Chapter 295: Jumping In
Tell me you wouldn't think about it and you're either: a) a liar or b) never saw Dukes of Hazzard or Knight Rider
It's been a pretty hectic week since getting back from Minneapolis. I have to say that there are a slew of projects and organizations over here that need the help that the Design Studio can do our best to assist with which makes me happy. I can also say that there are a slew off... well, you get the point. Either way, it's an interesting thing to be the only person over here operating in a satellite function while we get staffed up. I am really enjoying the experience of not only having my own projects but being a day to day part of shaping what is going to be happening with the Housing Resource Center in general.
Getting connected
To give you a Reader's Digest version of what I'm doing over here isn't the simplest thing, but I'll try to explain it as clearly as I can. Here goes:
1. Sherry-Lea Bloodwirth leaves her position with the East Biloxi Coordination Center where she was the financial director in October to become the head of a new center here that will be known as the Hancock Housing Resource Center. In addition she will be the head of the Long Term Recovery Committee which was previously operating in a similar fashion.
2. David Perkes, head of the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio talks with Sherry-Lea and they agree that it would be a good juncture and a great relationship to partner with the new Hancock HRC in a similar fashion to how we work in Biloxi already.
3. In our project meeting, David brings up the opportunity to go over to Hancock County and anchor down the Studio while we staff it up to presumably 4 employees including myself, a licensed architect, and two others.
4. In December, just prior to the holidays, I move over to Waveland, Mississippi with the intention of starting after the holidays as we start our new branch studio in Bay St. Louis to operate county-wide.
5. I get back to work after a great holiday and the fun has begun including helping non-profit builders refine and in some cases re-develop their existing floor plans they have been building with, catching residents that fall through the criteria cracks for the local non-profits but still require assistance with the rebuilding process, beginning the process of developing a system by which we can being to survey and map the County to better assess its needs, and setting up the Studio office so that we can begin to establish ourselves within the community and the Center itself.
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Design Studio Poetry Corner for 09 January:
Fall of Troy
Tom Waits
It’s the same with men as with horses and dogs
Nothing wants to die
Ethel and James they killed in a game
With guns too big for their hands
Just off St. Charles in no man’s land
And you’ll have to find your own way home, boys
You’ll have to find your own way home
The oldest was Troy, an eighteen year old boy
Shot dead in March in a robbery
His brothers started out to hell and to ruin
Troy’s killer was never caught, they say
Young Nick, he just went bad that day
Now he’ll have to find his own way home, boys
He’ll have to find his own way home
Why cook dinner, why make my bed
Why come home at all?
Out the door and through the woods
There’s a world where nothing grows
It’s hard to say grace and to sit in the place
Of someone missing at the table
Mom’s hair sprayed tight and her face in her hands
Watching TV for answers to me
After all she’s only human
And she’s trying to find her own way home, boys
She’s trying to find her own way home
My legs ache, my heart is sore
The well is full of pennies