Memphis and More

This past week feels like a year. So many emotions, so many people, so much going on around us. The week began with a bit of free time and ended up being somewhat busy. As I mentioned before there has been a volunteer group here from Seattle this week and we’ve had a good time hanging out with them. They did a lot maintenance work on the grounds in spite of the very hot weather. The place looks great and just in time for the Youth Conference, which will be held here next week. When volunteer groups come down, the Perkins center has a house across the street from ours for them to stay at. The house is a great resource complete with lots of bunk beds, a kitchen, and a large meeting room. On Tuesday night we turned the lights on out on the basketball courts and played some late night ball. We invited a few guys from the neighborhood and they ended up bringing 7people to play and more to watch. During the game I took a spill and broke or severely sprained my big toe. I finished out the night playing a few more games not realizing until later how bad it was. It’s still a bit sore and looks as though it has been tie-dyed purple and red. It’s been nice to have the group from Seattle here. Many of the leaders were our age and we enjoyed talking with them.

On Thursday we headed north to Memphis for a one-night getaway. Shortly after leaving Jackson we saw a young hitchhiker with an orange guitar on the side of the road and since we had room we picked him up. His name was Gabe. I will now quote from a letter that Emily wrote while making the 3-hour drive to Memphis.

“We’re on our way to Memphis and just picked up a hitchhiker. He’s about our
age and travels the country, sometimes picking blueberries, sometimes playing music, but most of the time with the Incognito Traveling Circus. His character is the Southern Metronome Rapping Redneck with the backdrop of an enormous, inflatable purple cow. His sidekick is a puppet that has a puppet that has a puppet.”

We had some good talks with Gabe about hoping trains across the country and of coarse about the circus with which he traveled. About an hour and half after picking up Gabe we spotted another hot sweating soul along the side of the road looking for a ride. We had room so we picked him up. His name was Steve and he was trying to get to Chicago. He was an older man who seemed to have come upon some hard times. He told us about his travels and he and Gabe shared advise on hitching. We left them on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi river at a Flying J rest stop. Hopefully they are both home and safe.

Memphis seemed very touristy to us. After arriving in the mid afternoon we went and explored the famous Beale Street and walked down town for a while. We found out that Memphis has a minor league baseball team and we were all over that. We watched the Memphis Redbirds take on the Sacramento Rivercats in a really cool little stadium right downtown.
The next day we had breakfast at the Arcade restaurant and by chance sat down in the back booth where Elvis is rumored to have sat on many occasions eating his fried banana and peanut butter sandwiches.


We then went to visit the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The motel has been turned into the Civil Right’s Museum. The motel room he stayed in is still intact and you can look in it. We met a really cool lady outside the museum who has been protesting the museum for over 17 years. She lives on the street corner right in front of the motel. She thinks it’s wrong that so much money has been put into making a “tourist trap” money making museum and that Dr. King would have preferred that the money go to help the homeless or be put to work in some sort of social justice action. She was the highlight of the visit for us and we walked away agreeing with her. We were amazed at her dedication to what she believed.



This morning we said goodbye to the Seattleites and then went to Stew Pot to prepare and serve a meal to the homeless. Stew Pot is a group that is based in our neighborhood and serves lunch everyday. They occupy a really cool old church building and the dinning room is in the old sanctuary. Emily and I took charge of making the potatoes and I think they turned out well. We had to use our math skills for the first time since high school as we tried to multiply the serving sizes to feed 150 people. I then ended up on the grill flipping burgers, which took me back to my old Wendy's days, while Emily served on the food line.

Ole Miss

Currently In Oxford MS, home of the University of Mississippi or Ole Miss, drinking good coffee and watching the rain fall outside. We are on our way back to Jackson from Memphis. I will write a Memphis post complete with pictures later but let me just say that we are no loner skeptics of Elvis's death , he is definitely alive! It all comes down to his twin brother.
Johnny

Meet your Meat

Blog frustration has officially begun. Moments ago i had typed a great update filled with passion and humor only to have it disappear from the screen. Now i am forced to try to retype what was so natural and flowing the first time.
Today may be the hottest day since we arrived. We spent the afternoon playing basketball with a group of high school volunteers here from Seattle for the week. They will be doing various grounds work to get the Perkins center ready for the upcoming youth conference. Its nice to be around some fellow northwester's for a while.
Now to meat of the blog, literally. Last night for the first time in over 2 years (more for Emily) we ate meat. We were invited over to dinner by another couple and rather than risk offending them we partook in animal flesh. Some of you non vegetarians may not understand this dilemma but its something Ive been struggling with. Do we tell people before hand that we don't eat meat, possibly offending them and sounding conceited or do we just eat the meat? We don't think its wrong to eat meat we just don't feel its something we have to do. I would love to get some feed back on this topic whether in the comment box of this post or via Email. ( johnny.bertram@gmail.com )


Minor league baseball continues to be our main form of entertainment. With 2 local minor league teams, one of which offers free tickets to every game, we've spent many an evening a the ball park. Both teams have fireworks on Friday nights to draw out the crowds.


We had a formal banquet for the summer interns on Monday night. I borrowed a friends suit that was from the 70's. It was a good time complete with awards and lots of picture taking. Only ourselves and 2 other interns will be sticking around for the next year.
At this point i must admit that this post is nothing like the original and is going nowhere near the emotion of the last so here it will end.
Thank you to the faithful readers of our blog. We appreciate your interest and involvement in what were doing!

I get by with a little help from my friends

Earlier tonight we celebrated the end of our summer camp with our performance for the children’s parents. There was singing, dancing, and even a slide show on the big screen by yours truly. We have been preparing for this for about a month and tonight everything thing came together. Our kids danced their hearts out to Mariah Carey’s song, Hero. We made “hero medals” yesterday, and near the end of their performance they went out in the crowd and placed the medals around their parents necks. Other highlights included the 6th and 7th graders performing a mime presentation complete with painted white faces and gloves. My slideshow was a hit. The kids loved seeing themselves on the big screen.

John Perkins spoke and as he did I began to think about community. I feel so alive when im interacting with others in a personal way. It was an emotional evening for both Emily and me as we watched these kids that we’ve come to love so much, perform. John told a story about being in a prison 2 weeks ago and his interactions with the prisoners who wore the orange and black uniforms that symbolized they had committed murder. All of them were black, and he said he had never seen men so young and beautiful. He said that as he talked to them he cried and they listened and they called him grandpa. As he was telling this story tonight I looked at the faces of the children from our camp and imagined them, having made a horrible mistake, forced to spend their lives locked up in prison. Its got Emily and I thinking a lot about the importance of working with children. They are the ones who can grow up and make a difference in their depleted neighborhood. Kids in our neighborhood have very few people to affirm their dignity, to tell them that they have worth. We could have never gotten to know these kids had we not been in their community. All this to say that tonight I felt alive by being involved in community. Sometimes for me it seems easier to withdraw myself and not be known but when we are involved with people, though it’s sometimes hard, we taste life in its richest form.

Extreme Smiling all the rave!

This means War

Last night we went and sat on the steps of the Mississippi state capitol building. We were on our way home from yet another minor league baseball game and decided that it was time to see the capitol building up close. The building looks very similar to the one in my home state of Idaho. We read over the four-sided monument out front dedicated to the women of the confederacy. Then as we tried to comprehend the history of the civil war, a small civil war broke out right before our very eyes. For over month now we have been at war with an army. This army travels small, sending out only one or two soldiers at a time. They move fast and force you to attack quickly, or else face the possibility of trying to get to sleep at night knowing that you missed your chance (and now you have risked a possible ambush by the enemy in your sleep). The enemy I speak of are the cockroaches or "water bugs" that have hunted us since our arrival-at one point going so far as to jump from the ceiling onto Emily’s arm causing her to scream a scream so loud that my hearing is just now recovering 3 weeks later. As we gazed upon that Southern facing capitol building, the enemy made an appearance. We soon became aware that we were surrounded. But for some reason the fear normally associated with the sighting of a rogue enemy was not in me. I drew my weapon, a single thong sandal from my foot, and immediately went on the offensive. The roaches, surprised by my lack of fear, tried to retreat-but with no good hiding places were forced to run around in circles or squeeze into small cracks. Bam! Slap! went my sandal, dropping enemies left and right until I could see no more. Then, just as we were heading for the car, I spotted another on the liberty bell replica. I moved quickly knowing that I had to make the most of this opportunity. GONG rang the bell, and the battle was over for this night.

All humor aside, we were amazed at the continued representation of the confederate mindset here in MS. The capitol was built to face South in direct defiance to the North, and the confederate flag is still in the upper left hand corner of the Mississippi state flag. Attempts to change the flag are continually voted down even as recently as last year.

We’ve had a good week. Our summer camp is winding down with only 3 days remaining. Wednesday night we will have a closing ceremony for the kids and their parents. Our class will perform the dance we have been working on for the last month. We had a practice performance on Friday and both Emily and I got a little emotional as we watched the other classes perform their dances. We’ve become attached to all the kids and are sad that camp is almost over.

On Wednesday evening we went to swimming lessons with Jimmy and Cathy, two of our campers. Cathy is 4 and her brother Jimmy is 6. Cathy is in our kindergarten class and has become very attached to us, especially Emily. At swimming lessons she kept a steady eye on Emily to make sure she was watching. We went out to dinner with the kids and their Mom Felicia afterwards.
On Thursday we went to another campers little league baseball game. The kids are so happy that we come to these events and it is a joy for us to be a part of their lives.

We had a meeting this week with Elizabeth from the Perkins Center where we work, to discuss what was next for us after camp ended. As Emily mentioned last week, she has applied to work for Americorps in a local elementary school. We are still waiting to hear back from them. I will be helping to run and organize a youth conference that will be held at the center during the first week of August. We are expecting 200 teenagers from all over the country to attend. Emily and I have been placed in charge of evening activities and are looking into doing a late night basketball tournament. I will also be running an after school program throughout the school year. I’m really excited about this. We will tutor kids and help them with their homework. I will also be able to go into the schools on a weekly basis and visit the kids.
Thanks for reading
Johnny

Blogs are taking over the World!!!!!

My good friend Jerrod back in Porltand wrote a nice blog about us on his blog page. Check it out at
http://pipeandbeer.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the shout out Jerrod!

"I cant be stopped out here on the black top"

A picture of the courts behind our house and a picture from our Vicksburg field trip a few weeks ago. We were singing a song that invloves alot of clapping, stomping and yelling in a memorial building to civil war soldiers.

An Update From Emily

Another week has gone by in the magnolia state! We are increasingly becoming accustomed to the slower pace of southern life and to the community atmosphere in our area. Though we daily play Johnny's game of "if we had one night in Portland what would we do," I truly am in my element working with these amazing kids. We are slowly feeling more acceptance from the local junior interns and staff that we work with, the guys especially are starting to really attach to johnny. He taught the kids a three part round song in chapel that they decided would be our closing song at the end of the year performance. Johnny has also made four square the hottest trend, attracting long lines of kids and counselors for competitive games under the hot sun. Our week was packed with swimming, dance practice (Johnny's favorite time to shine), a zoo train ride, field trip to the movies, and three different ball games (including church softball where we lost 12 to 13, a campers little league baseball game, and another date night watching our minor league team the Mississippi Braves lose). It was firework night last night at the Braves game so we rushed out to lay in the parking lot directly under the explosions, hearing shells drop all around us. We then made our first much anticipated visit to The Waffle House where we feasted on waffles, hash browns, eggs, toast and grits, all for six dollars. It was a humorously eerie experience when johnny complimented our efficient backwoods waitress and she proudly stated she had been there for over 8 years, and also when I overheard a fellow patron being asked how she was doing she replied "well it's been downhill so far." We'll definitely be back to to the waffle house.
It's looking like I may do a year of Americorps here in West Jackson. The opportunity has arose to be full time in a Jackson public elementary school doing one on one tutoring and working with an after school program. The public schools in our area are almost 100% black and they see creating more diversity as a positive influence for the children. The need for tutoring is vast and there is a chance I could be placed in one of the poorest performing schools just blocks from where we live. I love the idea of working in my community with local children, and earning a scholarship for school upon completion. I could also work with the Perkins Center Summer Program next summer as part of my Americorps service. Johnny could then afford to be a full-time year long volunteer intern for the Perkins organization if I am making a little money. I would need to start August first which doesn't leave much time to decide.
We have been led this far and look forward to see what unfolds next.
Thanks for Reading!

Emily

Comment Update

I adjusted the comment function so anyone can leave a comment without having to sign up for an account. When you click on comment choose Anonymous as your identity. Thanks for commenting and checking the blog. Emily will be posting her first update this weekend so stay tuned.
Johnny

Happy Birthday Mrs. Emily!!

Little four year old Cathy realized that Emily wasn't going to have a birthday cake so she told her mom and the next day brought one in.

Another week has come and gone here in Jackson. The weather has been heating up and the humidity makes it feel even warmer. Yesterday I was sitting outside checking kids in as they arrived for camp at 7:30am, by 8:30 i felt like i needed a shower. This week Emily and i were in charge of leading morning chapel with the kids. I pulled out the guitar and taught the kids a few new tunes that they seemed to like.
Every week on Friday we take a field trip. Last week we visited the civil war battlefield at Vicksburg which was really interesting for me but the kids didn't seem to take interest except when we watched a live reenactment of a cannon being loaded and fired. Yesterday our field trip was to the zoo which is actually located about 2 miles away in our neighborhood. We had a blast watching monkey's swing and tigers roar but the highlight for the kids was when we came upon a urinating elephant. At one point near the end our class was forced into a small bathroom because an animal had gotten loose in the area we were in. After it was over the zoo workers told us that they pulled us aside not because of the danger of the animal but because they didn't want our kids to be shot with a tranquilizer dart.
We celebrated Emily's 24th birthday on Wednesday. Cathy, one of our students, brought in a cake with "Happy Birthday Mrs. Emily" written on it. It was very sweet of her.
John Perkins has been home for the last 2 weeks and we've been enjoying getting some time with him. We offered to pick him up from the airport last week and had a good talk with him on our drive home. He is currently in Illinois at a music festival called Cornerstone where he will speak to a crowd of 20,000 people.
Last weekend we were given tickets to see one of the two local minor league baseball teams play. It was fun to go out to the park and enjoy some summer ball even though the team doesn't seem to be very good. They got beat both nights.
Overall things are going well here. We are enjoying the kids at the camp more and more as we get to know them.
thanks to all who check this blog and are interested in what were up to. If you have any questions or comments please email us. johnny.bertram@gmail.com
shalom
Johnny

Camp Photos

Damien (left) and his Uncle Jeremiah (right) enjoy snowcones from the snack shack


We've been working on our "end of year" dance routine for the parents night bbq. Think Napolean Dynamite

more zoo fun