This week, in addition to celebrating Thanksgiving, we are getting ready to head south on December 3rd.  Excitement!  Filling out those notarized forms, deciding what kind of boots to pack, getting our tetanus shots updated, reading those books about New Orleans and the wetlands…lots to do!  I’m pretty excited about this, the 3rd group of students I’ve accompanied to Louisiana.  

It will be great to have Molly MacElroy with me again — we’re a great team.  This year Paul Matarazzo is also coming with us — Paul is in charge of capital projects for Union and is an expert on all things construction.  And, he is a great cook, we hear. 

What am I thinking about? Mostly wondering what it will be like back in Dulac and Houma.  Darryl Guy at the Dulac site tells me that the flooding from Ike was worse than from Rita, and Rita was terrible.  The pictures I’ve found on the web are dramatic. It will be hard emotionally to see so much once again ‘washed away.’

I’m excited that this year we’ll be actually doing a project to help repair the wetlands.  Mel Landry at BTNEP has arranged for us to do clearing of invasive species down at Grand Isle with the Nature Conservancy.  We’ll be down there on Sunday, Dec 14th.  The drive down will take us by many of the sites described in Mike Tidwell’s Bayou Farewell, and we’ll be right there on the Gulf to see the oil rigs dotting the horizon like ants.  We’ll learn so much!

Got to go…I’m still grading papers from last term and need to make some last minute calls to LA.  I’ll be assigning everyone in the class to post here at least once before we head south.  Watch for their posts, coming soon.