9/11 and the National Day of Service: My Take

To be totally honest, I didn't even know there was such a thing as a National Day of Service on September 11th. I'd never heard of the "I Will" campaign, never seen an ad for it, never witnessed volunteers helping at my school or in my community. But apparently not only does it exist, but it mobilized as many as 33 million people last year who all went out and served in their communities or just decided to be kind to a stranger or a friend that day. Today, on 9/11/12, NCCC's Southern Campus held a 9/11 reflection meeting, then went out into Vicksburg and even all the way to Jackson for a day of community service.

It's a little strange to think about, because neither 9/11 nor the succeeding War on Terror have directly affected my life. I live a thousand miles from New York and D.C. and Shanksville, PA. I know very few members of the military personally and have none, at least of this generation, in my immediate family. Ditto firefighters, ditto-ditto policemen and emergency medical personnel. My taxes haven't appreciably increased because of the war, I have not been and am unlikely to be discriminated against in this country because of the 9/11 attacks, and while I've maintained a deep and lasting interest in 9/11 and the Afghan and Iraq Wars, they have yet to reach out and touch me. (Thank God.) I was in sixth grade when the Twin Towers fell, and at the time the death and destruction was impossible for me to understand. I simply couldn't concieve of death and suffering on that scale. Eleven years later, the events of 9/11 remain more historical than visceral to me.

I guess, to put it simply, I always focused on the results of the attack--two wars, an expanded national security complex, a new Cabinet department, a renewed and enhanced emphasis on secrecy, defense and security, and an ever-increasing number of bodies overseas--ours and theirs alike. The visceral, emotional impact upon a country that once seemed untouchable on its own soil (it had been almost 60 years since Pearl Harbor and 191 since the War of 1812) was lost on me. I guess this relates to my post about the long-term impact of disaster relief, where I focused once again on details instead of human stories. I never would have imagined something so widespread as a National Day of Service, designed to retake September 11th and make it a day of help instead of a tragedy, engaging people from coast to coast.

And yet, it makes sense. It actually makes a ton of sense. All of my associations with 9/11 are either absent or negative--bad foreign policy, bad domestic policy, a decade of war with no clear end or victory--because that's what the attacks inspired. The half-joke half-serious line in the years immediately following 9/11 was "...or the terrorists win". We do this, or the terrorists win. We go out and hit them in their heartland, or the terrorists win. But through our foreign invasions and occupations and all the death and sadness they caused, we handed them the biggest victory they could've hoped for. We became the enemy for millions of people. The history of 9/11 is not complete, would never be complete, without everything that that horrible day inspired in us.

But I said everything, not just our decade-long counterattack. The events of 9/11 have also inspired countless people to do good in whatever way they think best. The National Day of Service is about kindness, not vengeance... about service, not justice... and about the strengthening of life, not the punishment of death. It says 'You can't beat us because we're not even playing the same game. We're turning the other cheek. We're choosing to make ourselves stronger, not to give you the vengeance you want. We're taking the wound you gave us and making it a badge of honor and service.' The National Day of Service is our attempt to replace the memories of war and vengeance with a spirit of brotherhood, country-hood and service of those who deserve our thanks.

And so the members of the National Civilian Community Corps, like millions of like-minded Americans around the country, took time out today to reflect, remember and offer our aid. I washed squad cars at the Vicksburg Police Department and chatted with members of the force. Some of my fellow Corps Members went to the Vicksburg Fire Department or to local  elementary schools; others served in other communities with other First Responders. We served all around this community, and we will--a few minutes from now--attend a community barbecue thrown to honor the service of the citizens of Vicksburg and of the NCCC. Helping, healing and serving are the watchwords of the day. Together with reflection and rememberance, I can't think of better.

My Latter Two Days at Camp Lake Stephens

"Editor's" note: Excuse the present tense; this was written contemporaneously with and describes Thursday-Friday of last week.

After an eminently memorable first day, the second two days of our Camp Lake Stephens were… decent. It’s kind of odd. After a day clearing underbrush, I found myself really really wanting to write about them and tell the story of that day, because it was a profoundly unique feeling, a real NCCC memory. What we did yesterday and today was fun and dynamic and unique in its own right, but it didn’t leave me thinking “Wow! That was amazing, I have to tell everyone I know!” in the same way that Day One did. Maybe that’s my standards being unrealistically high, I don’t know.

In any case, Day Two would’ve been called fun by even the stingiest summer-camp participant. We did a low-ropes course and a high-ropes course. The low-ropes courses focused on teamwork; you had to fit everybody through the (rather small) holes in a man-made spiderweb of ropes, or get everyone to swing on a rope swing across an (imaginary) highway and land safely on the other side. It was okay, I guess. This connects to the Myers-Briggs personality tests we just took, I suppose, but I would’ve welcomed a little less standing and talking about the course and more “Let’s do something and see if it works!”. Perhaps correspondingly, my favorite of the four was when we were all mute, standing on a log, and had to arrange ourselves in a specific order (our birthdays, Jan-Dec).

The high-ropes courses, on the other hand, were all about individual achievement. We did a “flying squirrel”, in which—through the magic of lines and pulleys—one person (the squirrel) stood on one end of a rope, five strong team members were clipped to the other end of the rope, and the point was for the Five to run and yank the rope as hard as they could and send the squirrel flying as high as possible. That was terrific fun; I was one of the Five for about seven squirrels before getting my turn, and it’s like a giant eagle just picks you up and yanks you into the air. There was also a rock wall with a wicked incline at the top (I couldn’t quite make it, failing two handholds from the top, to my immense irritation) and The Pole, a highlight to end all highlights.

The Pole is simple in design, difficult in execution. The chosen one is equipped with helmet, harness and safety line and made to climb up a thirty-foot pole (handholds and footholds provided. Once at the top of the pole, they will see a trapeze suspended in the air about 5-6 feet in front of them. The objective, of course, is to jump and grab the trapeze.

Plenty of people were scared; perhaps two-thirds of my team required some sort of coaxing from the ground before making their attempt. I wasn’t scared at the top, at least not of falling; I just remember thinking “Okay, I have one shot, so I better not miss.” Didn’t help all that much.  I did not make it. After a sort of swimmer’s dive off the top of the pole, I fell about a foot short by my estimate, never touching the confounded thing. A very, very few people Corps-wide made it; I would guess about 20-30 out of 240. My teammate Joe actually touched the bar with both hands (he’s 6’4”, which helps a lot) but slipped off because his hands were sweaty—it’s unbelievably hot on top of the Pole. That was easily the high point, figuratively and literally, of yesterday.

Today was the “Amerilympics”, a unit-wide competition in all sorts of things. We had a punt-pass-and-kick with a football, a water balloon toss and subsequent free rein to just go nuts with water balloons, a trivia competition (apparently Ben Franklin died on 4/17/1790), a competition to kick the most soccer balls in a net, a Frisbee accuracy competition (I hit three of five cones myself; no TEAM of 8-12 people totaled more than four), “Dragon tails” (break into two lines of five, last person in line has a tail, get the other guy’s tail before he gets yours) and a three-legged race (Joe and I won within my team, but lost by eight seconds unit-wide). Like I said, it’s all fun enough, but none of it is particularly extraordinary. And perhaps that is an unfair standard, but many of the Corps’s activities have been extraordinary (using it correctly, i.e. much better than ordinary); this was just ordinary.

I’m definitely glad we did it, though. After shepherding each other through various impossible obstacles—and more to the point, just hanging out, living together, swapping music preferences and inside jokes and having long conversations—I definitely feel a lot closer to my teammates now than I did at the start of the weekend. That was the entire point of the exercise, after all, and I’m glad of it.

Clearing Brush at Camp Lake Stephens

"Editor's" Note: This was written a couple days ago, so excuse the present tense. Also, I'm mostly healed now and thanking my platelets profusely for it.

I have not counted the scratches, pinpricks and bug bites covering my arms, legs, neck, knees, wrists and hands, but if I did it would probably be well over a hundred. Some of them are straight, including a six-inch doozy on my right arm; many, however, are curved. One scratch on my left knee resembles a stratovolcano in shape. Another pair on my left bicep combine to form a perfect T. According to my friend Rii, the back of my right calf is sporting bloody Japanese characters. My limbs look basically like I tried to shave my entire body and it went catastrophically wrong. I’m covered in a fine layer of grime, bark, twigs and sweat; my wrists ache, my back hurts and my right heel is throbbing like crazy. And even considering all that discomfort, I haven’t felt this incredibly contented since I don’t remember when.

Such is the fruit of the Camp Lake Stephens service project, upon which Americorps NCCC is currently engaged. We are spending three days in the general area of Ole Miss, doing team-building exercises and performing mitzvot. The three units—Summit (we wear hats!), Ocean and Bayou—are rotating through three different activities: completing a ropes course, competing in what’s been dubbed the “Amerilympics”, and doing some sort of service project in or around the aforementioned Camp Lake. My unit, Summit, did our service project this afternoon; tomorrow is the ropes course, and we finish up with the Amerilympics on Friday before hopping in the vans and driving the four-ish hours back to Vicksburg.

My task, which I volunteered for, was clearing twelve to fifteen feet of underbrush away from the edges of the athletic field. To do this, we were given loppers (that clip off small-to-medium branches), fire rakes (massive beefed-up rakes that are designed for clearing away debris), hacksaws and welcome but imperfect gloves. We also had J-blades, essentially small J-shaped machetes on sticks, which looked fearsome but were basically useless. Our enemies—I mentioned in a previous post how the South just goes nuts with climbing vines—our enemies were mostly these gigantic vines that went as far as fifty feet up the trees. There were these green thorny bastards that went up for miles, great brown vines an inch in diameter that often required several people to pull down from the tops of trees, and for some reason, rusty barbed wire that had probably been there for over a century. Once, I saw a foot-thick tree that had apparently grown up around the wire and absorbed it into itself.

The green thorny vines were the source of most of my scratches and pinpricks; the gloves stopped them most of the time, but if you weren’t careful or grabbed them in the wrong place, they went through the gloves like nothing was there. It was fairly common for people to get just enmeshed in the vines while attempting to carry them out of the forest to be burned. The bastards even untied our shoes by sticking to the knots! They also tended to grow horizontally when not next to a tree, meaning that you could be thrashing your way through a thicket of them and have no way to get to the point where they come out of the ground, which is where we were supposed to cut them.

It was good, hard work, though. Over time, a natural kind of teamwork developed. I lopped vines off at the source and Jim, a teammate with a fire rake, dragged them away with loose branches that had accumulated on the ground. Teammates with J-blades and hacksaws took care of the branches that the lopper couldn’t cut, and the fire rakes—which I kept calling fire axes because that’s what I think—dragged everything away. I can’t count the number of times that I was dragging vines out and one troublesome vine was still attached to the ground, and a teammate snipped the offending vine for me (or the reverse, with me doing the snipping). We had an enormous bonfire going with all this wood, and as time went on, the front line of where we were cutting got farther and farther from the fire. So I would, or the fire axes would, drag the vines and branches to the edge of the tree line and then other CMs would drag them to the fire. We had multiple people dragging vines down from trees, carrying whole logs out of the forest and breaking them down. It was great.

And we were productive, too. I’m not sure exactly how far it was, but we cleared better than one-third of the tree line along the edges of the field. I would estimate at least fifty to sixty yards were cleared by the time we were done. I got my nicks and cuts while fighting through that line of forest. There’s something immensely satisfying about being able to see the results of your work, though. And it’s even more satisfying to do physical labor all day and then see the results of your work. I’m a little sorry we won’t be doing more of this—clearing brush and things like that are more traditional NCCC projects then they are FEMA Corps duty—but it was nice to have that experience today. I certainly have no regrets over volunteering for underbrush duty; I’d take it over painting or something any day, scratches and all, for the sense of contentment at the end.

The Unbelievable Scope and Scale of Disaster Relief

When I was a kid, I used to be all about disasters. Natural, man-made, man-contributed, whatever—if it affected humans, I read about it. I learned about fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, mudslides, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, avalanches, tsunamis, floods, famines and plague events. I read about ships and aircraft that sank or crashed or caught afire. The Titanic, the Andrea Doria, the U.S.S Scorpion, the World War II-era ammunition ship that blew up in Halifax harbor, and of course the Cyclops and her sister ships; I learned about them all. Cruise ships that caught on fire, grain elevators that blew themselves to pieces, trainloads of jet fuel that erupted like bombs, airplanes nose-diving into the ground. To this day, I’ll still go on Wikipedia binges about ancient supervolcanoes or the Challenger disaster that last me hours and hours.

I’m not really sure why this is. For whatever reason, I’ve always been intensely interested by and in the stories and photos of disaster events. I was insanely excited when I got the assignment for FEMA Corps, because that meant I would have the opportunity to help fix disasters, not just read about them. But I was stunned even so when I learned that full-fledged recovery from a natural or man-made disaster can take as long as a decade; indeed, seven years after Hurricane Katrina, that some families are living in FEMA disaster trailers to this day and waiting for their homes to be rebuilt.

Maybe it’s because of all that disaster reading I did—the sensationalist accounts of the day the deed went down, of men jumping out of the Hindenburg or rowing away from the Titanic—that the length of disaster cleanup and recovery efforts was so startling to me. The literature—especially children’s versions—tells the story of the disaster itself, but stops when the hurricane leaves or the fire is extinguished. There’s no account of the years of rebuilding, of the legal complexities of getting families resettled in newly refurbished homes or anything else. And because such books tend to focus on the raw numbers—1,200 killed, half a million displaced, 380,000 homes destroyed, etc.—it’s easy to lose track of the human stories behind each disaster.

As I’ve learned more and more about FEMA’s role in disaster recovery, short- and long-term, I’ve only become more astonished at the incredible complexity and difficulty of rebuilding a disaster-stricken community. Bodies must be buried, water and power and sewer services restored, evacuations conducted and shelter found for the newly homeless. Insurance claims must be processed and granted, and government aid from a hundred agencies must be coordinated and focused in the right places. Unsafe buildings must be demolished and new ones erected; historic buildings must be saved when possible. Temporary schools must be set up, or the children relocated to other districts. Hundreds of millions of dollars must be spent wisely, and waste and fraud prevented from occurring. And even if these formidable challenges are met and matched, the real work is still to come.

 All of that is just the short-term response, the quantifiable results of a disaster relief effort. The qualifiable or unqualifiable results are even more difficult. The fragile web of interprersonal relationships and community bonds must be allowed to regrow, slowly and haltingly, over time. These are the parent-teacher associations, the YMCAs, the swimming lessons and museum trips and local athletic teams. They are the breast cancer awareness centers, the coffeehouses and bars where people come together to talk and exchange stories, the concerts and outdoor festivals where people dress up in silly clothing and forget about tomorrow. It takes time for everyone to feel safe in their new homes; it takes time for everyone to be safe in their new lives. Businesses, driven underground like perennials, must come back. The community must regrow itself, year by year and layer by layer. It will never be the same as it was before the storm, but every community will—however eventually—get back on its feet again. It is FEMA’s job to give them everything they need to get to where they have to go. And it is our job to help FEMA help these people. I can’t think of a more honorable or worthier task for us to perform. In the past, I’ve concentrated all of my energies on understanding the disaster itself, figuring out the intricate mechanics of the problem. Now, as a FEMA Corps member, I’m all about the solutions--and it feels good.

Catch-All NCCC Jargon Repository

If you’ve been reading this blog over the past few weeks, you know that my employers love the hell out of their acronyms and other jargon. It’s become a second language for me, since I’m immersed in it, but real-world readers do not have that luxury. That means I have to explain it, which is tedious, and you have to put up with it, which I’m sure is equally tedious. To solve all this, I’m doing a catch-all NCCC jargon post that I will link back to for all subsequent posts. That way you can refer to it whenever something is incomprehensible and I don’t have to type out a dozen acronyms every single time.

 

NCCC = National Civilian Community Corps. This is who I work for. The Corps doesn’t like the word “employee”, but I am employed by them to do work, so… there you go. NCCC is part of Americorps, which is the umbrella organization for a bunch of different programs that do different types of community service. They are funded by CNCS, or the Corporation for National and Community Service. That bankrolls all of Americorps, including the NCCC.

Spike or On Spike = out on a project site for an extended period. I learned today that the name comes from the Depression-era Civilian Community Corps, which the NCCC is descended from. We’ll be housed in all sorts of places—hotels, schools, church basements, whatever—but the CCC guys just had tents to sleep in, which were secured with tent spikes. So going “on spike” became synonymous with “on a project”.

PT = physical training. The voice of doom: three times a week at 6 A.M., unless interrupted by hurricanes.

Service or National Service = NCCC disdains the word “volunteer” and it doesn’t much like “work” either. They prefer “service” or “to serve”, so we're required to use them as such, but that's what that means.

Chain of Command = according to Firefly, the chain I get and beat you with ‘till you know who’s in command. According to me, it’s all the roles directly below, starting with me and going up from there.

CM = Corps Member. The rank and file. I am one of these.

TL = Team Leader. One of these leads 8-12 CMs.

UL = Unit Leader. In our command structure, seven teams = one unit. We have 21 teams, so there are three ULs on campus. Two of them wear other hats, which are below. 

APD = Assistant Program Director. These are part of the NCCC permanent staff, as is the UL. They stay on the Vicksburg campus while we leave on projects. I think of them as the producers, Hollywood-style, for our spikes: they field requests from other organizations to have a NCCC team work for them, make sure the NCCC’s requirements are met, ensure that we’re getting proper housing for the teams, etc. They make it possible for us to go do good works.

DRD-P, DRD-O, DRD-UL = Deputy Region Directors for Programming, Operations and Unit Leadership. These three people are the chief lieutenants of God. They oversee all business on this campus, including everyone discussed above.

RD = Region Director. This is the boss of the entire region. He is responsible for fourteen traditional NCCC teams, plus twenty-one FEMA Corps teams, deployed over an eleven-state area, plus all the staff and running the Vicksburg campus itself. He is the King Under the Mountain and his fiefdom is the NCCC Southern Region. Do not cross him. The official chain of command goes higher than him, but he's the Ultimate Authority as far as I'm concerned.

POC = Point of Contact. The term means the person you get in touch with in another organization, e.g. a guy in the Habitat for Humanity command structure. It also connotes “the guy who does things”. The POC is not a useless functionary. He or she is someone you can actually talk to and get results. Secondary meaning: the person on your team who is responsible for completing a certain task; for example, a CM could be the Food POC for their team and thus responsible for scrounging groceries.

LAA = Life After Americorps. The Corps devotes at least two, possibly three, days per year for members to do LAA stuff, i.e. interviewing for jobs. The term also refers to the Corps teaching us how to apply for jobs.

Specialty Roles = This is a job that the CM must carry out in addition to their 40-hours-a-week-or-more day job. The six roles are listed below. Every NCCC team has at least one of each, usually more. This is not to be confused with FEMA's Specialist Roles, which are said day jobs.

Media Rep = Coordinate with local media and generate publicity for the team.

VST = Vehicle, Safety and Tools. Safety gadfly makes sure everyone is being safe with tools, that the vehicle is in good working order, etc. They are responsible for the tools that the DRDO sends out with each team; if the tools don’t come back, the VST better not either.

CAPper = Corps Ambassador Program. The Corps’ cheerleaders and recruiters. When on spike, they find local high schools to speak at, job fairs, table at colleges, etc. If you’ve seen a NCCC member at one of these places, he or she was almost certainly a CAPper.

SLI = Service Learning Initiator. This CM thinks of creative ways to help the Corps understand the big picture of their service. It’s their job to tell us why we’re doing what we’re doing and why it matters, and to do it in a way that reaches everyone.

Peer Helper = s/he who helps peers on the team work through problems, or just gives them someone to talk to.

POL = Project Outreach Liason. This person is responsible for finding other things for NCCC members to work on, specifically on National Days of Service (5-6 in a year).

Everything About Alabama, the CDP and Fort McClellan

Before moving to Mississippi last month, I put together a package of statistics, history and fun facts about the state and shared it on Facebook. People seemed to enjoy it, so I decided to do another package for our upcoming move to Anniston, Alabama and the Center for Domestic Preparedness, where FEMA Corps South will spend fifteen days learning everything there is to know about FEMA and about our specialist positions. Here's a breakdown of what I learned about the CDP, as well as a ton of information about Alabama in general. 

History of the CDP: Camp/Fort McClellan

The present-day CDP began life in 1917 as Camp McClellan, a WWI Army training camp. In 1929, it was upgraded to a fort and turned into a permanent base. According to Wikipedia, the base was expanded pre-WWII and trained nearly 500,000 men during the war. It also housed around 2,500 German and Italian prisoners of war. The Chemical Corps School, later the U.S. Army Chemical Center and School, was established there in 1952. In the same year, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was established there. The Military Police School was moved to Fort McClellan in 1975, and the base served as a Vietnam War training facility from 1966-1970.

Fort McClellan was officially closed in 1999. However, the Alabama National Guard still uses it as a training site, and it houses a National Guard Officer Candidate School as well as the CDP. Nine thousand acres of the former fort are now part of the Mountain Longleaf National Wildlife Refuge, established in 2003. The base houses McClellan Community, which is apparently a new small town,  and the US Army Chemical Corps Museum. If you're interested, it apparently has over 4,000 “chemical warfare artifacts”.

The CDP itself opened in 1998 as a “training center for the nation’s emergency responders”, with a focus on chemical, biological and radiological disasters. It includes the Noble Training Facility, a block south of the CDP proper, which has more of an emphasis on natural disasters as well as manmade ones. The CDP became part of Homeland Security in 2003, and part of FEMA in 2007. According to Wikipedia, “In 2011, FEMA began using the CDP as a staging area for major disaster response. It will eventually become one of four National Staging Areas across the country developed for this purpose." The CDP web page contains a standing offer to local and state First Responder units: come train with us and we'll pay for literally everything, from room and board to the training program itself to the drive from the airport. The Department of Homeland Security is happy to pick up the tab. 

Beyond the former Fort McClellan, the state has three current Army bases (including one chemical weapons storage depot, the Anniston Army Depot), one Coast Guard and one Air Force base. Rather misleadingly, the Aviation Training Center is actually the Coast Guard one; Air Force is Maxwell-Rucker.

History and Politics of Anniston and Alabama

The population of Anniston is 23,106; it is the county seat of Calhoun County, named for John C. Calhoun. As of 2000, the population was 48% white, 48% black and change for anyone else. Anniston boasts the Anniston Museum of Natural History, the Berman Museum of World History and the largest chair in the United States. Michael Biehn, of Terminator, Aliens and The Abyss fame, is a former resident. So is Kevin Greene, former five-time Pro Bowl linebacker and current Green Bay Packers outside linebackers coach.

As far as history goes, Alabama was first explored by the Spanish and later colonized by the French and English. After the French and Indian War, the French ceded the area and it was held by the English until the Revolutionary War. Parts of Spanish West Florida were annexed in 1812, making up the rest of Alabama’s present-day territory. The U.S. fought the Creek and Choctaw tribes in the Creek War to gain effective control of said territory, a war that made Andrew Jackson into a national political figure. 

The Confederate flag was first designed and flown in Alabama, the fourth state to secede from the Union. The first capital of the Confederacy was Montgomery, where the Confederate Constitution was written after about four months, the capital was moved to Richmond as a show of defiance towards the North. According to immediate postwar assessments, approximately 120,000 Alabamians fought in the Civil War. 35,000 of them died and another 30,000 were permanently disabled. 

Never the most progressive state towards its black population, Alabama took a giant step back in 1901 when the Democrats' new state constitution effectively disenfranchised the state's African-Americans (as well as hundreds of thousands of poor whites). During the civil rights movement, the state was indubitably the frontline of the fight against segregation. The Montgomery Bus Boycotts of 1955-6, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, took place in AL. Other notable events included the 1961 Freedom Rides, the brutal 1963 Birmingham Campaign and the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery in support of the Voting Rights Act. One Freedom Ride bus was firebombed and the riders attacked by a mob in Anniston itself. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself was an Alabama native, as was his wife Coretta Scott King and ally Booker T. Washington. 

George C. Wallace, one of the most well-known names in Southern politics for a generation, was a four-time Alabama governor. It was he who took the infamous "stand against desegregation" in front of an Alabama university. Wallace ran for president three times as an old-style Southern Democrat, losing in the primaries each time, and once in 1968 as an independent. He carried five Southern states that time but was swamped by Richard Nixon. 

 Today, Alabama is dominated by Republicans. Every state appellate judge and Supreme Court judge, not to mention every elected official of the executive branch, both Senate seats and six of seven House members, are Republicans. The party also holds six of eight seats on the Alabama Board of Education and controls both houses of the state legislature. I don't know if this is typical or not, but the state government employs a scanty 9,500 people. 

Population, Economy and Trivia

The state holds a hair under five million people, at 4,779,336 as of the 2010 census. The largest city, Birmingham, holds just 212,237. 68% of the population is ethnically white and 26% is black; everyone else is pocket change. A resounding Bible Belt state, 58% of the population attends church regularly. Most of the state is either evangelical or regular Protestants. 75% of Alabamians graduate from high school, the fourth-lowest rate among the states; according to the CDC, Alabamians are the U.S. state least likely to exercise, and are among the nation's 'leaders' in obesity and diabetes rates.

Alabama's economy is based in manufacturing, agricultural products and miscellaneous services. The state produces about 12% of the nation's broilers, and also have livestock, calves, chicken eggs and catfish. Their agricultural economy is dominated by livestock, but they do produce limited stocks of cotton, grain, soybeans and peanuts. In keeping with the chemicals theme (see above), Atlanta is one of the nation's largest producers of chemicals. They also produce paper products, and have large mining concerns of coal, natural gas and limestone. Alabama ranks fourth in the county in car production, and is a major hub for the U.S. steel industry; they also do aircraft engines and "military and space equipment". 

The list of impressive people from Alabama is ridiculously long. I mentioned a few people above (Dr. King, Michael Biehn, etc), and will list a few others below. Names that caught my eye included Charles Barkley, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, actress Felicia Day, Mia Hamm, Zora Neale Hurston, jazz composer W.C. Handy, brilliant authors Edward O. Wilson, Nelle Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird) and Zora Neale Hurston, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Jake Peavy, Jesse Owens, Tallulah Bankhead, Nat King Cole, the "Brown Bomber" Joe Louis, Channing Tatum, country music singer Sonny James, and of course Helen Keller. Just on the pro football side of things, Alabama has produced Bart Starr, Bo Jackson, Joe Namath, Ken Stabler, Walter Jones and Terrell Owens, among hundreds of others. Although not residents, George Washington Carver, Truman Capote and Wernher von Braun also lived in the state. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that one of my personal heroines, Condoleezza Rice, is a Birmingham native.

State stuff: Alabama has one of those Southern no-nonsense mottoes, "Audemus jurus nostra defendere" or "We dare defend our rights". They're one of only six states with two state birds, the Yellowhammer (a.k.a. northern flicker) and the wild turkey, the state game bird. Alabama is known as the "Yellowhammer State" (apparently it's also a nod to the color of Confederate uniforms), as well as the "Heart of Dixie" and the "Carmellia State" (state flower). It used to be called the "Cotton State", but that was before the coming of the boll weevil. The state nut is the pecan, the state insect is the monarch butterfly, the state fossil is the Basilosaurus (prehistoric whale again), the state alcoholic beverage is Conecuh Ridge Alabama Fine Whiskey, and the state outdoor drama (they have that?) is William Gibson's The Miracle Worker, about the life of Helen Keller. 

 

Despite not having any professional sports teams, Alabama has four of the largest stadiums in the country. The Talladega Superspeedway, Bryant-Denny Stadium, Jordan-Hare Stadium and Legion Field combine to seat over 400,000 people. The all-time high of 114 degrees was recorded in 1925; Alabama is troubled by thunderstorms, hurricanes and tornadoes, and contains the southern end of the Appalachian Mountain chain. If you want to go to the bars, you're subsidizing the state government, which is the only legal alcohol seller in the state (I did not know that places did that). Finally from the college football world, Alabama just bulldozed Michigan 41-14, which makes their sports scene profoundly OK in my book.

 

My 2012 Mission Statement

A few nights ago, upon receiving our permanent team assignment, members of Summit 5 "Mt. St. Helens" were asked to write a sort of time capsule statement, to be sealed in an envelope and left unread until the end of the year. Because I was hugely excited upon recieving my permanent team assignment, I typed up the thing and decided to post it here, with an edit or two for clarity. Enjoy.

Well, it finally happened, and just the way I wanted it. Community Relations. Stayed in Summit. Good people all the way through. None of the people I wanted to avoid. Boots on the ground, the scouts of FEMA Corps. Working with people that just experienced a disaster. The vanguard of the relief effort.
I am so freaking excited right now. Everything is fantastic. Aside from having Sean or Rii or any other close friends on my team, it’s hard to see how this could have gone any better. Celebrating with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 right now. Hell, PT (Physical Training) today was cancelled because of Isaac and I got a package with DVDs! It doesn’t get any more exciting or better then that.

Now, it’s not as if there won’t be challenges. Tents, for one. I’m unused to camping and don’t much like it, but if an area gets totally shitwrecked—especially since we’re coming in RIGHT AFTER the disaster—we’ll probably be tenting most of the time. I can live with that. New horizons and whatnot. There’ll be the challenge of working with newly disaster-hit people, and the enormous responsibility of initially assessing the damage and sending back accurate and timely information to my FEMA overlords. I will have to be as observant, on-the-ball and analytical as I have ever been.

But it’s also gonna be absolutely rad. I’m gonna be the first person people see on the worst day of their lives, the person that lets them know that they can come back from the abyss, the person who directs them towards help and gives them hope. That’s my year’s task, my great work. And I absolutely cannot wait to get started. It’s gonna be a wild ride and one hell of a year. Let's get this traveling circus on the road.