Credentials on the wall do not make you a decent human being.
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In a recent post I took issue with the declaration that this is the greatest nation in the history of the world (or maybe the phrase was "that the world has ever known", whatever).
I'll back that up.
The US spends less on infrastructure than any other developed nation, by far. Other nations spend three to five times as much.
Our dams, roads, and bridges are deteriorating.
Generating plants of all kinds are aging and inefficient, and we aren't seriously considering the development of alternate sources of energy.
Railroads are falling apart. We have no high speed rail. Every time it comes up, it's stomped down. In Europe, you can get anywhere you have to go by train and bus, quickly and cheaply, and even in Asia trains are efficient. And fast.
All of our materials are transported all the way across the continent by truck! That's incredibly inefficient, given how little one truck can carry, the amount of gasoline it requires to do it, and the amount of additional wear on the roads. Trains can do it quickly and cheaply, with trucks used only for local delivery.
We may have good doctors and hospitals, and medical research, but only if you are rich. The average citizen can't afford decent medical care. And even if you can afford it, many treatments and options available in the rest of the world aren't allowed here.
We don't take care of our elderly. It's a scandal the way we turn our backs on them.
All we're really good at is making money and waging war. And the top 1% makes all the money while the bottom 50% does all the dying.
This is not "great".
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I have enormous admiration for the Japanese people. In all they've been through, the devastation, the dislocation, note that there has been no looting. None. A shortage of food? Rather than grab and run, they share. Looting from destroyed homes and stores? They have actually gathered salvageable bits and pieces and put them in small bins in reclamation centers, where people can go and look for their belongings and claim them. They have centers where people are cleaning found photographs and then posting them on a bulletin board so people can find them. People stand very patiently in long lines, waiting for food distribution. No pushing, crowding, or shoving.
And then there are the people who volunteered to work in the damaged reactors, with the certainty of early death, but no promise of reward beyond the knowledge that they are helping the country and their people. I can't imagine that anywhere else.
The Japanese people are working together for the good of all, and they don't seem to be aware there is any other way to act.
(Yeah, ok, I know about what they did in China, and in WWII, and whatever else "Jap Haters" want to bring up, which is also an outgrowth of the culture. Go away.)
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Every single time I have gone north to the old house, The Hairless Hunk has seen me, even if I didn't see him. It's getting creepy.
I drive past his house on the way to my house, and I always automatically look to see if he's working in the yard, or if his vehicle is there. Mostly I don't see him --- but he always sees me. Often he passes going the opposite direction on the road. It's weird.
Last Tuesday, I took the tax documents to Piper's office in the village, but I didn't go to the old house, which is 2 miles farther north. I was in the village, in Piper's office, then walking with Piper up the street a little less than a block to the diner, then back down to my car outside Piper's office, then I left to head back south.
The next day, I got an email from THH that he'd seen me in the village!
It's like he has a GPS tracker on me or something. ESP. Strange.
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I guess everyone has heard by now about the young woman who drove her car, with her four children in it, off a boat ramp and into the Hudson River in N3wburgh, NY, last Tuesday evening. The oldest of the four kids was 10, and he managed to get out of the sinking car and swam to shore.
And people are wondering why?
She was 25 years old (although I've also heard 24). The oldest of her four children was 10. That means she was pregnant at 14 (or 13), which means she likely has no education, training, or skills to support herself and her children. She was married to the father of her youngest three, but I gather he was not living with her. She had recently moved to N3wburgh, into an apartment in a slummy area of God-forsaken N3wburgh (if you've ever been there, you'd know what I mean. The newspaper describes it as a "humble river city").
According to neighbors, she was a good mother, and had a job. There was apparently a "domestic dispute" that evening. She finally had confirmation that her husband was not only cheating on her, but had been a serial cheater all along.
This is speculation, but I think I can figure it out. The husband had probably left her wherever they had lived and "went north" to find work, so he could support her and the children. That happens a lot. She probably moved to N3wburgh because she didn't like the separation. He'd been able to hide the girlfriend(s), but now he couldn't. He didn't want to move in with her. She suddenly realized that she couldn't count on him any longer.
What else is there to understand? Her world collapsed and she could see no other possibilities.
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6 comments:
THH has seen your car, not so much you. Thats what I think.
Me, car, whatever - he always knows when I'm in the area.
"Suicide is what happens when your ability to cope is exceeded by your pain." Who knows what else she'd been dealing with? But why couldn't she have let the kids out of the car first?!?
I understand completely why she didn't let the kids out. There is no SPCA or kitty retirement home for children.
When everyone has let her down, when the kids would end up with their father (and the eldest has no father), and perhaps the father has said something like that he wished they'd never been born, or if the kids would end up in foster care, and we know what the chances are of finding a good home in that system, what else do you do? Especially if you are religious? You take them with you to A Better Place. Even if that's not where you go, they will be better off.
I think the more a mother loves her children, and the more she believes in Heaven, and the less faith she has in the rest of humanity, the more likely she is to want to all go together.
You can't leave your children out in the cold to an uncertain and likely harsh future, any more than you'd drop a beloved pet off at the edge of the woods.
In my 20s the only thing that kept me alive sometimes was my cat Smokey. No one could care for her or love her the way I did, and luckily, I didn't believe in Heaven.
I just had to go hug my kid and tell him how much I love him!
Unfortunately, I don't believe in Heaven either, or I'd wish that woman would go there with her three children. That's no way to live. I understand why she did what she did. I hope the bastard father feels this weighing on him for the rest of his life. Men can be such scum sometimes.
In response to Becs, it was obvious that the life she saw for her children was far worse than the fate she gave them - whether the rest of us think it's right or wrong. I feel horrible for the 10 year old who got out. Who knows what horrible existence that poor child will have to live now. And the weight of the memory of his mother trying to kill him? Wow.
I'm going to keep the rest of what I think about the situation to myself.
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