough of the soapbox, just suffices to say the problem is an interesting one.

My life here on the compound is enjoyable enough. The JVB job, although mundane, is not difficult. I have time to work out (want to see how living at 6000’ will help my 10K time), read (still reading extensively about diet…as I’ve been a vegetarian since June), and stay in touch with loved ones.

My sincere thanks to those of you who have asked for my address with an eye to sending goodies out here. As you might now imagine, both the basics and comforts are in ready supply here (I drink tea every day in a garden that counts bunnies (not kidding…rabbits) among its population), and I am well stocked in cookies and candies to share with the other folks in my office (thanks Sara). However, the children of Kabul could use some items. Police District 10 (PD 10), the one right out my front door, is home to about 4300 children who attend school. They are lucky to have blackboards and desks, and are currently on hiatus from school for the next three months as they await the return of warmer weather. When they get back in the spring, they could use simple things like writing paper, pencils (maybe sharpeners and erasers too), and pens. Since there are 4300 of them, it’s tough to provide for all…but if we could add some simple school supplies to their stocks…that would be pretty cool. Anyway, if you do feel like sending along stuff, my address is:

Frank Norcross

HQ ISAF

US, NSE

APO-AE 09356

It’s just like shipping to NYC, so the shipping costs shouldn’t be exorbitant. Thank you for whatever support you can provide.

All in all, I’m a happy boy. I’m applying to several schools on the east coast with an eye on studying renewable energy policy…hopefully I’ll in one of those programs come this time next year. Anyway, that’s enough babble for the time being. I hope that this letter finds each of you well. Have yourself a merry little Christmas…

Cheers,

Frank

A new service called Bandwagon is launching soon that automatically backs up the music libraries of iTunes users to Amazon S3 for a flat rate. It looks very cleanly-designed; if only they did it for your whole hard drive.

Disclosure: By posting this blog post, they're giving me a free one-year account.