Clever title about Memphis

We start Round Three eight members strong. Joe and Dianca are no longer with us. We miss them a ton, but we are pressing on and ready to do great things for the city of Memphis. Memphis is one of the Americorps NCCC target cities for the Southern Region. It is a city with a deep history, great culture, and great music, but also a lot of problems. Racial tensions during and after the Civil Rights Movement and a de-facto segregation of city and suburbs have left the city with a depleted downtown area, no city center, a deep housing crisis (preceding the national crisis), and a shoddy education system. And we are charged with fixing these problems, or at least planning some seeds. This round, we will be working with two organizations. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, we will be working with the Wolf River Conservancy, an organization seeking to preserve the Wolf River Corridor which runs from the Mississippi River, through downtown Memphis, and into the suburbs to the east. The urban portion of the river was channelized years ago and the river is struggling to recover. One awesome project that the Conservancy and other organizations have been working on for several years and will continue to work on is what is known as a greenway. This is a hiking/walking/running/biking area along the side of the river that is protected and provides not only great scenery for the city, but a viable exercise area for a city plagued by the effects of poor eating habits and lack of exercise. I look forward to doing some erosion prevention, river cleanup, and trail work with Wolf River, along with hopefully being able to spend some time on the river. After looking at some of the things that the Conservancy is doing and seeing tons of the pictures of the river, I am inspired to get back to spending more time in the woods, which I didn’t do as much as I would have liked to during my college years, after spending almost one weekend a month camping during my scouting days.

Our Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays will be spent working with the Arkwings organization on whose property we will also be living. Arkwings is a retreat property and an organization that focuses on the betterment of the mind, body, and spirit. I have yet to get a firm grasp on exactly what Arkwings main mission is- in fact they seem to have their hands in all kinds of work. What I do know is that we will be working for the betterment of the community of Frayser, a suburb north of Memphis. We will be working to prepare the property for future NCCC teams (this is Arkwings’s first time as a project sponsor), doing a reading program for 4^th and 5^th graders on Saturday mornings, working with the Arkwings youth program for underprivileged students, and working on a barn where the organization is hoping to host an offshoot of the Harlem Dance School. I look forward to working with Arkwings and seeing what we can do to get things moving in a positive direction is Frayser.

We won’t have internet for a while, so I am writing my blogs and then posting them when we get access. Thus the sudden explosion of blogage. Enjoy.

National Champions!!!

I began my Americorps term attempting to maintain not only my personal blog, but also a blog on Auburn football which I had begun last year for a friend’s website. As my personal blog dwindled, so also did my Cover2Sports blog. So, now you get to read my football recap in Drewbiesnacks form. What a year I chose to leave Auburn University! I was lucky enough to make it to one game this season- the greatest Iron Bowl ever. But wow, did I miss the greatest season of football I can imagine by one year. Many saw big things from this Auburn team before the season started, but few imagined this amazing a season. Six months ago, we had no idea how amazing Cameron Newton would be and how big an influence his presence would have on this team. Yes, there were lots of distractions, but for a guy my age, he did a phenomenal job of keeping poise, focus, and humility amidst a barrage of pointed and vicious media attention. But this season wasn’t all about Cameron Newton or Nick Fairley. Yes, they were incredible talents, leaders, and emotional forces, but this was about a senior class that had been through a gauntlet of ups, downs, coaching changes, and learning curves, and emerged as an outstanding group of leaders poised to take on challenges, face big deficits without losing faith, and persevere even when trailing seven times in the second half to emerge undefeated national champions. Many of these guys will be forgotten by a history that will remember Newton, Fairley, Wes Byrum’s kick, and Michael Dyer’s Oregon Duck chair. Much of the credit for this team’s success, however, must go to guys like Ziemba, Pugh, Berry, and Isom- an offensive line that put in more than its share of snaps and deserves way more credit than it will ever get. How about Zach Clayton, Zac Etheridge, and Aairon Savage? Three guys who missed significant time to injury during their Auburn careers but put in key time mentoring young players and helping Auburn develop the depth that it had missed so much in recent years. And don’t forget Clayton’s presence on the field. Fairley got a lot of credit, but Clayton was a dominant force at times. And what can be said about Kodi Burns? The former quarterback who moved to wide receiver and made himself into one of the best blocking wideouts in the country as well as a threat to catch the ball in key situations. It is the dedication and sacrifice of guys like Burns that take a team from good to great- the desire to do what it takes to make the team better while forgoing selfish desires. Credit the Auburn coaches for this type of development, not only in Burns, but in many members of the team. The “Auburn Family” line is not just lip service, as it may have been under previous regimes. These coaches have taken a personal investment in the lives of their players, dedicated themselves to Auburn (as evidenced by Gus Malzahn and Jeff Grimes turning down more money in other places to stay and get things done at Auburn), and made a huge impact on the field as well as off. I would have counted myself among the skeptical when Gene Chizik was given the job more than two years ago, but also encouraged people to wait and see who he surrounded himself with. Once he hired a staff that included some of the most highly respected men in the business, I knew that special things were in store. I guess I am a genius. War Damn Eagle!

Guess whose back? Back again. Drewbie’s back. Tell a friend.

It’s been far too long. In fact, a whole round has passed since the last blog. Sorry, life gets in the way. I was told recently that the readers just want the info, they don’t care about the presentation and how much thought I put into the wittiness and presentation of it all. Well, that’s not how I roll, so you will just have to be patient with the updates. This post will be a recap and will be followed shortly by an outlaying of the current proceedings. The team spent the half of October, all of November, and a large portion of December along the Mississippi Gulf Coast working with Habitat for Humanity. We worked in the cities of Ocean Springs (where we lived), Pascagoula, Pass Christian, Gulfport, and Biloxi. The beginning of our time was painful boring if we are being completely honest. We spent a lot of time doing what is known as punch list work. This type of work includes caulking, touch up paint, cleaning, and fixing minor problems. In short, it is all the things that you probably would not notice upon initially walking into a house to purchase it, but might annoy you upon further inspection. Our team became experts at taking a house that was completed but lacking in a few areas and turning it into a home ready to be showcased for a homeowner. While the transformations could be quite impressive, the satisfaction was not near as strong as we had seen at SBP for one simple reason: no one was moving into these houses. This fact gave the greatest contribution to the frustrations of the team during the first portion of the round. Habitat for Humanity homeowners must 1) have a job, 2) make under a certain amount of money, and 3) put in a large number of volunteer hours with Habitat. The current state of the Mississippi Coast, which has rebounded much quicker than New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, is such that very few families qualify for both of the first two categories. The families who are in need of homes rarely have the necessary steady source of income required to get a home. As a result, many of the homes that are being completed have no owners to move into them. The result is a lack of new builds and lots of homes sitting empty for longer than expected. HFHMGC is working to remedy this by raising the maximum amount that people can make, but until the job market picks back up, it will make for an interesting situation for the organization and those for whom the need for housing is greatest.

Our work began to pick up during the second half of the round, as we began to work on a huge deck which connected 17 MEMA cottages. This was a project that really intrigued me because of what it meant for the community. Most importantly, it meant community. The goal for the project was to bring artists and artisans together in an artists’ village to begin to bring culture back to the city of Pascagoula. The idea of these people living together and sharing their skills, talents, and lives with one another and with the community was and continues to be very intriguing to me. Our work with this project was largely in putting the different railing systems up around the deck. We learned how to build wooden hand rails, run pipe and wire rails, and meet the building codes associated with each. In addition, we stained the deck and did some cleanup and landscaping around the exterior. This project was a great way to learn while on the job, thanks in large part to our supervisor Mark, who made sure that we not only learned how to do the things we were doing, but why we were doing them.

Finally, during the last week of our time on the coast, we got to do work on a new build, putting up the framing for a house, which is considerably more difficult on the coast, where all the new homes are built on stilts. It was cool to be able to see the detail that went into making sure everything was properly aligned at these beginning stages and to have the process of creating a home come full circle. Our time on the coast concluded on December 15^th with a bowling party with the whole Habitat staff, before we headed back to campus for a week and then home for winter break.