What is going on in the world today?? A question that is way easier asked than answered. As I sit at my dining room table, surrounded by unaddressed thank you notes and blank sheets of stationary just screaming to be inked, the three remaining pieces of my large Pizza Hut Supreme Pizza, my second glass of wine in hand and I immediately am regreting switching to the cheaper bottle. What a girl to do when she runs out of the Bogle Merlot?? Start in on the Livingston, apparently. Nevertheless, the warm tinge of rouge on my throat and the sound of summer rain on the porch brings me back home, to a place where I can be truly thankful for what I have and the people who surround me. Best friends, incredible family, endless opportunities for my future, and TONS of untold delights for my life all lay right in front of my eyes. And yet, there is so much more going on in the world at right this second.
What are these things otuside of my seemingly euphoric reality? Turn on CNN and you will see. Natalie Holloway's "murderer who got away" is arrested for charges of killing a young 21 year old. Funny how it happens to be 5 years to the day that Ms. Holloway's life was taken. Not so coincidential, if you ask me. THE Blanch Deverough suffered a stroke and died early this morning. Who would have thought that the sexy, perpetual "50something" would ever leave us? I grew up watching the Golden Girls and it's funny to think how I was so naive and didn't catch all of the sexual innuendos and undertones. Funny how time changes perspective, isn't it? Obama met with the governor of Arizona to discuss the most bogus bill passed since No Child Left Behind (please allow the state-to-national comparison). The law opens the doors for abuse of power via racial profiling and what is even scarier than the Arizona legislature passing this bill in the first place is that it creates great potential for 50 other states to follow suit. This has the same consequences as the Texas textbook rewriting controversy. Replacing "slavetrade" with North Atlantic Triangle and "Imperialism" with Expansionism wipes out two posts of US history that continue to shape our society, inculcate of our youth to conform to norms and abide by the status quo. It doesn't help that a huge percentage of textbooks in the nation come out of the Texas manufacturing plants. So what happens when the 18 year old Texan goes to college outside of her state only to find words like "slave trade" and "imperialism" to which she has never been exposed! The ripple effect is the issue here--more so than the actual event
The same goes for this sickening oil slick spreading millions of gallons across our ocean. I am watching the live camera right now of what is hapening down under and my jaw literally just drops. This is actually happening. Right now, this pump is shooting oil resembling a rocket ship. Will this cap fix it? No, it won't. Because the point of the cap isnt to fix the problem--it is to curb it until August when the relief wells are expected to be dug. August. It's June 3rd and while I hate to wish away the weeks of sweet summer and sunshine, August cannot come quick enough. This isn't going to stop once the oil stops flowing. Wildlife is dead. Livelihoods are destroyed. No check from BP can fix the intangibles that have been forever affected by this "slip up". Carvel was right--this isn't an "incident", this is a catastrophe and should be treated as such by everyone involved. I have never really had anything that I seriously considered effecting my children's generation. Of course, September 11th, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, global warming--these are all really important, life changing things that I obviously think about and I am aware that they will affect future generations. But for some reason, this spewing oil is bothering me more so than any other catastrophe I have experienced. Is it the fact that I can watch what is happening on the TV? Maybe. Is it because I hear the testimonies of fisherman and "ordinary" people who have lost everything? Perhaps, but not so much because the personal recollections are heard in other events too. This spill is physically apparent, every day. We have a countdown and a timeline of how much over how many days we are losing. And if this cap doesn't help, we can only keep moving down the line of plans to B, C, D, etc... But all of the time it takes to move down this ladder we are killing our environment, people, animals, careers, trust in government and companies, money is being lost. Those who think they are not affected are dead wrong (pun intended). This is a huge deal and it will never go away. After all of the tar and oil is cleared up, the problem persists.
And here I find myself, still among my stationary and ink pens, wine glass (now empty) and purple lips from the cheap elixer that has certainly made my warm bed and PJs sound way more appealing than usual. And so I will go to bed, and wake up in the morning to a hot shower, hot pot of coffee and PB& J toast, hope that the fire alarm won't go off from the still ingering burnt plastic on our front burner, and then spend the next 8 hours at work. Nothing out of my ordinary routine on tomorrow's agenda--but the world outside continues to change paths and take on new faces. It is our job as humans to keep up, because if we don't we will become blind to the changes in our own routines that are perpetually caused by the disarray of the world around us.
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