Gulfport

Well, I don't have much to write today because there's really not much new but I did take some pictures of Gulfport over the weekend that I wanted to post. Brooks and I are currently living in Gulfport which is on the Mississippi gulf coast and is a few miles down the road from Biloxi. I had never visited Gulfport before "the storm" but from what I understand it was a fair-sized tourist spot on the Redneck Riviera. (That was always my Dad's name for the Alabama gulf coast and I've determined that it applies to the Mississippi coast as well.) Without having anything to compare post-Katrina Gulfport to, I am struck by the abandoned nature of things here. The house where we are staying is about three blocks from the beach, but I've never seen such an abandoned beach before. There are tons of empty lots where houses or hotels or some touristy place used to stand. As I'm out walking or jogging along the streets, I'm struck by the number of "For Sale" signs as well as the number of houses that appear to have just been "left behind", almost like those books about the rapture or something. I doubt that these pictures will portray the strangeness, almost eeriness and ghosttown-likeness, but I figured a picture's worth a thousand words. (Guess I shouldn't have rambled on so much then but isn't that what blogging's for?) By the way, if anyone can tell me an easy way to link other people's blogs to my site, that would be great. I've been getting comments from people I haven't seen or talked to in forever but I can't figure out how to do it. Oh well - I guess I'll learn!

Not so savvy...

Okay, I'm a technological idiot - I gave up on myspace partially out of fear of weirdos but mostly because I couldn't figure it out so that should tell you where I'm coming from. I don't know why the picture I tried to post with my first blog didn't show up so I'm trying again. Here goes...

Raising Mississippi

Well, here we are in the state of M-I-Crooked Letter-Crooked Letter-I-Crooked Letter-Crooked Letter-I-Humpback-Humpback-I. Brooks and I started our adventure about a week ago. For those of you who don't know, my husband Brooks and I have moved to the gulf coast of Mississippi and have made a commitment to be here for at least the next year. Brooks will be working with a non-profit organization called Walls of Hope that was established in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to help with the rebuilding effort. They are similar to Habitat for Humanity in that they use volunteer labor and homeowners pay for the materials and skilled labor. If you want to learn more, you can visit their website at www.wallsofhope.org. We are currently staying in Gulfport, MS because a very generous couple has offered us their house to stay in for the next month or so while they are out of town. We are looking for a house to rent somewhere between here and the Mississippi/Louisiana state line, which includes the communities of Long Beach, Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, Waveland, and Pearlington - basically all of the areas in Mississippi that were wiped out by Hurricane Katrina.

I've never been really sure about the whole blogging thing for several reasons that I won't go into now - I'll save that for a later rant. Anyways, I figured that while we're away in Mississippi this is probably a great way for me to keep people up to speed on what's going on without sending mass e-mails to people who may or may not want to know all the boring details of our adventures down in the bayou. So here it is - my blog and my first post on it and who knows, I might get hooked on blogging. I named it "Raising Mississippi" because of the t-shirts that our small group in Nashville gave us. Brooks has pretty much memorized the movie "Raising Arizona", as have Fred & Leigh Gately, and it is a favorite of the four of us so they made us t-shirts before we left that say "Raising Mississippi" on the front and "OK Then" on the back. If you like the movie, you'll get it. We absolutely love the t-shirts and Brooks even threatend to order 20 more of them but I think he came to his senses. I'm posting a picture of the t's so you can enjoy the creativity!

Well, I think that's all for today. There's so much to write about life down here - how everything is so abandoned and destroyed and I don't know what it looked like to begin with but I can't imagine how it will ever get back to normal if it looks like this nearly two months after the storm - but I don't know where to begin so I'll save that for tomorrow or the next day or the next. But one last thing to add is that no one down here ever says Hurricane Katrina; they just say "the storm" so I'm going to try to incorporate that into my blogs if I can remember! Praise God from whom all blessings flow and good bye!