Xavier Bishop

FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 2008
5:35 a.m.: The cell phone alarm chimes quietly. I retrieve it from the nightstand and draw it close to my face.
It’s always my first decision of the day: whether to Dismiss the alarm and get out of bed or take the 10 Minute Snooze. I press the side wheel on the phone […]

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You know, 8 hours is a significant amount of time. It’s one-third of an entire day.  As a workday 8 hours appears to be ample time to get things done. But I figured out that on any given workday roughly 70 percent of my time is spent meeting with someone in one of two ways: […]

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Two long breaths. Then 30 rapid compressions.
Two long breaths. Then 30 rapid compressions.

Anyone past the age of thirty knows that most phone calls you receive at two o’clock in the morning aren’t likely to bear good news.
And so it was for me when my phone rang bedside and I reached over to see […]

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I finally got around to doing something I’ve been meaning to do for more than two years. No, I didn’t give up being a vegetarian.  I went to see a doctor.
 
This may not seem like a big deal for many of you but like so many other things, in the aftermath of Katrina I’ve been putting […]

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Today I decided to alter my routine at the gym and run on the treadmill. After about 20 minutes of exercising it occurred to me, there’s a lot about being on the treadmill that reminds me of life after Hurricane Katrina. 
 
A treadmill is little more than a belt that turns repeatedly; a continuous loop […]

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Sometimes just when it seems like things can’t get any worse, they do. We’ve all experienced that before.  But oftentimes if we look beneath the sadness, we’ll find a message that help’s to get us through. 
 
That was the case yesterday when, on top of a general feeling I had that nothing was going well, I […]

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It was Tuesday, July 5, my first day as mayor. I awakened early that morning to watch the news. A hurricane that had formed in the Atlantic was now in the Gulf of Mexico and would likely make landfall tomorrow.  The weatherman said depending on the intensity of the storm and its proximity to Moss […]

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“Fire Chief: Water Pressure Hampers Fire Fighting”
 
I freaked out when I read the headline in the morning newspaper, and nearly went ballistic when I read the story that followed.
 
The story reported that low water pressure hampered our fire department’s ability to fight two house fires. In fact, the story suggested the homes might have been […]

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