I WANT TO PAY ATTENTION TO WORLD AVOIDS BUT THE PICTURES ARE BETTER IN US WEEKLY
I got excellent news today from Husband. The California trip is back on. We are still only going overnight and not for the three nights originally planned, but I am excited nonetheless. Now I just have to call Sister and have her pick me up some Ambien so I can sleep on the plane. I can not stay awake on airplanes because I am afraid of flying (well, not so much flying but crash landing. Flying is just fine) and if I am awake on the plane, my imagination, which is overactive and predisposed to melodrama under the best circumstances, will analyze every noise and bump until I am nothing more than a jumble of frayed nerves. By the time we land, Husband’s shoulder will be bruised and he will no longer think my fear of flying is “cute.” So, I sleep on planes, blissfully unaware of anything but open skies.
I sort of like being blissfully unaware of things sometimes. I have stopped reading very much about the war in Iraq for the same reasons I sleep on planes. I am not sticking my head in the sand – I know we are immersed in a losing war with no hope of a quick withdrawal – but after writing letters to my congressional representatives, campaigning for folks who are anti-war and giving money and supplies to organizations promising to support the troops, I have come to the conclusion that no one listens to me or really cares how I feel about the war. Reading daily about how many soldiers have died does nothing but make me more upset and only increases my frustration.
But today some of that started to change. (Not my distain for the “rah-rah, let’s march on Washington” folks, that is pretty much firmly entrenched in my being). To start with, while I was mindlessly working on the New York Times crossword puzzle during my subway ride (ok, I lied, it was not mindless – today was particularly hard for a Tuesday) I noticed an article that mentioned how some of the bloodiest fighting has recently taken place in Iraq. My eyes were drawn in and I continued reading the paper until I shook with rage at not just the happenings in Iraq but also Darfur.
Perhaps I should have been paying more attention to something besides the Madonna adoption controversy, but I probably can't sustain interest.
3 comments:
As you already said, there isn't much you can do about it right now, so just concentrate on what is useful.
I hope you know it was not your fault. And let me find out that while it's true that no one at a NYAAF conference might know your name, they do know about Haven Coalition - in an almost mythic way. So as you realise that one act, turning off the phone for a night, impacted one person, remember that being a part of the tenacious band of volunteers that is Haven Coalition you are creating something that is a powerful force for good in the pro-choice world – an organisation that has helped hundreds of low income women forced to travel to NYC to obtain second trimester abortions, but also an organisation that is an inspiration to the people who are working in clinics, and lobbying congress, and despairing that apathy will bring about the ultimate destruction of what little is left of abortion access in the US.
‘Nuff said.
(I meant POINT out, not FIND out)
Post a Comment