silent disaster

The East Village is under nine more inches of snow today.  Colton is home from pre-school, completely upending my day.  I have recycling bags outside that include Christmas wrapping paper because it's been that long since they picked up recycling.  To add insult to injury, our oil burner is down and the building has no heat or hot water.

New York really freaked out after our December blizzard.  Yes, there were people trying to get on airplanes.  Yes, there were people trying to get to work in an effort to keep the economy (both their own and the larger one) running.  Yes, there were people who died because of the inability to access emergency medical care.  All these reasons to cry out to city leaders are absolutely legitimate and, in these ways, the response was inexcusable.  Then there were many who were simply annoyed, inconvenienced, and looking for one more thing to be pissed off about.  I'm one of those people.  The storm delayed my ability to get the rest of my family out of town so I could enjoy a couple days of much-needed solace at home.  For those of us for whom the storm did not endanger our lives or our checkbooks (it was the two days after Christmas, schools were closed anyway, many of us don't even own cars, I saved money by missing the after-Christmas sales), I can't put my finger on what the big deal was.  Lack of control?  Lack of expected access to resources?  An outlet for holiday agita?  For me the answers are: yes, yes, and yes.

A friend of mine, who is fantastically poetic and tends to have a much more positive outlook than I do, reflected on the storm as a "silent, but beautiful disaster".  For those of us who did have the ability, that we may not have taken, to sit back with a cup of tea and enjoy the show, an opportunity lost.  (I will also say that this friend somehow rode her bicycle across the Williamsburg Bridge the day after the storm, which demonstrates that she has a much heartier constitution than I do.)

City officials seem to have responded much more efficiently to last night's storm after the city council conducted a hearing on the shortfalls of last month's storm recovery and enacted a new emergency declaration policy.  Public school is on today and very few transit delays are being reported.  Mayor Bloomberg is facing public criticism for the fact he may have been in Bermuda while the first storm loomed, returning to New York late in the day of the 26th.

Meanwhile, today is the one year anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti.  How much have you kept up with the situation there since the media and fundraising fervor died down?  I've only followed the broad strokes which I've largely been fed by the media and NGO's I follow on Facebook: rescue efforts, housing, cholera, political strife.  I've held a particular interest in the plight of HIV patients and their inability to receive their drugs, or even access condoms.  Natural disasters do not cease a person's basic need for sex.

It does seem we always feel this guilt of not keeping up with the long-term aftermath of human disaster: the tsunami, New Orleans, were there real changes to mining safety policies in West Virginia and Chile?  I don't know how to answer for my ignorance, personally.  I'm busy to the point of being crazed most of the time.  The human disasters in my immediate community require my focus and attention.  Suffering is relative.  I mean, did I mention they haven't picked up my recycling in three weeks?!

So, today, check out this interactive feature on the NY Times website, which does a brilliant job of presenting images from Haiti and giving a consolidated overview of what has happened and what is happening now.  It's not pretty, and it's not terribly hopeful.  I bet you knew that.