Go 'Noles!

I write this to the sound of war cries. I can imagine pioneers hearing these sounds 150 years ago and trembling with fear. The words “These people take their football seriously” have leapt from an abstract phrase into 3-D, Surround-Sound, THX Life-O-Rama. On my way into the campus this morning I saw that tent cities had sprung up on every open field and parking lot of any size. When I emerged from the library at 6 p.m. the world had changed – Landis Green was covered with SUV’s and Jeeps and barbecue grills and picnic tables. People of all ages were everywhere – families, students, elderly couples – and to a person they sported FSU t-shirts, hats, beads, and warpaint on their cheeks. On the slow drive back to the Village I kept thinking how like Mardi Gras the scene was – people and cars decked out, cruising and honking and yelling, “Parking for Game: $20” signs at the Greek Houses. I skirt the stadium at a crawl, police directing at the intersections, all the athletic fields filled with tents and cars and parties. Hawkers holding up tickets. I’m breathing barbecue sauce instead of oxygen and cars next to me are full of students yelling songs.

Now it’s 8 p.m. and the game must have just started because I hear the War Chant, followed by drums and roar after roar from the crowd – sounds like the team is going out on the field. I never even bothered to pick up my ticket coupons, but I think I have to see at least one game while I’m here. This is beyond football -- it's a Spectacle.

Globe Trotting

Of course the best news of all, that Sherry's fine, and the bonus that 1109 weathered the storm so well, has made everyone's weekend. Courtesy of cousin David Zehender, Mom and Dad heard about earth.google and its power to show us virtually any place on the planet; so I downloaded the free version and plugged in 1109's full address. Our beautiful green and blue globe appeared, as seen from space over the USA, and then the view began to zoom into the south, then the Gulf, and before I knew it I saw the railroad tracks, the playing field, and there, nestled on the corner under some trees, sat 1109. My view was very grainy; I couldn't, as Aunt Marvel reported, read license plates or identify someone in the yard, and I don't know whether that's due to my connection, weather conditions, using the free versus the fee version of the software, or what. But nonetheless it seemed miraculous. I plugged in Mom and Dad's address and watched the view back up, zoom across to Texas, and down again into Austin. There was their condo. Next I flew over to Winter Park to see my old (now Haley's) apartment. And finally, I zoomed over the Atlantic to Jolly Old England for a look at St. Paul's.

Just amazing. "The age we live in," as Dad said.

Getting my online courses up and running has made for a hectic week -- only 2 students dropped, so that meant reading about 175 posts in addition to everything else. My connectivity at home is not good so I've been living in the graduate computer lab at the library. But that's another post.

"You Can't Go Home Again"

I don't know what I was expecting as a cat 4 storm slammed into Louisiana and Mississippi, but the fact that two beloved places of my childhood, that were my parents' homes, are changed forever -- well, it just is not really sinking in. It's been very hard to focus this week because thoughts of Aunt Sherry and her boys, on a personal level, are omnipresent; and behind those thoughts are images of New Orleans and Gulfport, as well as Slidell and Mandeville. I simply can't comprehend it. But the effects of the devastation will be with us a long time. And the New Orleans I was born in is gone. Someone in one of my classes said there was talk of deserting the city and not rebuilding it simply to be hit again by future storms, but she's wrong; it will rebuild (she must be from someplace else); but its character will be altered. Our childhood memories of a place are like dream images -- based on reality but not true to it, as we notice when we return as adults and wonder why everything is smaller and less bright. It seems to me now that the real New Orleans and Gulfport have joined my childhood New Orleans and Gulfport in the world of memory and dreams.