To Chuck Goolsbee: would you be kind enough to put this letter on your website and let people know on the Jag list they can catch up with me there? Thanks!

To all..
I've a little more time tonight, about 9:30 PM, Monday, October 17th. The terrible sights and the horrible smells and the staccato sounds I've seen in my 1 week here are almost more than I can bear, but I'd not trade a single second of what I'm doing here for the peace of home: for the first time in a VERY long time I honestly feel as if *I* make a difference in the world. I came to give but I have received so much more.

I've only taken a few photos, because I feel a little *ghoulish* taking pictures of the devastastion around me. Oh, don't get me wrong: there's humor and beautiful things to see here but I'll get back to that later. In all my time on this big blue marble we call home, never have I seen this kind of widespread damage. It certainly doesn't hold a candle to the poor souls of Pakistan nor to the hundreds of thousands whose lives were torn to bits by Katrina. I know the people of Liberia, huddled in refugee camps in Ghana, like Buduburrum Camp, are suffering far more. Nonetheless, as we all know, *our* losses are the worst, regardless of time and place.

NOTE: to the woodworkers to whom I send this, I give you strong warning: THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH IS *OOOgly.* Not *ugly*; this is beyond ugly. There are literally *thousands* of trees, bushes, and plants that have been overturned, uprooted, blown away, knocked down. All the preceding words can't begin to express the sadness I see and ehear about; hear about because people cry as they explain to me "That was the tree my kids first played on, and me before them, and my parents before me." This is the South, whose family structure is still much as it was many years ago for the rest of the country: time and again, I meet people whose children live, if not next door, in the same block or maybe just a few blocks down the road. HUGE, hundreds-of-years-old live oaks, sycamores, pecan trees (I NEVER knew pecan trees were so damned big!), cherry and walnut, sugar pine and maple, all fallen victims to the terrible winds of Rita.

On one of my daily 12-hour shifts, inspecting houses to put up temporary blue tarp roofs ("FEMA roofs") I talked to a man who was busy sawing up an oak that, with not a word of a lie, was 4 feet...FEET..in diameter at its base. I stood, simply aghast at the loss and I asked the man, "What are you doing with the logs?" He looked at me with a huge sadness in his eyes and said, with an even deeper sadness in his voice, "All I can do...throw them out."

"Throw them out." As I drive around the cites of Beaumont, Port Arthur, Nederland (for the Coloradans, it pronounced KNEE-derland down here, NOT NED-erland), Port Neches, and Groves, I hear the same stories: I see the same sad eyes and I listen to a lot of tearful stories. I see the piles of people's lives. Piled out in front of the water-damaged houses, awaiting city crews to come take it ...take it where? ... to throw it away.

Clothes, flooring, fiberglass insulation, bits of drywall, furniture, some quite nice, dolls...teddy bears ...<:=(... children's toy boxes, couches, kitchen tables. Oh, yes, 'boxes...ice boxes, freezers, most duct-taped shut, for obvious reaons. Boxes of mold-laden clothing, piles of mattresses, broken trampolines....the occassional childrens' swingsets, all grotesquely bent and broken. All ruined and ready to be thrown away ("Thowed," in the local dialect).

It ALL stinks to high heaven, with mildew literally crawling out and up the piles. People's lives have been lost, possessions ruined, pictures destroyed, guitars smashed into toothpicks, siding ripped off, roofs blown away, pools filled with the stinking rotting corpses of trees and leaves and in some cases, the animals that were taking refuge in the trees when Rita blew them into people's pools and houses.

It's hard for me to maintain my professionalism, sometimes. I meet old ladies, who had no way out, who sat in the dark and wondered if their house was going to blow down, to wonder if their sycamore was going to fall on the house, for their windows to blow-in in the 130 mile per hour winds. Huge sign poles just bent in half; telephone poles snapped like matchsticks, tin carports blown a mile away (I know one was a mile away from its owners: It had their name and address on it: When I found their house, it had NO roof. It was across the street, on top of the next door neighbor's car).

One family was living, with their few remaining possessions, in their garage which at least had a roof that didn't leak and no toxic mildew and mold crawling up the remaining walls.

But, spectacularly, what I will take away from this is not all the scenes of the ruination of people's lives: for the rest of my life, I'll hear in my mind the words, "God bless you, for helping us. We thought we were alone."

To a person, EVERYONE has been upbeat, bright, cheerful, if a bit muted. Who can blame them? They thank me, they want to take a bit of time to 'have-a-chat,' to share with a stranger that no matter what, their faith and their spirits are NOT broken, NOT blown away, not at all 'mildewed' like the blankets sitting out over the piles of debris. They shake my hand, some hug me. They say to me, "Y'all ain't from around these here parts, are ya?" I tell'm, "Naw, I'm from Colorado; that's why I've got such a funny accent!"

At first, they look a little worried, perhaps thinking I'm an insurance adjuster coming with the bad news. But when they hear I'm one of the "blue roof men,' they smile, they say, 'Welcome..would you like a glass of sweet tea, darlin'?" (Lisa, *you'll* smile when reading that line!) They show me where they've cleaned up a huge pile of branches or where they saved some of the pictures of theur children. They laugh and acourageously choke back tears.

EVERYONE, from the richest parts of the towns to the dirt-poor, and they are *poor*, to a person they thank me, they ask if I like the "Texas heat and humidity," and they seem a little brighter, knowing that soon, they'll have at least a dry roof over thir heads.

These people show me how one can suffer seemingly unendurable events, yet still offer a smile to a complete stranger. If I could, I'd stay here as long as my work would let me, for although I am working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, I feel as though it's nothing compared to what these people have had to endure for nearly a month. In giving what I have to give to these people, I get back the best gift that anyone could ask for: a smile and a handshake. If my work can help one old man, one small child, one ANYONE, a brighter day, it's entirely worth any effort.

I can't thank these people enough for the opportunity they've provided me in letting me do my small bit to help rebuild their lives. For the wind of their love, the breezes of their hearts and souls will keep me flying. They are truly the wind under my wings. I will fly forever on the spirits I see here and never think a moment of the work. I'll only dwell on the love that we ALL ought to show to our fellow humans, in their hours of need.

I am truly, deeply beyond any words, humbled by this experience. I will forever and always remember....

Peace to all..

...Paul