Down Came the Rain

Our computer crashed at home, otherwise I would have posted sooner. I am very depressed, I feel the same way I felt after 9/11. A great tragedy has occured in the country where I live, but far enough away that I am not touched by it in my daily life. I go about my business, going to work, shopping, working out, maybe even a movie. All the while suffering and heartache and devastation rule an entire region on the other side of the country. And there is very little that I can do to help.

But it's not just the Gulf Coast. There is famine in Niger and surrounding West African countries, gang violence in Guatemala, massive flooding from rainstorms in Central China and hundreds of thousands of people still reeling from the tsunami in Southeast Asia. I realize there has always been and always will be somewhere in the world where people are starving, homeless, dying of preventable diseases and persecuted. I am extremely fortunate to have been born after the last World War and have not lost anyone in my inner circle to current military actions.

We have all seen selfless heroism and selfish criminality in the same block, the extremes of human nature on display. Most of the media has been concentrating on how long it took for the relief efforts to begin and the failures of beaurocracy. Since I have no personal knowledge or experience with disaster relief and were not there, I have tried to keep an open mind. It's been difficult to be a cheerleader for FEMA when the Times Picayune newspaper in New Orleans called for all of it's top officials to be fired in an open letter to President Bush.

Despite all of our faults, human and otherwise, in order to survive as a country, a community and a culture, we need to stop blaming and just get the job done. Maybe for me, that means making as big a donation as I can and just getting on with the living of my life. If you know of a way to do that and not feel guilty, let me know.