Dispatch # 4 from our intrepid blog reporter in New Orleans, Jayawalker residential manager Buckley Bailey-Gates.

Today started off with a rainbow (see photo above), which should have given us a hopeful vibe, but instead…

Our stalwart crew struggled through a mid-week slump in enthusiasm. Though these happen often during our service trips, we always pull out of them. How do you pull out of such slumps? Barbecue! Is the facility equipped for grilling? Nope. Dan and Art were given a suite, a measure of gratitude offered by Super 8 staff, which has a deck with ample space for grilling (see photo below). The rest was good old fashion Jaywalker enthusiasm and ingenuity.

On the menu: Snapper, Tilapia, Ribeye, Chicken Legs, Crawdad & Alligator Sausage… and of course, tons of Potato Salad. Everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves in no time. Again, I’m so proud of these guys, who chose to join us for this trip to help some people who are really in need, and continue to rebound into positive thinking.

N’Orleans BBQ – Crawdad and Alligator Sausage et al

On that note, our site supervisor, Kathryn, a 23 year old college student earning $1000 dollars a month, baked cookies for Ernie to celebrate his 90 day recovery milestone.

We’re over the hump now. Only 2 more days of labor, and it’s off to the French Quarter for a day to take in the culture before returning to JWL.

Thanks to Mike Goerne, operations director, for this update and the pics from the current four-day Jaywalker Lodge expedition to Moab, UT.

The weather in Moab is spectacular so far… The men have been making the most of their many choices for activities here in the Utah desert. The daily options include Rock Climbing, Mountain Biking, Hiking, and even a day of golf during our four days in Moab.

On Monday, several clients spent the afternoon scaling the sandstone area know as Wall Street. Yesterday, the climbers group got after it on the “Bakery,” while the hikers and mountain bikers spent time at trails know as Klondike Bluffs and Sovereign. We all wrapped up the day with a Big Book study in Moab last night!

Alumni Coordinator John Schneier

Dispatch #3 from Jaywalker’s sober service expedition to New Orleans (Thanks for this update from residential manager Buckley Bailey-Gates.)

Using a putty knife as a spatula, Justin decided to grill up a few burgers at the worksite today. Our supervisor took one look at this and called our guys “the most eccentric group I’ve ever seen.” I suppose in New Orleans… that’s sayin’ something!

Day # 2 on the worksite featured, well, more hard work… followed by a gratifying nosh at Popeye’s afterwards.

Here’s a little background on the project organizers, St. Bernard Project, organized out of St. Bernard’s Parish in New Orleans. The mission of the St. Bernard Project is to create housing opportunities so that Hurricane Katrina survivors can return to their homes and communities. So far, SBP has completed 290 homes, and these families are living in their homes again.

Our group of seven Jaywalker Lodge clients and three staff are hard at work on one of 50 home projects currently underway: these homes are under construction and families will be able to move home in the coming weeks.

NOTE: Dispatch #2 from Jaywalker’s expedition to New Orleans, Oct. 17 – 26, 2010. Thanks to Buckley Bailey-Gates, residential manager at Jaywalker Lodge, who is serving as our correspondent and photographer in the field.

In this photo, Jaywalker Clinical Director Dan Reed operates an unwieldy power tool which serves to rattle violently and vibrate loose any uneven cement and/or attached particular matter from the floor's surface. The author of this blog also had the misfortune of operating the same machine. It shook loose my brain, I think.

We showed up for our first day of work, and they split the group in half after a short orientation. Turns out the non-profit parish we’re working with was started by a man who spent six days on top of his roof waiting for rescue in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Driving through the neighborhoods, I notice that most are spotted with condemned homes, which look odd juxtaposed against houses that have obviously been restored. The house my group was working on still has the remnants of the spray painted “X” amidst an array of indecipherable numbers. These graffiti style instructions were left behind 5 years ago by rescue workers – an image now famous because of Katrina.

I’m so impressed with our guys, who not only worked their asses off, but did not complain, and seemed to enjoy themselves.

After eight hours of restoration, it was a slice of pizza in the Garden District, followed by an NA meeting. We drove to the Bridge House, a treatment center in downtown N.O. for the meeting, and were greeted by a plain unmarked white van (identical to ours) full of women in early recovery. They informed us that the meeting location had changed, so we followed their lead. Most of us were impacted by culture shock during the meeting – Carbondale is such a bubble (my favorite bubble).

Come join us, I’ll try to update as often as I can.

Special thanks to Jaywalker Lodge residential manager Buckley Bailey-Gates for this dispatch from New Orleans.

So much for anonymity…

Amazingly, (clinical director) Dan Reed, (counselor) Art Kleinschmidt, and I were able to assemble and mobilize seven recovering addicts from Jaywalker Lodge at 5:30am. Everyone made it to the gate on time, and we flew out problem free. Our hotel is not in the nicest neighborhood (the convenience store next door has bulletproof glass for the attendees), but it’s very New Orleans. Fried oysters and an AA meeting tonight, labor to restore Katrina stricken homes tomorrow.

The Saints are blowing out the Bucs right now, and they’re lovin’ that down here. I’m a true Giants fan but, when in Rome…”Go Saints!”

In the mid-1990’s, during the administration of Mayor Rudolph Julianni, New York City saw a 50% reduction in violent crimes (such as murder, rape and robbery) as the result of an initiative known as “community policing.” This campaign, which took its roots from Small Town America, focused repairing broken windows, cleaning up graffiti, and a crack down on minor offenses such as subway fare-scoffers and squeegee-wielding panhandlers.

Really? Let’s give that just a minute to sink in.

A 50% decline in violent crimes as a result of fixing windows and cleaning graffiti? That’s a startling statistic, and it’s also the underlying principle behind the so-called “Spiritual Dashboard” an important benchmark used by the clinical team every week at Jaywalker Lodge.

The Spiritual Dashboard is a measure used to gauge what we call “the spirit of the house” at The Lodge and Solutions – our two 90-day residential treatment programs. As a community, the spirit of the house fluctuates regularly. Sometimes a group of peers will be collectively focused on recovery, acting in a manner than creates an authentic space of healing for everyone in the program. Other times, a certain spiritual “malady” will inhabit the treatment milieu, creating a sense of uncertainty about recovery where small rule infractions and self-centered thinking can lead to larger and more toxic consequences like lying, stealing, or relapse.

The Spiritual Dashboard does not seek to analyse complex issues like root origins of addictive behavior or transference of unresolved family issues, etc. Rather it is a simple tool which provides the community with a quick glimpse at how our residents are keeping up with the daily disciplines of recovery: Attendance at AA meetings, our family style sit-down dinner, daily journal entries, chores around the house, made beds, and attendance at morning meditation groups.

And it really works! Just as cleaning graffiti or fixing broken windows drastically cut New York City’s violent crime rate, so too does a focus on personal accountability and small daily disciplines serve to create and sustain an authentic space of recovery and healing for our residents.