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July 07, 2005
little things today
like standing in the shower (before I knew Joe had turned the TV on) and thinking that something big/lifechanging/tragic is happening. Toweling off and just realizing that the TV is on...and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is "breaking news" even though I have no clue what it might be about. And then the sick freaked out shock that I was right. I didn't know how to tell anyone. It sounds too weird.
Standing in the elevator today after I was leaving a PR meeting. A man in the elevator with me had a television camera. I realized that he had just come from the British Consulate, who was in the same building. When I left the parking garage...another news crew was set up on the lawn.
Finding out that our friend Phil was safe, but not sure how on earth he was going to get home from work downtown without any buses or subways running. His girlfriend expressed her relief to me today--it sounded like how running through a sheet of water on a hot day must feel. I don't know how to explain--the waves of fear rolling away from her as she explained he was okay.
Wondering why some stupid kids movie (with Paul Giamatti making a monkey of himself) was on channel five instead of Reign of Fire (not that it was a particularly stellar flick but I rather liked it). I mean, why is a futuristic apocalpytic movie about dragons toasting up the earth a big deal? Then I saw that it was set in London.
Thinking about how it is when 37 people die (and 700 wounded) in a big, modern city that it sends waves of shock through the world but we don't really seem to bat an eye at the 25,000 civilians dead in the Iraq War, the 3.4 million people that died of AIDS in Africa in 2004 or even last month when 36 people died and hundreds were wounded in Ethiopia during protests of the country's allegedly rigged elections...I could just go on and on about other losses of life in tragic ways in places out of the way. The well-developed countries are outraged when something tragic happens to them but we are sort of immune, blind, unwilling to see...when it comes to human life in places that aren't on the same "level" as those same developed countries. Note that I am NOT minimalizing what happened in London--only that the media perspective skews things so wildly. Those other tragedies seem so minimal in comparison even though the loss of human life is in many cases far far greater. Why is one life worth more than any other? I find myself very saddened by it all.
Posted by crystallyn at July 7, 2005 11:15 PM
Comments
We can imagine being in London or Boston or New York on the subway. We can't imagine not having food or living in shack and without electricity. That's a different world and one that doesn't have anything to do with us.
We have won a lottery living the life we do.
I was watching "The Girl in the Cafe". More people died yesterday from starvation than in the attack. How many people die in Iraq from these types of attacks and we just go oh well!
I think life might be overwhelming if ever terror attack and unjustice would upset us.
My heart goes out to everyone who lost a loved one yesterday... in London and also in the rest of the world as well
Posted by: Paulette at July 8, 2005 12:13 PM
I ask that whenever something like this happens (yes, aloud, and in public...), and everyone looks at me like I'm some kind of monster.
What the hell????
Posted by: Shanna at July 10, 2005 04:36 PM