Update on a Good Deed

Chris has a posting on his website about the rebuilding trip to NOLA. Please take a few minutes and check it out. On the same page is a recording of his song about his first trip down to New Orleans. It brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it.

Go to lloyddoblereffect.com
Click on Journals
Look at the column on the right and click on Chris in New Orleans

Good Deed Week #17

Good Deed #113. With hopes to make a day a little brighter for someone, I went to a local florist shop, bought a flower arrangement, and had it anonymously delivered to a retirement home to a person who needed it the most.


Good Deed #114 + #115. As most of you already know, I lost a great friend and an amazing person when I was younger due to a drinking and driving accident. I never fully "got over" his loss and don't think I ever will. Although, I have accepted it and I have tried to "move on," I still carry images, thoughts, and memories of him with me every day. In John's memory I made another donation to both SADD and MADD.




Good Deed #116. It's no secret that I have a strong love and respect for firemen. It's also well known that I am extremely shy (although some refuse to believe it). Let me give you a little back story. Several years ago when I was living in Newport News, VA I spent an entire day baking several different types of brownies for the fire department that was literally right in front of our apartment complex. I arranged the brownies nicely on the tray, grabbed my roommate and headed up to the fire station. When we got about 20 yards from the door, I came to a dead stop and shoved the tray into her arms and refused to go any further. I was paralyzed with fear. I think she somehow convinced me to go to the door, but it is all a blur to me. I do know I made her say she baked the brownies and she handed them the tray. If I was at the door, I'm sure I was trying to hide behind her or something else. Anyway, I digress, because of my complete love but total fear to approach firefighters I decided to go a different route. Since, I always see the guys from our local fire department at the grocery store, I decided to buy a gift card to the store and mail it to them anonymously. This way I am still helping the boys, but not making a fool out of myself.


Good Deed #117. Did you have a favorite teacher? I had a couple, but most of them I can't track down these days. I decided to write a thank-you letter to one of my favorite teachers from High School to let her know the difference she made in my life. If it wasn't for her (and the requirements made by my first college) I don't think I would have come a few credits shy of a Math minor (me + math = disaster).

Good Deed #118 + #119. Brian and I attended the orientation for and participated in ReLeaf Boise. The goal is to make Boise a better place to live by providing trees to shade streets, clean the air and ease global (and Boise's) warming. We were lucky enough to join a wonderful group of friends from BoiseLife.org and as a group we planted a total of eight trees. I'm not sure if all of them will survive, but at least we tried. I will post pictures of the event shortly.

Good Deed Week #16

Good Deed #106. I'll be honest, I didn't come up with this idea on my own. I was online looking at the good deeds others are doing and came across this great idea. I went on Amazon.com and found a random stranger that recently added items to their "wish list." I bought a few children's toys off their "wish list" and had Amazon anonymously mail it to them. I'm sure it will be a pleasant and somewhat confusing surprise when the package arrives.
Good Deed #107. I made a $25 donation to the Solar Electric Lighting Fund (SELF). SELF improves life conditions AND saves the environment by bringing solar power to rural villages in developing countries - enhancing health, education, and economic prospects, while combating global warming. My small donation was enough to buy a full lighting kit, including ballast, fixtures, and bulbs for a rural village home.


Good Deed #108. April 25th was World Malaria Day so I donated to Freedom from Hunger's malaria initiative. My very small donation of $12 will buy netting to protect three children from malaria. It is a sad and preventable fact that one child every 30 SECONDS dies from malaria.

Good Deed #109. I signed Brian and I up for Tending Our Foothills, which is an annual volunteer event geared toward citizens who have a passion for the Boise Foothills. The event is sponsored by Ridge to Rivers, and involves Boise citizens in the enormous amount of maintenance that is needed along the 85 miles of trails and thousands of acres of open space in the Boise Front. The goal is to keep the areas in pristine, safe, and operable condition, so that they may be enjoyed by many generations to come.

Tending Our Foothills

Good Deed #110 and #111. I once again donated to Kiva.org, which is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, that empowers individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world. Simply put, Kiva connects people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.


In addition to the donation I made to the organization, I also donated to Natig Safarov who lives in Beylagan, a small city in Azerbaijan. He is 36 years old, married and has two children. For the past six years he has owned and operated a small café in the Beylagan city bazaar. He plans to use the loan from Kiva to expand his business and increase his number of customers.

Good Deed #112. We all know I was deeply impacted by my trip to New Orleans. Sadly, I can not walk away from my home and responsibilities and live in NOLA and rebuild. Until I can return to rebuild more homes, I will do what I can from Boise. In that spirit, I donated to Common Ground Relief whose mission is to provide short term relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the gulf coast region, and long term support in rebuilding the communities affected in the New Orleans area. Common Ground Relief is a community-initiated volunteer organization offering assistance, mutual aid and support. The work gives hope to communities by working with them, providing for their immediate needs and emphasizes people working together to rebuild their lives in sustainable ways.

Good Deed Week #15 continued

Good Deed #101. At one of the many airports I stopped at on my way home from New Orleans, a man was trying to juggle a tray of nicely wrapped cupcakes, a pitcher of soda, and a laptop. Within 25 feet (or so) of his table, he started to drop the beautiful (and I'm sure tasty) cupcakes and then proceeded to start kicking it towards his table. With his kids oblivious to the fact, I put down my luggage, stopped my race to the gates, and picked up his demolished cupcakes and offered to help carry something, anything (he refused).


Good Deed #102. Keeping with the small interactions for good deeds, I was behind a lady paying for her lunch at a local sub store and one-by-one she dropped her umbrella, a few grocery bags, and spilled her change across the floor (she too had her hands too full). I quickly picked up and returned all her money, organized her bags in an easy-to-carry order, and offered to help her out to her car (she refused too - do I look scary?).

Good Deed #103. One evening after work, Brian was cooking dinner, I was watching something lame on T.V., and Jake was playing in the backyard. It isn't unusual for Jake to bark, but he started to do his pitiful "I'm trying to sound mean bark." So, I got up from the lame show, went outside, and discovered we had a lost dog in our backyard. We couldn't read the information on the dog tags, so we looked around and waited to see if someone was looking for the little guy, and then started to call around town for a place to scan his ID chip. Many phone calls later (pretty much everything was closed for the evening), we reached a vet's office that was closed, but she was willing to stay until we got there to scan his chip. We jumped in the car, drove down the street, and took the little guy into the vet. Unfortunately, his owners never registered his ID chip - so we still couldn't identify his owners (silly people). We offered to pay a night of boarding at the vet's office (she declined and kept him for free) and the next morning they were able to contact the city and track down the owners by his city tags. He is now safe and sound in his home - which we now realize is only a couple houses down from us (doh!).


Good Deed #104. On the way home from the Robie Creek Half Marathon (Brian and Shane - a coworker/friend - ran in it), we realized the buses that were transporting the athletes and guests off the mountain we incredibly inefficient and disorganized. The lady sitting in front of us needed to get to another location than where our bus was going. And, we realized it would be another hour or so before she would be able to make it the 5 miles down to her actual stop. She was contemplating walking, but we would have none of that (she just finished a half marathon!!). So, we offered her a ride to her car (and she accepted!!!). Oh, did I mention she was a very mature lady - more mature than my mom but younger than my grandma. Congrats to her for finishing Robie Creek!

Good Deed #105. As you all know, I have adopted 5 soldiers in Iraq. I recently learned that one soldier finished his deployment and was sent home a few weeks ago. Sadly, I also learned that two of the men have suffered tragic losses in the recent uprisings. One individual lost one soldier and the other individual lost two soldiers. I wish I could do more for all my adopted men, but sadly I know there is only so much I can do. I wrote the four remaining men letters and I am in the process of putting together another set of care packages. It's hard to buy cookies, snacks, and hygiene items - and still feel like you are making a difference. It just seems so trivial.

Good Deed Week #15

Good Deeds #98 - #100

A Southern Welcome. The idea to do a good deed a day for a year started when I was back home for Christmas. As I headed to a Lloyd Dobler Effect show with Danielle and Jessica I ran the ambitious idea by them. Lucky for the world, they were complete supporters of the idea. That night, Chris performed a song about his volunteering experience in New Orleans and I knew at that moment I wanted to go down there with him.

Four months later, I sat in the Louis Armstrong International Airport listening to a live heart-soothing jazz band waiting for his plane to arrive. Since the news camera’s have been turned away from New Orleans, I was nervous about what I was going to experience, but was comforted knowing I would be with a friend.

After we left the airport into the warm and humid Louisiana air, we were quickly immersed in the sights and sounds of downtown. From the Creole kitchens and shops on Magazine Street to the charming iron balconies and the cobblestone streets it is hard to imagine the ugly truth that lingers.

A few blocks away from the touristy downtown streets you will find more people living in tents than FEMA trailers and more people sifting through soggy homes than getting massages at the Ritz.

It was this stark reality that I feared most.

Day 1 - Lavender House. Our first rebuilding day started with introductions and orientation at Acorn. Chris and I were immediately and warmly adopted into Team Robert – which consisted of friends and members of Middle Church. We packed our gear and drove to our first location affectionately called Lavender House.


The first glimpse into the destroyed home was enough to take everyone’s breath away. Silence fell upon the ten team members and instantly I started to question how it was even possible to honor those who were lost, those who survived, all that was destroyed, all that made New Orleans.


Starring at the heavily damaged but still hanging chandelier, I was overwhelmed with thoughts of desperation to fix the problem. We all grabbed crowbars, hammers, ladders, goggles, and breathing masks and began to remove pieces of history one board at a time. The girls tore up four layers of floorboards, the boys removed the ceiling sheathing, and a small team destroyed the shed in the back.

Becky and Veronica

Chris

Jose

A suburban stereotype intruded on our work when an ice cream truck jingled down the street as we were cleaning up, but the somber truth hit us when we realized we were probably her only customers for the day.

Day 2 - Bathtub of Memories. The boys worked on the second house to give it a new roof, finally sealing it from the elements two years after the storm, while the girls dug a foundation for a mother-in-law suite. The homeowner is an older lady that houses teenagers whose parents are drug dealers or prostitutes. Her heavily damaged home is being divided into three sections to accommodate more kids and the mother-in-law suite in the backyard will be her sanctuary.

Chris with the hammer and Jose in the white shirt

Mai in front, Becky in the middle, Veronica in the back

We all worked in the hot sun – the boys on the roof and the girls in the backyard. But, as we sweated and joked with our team members, it was hard not to look in the bathtub of memories and wonder when was the last time her family filled this house with laughter.

Her neighbors sat and watched us from their rocking chairs with a look of exhaustion on their faces – not from rebuilding but from not being able to see any progress. As I continued to dig a massive hole, I couldn’t help but wonder what they think of volunteers constantly filling the neighborhood with carefree lives and easy laughter as they painfully wait for some sort of normalcy to return to their neighborhood and their lives.


Day 3 - Duty to Family. The city’s tourism is built on alcohol, but it is jarringly sobering that so much remains to be done. A heartrending example of this fact occurred on our third and final day. We arrived at a house in the lower ninth ward and began to remove the remaining floorboards. As we worked, an older African-American gentleman unlocked the fragile, barely standing backdoor. Chris turned to see who was entering the house and realized instantly he knew the homeowner. A year ago, Chris painstakingly removed personal belongings and started to gut this man’s house, even now a year later and more than two years after the storm, we are still in the demolition stage and not onto the rebuilding effort. Sadly, not much has changed over the past year for the homeowner, Smitty.

Our team was able to make a little progress for him by taking down the interior doors, pulling up his floors, and giving the exterior walls a fresh coat of paint. But, it is hard to believe that more progress has not been made.


After a few hours, Smitty offered to give us a tour of the lower ninth ward. As he walked us down the street he told us stories of his family’s history dating back to slavery, reminisced about stores that were located on street corners, and explained the complicated history of corruption that has run rampant throughout this small slice of land.

Listening to his Morgan Freeman-esque voice and looking into what he called his “Black Irish” baby blue eyes, it was easy to be captivated by the stories of suffering he was telling about the past 80 years.

Smitty

As the tour continued, he took us down to see the levee. It was sickening to see the pitiful old wall they called a levee and even more so to see what they call the new levee.

Old Levee

New Levee

As we stood not far from where the levee failed to protect the residents of the lower ninth ward we saw houses that were moved blocks away by the floodwaters, but still have furniture and moldy clothes silently telling a story to us with unspoken words. We tried to speculate as to why the city or the Federal government hasn’t removed or even gutted the homes more than two years after the flood, but the truth remains unknown. Along with many other answers to questions such as how many actually died, how many are still missing, and when will the city finally be rebuilt?

Smitty and Becky

After an emotionally draining tour, one volunteer poignantly asked Smitty why he was living here in poverty when he has “no love for New Orleans” and a PhD that could take him anywhere. He gave a simple answer: It is my duty to my family. He wants to rebuild the house his family has owned for centuries and he wants to keep the history of the lower ninth alive.

Becky, Smitty, and Chris

Of Course…It is important to understand that this experience was not solely based on our rebuilding effort. I was lucky enough to go through this life-changing journey with six other people and learn different perspectives over dinner and drinks every night. As I have already told them, it still amazes me how easy it was to laugh and joke uncontrollably as a newly formed family even after grueling and long hours of stubborn layers of floor board, dangerous glass falling from the ceiling, a zig-zagging foundation, and exhausting roofing shingles.

Becky, Chris, Kira, Mai, Veronica, Jennifer, and Scott

Returning Home. Leaving New Orleans I now have an insatiable appetite to do even more volunteer work across the country and the world. I can’t just walk away from the rotted beams that are supporting shattered lives and submerse myself into a superficial world with manmade deadlines.

More Photos. I know this entry is long, but please take 10 minutes to look at the pictures below:

Day 1 - Lavender House
Day 2 - Digging and Roofing
Day 3 - Smitty's House, Lower Ninth Ward, Levee, Wetlands, and Destruction

Night 1 - Coops Place
Night 2 - Downtown Bars
Night 3 - Private Guitar Show, Beighnets, and Coffee at Cafe Du Monde

Good Deed Week #14

Good Deed #92.  I once again donated to Women for Women International.  Hopefully, one day I will be able to support a woman for a while, but for now I will stick with monthly donations.

Good Deed #93.  I bought food items and donated them to the Idaho Food Bank.  In Idaho, more than 15,000 individuals need emergency food any given week and more than 81,000 people need assistance in a year.  

Good Deed #94.  Brian and I signed up for Boise's Paint the Town.  We join more than 2,000 volunteers that will help on June 7th to paint and fix up the homes of approximately 90 senior and disabled homeowners who are no longer able to maintain their homes.  

Good Deed #95.  I signed up for the Boise Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5K run that is being held on May 10th.  I am running in the race in the name of all the brave women that have been impacted by Breast Cancer - including some mom's of my dear friends.  

   

Good Deed #96.  I found a posting on AnySoldier.com from Taylor Batten asking for emails and/or cards for veterans.  He is going to take them to local nursing homes and the VA nursing homes and will deliver them to our veterans.  I am sending a few cards to Taylor for the Veterans.  If you would like to help out send an email to cab24@verizon.et with the subject line: VETERAN and he will print them out and give them to a  veteran or send cards to VETERAN in care of Taylor Batten PO Box 350 Mendon, MI 49702 and he will not open the card but will take it to the homes and will let the veterans open them.

Good Deed #97.  Brian and I did a little spring cleaning a few weeks ago and somehow managed to fill several trash bags with clothes, shoes, and blankets that we are donating to the Goodwill. 

Good Deed Week #13

Good Deed #85.  I donated through Care2.com to Children International to help sponsor needy children.  Children International is a nonprofit that is dedicated to improving the lives of children living in dire poverty.

Good Deed #86.  I donated to the Afghanistan Orphanage Project (TAO Project) which is dedicated to providing orphaned and homeless children of Afghanistan with shelter, food, clothing, health services, education, and love. The TAO Project will achieve this mission by building an orphanage in the Khalakhas district, near Kabul, Afghanistan.  The orphanage will be home to over 1,000 children.  I highly recommend at least viewing the short video that gives an overview of their mission.

Good Deed #87.  I donated to TayBear which was started by a seven year old girl who donates teddy bears to kids with cancer or chronic blood diseases.  In 10 years, she has donated 20,936 teddy bears to the Hermatology/Oncology department of hospitals all over the US, Canada, and Mexico.

Good Deed #88.  I donated to Eckerd Youth Alternative - a private, nonprofit organization that wants to ensure every child has the opportunity to succeed.  Starting with a revolutionary treatment program for youth in 1968, EYA has continued to innovate alternatives to help our nation's youth.   

Good Deed #89.  Brian and I signed up for A/C Cool Credit through Idaho Power.  Basically, we agreed to have Idaho Power cycle our air conditioner throughout the summer when A/C usage is at its peak.  It is unlikely that this program will reduce our overall energy consumption, but it is designed to shift the demand for energy to non-peak hours to better utilize the capacity of the electric system.  

Good Deed #90.  I joined Operation Quiet Comfort which creates care packages for U.S. Military men and women receiving car at medical facilities abroad.  I will help supply the Go Bags that are filled with hygiene products, clothing, entertainment, and support.

Good Deed #91.  I donated to the Fill the Red Cup Program again.  As I stated before, it takes just 25 cents to fill one of the "red cups" that the World Food Program uses to give hungry children a regular school meal of porridge, rice or beans.      

 

Good Deed Week #12

Good Deed #78.  I made a donation through Care2.com to Amnesty International's programs to stop violence against women and girls worldwide.  Amnesty International's End Violence Against Women and Girls program seeks to protect millions of women from rape, genital mutilation, sexual slavery, etc.

Good Deed #79.  I signed a pledge to (and actually did) conserve water for a day.  It's more important than ever to take every small step we can to conserve resources.  I made sure to turn the water off while brushing my teeth, washing the dishes, and the biggest step - I took a short shower.  For everyone that knows about my showers - knows how huge of a step this was.  I didn't earn the nickname Shower Ninja for nothing.

Good Deed #80.  A  good deed that everyone can do everyday is just be nice to someone.  For this good deed, I was nice to a stranger. I emailed a blogger that I read several times a day and let him know he was making a difference in my life.  A small gesture that hopefully put a smile on his face.  Try it.

Good Deed #81.  To reduce our dependency on herbs from the grocery store, we started our own garden for the third year in a row.  Our little garden has basil, cilantro, oregano, rosemary, etc.

Good Deed #82.  I wrote letters to all my adopted soldiers from AnySoldier.com and Soldiers Angels Network.

Good Deed #83.  I again knitted some of my baby blanket for Operation Baby Blanket - this is going to be a very long good deed process.

Good Deed #84.  Because only 1 in 10 women who have breast cancer have a genetic history of the disease I signed the Pure Prevention Pledge to make pure choices to help reduce the chances of developing breast cancer.  In short, I pledged to create a healthy home, eat smart, choose safe cosmetics (or in my case, its really easy cause I don't usually wear any), get outside, and spread the word.