#15 What I Learned at Headquarters & New Orleans

Arriving at headquarters, you are immediately struck with the sense of urgency that pervades the building. The surrounding city is oblivious to the hurry. The population of Baton Rouge has increased threefold. Traffic now looks like L. A. at rush hour instead of LA at any hour. In the Client Services Department, volunteers arrive en mass daily. Luggage is piled in row upon row upon row outside of the main door. It looks like an Army barracks.

At least by my arrival, some volunteers had cooled their heels without an assignment for up to 7 days. At the time, I was unfamiliar with how other departments used their assets. Our department appeared not to use them at all.

The Red Cross like any large company has a hierarchy. In our case, it went as follows:

The Old Man. Long and lean, slightly curved like a banana. He sports a full head of white hair, some form of usually striped polo shirt and a pair of chinos. The look on his face is normally a grimace. He has apparently modeled his outward demeanor after some long lost Disney villain. For some incomprehensible reason, He reigns as the head of the Baton Rouge headquarters.

In the time I spent in Baton Rouge, I never personally witnessed him do more than stroll around the building looking distantly at what others were doing, or taking time out to be rude to someone. How he got to his position, is anyone's guess. As I have seen over and over again, at least in my department certainly, cream does not rise to the top.

Below him is the Red Hornet,whom I have previously discussed. Hornet is mid sized and about twenty pounds past her prime. Round cheeks, a thin little mouth and sparkly eyes. I call her the Red Hornet, because she wears only red ARC polo shirts, tucked into chinos with a belt. Wassup with the chino theme?

Her hair is cropped into one of those pineapple dos. She wears a little makeup, but not enough to make you notice. She is not a volunteer. She is paid to do her job by the National Chapter in Washington DC. She makes some policy herself, and interprets national policy to headquarters, management and volunteers. She is a one woman band. She is overwhelmed. Noone would be able to do all of the things required of her, and do them successfully. it is not physically possible. damned if she doesn't try though. I have watched her and seen that she does her best. Her best is not enough. Imagine being paid for that?

Below her is our department, CLS. Client Services. I couldn't tell you what the "L" stands for. Neither could most of the top brass. Oh yeah...CLient. I guess "CS"just didn't sound weighty enough, so they had to stick the "L" in. The department used to be called "Family Services". Not sure why the change. The old guard still calls it, "Family Services" that makes it all the more confusing to anyone not part of the "in crowd". If you were at all familiar with CLS, you know, that it couldn't be more confusing. The head of CLS is a guy I will call. "Joe".

"Joe" is a smiley guy. He is about 5'7", under 40, close chopped hair, and a goatee on his chin. His chin is generally pointed up and out. He looks like the shrimp-in-the-army, version of Bacchus. "Joe" appears fit. More polo shirts. They must all shop at the same place. Other than that, "Joe" is pretty non-descript. Invisible even. I am sure that he does something. Again, I am not sure what. Mostly he smiles and types away on his computer. They could get a secretary to do that. "Joe" is inaccessible. I know that, because at one point I was ordered to speak to him by the Red Hornet, to try and resolve my, "issues". Didn't happen. After Red escorted me directly to him, he immediately shuffled me off to someone else, but he did it with a smile.

The "someone else", was "L.B." She is a tall, thin, unfortunately dour specimen. One of those females that makes you think that she lives at home alone with her cats. Fifty something, she wears her grey hair twisted into a style that I last saw popular in seventies communes. It was held back by a functional clip. She appears to have no body at all. She does have a long-outdated grey and white RC smock instead. "LB" wears glasses perched on the end of her nose. Her brown eyes are soft, limpid and sad. "LB" is a long-time volunteer for the Red Cross.

I know that, because when she was forced by circumstance and direct orders to speak to me seriously about a particular subject, she followed the classic RC caseworker routine of making eye contact, appearing to write pertinent information, and then making eye contact and appearing to listen, when it was quite evident that she was not listening to a word that I was saying, and made it obvious that she was forced into a position of interaction with me, not to her taste or ability. Occasionally she would nod her head in a damp imitation of sympathy. We wonder why some of our clients hold our agency in disdain?

At one point, I was tempted to interject something about a giraffe, or perhaps an invented drinking problem, just to confirm that she wasn't hearing a word I was saying. Not that it needed confirmation. I instead made the effort to be genuine. It was a wasted exercise.

Below her is "Delilah". "Delilah" may well have been an asset in some long distant disaster. She is not in this one. Delilah is stupid. There is no gentler way to phrase it. Run of the mill houseplant. Her eyes are beady and colorless, her pale brown hair a flatter, stiffer, helmet version of pineapple. it is sprayed with lacquer. She faintly resembles an older, nastier version of The Hornet. When spoken to about the dire need at the Bellemont for water, food and other support, you could see the veil go down, and the eyes go blank. She could not comprehend the possible consequences of the situation there, and instead reverted to the it-isn't-happening position. It was disturbing to watch. More disturbing to deal with the consequences. Most disturbing to deal with her, and realize that on some level of the food chain, she is in charge. It made me shudder.

Under "Delilah", is "Jerome", he is brilliant. Brilliant and detached. not connected to any form of reality as far as I can tell. He another tall lankster. Prone to hawaiian shirts and cargo pants, he is bald. He would call it balding. "Jerome", passed balding into full-fledged nohairedness some time ago. He has for some unfathomable reason shaped a moustache on his mug that is small and long. It droops over both lips. It is not a point of attraction and gives him the unfortunate air of a Kerry Blue Terrier. "Jerome" is erudite and an onophile. He speaks in an oddly cultured drawl peppered with iconoclastic verbiage directed at the ARC.

That combined with the fact that he lives in San Francisco, might indicate to some that "Jerome" is gay. Not that it matters, he is not. Neurotic to a fault. He has to have a steam bath at a local health club before he can function. it is obnoxious. Oh...."Jerome" is black...sort of. I wouldn't mention it, but that he refers to his racial enigma status frequently. I never gave him the satisfaction of asking, as I never actually cared.

Next on the slab: Chicken Little. Look in the dictionary under "Frump", and she will be there. Lumpish and dumpish and tall at the same time, CL wears her hair in a brown bob. Housedresses, below the knee skirts that look for all the world, like sails off a boat. The sail/skits paired with halves of twin sets make up her wardrobe. Her glasses are too big for her, and give her the sorry aura of Mr. Limpet. She is terrified of her responsibility, and out of control in her decision making, or rather her lack thereof. Sigh. Where do they find these people? When approached with a question, "CL's" voice goes up an octave, she goes into hyperdrive, and only then she might actually listen to what you have said and calm down. Of course, she might not. In every conversation, you expect to see at some point "CL", suddenly break into a shriek, and start to literally tear her hair out, or perhaps even pop like a balloon and fly round and round the building backwards. We check in daily, to see if she has snapped yet. Someone should start a pool.


Ahhh The Viper. Viper is older, chunky, squat. Fat even. Viper has very short, very chopped very dyed red hair. Hair the color of photographic eye-glare. Her skin is parchmented and white. One occasionally irresistably wonders where she keeps the coffin. Viper is a terrorist. Volunteers have left and gone home over and over again because of her shrill abuse.

As I have witnessed, she has shrieked over the phone that a volunteer needs to get down to Baton Rouge from Shreveport in four hours or be sent home. At the least, it is a five hour drive. More in traffic. She refused to back down. That was one of her kinder gentler moments. Believe me, there are lots worse. The Viper makes "Delilah" look like a PHD candidate. Enough said? Not!

This witch sees her place in Red Cross life, to personally batter and break as many volunteers as she possibly can. You watch from a distance,as her head snaps around on her neck and her pinpoint eyes focus on the next victim like a laser on the scope of a rifle. Everyone is a threat to Viper. Something to be squashed. You can juuust imagine what she thinks of me...lol. She is a miserable excuse for a human being. Why she has an iota of power or position in this organization, defies logic. I and a slew of others will dance at her downfall.

The rest of my department is not so bad. "Carrie" is a slim, fit, forty-something. Always in shorts and a sweater. Compact and always on the go. Straight brown hair tied back into a tail, freckles, shining brown eyes and a hard smile. Her demeanor is perennially upbeat."Carrie", really and truly does her very very best. Unfortunately, she feels that she must dot all "i's", and cross all "t's" herself. She can't do it fast enough.No way, no how. The result is a giant bottleneck. Nothing gets done in a timely way, because of "Carrie's" inability to delegate. It has proved to be a pretty big problem. One of the several reasons the volunteers sit on their rears for so many days.

The others cause no problems, but their help is blunted by the upper echelon. "Brenda", is one of the good ones. Unfortunately, all she does is regulate vehicles in the department. Luckily, she is efficient at her job, and so goes mostly unnoticed. Her husband "Ron" helps her at this. The two of them are the visual epitome of Mr and Mrs Jack Sprat. She being so cumbersomely heavy, that she sits all day in one spot. It is a great place for her. "Brenda" smiles all of the time. She says that her crinkly brown eyes, "disappear when she smiles". It is true. Although for the most part, she is friendly and even jovial, you will rue the day you cross her. "Brenda" does not brook fools lightly.

Her Hubby "Ron", is her physical opposite. Short, wirey and tattooed. His loss of top covering has been parted through the middle. He always wears an oversized baseball cap, and occaionally a pair of dark glsses, which make him look as though it might have been a rough night. His eyes are brown and wide set, lending a flounderish look to him. They are a good team. "Ron" and "Brenda" have been married for a year. If you are really good, I will tell you their story sometime.

"Winnie", is burnt out. No other word for it. She is just plain old tired with overwork. She looks like one of those salted pink Vietnamese plums. seared and wrinkled. Gaunt even. Her very dyed, banged, blond, wavy blunt-cut looks a sharp contrast to her very red lips.

"Saundie", is the greatest. She is plain and plain spoken. She is bespectacled, pale and knows he way around a problem. Overweight, overworked, correct and unappreciated. It takes a while to get that she isn't really being sharp, just efficient. She is an onion person. lots of layers. Management overlooks her with the only consitency they are posessed of. Any input she gives is either commandeered by the brass if it is valuable, or ignored if the others don't get it. She wants to leave. Who could blame her?

So that about sums up my department. A pretty sorry bunch. I didn't know it yet, but not all of the other departments are this dysfunctional. Not anywhere near.

This day, I decided was my day. I had had it. It was either take off, or go home. it was that bad. I checked and made sure that Bellemont had received the promised water and food, a few extra port-a potties, wheelchairs and EMTs. I had accomplished at least a little. The fliers and posters were in the works, in fact, all of the posters had all been claimed and taken by sites. There was an order in for fifty more in the offing. I felt ok about going.

I told "Carrie", that I felt as though I might be coming down with the coughing flu that most of us at HQ had gotten. In fact, I like almost everyone else had developed hoarseness within three days. It was rampant. We figured it was something in the air. The department didn't question me too closely. They were glad to get rid of me.

So, where was I going? Why New Orleans of course. The previously mentioned "Jerome" and I had become allies of a sort. I am still not sure why. He was taking off to N.O., and wanted a companion. That would be me. I could go down there, and see what I came for, and also meet with my friends Dashka and Larry who had been in the Lakeshore district and lost their house their cars and their little pet turtles. One of the reasons I joined the RC was to go and see what I could do for them.

I would like to say off we went, but it was a snarled mess of a takeoff, due to "Jerome's" neuroses. I won't even go into it. You wouldn't believe me anyway. It involves his stomach, his imagined illness, and my waiting for two hours while he took a steam bath. I can hear you laughing. You should....I wasn't, I was a mad as a wet hen, but it was my only way into the city, so I put up with it. I'm not proud.

So off we went...sigh....got there in pretty quick time. Right away we saw the facade ripped off of a building, a collapsed apartment house, and the Superdome. It looked the same as it did on TV two weeks ago, only drier. I hear that the city plans to tear it down. I wonder if that will kill the memories? I doubt it. They live on in my mind, and in many people's lives.

As we entered the city, only the Army and other RC tourists were on the road. The song, "Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong came on the radio. The irony of the moment was not lost.

Ended up in front of the Convention Center. It didn't look like it did on TV. There were no dead bodies. I looked. I could see them in my head though. I had to resist crying. twilight zone moment. It could have been any of us. I took happy-snaps instead.

There were still rugs, tarps and debris on the sidewalks in front of the building. You looked at them and knew what happened here. I resisted looking into the building through the door. I had seen enough already, to last me a lifetime.

From there, we went to the French Quarter. I was desperate to go and see my friends. "Jerome" was desperate to see the good restaurants in the city, even though they were all closed. I was missing the point. He would drive to each restaurant, He would insist that I take photos of him there. Caption: Nightmare tour of New Orleans. Kill me now.

We knew that we were in the Quarter, when we came across drunken couples swinging long, plastic, neon yellow yard-style glasses, shaped like a grenade at the end. Bourbon street was fairly empty, but some places were open. Primarily the watering holes and titty bars. You could see all of the cops and firefighters gathered in front of the neon lit holes. We continued on, and saw collapsed building and thousands of birds flying over in huge flocks. Finally, we got to Dashka and Larry's.

D&L, lived in the Lakeshore District. Right by the 17th St. Levee. Know where that is? Under water. Their house is a panorama of rotted furniture, soaked drywall and mold. They used to have two little turtles. They truly loved those turtles.they haven't found their remains yet. I asked. In case you were wondering, they weren't the water going type of turtles.

Dashka used to have some cool stuff. her house was sixties architectural. now it is early swampthing. Mold crawls, did you know that? it has slunk up their walls, and through what is left of their lives. The creeping black scunge has worked its way up every surface available, and threaded itself throughout every crack and crevice of their history.

Dashka had this great red jacket. I could recognize her on the show floor at the convention centers that we met at by that jacket. The mold is now wearing her jacket. I would wager that it doesn't look nearly as good as it did on Dash. Mold sucks. Broken levees suck. Hurricanes really suck. D&L are circumspect. I am pissed. I am also in the Red Cross, accompanied by a lunatic. The things I do to see my friends.

Right now, they are living in one room above Dashka's jewelry store in the Quarter. It is small. They are lucky. She still has work. so does he. He wants to stay in N.O. She tells me that he wants to stay through teeth that sound severely gritted. One room living is a bitch. They have a dog. Did I mention that? Fortuitously, it is a small dog. They also have a kitchen. not too bad. However the cold shower in questionable water makes me squint when I think about it.

Last time I visited them was during Jazz Fest this year. We had a show of my jewelry at her store. I walked and stood my little feet off for the week. I wore high heels. What was I thinking? We sold and we talked and we spent time together yakking about nothing. We had a good time. I was accosted on the street one evening, in front of a bar on the way back to our car. The approach was persistent. He believed himself in love with me. I believed him inebriated beyond actual reason. In any case, it was a moot point as I found him terminally ugly, and Dashka found the whole thing terminally hilarious. I heard about it for days, as D looked in vain for my once and future would-be paramour. Strange what you remember in the middle of someone else's tragedy.

So, I took Loco manager nutcase to meet D&L. I had briefed them a bit before I got there, so she was apprised of the steam bath. To their credit, they kept the snickering down to a minimum. However,they found "Jerome" as bizarre as I did. D&I stuck him with the ever gracious Larry, as we went to dinner at one of the local bistros. One of the few that happened to be open, although many were cooking hot dogs and Hamburgers on sidewalk barbeques and selling them for $5 each. Everyone had beer. This is New Orleans after all.

Poor Larry . He entertained the asylum escapee, while the two girls leaned in and talked across the table under our breath. We went to one of the few joints in the quarter that was open. We ate bad jambalaya, and okra fried to a plaster. I tried to keep the okra separate from the shellfish/traif, as Dashka keeps kosher, and we were sharing a plate.

Larry is not so fastidious when it comes to yummy seafood. He and I regularly appall his wife with our rabid consumption of tailed, bottom dwelling sea-vermin. Yummy. He usually takes me to a local dive on the edge of the water called Jay-Mar's. The two of us usually eat ourself sick, washing down the traces with highly chilled mediocre beer. Jay -Mar's is gone. Never there, once again. They will rebuild. I am insistent. I must have crawfish, oysters and crab. Unfortunately, there will be no oysters for years to come. The beds were ravaged by the hurricanes. I looked to consume an oyster po-boy throughout my stay in LA. It was not to be. I was bereft.

So we sat and ate and spoke of old times. Larry and Dodo brains ate turtle soup which I found slightly morbid considering. The place was full of rowdy paunchy rescue workers and who was left. the restaurant served on paper plates and in plastic cups. It felt similar to what I imagine gold rush days to have been like. Pretty rough and tumble. I went to the bathroom to find that the water was not even fit to wash hands in. We are all living off of that weird antimicrobial gel, that will probably be found to be a cause of something terminal in a couple of years. In the mean time, pass the gel.

We went back to their place, and had a small drink. When I had last visited, BK, (Before Katrina), I had brought Larry a bottle of Glen Morangie as a gift. somehow, it was one of the very few things that survived in their house. They found it, covered in gunge, but totally intact. they said that they toasted me and drank when they found it. I feel as though I did something. How lame is that?

Dopey and I finally got into the dwarfmobile, and took off. Or so I thought. the next two hours were spent driving through the city after curfew at a snail's pace. If this guy could have read my mind, he would have run shrieking from the car, squealing like a pig. It was almost unbelievable. I was both hostage and witness to every street and every alley in the whole city. I could have walked it faster. One of the very few times in my life where I had to physically restrain myself from killing someone. Everywhere we saw armed military personnel. The city was under marshal law. They didn't stop us because Deputy Dawg was driving at the same speed as all of the cops. Ten miles per hour. AAAAAKKKKKK!!!!! Wouldn't have mattered anyway, as we had the get-out-of-jail-free card. our Red Cross IDs.

We saw toppled trees and flooded houses. Bits and pieces of people's lives strewn across lawns and avenues. Cars on blocks with their tires missing. Signs that read: Looters will be shot! Signs that read: You loot, we shoot. We miss, we shoot again!" My favorite was the series of signs posted across plywood next to Emeril Lagasses' famous restaurant. In a rough hand was written: "Don't try! I am sleeping inside, with a big dog,an ugly woman, two shotguns and a clawhammer! It went onto exhort people to return to the city, noting that he had his "parade spot already picked out". The next panel read: "9/4. Still here. Woman left Friday, cooking a bg pot of dog gumbo." The last panel exclaims,9/24"Welcome back y'all! Grin and bear it!"

We finally got on the road. I found my self falling asleep with the incessant droning of the escaped village obsessive-compulsive at the wheel. Oh...did I mention that he is Black? Or at least something approximating it. Earlier in the day, we had gone somewhere for lunch in Baton Rouge. Being from Southern California, I couldn't figure out why half the place stopped eating and stared at us when we walked in and sat down. When he went to the bathroom they stared at me. It got so bad, that I started to laugh out loud. Ludacris returned from the loo, to see some good ol' boy angrily boring a hole through me, and me with a fit of the giggles. My erudite companion who hails from San Francisco, turned to Bubba and intoned in his best pseudo gay/ british accent: "looovely day isn't it? Quite baaalmy." balmy was a good choice of words. Ironically, we were eating at a P.F. Chang's. A bunch of racist crackers in a Chinese restaurant. I about choked on my eggroll.

It took forever and then some to get home. It was dark, it was late, it was like a really bad date. I was never so happy to see a cot in a shelter in my life. Not that I have ever before seen a cot in a shelter in my life. Anyway, I was thrilled. Taking a long hot shower in an industrial room in a Baptist church in the middle of nowhere, was heaven. I resolved to avoid Gomer in the future. It was a resolve that would not be difficult to keep.

Tomorrow I intend to apply myself. To what you may ask? You will see.....



Best,

L