Our Interview with Joe "Cornflake" Light, Part II!

Editor's note: Because Mr. Light had a long interview and talks ridiculously fast--during the 23-odd minutes, an average of 2.6 words were said every second, a figure which includes "dead time"--we're splitting it up into three parts, which will air Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday of this week. It also means that each of these parts will be rather long for this blog, but hey, at least you don't have to listen to me talk. 

 

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Joe Light: One thing I really liked about the program, I know it’s something that bothers a lot of people, is that yeah, I don’t like that there’s things that go wrong. But I think it’s cool that, since we’re the first class. We’re the learning curve. We’re shaping this program for future classes. And you know, it all depends on how we handle it. We can sit back and cry about it and throw tantrums about how things aren’t going the way we want, or we can strive to make ‘em better. And when we find things that don’t work so well, bring ‘em up so that way they can be fixed, and make ‘em smoother for future FEMA Corps classes.

Andy Tisdel: And you just had an example of that, right? Something that didn’t work so well, so you brought it up and it got fixed?

As far as—you mean today? [By now, this is like a week ago.]

AT: Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Um… I kinda don’t know how to talk about this without sounding angry, ‘cause that’s really been my only bad experience with FEMA so far.

AT: Well you don’t even have to talk about it. I just thought it would be a good segue.

Um… Here’s a way I can put it. One thing that’s important about this program is that it allows young, ambitious people to kinda come in and act as eyes out in the field with FEMA for things that don’t quite run as smoothly, and we can then report those things back to FEMA, and not necessarily make suggestions, just kinda point out ‘this is what’s happening and this is how it’s being worked, wouldn’t it make more sense for it to be done in this way.’

AT: In a diplomatic way.

Exactly. Exactly. Through the right channels. That would be the nice way of saying it. *both laugh*

AT: Readers, you won’t be able to see this on the transcript, but he’s grinning hugely.

Usually I am, though, so that doesn’t really mean much.

AT: That’s true. Why don’t you… tell us about your personality. What do you like to do, how do you like to be.

I’m bubbly. As one of my high school friends used to say, I’m ‘bubbular’. That’s not a word, but hey… I’ve been told I’m always happy, although when we’re riding in the van I’ve been told I make angry, pissed-off faces whenever we hit a bump or something, this has been caught on camera multiple times. But I’m not really angry, I’m probably just really into the episode of New Girl I’m watching or something like that, or… I dunno, something I’m reading. I really thrive off being around people, I’m a huge extrovert, that’s where I get my energy. I like to be alone sometimes and kinda recharge when I get tired, but… I feel like I get my energy, my motivation, from being around people. I feel like-I don’t want to say that I have to please them, but I feel like—I don’t know. Just who I am. As I mentioned earlier, I’m very into the outdoors. I like to fish and hike and shoot guns at things… *laughter*

AT: Baseball.

Baseball! Baseball is awesome. Go Yankees. And I guess the Mets. *laughter*

AT: Just on account of being New Yorkers?

Yeah. On account of my New Yorker-ness.

AT: Talk about that. Talk about that.

Living in New York?

AT: Yeah.

Well, when I was a senior in high school, I took a spring break trip to New York City with some friends, and it was just awesome. Yeah, we hired a tour guide, and so they kinda only took us to the nice parts of New York, so our first impression wasn’t exactly an accurate one. I mean, we got into the Broadway, Manhattan, the clichéd kind of New York experience, and I had this kind of glamour-y image of what New York must be like. And of course, at the end of our week in New York City, we all vowed “I’m going to live and work there someday.” And I was one of ‘em that said that, and I legitimately meant it. I even added it to my bucket list, to live in New York City for six months, and I have since moved to New York City and started working here! We are working on four months of being here, whatever, so hopefully we’ll make it to six?

AT: Eehh, we had like six weeks in, uh, in November and half of December. So still got a while to go.

JL: I still think New York is pretty awesome I admit that the first time here I was not required to drive. So I thought it was pretty great when my cabbie started flipping off people and making U-turns on the interstate and stuff like that, but, uh… now that I’m having to do that—no! Not flipping off people, but now that I’m having to deal with people being less than courteous on the roadway—

AT: *laughter* Such a diplomat.

JL: It’s trying, but, you know… We’re so close to everything. I don’t know. I just can’t help, like, looking out my window before I go to bed and being like “The Empire State building is staring at me. The Chrysler Building is right there. The Freedom Tower, which is in downtown Manhattan, is in plain view of where I am sleeping tonight.” That’s just really cool to me. And I dunno, think of all the historical and great things that have happened in New York City, think of all the amazing people that have lived here. I don’t know. They call it the, what is it, the greatest city in the world. And it’s so close to everything. I mean, I can literally just walk out my door right now and walk to a Major League Baseball stadium if I wanted to. I mean, I could hop on a train and go to the Empire State Building, go to Chinatown and buy a fake Rolex.

AT: *laughs* Oh, that’s a story. Tell that story.

JL: Once upon a time, there was a homeless Cornflake, who desperately wanted a Chinatown watch…  

...and since we here at Tisdel's Tirades don't get to do a cliffhanger very often, we're doing one today. Tune in tomorrow for the story of Cornflake and the fake Rolex!

Our Interview with Joe "Cornflake" Light, Part I!

Editor's note: Because Mr. Light had a long interview and talks ridiculously fast--during the 23-odd minutes, an average of 2.6 words were said every second, a figure which includes "dead time"--we're splitting it up into three parts, which will air Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday of this week. It also means that each of these parts will be rather long for this blog, but hey, at least you don't have to listen to me talk.

Andy Tisdel: Tell the world your name.

The Undersigned: My name is Joe Light.

AT: What’s your real name?

JL: My name is Cornflake—

AT: That’s better!

JL: Vagrant Cornflake, Homeless Cornflake, really any variation on that that isn’t hurtful.

AT: Ah, that’s where the line is. So Pornsnake is out.

JL: Do not call me Pornsnake.

AT: Okay, uh… tell us a little bit about yourself.

JL: I am from Des Moines, Iowa. Grew up in a small town in the suburbs. Pretty easygoing kinda guy. I like being outdoors, I like helping people, I like being around friends… I like working hard. Before I came to Americorps, I was working on a farm, and as a local meat clerk, cutting meat at a local grocery store. I had just finished my two-year associate’s degree, an Associate of Arts, and, then I came here.

AT: What was your degree in?

JL: It was an Associate of Arts. So basically, not General Studies, but just kinda general education devices. Get that out of the way before I went to university.

AT: What are your plans about that? Where do you want to go?

JL: I was originally an education major, actually, and in my last semester of college I changed to biology. I took a biology lab that I really loved, and that’s the way I looked at it.

AT: Do you have a specific university you want to go to?

JL: Probably somewhere in Iowa. I don’t mind. There’s three state schools there, it doesn’t really matter to me which one.

AT: So are you planning to go straight there after FEMA Corps?

JL: No, actually. After FEMA Corps, there’s another program that I want to do in six months. So I’ll get a job for those six months, but after that, the next program I want to do is the Minnesota Conservation Corps.

AT: Is that for sure?

JL: Well, I applied for it and was selected for it this year, but due to the start date I had to turn it down. But they said they’d look forward to hearing from me next year, so I’m fairly confident that I’ll be able to get it again next year.

AT: Okay. What about being a TL? Is that still something you want to do?

JL: In the future, yeah. I like FEMA Corps. I like working with FEMA, and I think the work is very meaningful. It’ll be a really good program to be in, in the future…

AT: You don’t have to sugarcoat it.

JL: No, no, I really do feel this way. I’m not sugarcoating it. Obviously originally I applied for regular N-triple-C, and, I don’t know. I feel like the Conservation Corps is an extreme of NCCC, so that’s why I want to do it. And then potentially go back and be a team leader for FEMA Corps. More than anything, I want to get more experience working with FEMA, because I want to apply to be a Reservist.

AT: Really!

JL: In the future. Whether it’s when I go back to school, or just to have it on the side, and then if I get called to do something, see where it goes from there.

AT: So why a Reservist?

JL: Well, like I said, I really like the work we do, especially in CR, I’d like to do the things we do as a CR Specialist as a Reservist. You know, getting out in the communities, talking with people that were affected by the disaster, you know, being kind of that first wave of people that’s getting out there and helping, the first face of people they see. You can tell that they really look to you for information, help, stuff like that, and it’s very rewarding.

AT: Okay. What are some moments in your career as CR so far where you’ve been out in the community?

JL: Well, I feel like getting both ends of the spectrum is important. You’ll get some people who are extremely happy to see you, especially if they feel like they have a question they can’t get the answer to, whether they can’t get through on the 1-800 number or they don’t want to stand in like at the DRC for eight hours, and you show up at the doorway, and you give ‘em the perfect answer that kind of puts ‘em at ease, you know, and at the same time you won’t always have the answer, so you end up knocking on somebody’s door who’s not had a good experience with FEMA, or they’re upset, or something like that. And while that is kinda difficult, and it’s gonna stink to deal with people when they’re really crotchety, I think it is important—it’s an important experience to have, to experience both of those.

AT: So can you talk about a time where you had a specific CR experience that was meaningful to you? No names, obviously, but…

JL: We had one woman who hadn’t registered with FEMA yet, She didn’t really understand the process yet, and her house was very, very messed up, and her son had just gotten back a few days before from a deployment with the Air Force. So obviously she was more concerned about having her son home then all this, but like I said, her house—she had just bought her dream car the year before, she’d been working her whole life for it, and her insurance was only going to cover a tiny amount of it. It was completely destroyed. She had a half-dozen rescue dogs, and easily another dozen miscellaneous rescue animals that was living in her house. Very sweet woman. She was just, you know, very confused about the process, was very worried about her options, she didn’t know what FEMA would be able to do for her, how it would work with her insurance and all that. I was probably there for a good hour, answering all kinds of the questions she had. And at the end, she started crying, and then she gave me a hug and kissed me on the cheek, and… it felt pretty good. That was… that was a good moment.

AT: Glad to hear it. Um… Let’s talk about being on a team. What do you-what are your favorite things about being on a team?

JL: My favorite things about being on a team are a lot of the… Just the kinda aspect of a team where you’re all working together. It’s the same as in sports, one person can have a bad game or a bad day, and the rest of the team can turn around and—they’re a support system. They can turn around and pick up the slack, and make sure the other person knows that sure, we’ve got your back. They act as a kind of accountability net. Especially for me. I feel that I’m more, more inclined to work hard and to achieve things when I’m around these like-minded people on my team, who are driven to achieve and to go out and work really hard.

AT: I think you’ve said as much when we’ve talked previously. Um… *pause* I actually don’t have any prepared questions. I’m just winging this. *both laugh* So… what do you want to talk about? Is there anything you’d like to tell me?

JL: When I was living in Atlanta, I had a strange rash in my armpit—

AT: (Laughs) I remember that…

JL: For two months…

AT: And I shared a bed with him, by the way, for most of that time (he said, pointing at the camera).

JL: Um… Give me a moment to think…

AT: This is going to go in the transcript as just dot-dot-dot, dot-dot-dot. 

Which seems like an appropriate place to take a breather. Tune in Tuesday for Part II! 

Debunking FEMA Corps Conspiracy Theories

Editor's Note: This is Andy Tisdel, proprietor of Tisdel's Tirades, talking. This post may or may not reflect the opinions of a majority of FEMA Corps Team Summit 5; it is nothing more or less than an ordinary blog post.

You would think that a group of dedicated, motivated young people signing up to serve their country for ten months, working in disaster zones and helping individuals and communities get back on their feet, would be immune from the panting fever-dreams of conspiracy theorists in the dregs of American political thought. If you thought that, well, you'd be what we in the Corps like to call an 'optimist'. It's far from a mainstream opinion even among the legions of sweating nutjobs that believe in such tripe, but this particular 'article' has been making its way around the Internet since October. It hasn't bothered me, unlike many of my fellow Corps Members--my position is that there will always be crazies, it's just something you live with, so why get worked up about it?--but it occurred to me today that pushing back on this particular conspiracy theory is right in my bailiwick. I've done quite a bit of it on this blog, and it actually pertains to me and mine, which is enough justification in my eyes. 

I'm not going to link to the article directly, because it's not worth the photons. I will link to a FactCheck.org post that debunks the claims pretty thoroughly; because that's quite comprehensive, instead of going point-by-point on the article, I'll just offer my perspective as a member of FEMA Corps. Here are the three biggest lunacies that the letter offers up.

The first thing that jumps out at me is the idea that we are all supposed to be highly trained killers, and that millions of rounds of ammunition have supposedly been purchased for our use against Americans. Yeah, no. Like all members of Americorps NCCC, FEMA Corps members aren't allowed to bring firearms onto campus or on spike. No semiautomatic rifles, no hunting pieces, no pistols, no BB guns, no paintball guns. They even frown on us having pocketknives! The most dangerous projectile weapon in my room right now is a battery-operated Nerf gun with three plastic darts in it. Call the goddamn Special Forces. 

 Second big thing: Can these idiots count? They warn of the rise of a Hitler Youth-style FEMA army with "tens of thousands" of members. The official FEMA press release they quote from earlier in the article lists the Corps's maximum size at 1,600, which they must've just somehow missed (har har), but never mind that for the moment. Let's hypothesize about what would happen if there really were tens of thousands of us with guns. What would happen to such an army? The regular U.S. military, which has a total active and reserve force of nearly three million members, would utterly destroy it. A lot of these conspiracy theorists believe that President Obama is plotting to overthrow the government; if he was planning on doing it with an untrained army orders of magnitude smaller than the regular armed forces, he'd be less an evil mastermind and more of a total lunatic. (I know logic only gets you so far with conspiracy theorists, but I can at least give it a try.)

Third and final big thing: This isn't a dig at FEMA. I've had the opportunity to work with a great many FEMA personnel from Atlanta to Connecticut, and a majority of them are good at their jobs and interested in getting things done as quickly as possible. But can you imagine what would happen if FEMA, of all the huge government bureaucracies, tried to take over the country? Seriously? They'd get bogged down in Incident Action Plans and 215 forms and a mountain of other paperwork! I have seen with my own eyes that FEMA could not take over so much as a middle school parking lot without getting into a fight with the local mayor's representative (who was rather an odd duck herself). FEMA could not be farther from the grim, faceless, implacably evil bureaucracy imagined in the email. It just isn't even close to their personality or what they do, except in the paranoid fantasies of sad, lonely people. Don't believe the garbage.

Summit 5 is Back on the Streets (Mostly)!

Well, I guess it couldn't last forever. We members of FEMA Corps, team Summit 5, are VALs no longer; most of us now tramp the slushy streets as members of Community Relations once more. After scouting, contacting and reporting the location of every house for sale, apartment building, nonprofit, hospital, school, synagogue, church and college on the Rockaway Peninsula (Queens) over the last two weeks, we did our job so well--not to brag--that there was no job left to do. Yeah, I'll be honest: that's a big fat bin of braggadocio I'm serving up here. 

I mean, the job was always attached to a time limit; we were VALs for the purposes of doing this one project, following which we were always going to return to our home specialty. Still and all, though, I enjoyed my time as a VAL. Our POCs, Rich and Tony, had our absolute favorite soft-touch management style: point us at a target and say 'Go'. No micromanaging, no meetings, no nonsense, just sit back and watch us work. And the work was fun; we talked to rabbis and pastors and principals and superintendents, got to see the entirety of the peninsula and walk much of it on foot, and do the rest of it from the comfort of the self-heated van (it was cold last week). 

So what are we doing now? Well, most of the crew is out doing more CR work on the peninsula with various crews of FEMA reservists and local hires. I did that yesterday with Mike, J.J., Joaquin, Janelle, Stefanie, Cindy, Jean-Richard and our own Shingirai Gadsden-Sams. All of them are fun people--I spent a lot of time talking to Mike, whose work history includes politics, journalism, history and education--and canvassing with them was fun. Going back to check on whether everyone has power, hot water or unresolved problems with the FEMA process isn't the sexiest of work, but I guess it still needs to get done, so Summit 5 is doing it. I, however, am not (here's where this post drops the team "we"). Together with Malinda today and Tiffany Chu tomorrow, I'm in the division office working on a Special Project!

The project itself doesn't fit into CR, IA or any of the rest of FEMA Corps's pantheon of roles. I'm working in the Operations/Planning branch of the regular FEMA office, trying to answer some or all of the following set of questions, dubbed "master's thesis" by a coworker: "Are the Rockaways recovering? Where do we look to find out? When you put together all the data, what are the obstacles to long-term recovery, and what are the Rockaways' assets? How can FEMA help the process out? And how do we integrate FEMA's Long-Term Recovery branch--whose job it is to answer all those questions--into the ongoing disaster response, and the Neighborhood Task Force Initiative we just started up, that we're doing right now?"

You probably could write a legitimate masters' thesis on most of those, and my team should know (at least Mike has his master's degree, and Joaquin is on the final semester of his). We're still brainstorming how to tackle 'em, which will likely involve getting in contact with every relevant branch of government, canvassing area businesses, pirating the list of charitable and faith-based organizations that we created as VALs and so forth. Today, I basically just read the National Disaster Recovery Framework cover-to-cover (all 116 pages of it) and took notes, along with going over the relevant orders and reports that come out of our office. 

That's most of what there is to tell about Day One in the new gig. My table-mates seem like fun individuals; Chuck, a Reservist from Denver, has a voice like a radio host, and local hire Seth is in the early running for one of the funniest people I've ever met (after asking in vain after Malinda's and my snack food preferences, he exclaimed "You haven't even given me a state of matter to work with"). Co-worker Ray and boss Monica seem like good police (to borrow from The Wire), and the whole office work structure is something I'll get used to again pretty soon. Early reports from the rest of the team about our work structure are mixed--we're split up as a team, each with different CR or office groups, for the first time ever--so we'll see how that turns out. For now, this is what we're doing, although as usual it could change any day. 

Asteroid Mining for Fun and Profit

Editor's Note: This is Andy Tisdel, proprietor of Tisdel's Tirades, talking. This post probably has nothing to do with FEMA Corps, and does not reflect the opinions of a majority of FEMA Corps Team Summit 5; it is nothing more or less than an ordinary blog post.

It's official: as of January 22nd, 2013, there are two separate companies with a plan to mine near-Earth asteroids within a decade. The unambiguously named Deep Space Industries wants to "build a fleet of robotic ships to extract resources for fuel and to mine valuable minerals from asteroids" by 2016, while Planetary Resources wants to have a space-based fuel depot by 2020. The stated goals of each company are pretty much the same: scout out profitable near-Earth asteroids, send robots out to take samples and then mine them, ship the resources back to Earth. If you find water, you have hydrogen, and perhaps you can use that to refine fuel for a depot that satellites and NASA vehicles and so forth can use. 

All well and good. But I want to think bigger. 

 

As RedOrbit.com pointed out, one cannot simply ship boatloads of valuable minerals back to earth without their prices crashing. Getting enough to make a profit, but not enough to wreck the market, would be really difficult. I'm no economist, but it would seem to me that you'd need a demand commensurate with the supply of what you're getting. Rare earths, gold and platinum will get you the most bang for the cost of shipping it back, but materials that can be used to make spacecraft or fuel--products usable in space--might be the biggest moneymakers.

That's where orbital manufacturing comes in. Way down in the Deep Space Industries article, they mention a "microgravity foundry" 3-D printer that's capable of manufacturing goods in space. That's the real ticket to both a profitable enterprise and an ever-expanding space industry. The biggest problem to putting things in space is the enormous fuel and monetary costs of getting out of Earth's gravity well; you have to resort to stacking your cargo atop a gigantic, expensive rocket, or else piggybacking off a 747. Manufacturing in space--say, solar panels or spacecraft parts--cuts down on the mass you have to lift, which slashes your costs. Now, with sufficiently advanced manufacturing technology, you can make satellite, spacecraft and space station parts and equipment in space, for your clients on the ground. All they have to do is send you the blueprints and pay a fee. If you can bring home sufficient resources, you might even start to turn a profit. 

Orbital manufacturing can't solve every problem, of course. You still need cheap, reliable spaceplanes--ground-to-space delivery craft--for the space tourism industry, and some components will prove difficult or impossible to fabricate in space. Getting a viable, self-sustaining (if incomplete) space-based economy is, however, a major step on the journey of humanity moving further and further into space. 

This post doesn't really have an overriding thesis, but it does bring to mind a few things I've read over the past year or so. There's a school of thought out there that successfully landing on the moon was the worst thing that could happened to NASA; without a huge, sexy, competitive goal to go after, the agency has been withering ever since. There's only so much political capital for an agency like NASA, which fiscal critics who fancy themselves clever could deride as 'throwing money down a black hole', and that places a cap on how much they can do. National governments can only throw so much money at something that doesn't directly benefit their people (although there are plenty of indirect benefits). 

That's where the profit motive comes in. I've been reading a book called Freedom's Forge, a very business-friendly account of how American businessmen overrode a weak, fumbling FDR and his New Dealer henchmen to give America the tools to win World War II. While the book makes no pretense towards being fair to its topic, the picture that does filter through the author's biases is one of the irresistible power exerted by a profit motive. Bottom line: the past sixty years of government-only exploration of space have been slow, halting, costly, full of some brilliant successes but maddeningly ready to waste time and money, or cancel projects halfway through that take years to develop (see: Constellation). The foreseeable future of space exploration will be through private investors, and if there are ways to actually make some money out there, it can only be a good thing for our hoped-for expansion out into space.

A Day of Service- By Summit 5's very own Joe "Cornflake" Light

Editor's Note: Today we're featuring a guest post by, as the title says, Joe "Cornflake" Light, Assistant Team Leader and fellow Media Rep!

    Martin Luther King Jr. Day started like many others for Summit 5, FEMA Corps. We all woke up early, sucked down some complimentary muffins from the hotel, piled into our van and headed out onto the cold streets of New York City. But this morning had a different feeling to it. We were on our way to the Rockaways in Queens to paint a community center and help out with anything else that needed to be done in that particularly hard-hit area.
    Our team was excited to get out and do some good old-fashioned hands-on work, and we couldn't help but act like the chipper young people we are on our ride in. Upon arriving at the community center we were given even more muffins, this time compliments of NYC Service. Score! We were each given a paint brush or roller and were pretty much given free rein for the next few hours of painting.
    We worked in partnership with another FEMA Corps team, for a total of about 20 Corps Members, and the work went quickly with so many capable young people on the scene. By the time we finished painting the two-part room we were assigned, we were all laughing and singing along to somebody's iTunes playlist. Sounds like a pretty uneventful day, doesn't it? Well, that's what I initially thought too. Don't get me wrong, the work we did was incredibly helpful to the community, but I was just perplexed by the thought that us painting a room was considered a way of embodying MLK's visions.
    We finished the painting much faster than had been anticipated, and there was no extra work to be had at the community center, so our team took off for home. It was still early in the day, so we ducked into a small cafe/ice cream shoppe for a quick treat and spent the next hour animatedly chatting at the counter over ice cream. I wandered off from the group to explore the cafe's customer wall of fame and mull over the seemingly uneventful day we had just had.
    While perusing the various signs, pictures and miscellaneous items hanging from the wall and ceiling I was approached by two middle-aged men. They had noticed our gray AmeriCorps hoodies and khaki pants and wanted to know more about us. I spent the next half hour answering questions and telling stories to them as they repeated the same line over and over again. "Wow, that's great. Thanks for what you guys do!"
    I get asked questions about AmeriCorps on a weekly basis and I'm thanked by disaster survivors on an almost daily basis, but these two guys' praise stood out to me for some reason. Yeah, they were charismatic and easy to talk to, but I just couldn't put my finger on the real reason I was so drawn to this conversation. It came time for us to head home and I shook hands with the two gentlemen as they wished our team the best and thanked us profusely for our service.
    On the ride back I was in a fog, split between the pleasure of having an engaging conversation with complete strangers, but still searching for the meaning in our day of service. It took a little bit of abstract "big picture" thinking, but when it hit me, it hit me hard! I was only focusing on the meaning of our individual team's day of service in memory of MLK. In reality, the day is about an entire country, or even an entire planet, teaming up and doing things to better the lives of those around us. It's about putting aside our differences and working together for a common goal, even if only for one day a year.
    Painting one room in a disaster zone that is home to 8.5 million people may seem like a drop in the bucket, but look at the big picture. Think of the thousands of rooms that must have been painted by volunteers on January 21st. Consider the tens of thousands, possibly millions, of other service projects that were completed on MLK day, none of which focused on the size of the project, rather the brotherhood and commitment involved in such an undertaking.
    I was glad to finally understand the meaning of this day of service, and I'm certain it will help me find meaning in even the most mundane tasks in my years to come. So, here's to the legacy of a great man whose vision enabled wonderful voluntary service programs like AmeriCorps. My name is Cornflake, and I approve this message!

Super-Ultra-Extra-Happy Video Promotion Post!

Hey all, 

So last Thursday or so, my Team Leader told me that there was going to be an all-Corps theme video contest, subject: "What does FEMA Corps mean to you?" I, of course, took this as just one more birthday present (I'm 23 now!) and started planning with fellow director Tiffany Chu over the weekend. We planned it on Sunday, shot it on Monday and Tuesday, and I edited (for three and a half hours) and uploaded it to YouTube on Wednesday night. If I do say so myself, it's kinda splendiferous, and definitely worth eight or so minutes of your time. Here it is below. 

All video was shot on location in Vicksburg (MS), Whitestone (NY), The Rockaways (NY), or various places on the road from one to the other. A couple of the pictures were taken in and around the Atlanta metropolitan area. 

I haven't done a video in a long time, so I'm really excited about this one. Hopefully it will not be the last one I shoot in New York, although the team would have to put up with me buzzing around with a camera even more than we already are. That's basically the story, so watch, share and enjoy! We're in the running for a $50 VISA gift card, and I think we've got a decent shot if I say so myself.