(no subject)
Aug. 31st, 2005 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaHoping to hear that the following people are okay:
James Butler (New Orleans east) -- safely in North Carolina
Janice and David Liang (New Orleans east) -- have heard they are okay, not sure about their status
Billy and Melissa Holder and childlings (Chalmette) -- apparently safe in MS
Heidi Bayer-Tompkins (Manhattan Boulevard)
Angelle Arata (uptown)
Jamie Joy Gatto (uptown) -- safely in Houston
Things in my life are actually good at the moment. My appointment at Harvard has been extended through January and may become permanent. And tomorrow evening i leave on a four-day vacation with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lady_babalon. My home life and social life and projects and relationships are happy and stable and on the rise.
It is so odd to have these good things juxtaposed with the absolute terror of the situation in New Orleans, and survivor's guilt (there's a lot of that floating around in the household right now). Of not knowing whether all of my friends and acquaintances made it through okay.
I'm particularly annoyed by prejudicial coverage in the news. Not just the "black people 'loot,' white people 'find'" dichotomy much commented on, but this sensationalism about looters ganging up outside Children's Hospital and trying to break in. There's no indication that anyone knows why people were really there outside the hospital, but i can imagine "legitimate" reasons they would be there -- they may well have been people seeking shelter, food, necessary medicine, information on family members. Maybe they weren't. But it underscores the idea i wrote about recently of "drug addicts" as people so subhumanly degenerate they will OMG attack a children's hospital. So there's a news story and suddenly i'm reading vicious comments that people hope others will "off one another" or be taken out by SWAT teams or just die. And i'm convinced that there is a deeply racist core at the heart of all this sentiment.
James Butler (New Orleans east) -- safely in North Carolina
Janice and David Liang (New Orleans east) -- have heard they are okay, not sure about their status
Billy and Melissa Holder and childlings (Chalmette) -- apparently safe in MS
Heidi Bayer-Tompkins (Manhattan Boulevard)
Angelle Arata (uptown)
Jamie Joy Gatto (uptown) -- safely in Houston
Things in my life are actually good at the moment. My appointment at Harvard has been extended through January and may become permanent. And tomorrow evening i leave on a four-day vacation with
lady_babalon. My home life and social life and projects and relationships are happy and stable and on the rise.It is so odd to have these good things juxtaposed with the absolute terror of the situation in New Orleans, and survivor's guilt (there's a lot of that floating around in the household right now). Of not knowing whether all of my friends and acquaintances made it through okay.
I'm particularly annoyed by prejudicial coverage in the news. Not just the "black people 'loot,' white people 'find'" dichotomy much commented on, but this sensationalism about looters ganging up outside Children's Hospital and trying to break in. There's no indication that anyone knows why people were really there outside the hospital, but i can imagine "legitimate" reasons they would be there -- they may well have been people seeking shelter, food, necessary medicine, information on family members. Maybe they weren't. But it underscores the idea i wrote about recently of "drug addicts" as people so subhumanly degenerate they will OMG attack a children's hospital. So there's a news story and suddenly i'm reading vicious comments that people hope others will "off one another" or be taken out by SWAT teams or just die. And i'm convinced that there is a deeply racist core at the heart of all this sentiment.
