Fear, Discomfort, Pain, Bewilderment

I was recently questioned on the title of this blogg and if I meant to suggest I was fearless. I don't mean to suggest I'm fearless. I hate roller coasters, I have life insurance. When I am out late, I run faster when I see someone coming at me from a distance.  What surprises me is how many people tell me that I should be afraid, as if fear should be the backdrop to my life, that I should nurture it like a weak child in need of extra rations.  I don't think it's new to the post-9-11 world that we live in. Fear in some ways is adaptive. If no one feared disease there might be no vaccines.  On the other hand if we didn't fear communists or Muslims, or the end of oil, what would the world look like?

Vaccines seems like a good idea. The fear that leads to racial violence in the aftermath of disasters like Katrina, fear that paralyzed rescue efforts of people trapped in the Superdome, that kind of fear, seems maladaptive and destructive.

This photography project is intended to explore my relationship to the places I'm told to be afraid of and the fear that is projected onto me by the world that I live in. Despite the fear, and variations on discomfort that I do admittedly feel,  I choose to navigate the community alone, and explore even places where others counsel fear and avoidance. I reject that avoidance and accept a certain amount of risk, although the major risk so far seems to be simply being a bit out of place and subject to questioning by residents of these neighborhoods. Most recently, I was asked if I worked for google maps.

I am open to a new title, but please don't propose "under an uncomfortable sky. " It's just flatter than out of key karaoke. I need some jazz in the band or at least some suggestion of poetry even if it smacks of impossibility.

Open Beach, Closed Beach

In the airport on the day down to NOLA I overheard a group of four college students complaining that it was going to suck going to the beach and not being able to swim. I made a point to go and have a look. I drove east out of town June 9th and made it to Florida within five hours. The sand was white, the water turquoise. There were no people. They stayed home and watched the news, I suppose.
I felt like one of the last people on earth watching the white sand blow into the air and the waves lapping the shore. It was like no one came to the funeral. It could have been like a second line, a mad rush to enjoy the last days it was still beautiful.

On the 12th I drove out to Grand Isle. There were hardly any people there either, but the oil had hit and the clean up crews were huddled in the shade of massive white tents and driving their ATV's and National Guard Trucks up and down the beach.  The unmotorized helps was busy sweating into their knee high black rubber boots and their smurf-blue hand gloves. There was nothing high tech about the shovels and rakes they used to remove the oily sand, packaging it for removal into clear plastic bags.

Community Gardens

This community garden was organized by Matt Potteiger of SUNY ESF in collaboration with neighborhood residents. It's not far from where I'll be working. As I mentioned before there are lots of refugees from around the world here and they tend to have strong agricultural traditions. The raised beds are intended to prevent lead exposure from the contaminated urban soils. Not everyone is aware of the risk and many, like the woman below, plant vegetables in their small side yards.
And some people like the gardens just find, but don't like what else they see going on in the area near the garden. When I asked what all they said was  "drugs, lots of drugs." 

The North Side

I've just started working at St Joseph's Hospital, which was started by Franciscan nun's after the Civil War. They bought three buildings: a saloon, a dance hall, and a house of ill repute and converted them into a hospital. I'm far from catholic, but I keep finding myself working with catholic organizations from the Birthing Center in Weslaco to Sister's of Mercy in Guatemala, to St Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse. When I'm working with Catholic organizations, there's always something that sticks in my craw, like the fact that the health insurance policy provided to residents doesn't cover contraception for women, an exclusion clause for religious employers that was approved by the NY State legislature a few years back.   On the other hand the involvement of the hospital in revilatizing the north side of Syracuse is commendable. All bags are mixed.

Prison = Slavery

I've Found a lot of great graffiti art recently. Here's some from NOLA. The image with Lincoln is  not too far from the Superdome. The printed text on Violence is a few blocks from St. Claude Tire, close to the abandoned St. Roche Market.

The Lodi Laundry

Today, my last day before residency, I was out on Lodi street waiting to meet the Somali translator for a patient interview. I recently looked up some statistics on the City of Syracuse northside and found that it the percentage of foreign born was even higher than I thought, on some block as high as 40%. The laundry had the most diverse population I've seen outside of the New York City Subway. One Customer asked me to have a picture taken with her after allowing me to take hers.  It's still strange to have the camera turned back on me.

Chickens and Mr. Sneed

When I  was briefly overtaken by a small flock of hens and a handsome rooster on the last day of my visit to New Orleans, I felt suddenly I didn't know where I was. The heat had let up under cover of clouds just long enough that I was pretty sure I wasn't hallucinating.  Just after they scuttled away under the awning of a house with a fading banner announcing the arrival of the red cross,  I met Mr. Sneed who told me where the hens lived.
He walked me to the in an empty house accross the street from where he lived and told me how they slept up in the tree hugging the side of the place.   It's only been a short while since this little flock hatched, he reassured me, it's not the usual thing around here. It reminded me of the rooster I came across in Syracuse. Mr. Sneed denied any cockfighting even though it was a right handsome rooster and the kind known to be used for the sport.

He was glad to meet me. He said I was a pleasant diversion with my questions and my New York accent.