Jodi and I went down to Stanford tonight. We do this occasionally, to take a walk and maybe grab a cup of coffee. On our way back to the car, we saw a huge art piece sitting off on the side of the path. It was built from what looked like flotsam and jetsam – board, picture frames, window sills, you name it. Embedded in or on all of this were paintings and photos, and above all of it four panels of text. It was an exhibit meant to provoke thought about Hurricane Katrina, by a survivor of the disaster. Most of the text was her story, and she invited the viewer to leave a message in pen on the back of the exhibit. Her hope was to shed light on the answer to the question that was Katrina.
While Jodi and I read through the exhibit and examined the photos and paintings, some people came up from behind us to look. Some of them stayed, but at least half of them glanced and went on. One group of guys walked past, slowed, and stopped to figure out the exhibit. One of them walked to the title text board and read it quickly. “Oh,” he said, and the group walked on.
Has Katrina become such old hat already? I’d bet these are the same guys that can watch the same episode of “24” fifty times, but presented with a real disaster with real casualties and failures they have nothing to say. It’s the disaster we should all learn from, and if we have to be exposed to it over and over again we should at least never forget it. Jodi pointed out that the climate in this country – the attitude that disasters are what happen to other people and we should go on and just go shopping – is what leads to this kind of response. Nobody had to sacrifice for the wars after September 11th, and so nobody felt tied to that great national cause. That attitude, applied to the much greater disaster and loss of life in the Southeast, would seem to lead this kind of detachment from the catastrophe.
I’m not saying that everybody should have signed up to go to war, and I’m not saying that everybody should have packed up and gone to help in the Katrina relief effort. I am saying that as a nation, we have lost some more of that community spirit that ties one life to another, one loss to another. “Oh” is never an acceptable response to the personal outpouring of another who has lived to tell of a disaster from which none of us is really immune.
