I miss NOLA already.
Category Archives: Katrina
Visiting St.Louis
I’m visiting St.Louis for the rest of this week to work with our collaborators on acquiring some OCT data. We’re imaging a right-ventricular free wall from a rabbit heart, on the endocardial side, as shown in this picture:
After we were done with work for the day, I took a walk over to the apartment building where most of our lab lived during the hurricane. It was really surreal. On the one hand, all of the Katrina Evacuation, the flooding, the return to New Orleans, etc… feels like a dream. Sometimes I almost believe it didn’t happen, though of course I know it did. And yet, here’s a reminder:
We had some good times during our short stay there, and it helped to build camaraderie and cohesion in the lab. We had the whole top floor of that building (two floors) and once even made use of the roof. Shh, don’t tell Quadrangle Housing.
Post-Katrina Paranoia
There’s a change in my ways of thinking that occurred because of my experiences with Katrina. I know that it has happened to others as well.
It’s not quite post-traumatic stress disorder, maybe a step below. I notice it in little things. For instance…
I had a safe deposit box in the Chase at the corner of Carrollton and Claiborne (in New Orleans). It was just below shoulder level for me, probably some 5 feet or so above the ground. The water got up to about 3 feet in that area. Contrary to my expectations, the vault was not watertight, or was not closed before the flood (I think it was the former). I never went back into that bank — Chase pulled the boxes from all of their flooded safes and put them in a warehouse, where people could go get their boxes. As soon as I walked in, my eyes went wide.
All of the box units (probably 10 boxes across by 20 or 30 high) had distinct lines on them. Above the lines, the units looked normal. Below, they looked awful. They were dirty and terribly rusted. I had to sign something before accessing my box, acknowledging that I might find… undesirable stuff in my box. Luckily, as I noted above, mine was out of the reach of the flood waters.
When I got a new safe deposit box here in Baltimore, I made sure it was as high as possible. It’s almost entirely irrational. This part of town is high up on a hill, and it’s not ever likely to flood.
But it can’t hurt.
I was already paranoid about offsite and portable backups of computer data before the hurricane. That partly saved my ass, but I’ve noticed that others are now becoming more careful about backups as well.
I don’t want to buy stuff. I moved an average of once every two months from April 2005 to August 2006. I want all of my stuff to fit in a U-Haul van (not a truck, the plumber/carpenter/etc type utility van). Every time I think about buying something, I can’t help but think about the fact that it might disappear due to some disaster or another. Even though my stuff is insured, why go through the bother of acquiring things if I’m just going to have to replace them later?
This is also irrational — massive natural disasters, and even catastrophic house fires do not happen very often to a single person. If this were really a hindrance, I’d work to overcome my irrationality. Since it lines up with my budget and desire for minimalism, I’m not fighting it much. If something gets really inconvenient not to have, I’ll buy it.
There are other things, here and there. As I mentioned in an old post, Katrina gave me a good solid reminder about impermanence. Other Katrina survivors (and I use the term loosely), have you noticed similar tendencies in your own thinking?
Back to Baltimore and JHU: Avoiding Burnout
My vacation and my trips to New Orleans and Seattle are are over. I arrived back in Baltimore yesterday, and made my way through the cold, wind, and rain to the lab today.
Hopkins has an “intersession” period at the beginning of January, affording me a brief break from classes. Assuming I passed Models of the Neuron (I still don’t have my grade), and that I pass the two classes I’m going to take this semester, this should be my last semester of classes. Finally. Anyway, for the moment I am free, and I have two more weeks free of immediate and pressing deadlines (i.e. homework).
I plan to take full advantage of this time to knock down Next Actions and finish some projects.
The flip side of this plan is that I am going to try to avoid burnout. In the effort to (a) settle in, (b) keep up, and (c) make a good first impression at JHU, I went full-throttle into the fall semester, working many days 08:00 – 22:00. In short order I found myself burned out but without enough free time to properly recover. I had a very good meeting with my advisor toward the end of the year, in which she suggested that I make time for exercise, meditation, etc.
I know those things are important, but it’s interesting how easily I push them aside when things seem “urgent”.
Thanks to my vacation, I am now well-rested and not a bit burnt out. In fact, I am eager to dig in to my work. However, I’m going to set a few priorities. Call them new years’ resolutions if you like:
- Exercise – in addition to my daily bike rides, I’m going to continue swimming three times a week, and re-introduce weight training at home to my routine
- Meditation – I’m going to try to give meditation a higher priority. 20 minutes per day. Surely I can spare that, right?
- Dharma – I’m going to try to crank through some of the Audio Dharma and Zencast podcasts that I’ve accumulated. Listening to these before, during, and shortly after the Katrina debacle helped to keep me (relatively) sane. It also helps to keep me centered and mindful of attachment.
- @Home projects – my @Home projects have barely moved in half a year. I’m going to devote some more home time to finishing some of those Next Actions.
Also, several people in my life are climbing on to the GTD bandwagon, and this is giving me renewed interest in streamlining and making more effective my own system. On the flight to Baltimore I spent some time with my treo, whacking the stupid out of my system and re-evaluating some of my stubborn Next Actions. I’ve already seen an increase in my ability to knock down the NAs.
Just Visiting (Tulane)
I’m still in New Orleans until the morning of January 7 2007, and Amanda started classes/rotations again today, so I’m working. I rode my bike down St.Charles for the first time in probably two months, parked it under Stern Hall at Tulane, got some coffee from the PJ’s right there, and am now at my old, still-unoccupied desk in 440 Boggs.
Nobody’s here because it’s officially still vacation for the students.
It’s eerie. Five months after we left, my name is still on my file drawers. Our names and phone numbers are still on the marker board. Most of our non-perishable food and dishes are still in the “kitchen” cabinets. I needed a pen, so I went over to the can-o-pens and took a few. To use my desk, I had to clear off boxes and packing foam that the movers left when they packed up our stuff.
It’s just like parts of the city.
There are parts of New Orleans, the parts that really flooded, like where I used to live before Katrina, where time stopped when the flood waters receded. Time has stopped here. Sure, we still have a few undergrads that use one corner of the lab, but they don’t touch the rest. Amanda mentioned the other day that she’s getting sick of being asked, “How’s the recovery going?” It’s nice that people care enough to ask, but it gets harder and harder because the answer is never a great one. More than a year after Katrina, it’s not possible to drive through uptown without encountering broken street lights. The water pressure still sucks. There are still those deserted areas where time stopped.
I’m sorry if I sound depressing. I didn’t mean to be, but it’s the way the lab feels, the way Tulane and the city feel. A lot of things are improving, yes, but some things were damaged and then time stopped.
I wonder when it will start again.