Katrina
On a totally different train of thought …
I think I may be the only person I know who deliberately hides her head in the sand when the news comes on. Not just the TV news. I pretty much avoid most news every day. Ian fills me in on critical topics, I am embarrassed to say. (Honestly! I have a critical mind and a college degree and everything!) I have avoided reading a single word about Katrina and the human devastation she wrought. I can’t face the fact of families separated; children victimized in the absence of trusted loved ones; people crammed together, hungry and thirsty, grieving, ignored, neglected, forgotten. I eschew the news, the pictures, even the “feel-good” rescue stories that the media injects us with because they are like morphine; they are meant to make us forget all the pain that is being suffered right now.
But who am I to talk or blame others for ignoring or forgetting the wicked, unconscionable darkness of it all? I cling to my safety; to my warm, living, thriving son; to my husband who shields my eyes and ears from pictures and sounds that will break my heart and rattle around day and night inside my head. I cling to my mundane patterns and many joys and thank the universe for what I have.
I am moved to feel hatred and disdain for our government. I am moved to laughter that a Hollywood actor does more in one day to help the people of New Orleans than our President, the leader of our nation, the man we are supposed to be able to look to in our times of crisis. Where is our FDR? Our Kennedy? Remember what we heard from the Democrats in the last election? There are two Americas. It’s so clear.
It took nearly two weeks to break over me. I finally cried.
September 21, 2005 at 12:00 am
It’s hard to see, hear, deal with. But you know it’s good to get to that point as well. A lot of people will remember this when next they are faced with the lies of the Evil Troll.
We don’t get an FDR. We get an idiot who has to ask Ms. Rice if he can go to the potty during a meeting. I will be doing the Happy Dance ™ when he dies, no matter how long it takes. I don’t hate, really hate, many people. He’s on the short list.
September 22, 2005 at 4:38 am
I do not envy you the task of trying to find balance between this post and your last one. I think you might forgive youself a little over the doll considering the wonderful, loving, non-impoverished, dry, warm, functional life you have built for that beautiful boy of yours. Your a great Mom. There is no such thing as perfection in this case and anyone that says otherwise is delusional.
I am still crying over the catastrophe in New Orleans. Terrorist flying airplanes into buildings I can understand. They hate us. Knowing that New Orleans can’t handle greater than a category 3 hurricane and not evacuating when they know a cat 5 is on the way is unforgiveable. Not having the national guards who are trained for this on hand when we need them is even worse. How many helicopters could have been mobilize if they weren’t over “securing” Iraq? Oh, and how much more fucking proof does the adminstration need for global warming besides erroding coastlines, record hurricanes, and the increase in size of antarctica for the first time in recorded history? Riding the new “Bush Adminstration Amusement Park” ride “Horror, Terror, and Rage” is really getting me down. I hope history does right by this guy and analysis shows what a bungler he was.