Blogger Megan Jordan, of Velveteen Mind, with son.
Crammed has been the news. Full of stories: Revival. Hope. Sad truths. And, teary remembrances. Five years ago, the deadliest and costliest natural disaster in the history of our great country, Hurricane Katrina, ravaged especially sweet portions of our precious Gulf coast….I believe in the art, the medium, the value of what I do here in this cyber-aged thing called blogging. And one of my favorite bloggers, one of just three that I subscribe to via email, (while I read the rest of my favorites in readers,) is a talented writer named Megan Jordan. Megan was born to write. I don't know how long she's been at perfecting her craft. She tends to downplay in email exchanges her lack of published experience prior to blogging. But Megan was made for blogging. And much more in the world of words. We need bloggers such as Megan who pour their souls eloquently into cyberspace, sharing important perspectives on important issues of our time….In all its disastrous plight, this storm gave an entree to the world for Megan via the internet. She lost her home. Flattened. Away washed decades of journals. So now she writes here. At very much her own, self-governed pace. Yet, lovers of words, of passion on…paper…err…strike that…you get my point. I'll shut up and let you sample for yourself in this excerpt, below, her pilgrimage since Katrina, and the aching, delicious honesty of her prose:
"A woman on the front porch of the Mockingbird Cafe in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, hollered to her departing friend, “Tell your mama an’ ‘em I said ‘Hey!’”
"God, I love living on the Gulf Coast.
"On the twenty minute drive east back to Gulfport, my habitual scanning of the water paid off: a pod of dolphins swam yards from the shoreline. I made a U-turn and parked my decade-old white Volvo wagon next to a large white van surrounded by a meandering oil spill clean-up crew. I hardly glanced at the workers as I got out of the car, keeping my eyes trained on the dolphins.
"The workers braced a little as I approached them, then relaxed as I strode right passed.
“Well, look at that,” he said to no one in particular. One of the workers followed my undivided gaze and found the pod. Yes, look at that. Four adult dolphins and what appeared to be a juvenile, swimming satisfyingly slowly within what felt like arm’s reach of me and a small crew of men hired to remove all evidence of Man’s assault on the Gulf of Mexico.
"I straddled a surreal reality as I watched that enchanting pod of dolphins, ancient and pure, alongside men dressed in bright yellow hazard gear. We stood together on the beach within one football field of where my home was reduced to a slab of concrete five years ago in Hurricane Katrina.
"I stopped in my tracks as I returned to my car, realizing where I was. I looked to my feet, knowing they and my entire body would have been under water in this spot that day. Wondered if our photographs might have floated over this point of land. Dreamed for a moment that if I dug deep enough, could I find a piece of me?
"God, I love living on the Gulf Coast. But Lordy, is it ever complicated.
"You ask us why we stay. Why we remain here when we know damn well that hurricane season will threaten our foundation every year. The Gulf that we love so fiercely, that feeds our culture and economy, is the very thing that feeds the fury of storms and provides passage for dangers we never imagined.
"The act of staying is an act of defiance, to be sure.
"The act of staying is an act of love. A passion of pride.
"The act of staying is an act of hope."
Read the rest here.
Perhaps I flatter myself to say that I see myself in Megan were I 20 years younger. Of that generation born with a computer in hand, instead of being introduced to them AFTER I graduated with a degree in communications. Fortunate for Megan, she's parlayed her passion into a public relations spokesperson role with Tide Loads of Hope, so this particular blog entry reflects that. When my beloved city experienced it's own recent crisis, the washing-machines on 18-wheels, ala Tide Loads of Hope–as in the detergent–came here, too. Now, that's good corporate PR. And, I'm glad Tide recognizes the power of social media and in doing so the talent of bloggers such as Megan Jordan and Velveteen Mind.
