NOLA UPDATE

My fellow Common Groundlings:

I wanted to give you an update on how the Gut Check anthology is coming along.

Last month I sent out a call to contribute to every Common Ground volunteer I had an email address for. In addition to the contacts I gathered during my time in New Orleans, I picked up a handful of other addresses from a number of you. All told, I had about 55 names at my disposal.

While I would’ve loved a 100% response rate, I was grateful that nearly half of you responded with encouraging words and enthusiastic vows to contribute to the project.

As of today, I’ve received submissions from 13 of you. The list of contributors includes:

—Tufts Alexi
—Missouri Peter
—Knoxville Quinten
—UCLA Pooja
—North Carolina Josh
—Miami Thom
—Portland Rob
—Memphis Julia
—Tufts Jonathan
—Minnesota Robert
—Massachusetts Johanna
—SoCal Jackson
—Tufts Neel

Plus, I’ve got commitments to contribute from another 13 people, including:

—Austin Thom
—Arizona Jeremy
—Chicago Jess
—Chicago Ryan
—Krystle Ramos
—Marin Doug
—New York Zeke
—Princeton Matt
—Massachusetts Stephanie
—St. Louis Nick
—St. Louis Cherie
—Texas Jesse
—Chicago Gio

In addition to these contributors, I’ve written a few pieces myself. I’ve transcribed a fascinating chat I had with Wendell, a Lower 9th resident who shared his Katrina story with me. I’ve transcribed an inspiring speech Malik gave to an incoming group of volunteers. And I’m including a number of conversations I have on video for a section I’m calling “Random Acts of Conversation.” (I found it fascinating how no matter where you were, there always seemed to be the imminent possibility that an interesting conversation—often with a stranger—might break out. Luckily I recorded many such conversations.)

Now for the latest developments…

When I originally contacted most of you I told you I needed your contributions by today, August 22nd, as I intended to have the book designed, edited and off to the printer as close to Aug. 29th as possible. (Since the 29th is, as I'm sure you already know, the 2-year anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.)

Well, there’s been a slight change of plans.

Last week I found out about a Common Ground group on Facebook that consists of over 400 former volunteers. Which means I’ve now got access to EIGHT times more potential contributors than I had when I started this process.

So instead of having 25-30 people contributing, I’m hoping I can rally 100 or more current and former Common Ground volunteers to chime in with their perspective.

Thanks to this new discovery, I’ve decided to push everything back a month. (But no more than a month!)

Consequently, I’m now hoping to have all the contributions in by September 13th September 21st. Which should give me ample time to design and edit the book in time to send it off to the printer by the end of September.

On August 29th I will be sending out a mass email to the 500+ names in my address book pimping our soon-to-be-published anthology. After reading the submissions I’ve received thus far I’m absolutely convinced that we’ll be producing a book that we can all be proud of.

So if you were on the fence, here’s your chance to dive in. And for those of you who vowed to contribute but haven’t gotten around to writing down your thoughts yet, you now have another 3 weeks to pull it off.

If you’re still having trouble focusing on what exactly to write about, I strongly suggest you simply go here and answer some of the questions I’ve posed.

And if you want to find out more details about what I have in mind for this project you can read my initial call for contributions here.

Thanks for your time. You will NOT be sorry you took the time to do this. Write on!

In solidarity,

Bob