Farewell

Loyal readers, I am approaching the end of my time here. On Tuesday, I fly home. Most of the planning unit is shutting down, there will only be a handful of local hires left.

I am eager to be home. It is hard to be away, almost five months now. It was hard to have a normal life on the road, even when I had an apartment. Part of the problem was working 60 hours a week. Beyond that, there were no daily rituals. There were no favorite diners, coffee shops or even mailmen. There was no opportunity to personalize my apartment, no family photos, no favorite pictures on the wall. Part of the problem was working all the time. I was so often exhausted after work that all I wanted to do is sleep. Many evenings I would go walking through neighborhoods, but that is it. It will be nice to back among friends and neighbors.

I wish I could leave here claiming great achievements. I wish I could say I did my part to help save Jefferson Davis. The truth is, all I can say is I tried. What we did more than anything is peddle hope. Our end product http://www.louisianaspeaks-parishplans.org/indparishhomepage.cfm?EntID=13 is marginally useful. It is poorly written and contrived.

Selling optimism counts for something. Hope is essential for survival. Without it, there would be nothing, people would move away. At the same time, hope is only useful if it carries you over until healing can begin. I am afraid that the process we led the Parish though gave them hope, but distracted them from other activities that might have helped them hearing.

For a doctor to offer hope to a cancer patient helps them survive. For a snake oil salesman to distract people from getting real assistance makes them worse. I don't know which we did.