Dave Land wrote:
On Sep 4, 2005, at 11:51 PM, Robert Seeberger wrote:
Granted, I live in this region. Geographically, I share the same type
of enviroment as the effected people. I have travelled through all
those places, and have stayed in many of them. I've known people from
these areas all my life. I share the same danger they do, and it could
have easily been me. I probably should care more than most of you in
the sense that it is more personal for me.
Perhaps better for another thread, but I have always had a problem with
this. People are people and suffering is suffering: why does there always
have to be a local angle? This strikes me as television thinking again.
I don't live on a tropical island, but the horror of the tsunami struck
me. I don't live in a flood plain, but the suffering in New Orleans
strikes me. I wasn't a dirt-poor indigenous Guatemalan during their
civil war, but I knew that we were alike enough in our humanity to move
me to fly all night then ride a bus through heavily-armed checkpoints to
Quetzaltenango to help them build houses... The point being, of course,
not how great I am for having done so, but that what makes us alike is
our humanity, and not our address or language or heritage.
But you're not on LOCAL mailing lists that have 20 messages a day
telling us, "Hey, I went to volunteer at place X, here's the routine for
doing THAT one" and feeling guilty that I have 3 kids that I'm the
primary caretaker for, preventing me from going out and doing any of
those volunteer jobs that I'd be perfectly capable of doing.
If Rob is on any similar mailing lists in Houston, it's gotta be hitting
him hard from all angles. Is he feeling guilty he hasn't been able to
get over to the Astrodome to lend a hand? Is he having to put in extra
work partly due to medical evacuees from New Orleans (I'm wondering if
I'm going to encounter any when I take my son to Brackenridge for a
follow-up later this week)?
I think Rob *is* getting hit harder right now for geographical reasons.
And that he's blaming geography for the apparent lack of intense
feeling about it. But it's just list dynamics, and we're all feeling
bad about it -- just not expressing it here, most of us, and not getting
hit with equal amounts of intensity about it. (I would be batshit
insane over it at this point if I hadn't gotten away from the media for
the weekend; my improved mental health can only help any hurricane
refugee I come in contact for the rest of the month, and I have no idea
if that number will be closer to 0 or 100.)
Julia
who should probably get caught up on reading before she adds much more
to any of these threads
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