After a three hour flight from DC, I’m in Baton Rouge. Allan drove me to the airport, once again helping me to appreciate what a wonderful and reliable friend he is. I spent the morning trying to tease out my anxieties from my past memories and to focus on the good I can do, but still I had butterflies in my stomach.

But arriving in Baton Rouge, whatever angst I felt was superseded by practical considerations. First, acquiring the rental car. Second, determing directions to my destination. Third, meeting my TAC coordinator. Fourth, driving to FEMA HQ for fingerprinting and background checking. Fifth, finding accomodations at the Motel 6. Sixth, scouting for food on this Baton Rouge strip. Seventh, connecting to the Internet via GPRS enabled cell phone.

A little hacking on this blog and I also managed to get gallery2 working with wordpress. I’m so proud of myself. I’ve still got an eye for understanding and tweaking code after, what has it been, two years since I last programmed, and four since I wrote any serious code? OK, so this wasn’t a huge project but I’m still happy to know I can support my own web projects.

Anderson Cooper is reporting live from the Gulf. NPR has a story about Louisiana Governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, inviting Andres Duany, co-founder of the architectural firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., to plan the new New Orleans. I feel like I’ve arrived in the midst of something, but I won’t know exactly what until my background check clears. Until then I have a few days to explore Baton Rouge and Louisiana on my own. Please post in the comments any suggestions of where you think I should visit.

About Aharon N. Varady

Aharon's Omphalos is the hobbit hole of Aharon Varady, founding director of the Open Siddur Project. He is a community planner and environmental educator working to improve stewardship of the Public Domain, be it the physical and natural commons of urban park systems or the creative and cultural commons of libraries and museums. His advocacy for open-source strategies in the Jewish community has been written about in the Atlantic Magazine, the Yiddish Forverts, Tablet, and Haaretz. He is particularly interested in pedagogies for advancing ecological wisdom, developing creative and emotional intelligence, and realizing effective theurgical praxes. He welcomes your comments, personal messages, and kind words. If you find his work helpful to your own or you'd simply like to support him, please consider donating via his Patreon account.

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“Baton Rouge” is shared by Aharon N. Varady with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.