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Gumbo Relief
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Sunday, February 10, 2002 Your patronage of our affiliate partners supports this web site. We thank you!
Gumbo
Relief “Do
all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can,
in all the places you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you
can.” Gumbo? Mais oui! Why not? On Thursday, 20 September 2001, the headline in the Metro section of the New Orleans Times-Picayune announced, “Gumbo ambassadors head to New York”. Extraordinary. Just one more piece of evidence affirming that Americans continue to reach out in whatever way they can. Bravo! More about the gumbo shortly… Economically, New Orleans has been hit extremely hard. Other than the cities directly attacked on 11 September (a date now indelibly etched in our memories), I would venture to say that the Crescent City is feeling the crunch more than most cities in the wake of the recent terrorism. We depend quite heavily on tourism here for our bread and butter. When we see the world-renowned Café du Monde (of cafe au lait and beignet fame) sitting three-quarters empty, when notoriously hard-to-get restaurant reservations are readily available, we see a tremendous red flag. A convention of 30,000 scheduled to let the good times roll in New Orleans this weekend cancelled. That is just one example. Tip of the iceberg. But still, New Orleanians are rallying to help their fellow Americans as best they can. As are people all over this wounded nation. Does my heart good. All is not lost. Not by a long shot. In today’s Times-Picayune, Sheila Grissett reports, “Cha
ching!
Good on them! Members
of the volunteer fire departments of La Place and Reserve, LA, are
absolutely everywhere today. They
are manning major
intersections, grocery store parking lots, and shopping centers, with
helmets and red buckets outstretched. And today, I saw no one making an effort to avoid them. Some folks even stopped their cars to get out and speak with the
volunteers. And yes, there were some tearful hugs as well. And
if this isn’t New Orleans for
you, I just don’t know what is. The
brass bands in New Orleans (i.e. Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Rebirth Brass
Band, Treme Brass Band, etc., you get my drift…) are gathering in a
united fund-raising effort at 3 o’clock this afternoon on the corner of
Rampart and St. Ann, on the fringes of the French Quarter. The bands will lead all who care to join them in a traditional New
Orleans second line parade (as in jazz funeral procession), and will raise
money for the New York relief effort by selling Which brings us back to gumbo. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported today, “Gumbo warming souls in N.Y.” The Gumbo Crew, of Norco, LA, (just down the river road a piece from La Place, where I reside) decided to bring gumbo and love to the Big Apple.Our local newspaper (L’Observateur “Best Along the River Since 1913”) has the following report (by Leonard Gray, Staff Reporter): “The
Gumbo Crew, led by Shawn Bradley of Norco, is currently in New York City,
feeding fellow American citizens in the wake if the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks. And it went on from there. Bradley called his wife and told her of his plan. She admits she thought “he was nuts!” But Bradley and his wife began making phone calls, one thing led to another, and the plan came together. They are in New York this weekend feeding the hungry, the exhausted, the heartbroken, the heroes. The Bradley family had already been heavily involved in fund-raising for New Yorkers after the terrorist attacks. To the tune of some $28,000, if you please! These people give a damn. They are committed. L’Observateur
reports further:
Gumbo, Duck and Andouille Indeed. The Major quite agrees. It’s just that he would have taken chili! I know what you’re thinking. There’s no way they are going to be able to get close enough to ground zero to do what they drove at least 24 hours to do. Wrong. It occurred to me when I first learned of this venture that The Gumbo Crew would have to “do some doing” to actually accomplish their goal. And that, in part, is what makes this such an extraordinary story, a heartwarming story of American resolve and determination. “There’s no way this can work,” can be a debilitating, paralyzing thought. One that, fortunately, has seldom in the course of our brief history been allowed to stop a fiercely determined American from reaching his goal. (Or her goal, goes without saying!) Today’s Times-Picayune reports: “Norco
crew reaches goal despite hurdles” “When
four Norco residents headed to New York City in a trailer to serve gumbo
to firefighters, police officers and rescue workers, they expected to find
a few thousand hungry souls to cheer up after last week’s terrorist
attacks. Yes! They began making phone calls. They were on a mission. They called the offices of a Louisiana congressman, a New York senator (guess who!), and the Red Cross. They went through channels, and the wheels of bureaucracy began to turn. Slowly. But you know what? This is how it went down: “In a moment of
luck, some police officers who’d heard of the group’s day-long search
flagged them down and told them they had a perfect spot: right behind a
command post about five blocks from the World Trade Center. God bless America! Paul Chaisson, Shawn Bradley’s brother-in-law, pointed out a John Wesley poem which helped The Gumbo Crew stay on course: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” I
wish I had known about The Gumbo Crew sooner. I would have gone Until next time, remember, "Bloom where you're planted." Michele "It
seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love,
are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of
one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am
really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love
of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine
reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one."
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