Greetings to my Neighbors, friends, and soon-to-be friends:
My name is Kathleen Rand Reed and until Monday, January 17,2011 I lived at 1923 2nd Street, NW in the corner house on 2nd and Thomas Streets. As many of you know the house was completely consumed by a 2-alarm fire and was devastating both to me and the heart of the Bloomingdale and LeDroit community. You can view just how intense the fire was by the video from the DC Fire Department's website http://www.dcfd.com and should you visit the website after January 2011, it will be archived under January 2011.
For fifteen years, since 1996, I both lived there and had my small business as an anthropologist and business advisor. Fortunately, when this occurred, I was out for the day with my friend and neighbor, Chestivia Shoemaker, 133 Thomas Street, NW, (The Pink House) a long-time B'dale resident.
As you can only imagine, losing everything, i.e., books, files, equipment, household goods, clothes, --just everything -- is overwhelming. However, what you ARE left with is love of neighbors and community, your aliveness and humanity and a fierce determination to rise from the ashes --like the Phoenix -- to recover and once again become or remain the neighbor and friend your neighbors and community have known you to be.
Chestivia provided that first night's restful but fitful sleep in a safe, warm and loving environment -- her home. That's where I am bunking for a while these few weeks. This past week John Salatti, ANC Commissioner, 5C04, and Robert Vinson Brannum, President BCA, have both provided an incredible amount of comfort, support and ongoing friendship, as have my neighbors, as they have asked through John and Robert and the listserv, emails etc. -- WHAT CAN WE DO? In a few days, I will be in a physical and mental position to begin to answer that question. Beleieve me, it takes a minute to just go through the reorganizing. That is, what one has to do -- reorganize, but organize nonetheless.
Right now, I am doing what I have always done; sitting with manila file folders, hanging files, file boxes, pens, a borrowed computer (e-mails), my cell phone, and my internet account, and setting priorities for each step toward recovery. As I began these arduous and seemingly impossible tasks, I realized how vulnerable we are as individuals, but how resilient we can be as the "embrace of community" (as Salatti calls it) holds us together as a caring and supportive group of dedicated neighbors.
In honor of that spirit and through the online and digital world in which I have lived since I was in Silicon Valley, I am going to remain a Bloomingdalian but, for a while, in a different form. My "give back" to my fellow Bloomingdalians will be a sharing of my experiences from a position of not a "victim" but as a trained participant observer, as we say in anthropology. Periodically, you will receive posts here at the BCA website, and from the listserv and other social networking sites in our community. I will post as Kate Phoenix: Bloomingdale's Virtual Resident.
You will receive no sad, depressive, long rants of victimhood. Rather, as I interface with the social service agencies, the DC departments, the American Red Cross and a myriad of other points of discovery that each B'dale resident needs to have available in the case of any serious emergency. I will, in essence, give you the 411 in case of 911.
When the Iraq War started, the media, of which I have been a member for many years, "embedded" reporters for the "live-in-your-face/hear-the-bombs drop/see-the-flashes-of-light brutality of reality of that War. Think of me, at this point, as your community and neighborhood eyes and ears of imbeddedness in what has been called, "the system."
Already, I know, as I have shared with John and Robert, each resident, no matter whether property owner or tenant, needs to be listed in an ICE (In Case of Emergency) database held by the BCA or some other agreed upon entity. When a person is injured or nonresponsive, the first thing the police do is to review that person's cell phone for the ICE telephone numbers and their priority listings.
Several firemen were injured trying to locate me not knowing whether I was in the house or no. A call to the database would have put them in direct contact with me on my cell to let them know my status, at least to the extent of my answering the call. These and many more observations have been my experiences this past week as I have begun my new journey.
My email is katephoenixbvr@yahoo.com
Any mail can be sent to Kathleen Rand Reed, 133 Thomas Street, NW Washington, DC 20001 at Chestivia Shoemaker's house.
I look forward to turning this tragedy into a way of a WISH: working, inquiring, sharing and healing -- WISH...This next phase of my life's journey, will be as a dedicated Bloomingdalian and with my apologies to State Farm, " Like a good neighbor, Kate Phoenix will be here! Thanks and let me hear from you....
Kate Reed/Kate Phoenix
katephoenixbvr@yahoo.com
