Is It Worth It?

If you're wondering where this question comes from, you can start by reading things like this:

http://motherjones.com/rights-stuff/2010/07/bp-cleanup-women-oil-wrestling (which shows that toxic physical environments lead to toxic community environments)

http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/07/big-oil-makes-war-earth (which discusses the environmental/community hazards of oil consumption around the world)

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hnRc-COAnkwXl4pq3IR3420c9jQQD9H43N500 (about the oil spill in China-- also note that it's being cleaned up by people wearing latex gloves as their only safety gear against the oil)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch (the plastic problem in our oceans)

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf (keeping in mind that this IPCC report on Climate Change is 3 years out of date and a new one should be published soon).

This is what we're learning about our modern life, our energy consumption, our material consumption, our throw-away culture of disposable products. This is a partial glimpse at the net sum of who we are, what we do, what we buy, what we use, and what we think about while doing it. The main point is that while we are creating a toxic world, we are thinking about the ease of use, the sanitation of disposable items, the convenience and comfort of our preferences. We are not thinking about the overall outcomes.

I hold that this needs to change. Yes, individual changes are not enough. Yes, legislation is not enough. Yes, corporate environmental restrictions are not enough. Yes, alternative energies are not enough. Yes, there is no one thing that will ever be enough. I hear infuriating arguments that "we are addicted to oil" which translates into "this is too big to overcome so why bother?" or "the Pacific Gyre is already clogged with plastic" (it's too late to boycott plastic now) or other calls for inaction. The world is too big and the problem is too great. What could I possibly do about it?

So where do we start? Everywhere. Any place you are interested in starting, I can guarantee you there is already a group or many groups that have started there. Join them. And in the meantime, my little piece that I am adding today is a call for a change in mindset. I call this the "Is It Worth It?" Campaign.

The steps to take:

1) Spend a day or a week thinking "Is It Worth It?" for everything you do. Every decision you make no matter how minute-- the energy of the elevator versus taking the stairs; the use of a plastic grocery bag instead of canvas; the purchase of a disposable item versus a long-lasting one; the purchase of an item versus no purchase at all; the car versus a bike or bus; local fruit versus grown across the world; etc. Everything. I mean, everything. Your entire day should be filled with the moral quandary, is this thing I am doing right now worth it, given the long-term costs to the environment, the current costs to poor populations around the world, the health costs to humans and communities? Is It Worth It?

2) Live purposefully, making decisions accordingly.

The purpose of this campaign:

The purpose is not to fill your consciousness with guilt about who you are or how you live. Guilt can bog us down with self-doubt and criticism, and it's not your fault the world is how it is (which is not to say that you should not try to make positive changes anyway). The purpose is to pay attention to how you live and the large-scale costs/benefits of people living this way. I believe that as long as we (all people) live without consideration for the rest of the world and for tomorrow that these problems will continue to get worse. We need a change in mindset about the interconnectedness of our global economy. We need to think about what we do and why. We need to opt in to our energy consumption and purchases from third world nations as opposed to joining by default.

The Is It Worth It campaign is internal. This is about you. What do you think about your life? And what will you do next? The answers will be different for everybody. But we should at least have some answers.

So schedule a day (or a week) to ask yourself repeatedly, "Is It Worth It?"

What I have learned about complaining

I'm sick. The doctor says I have bronchitis but not pneumonia, and she expects it to get better over the next days, but if it lasts another week to come back. The good news is that I'm sick this week and not next week when I'll be taking my Comprehensive exam. The bad news is that I'm sick. This sucks.

Which is the perfect opening to my long-awaited (by me) post on complaining. I gave up complaining for Lent based on a somewhat silly conversation between me and my roommate Gina in which she reminded me how great my life is when I complained about stupid stuff. It's not that I even think complaining is an inherently bad thing. My giving up complaining for Lent called attention to a number of complaining-themed conversations among friends and friends-of-friends, and they all basically came back to the conclusion that there is a time and a place in which complaining is good, and there is a time and a place in which complaining is bad.

So let me oversimplify our realizations terribly.

Complaining = The Good

Complaining may have a purpose because it creates change for the better. Complaining may serve to build a sense of community among people with a shared problem. Complaining may let off steam. Complaining may be funny. Complaining may be ironic (example, allowing the complaint "oh my god, my friends keep calling I can't get anything done" to serve as a happy reminder to yourself that that's an awesome problem to have). Sometimes complaining just makes you feel better.

Complaining = The Bad

Complaining can become so habitual that it loses irony or humor or ability to make you or anyone else feel better or the ability to actually change things. Complaining can become the status quo and infuse a heavy dose of negativity into every aspect of life. Complaining can become the status quo in which you expect everything will always be bad and so lose the will to try and change things for the better. Complaining can make you lose track of what good is inherent in the things you are complaining about. Sometimes, complaining just makes you feel worse. And also those around you.

For me, that day when Gina laughingly reminded me of the good in my life (Me: All of these good things in my life are making my life complicated. Gina: You have such a hard life /Sarcasm. Me: I know, I'll shut up), it kind of hit me that complaining had moved from The Good to The Bad. I was not complaining to blow of steam, or figure out how to make things better, or to be funny or ironic or to bond with others with a shared problem. I was just bitching. And, kind of a lot. Gina and Michael are both kind enough to say they hadn't noticed an upswing in my negativity, but I could feel it. And it's no wonder. It has been a hard semester-- studying for Comps is hard. But I'm doing this because I love it. It is both a means (get my dissertation going, get my degree) and an end (learn lots of really awesome stuff that I'm interested in). And I have lots of other really great things going for me right now that I was not being sufficiently appreciative of (great husband, great roommate, great friends, great family, great job, great school, great apartment, great climate, great food, etc.). Complaining about the hard stuff had succeeded in focusing my attention only on the hard stuff.

And so I gave up complaining.

The funny thing is that when I'd tell people I'd given up complaining, they would usually take that as an opportunity to point out whenever I said anything negative (for roughly the first two conversations we had after my no complaining revelation-- then they'd forget and move on with their lives). But to me, that wasn't the point. Not to hold everything in. Not to never acknowledge sucky things. Not to act the persistently cheerful person. No, the point was to not dwell on the sucky things. To acknowledge and move on. To focus on the good things, or to find a solution to the things I wanted to complain about. The point was to redirect my attentions, and hopefully redirect my mood.

And it took about, oh, I don't know, a week or two. Early on into Lent, it stopped occurring to me to not complain (even in thought if not out loud) about things that suck. Pretty quickly, I just started doing that automatically. Pretty quickly, I started feeling more positive and better about my life in general. Pretty quickly, my complaining went back to The Good.

Meanwhile, Gina was reporting to me a large number of conversations she was having with people about complaining. Mostly because she was a member of a group of people bound together with a shared trial over which they had no control. I'll give this shared trial a clever euphemism. How about... Psyvelopmental Decology class? Yes, that has a nice ring to it. At any rate, I'm not in that class, but it's been hard going, and I have an enormous amount of respect for the people I know who have been fighting their way through this semester. One of their coping mechanisms has been shared complaining sessions, in which they complain for the purpose of 1) humor; 2) venting; 3) bonding over shared trial, and 4) venting.

These shared complaining sessions, I would argue as have they, are part of Complaining = The Good. It serves a purpose in that it makes them feel better and supports each other. But it has also given rise to plenty of conversations about Complaining = the Bad, including occasional worries that their shared complaining sessions might be dipping into the dark side of the complaining continuum. The overall outcome seems to be a heightened mindfulness about this social construct of complaining (did I mention we're all psychologists?) and what purposes it serves us, and when it serves no purpose, or poor purpose in our lives.

Gina related a story to me a few months ago that I think about pretty much every day. It hit me with such raw force and has really made me think a lot about having gratitude for the great things I have in my life. In a conversation about complaining, one of the Psyvelopmental Decology women related a story about hearing another woman complaining about her husband snoring, and about how she, a widow, would give her teeth to be able to hear her husband snore again. And my god, how is it that we can look at the great things in our lives, even when they're being annoying, and see only annoyances? Or perhaps more to the point, why can't we just acknowledge the annoyance but keep our focus on the greatness?

This is the line between Complaining = The Good and Complaining = The Bad.

So, I made a diagram some weeks ago. It was meant to be funny, but the more I look at it, the more I think it's actually kind of a handy little reminder about the purpose and usefulness of this construct called complaining. See below.

Also, my lungs feel like they're made of acid.

An Argument Against Education

So I finally got around to watching the episode of The Daily Show in which Jon Stewart parodies Glenn Beck.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-march-18-2010-gary-locke

I'd heard it was really funny, and it was. For a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is that they cut to clips of Beck to give examples of his ravings. My favorite clip is the one where Beck says that "progressivism" is always proof positive of a shift toward fascism. This is funny, because just an hour earlier, I was reading about how fascism has ALWAYS been coupled with an unconditional return to a country's beloved past traditions. Progress is NEVER aligned with fascism. Never. Fascists always kill the progressivists first.

Fascism is also aligned with anti-intellectualism, among other things. Fascism is not the only ideology that is aligned with anti-intellectualism, so please don't take this as an argument that the current American Right (exemplified by certain politicians, tea baggers and Fox News) are fascists. I think a lot of them are right-wing extremists, at least in rhetoric if not in actual violent actions. And a lot of their rhetoric certainly supports violent actions that may be / should be taken by others (against liberals or progressives). But I'm not making an argument here that this is fascism. I have a different argument to make.

I've been thinking about this for a long time. I'm a liberal. A progressive. I'm not a Democrat because I have a lot of problems with the Party (too conservative/corrupt/ineffective/stuffy; not working hard enough for social justice or the welfare of our people). As a PhD candidate, I think I can squarely align myself in the "intellectual" lot as well. I'm also a pacifist. I believe in social justice, and I believe that when you believe in something you should work for it. And so I have, and will do.

What bothers me is the idea of the "liberal elite" that is so villainized by the Right in our country. This idea is used by the Right's most powerful (and wealthy) to galvanize poor and middle-class conservatives to action against any legislation that helps people. "Well, the liberal elite want to force this on you, but we're not going to take it."

It took me years to figure out what they're actually saying, and why in the world they would say that.

What they are actually saying, "The stodgy intellectuals who have more education and better grammar than you (and who look down on you because you don't speak as well as them or have letters behind your name) think they are better than you. They are not better than you, but they think they are and they look down on you. They think they know what's best for you, but they don't. But even though they're wrong, they're going to try and force blahblahblah through, and they will change your life for the worse and still look down on you."

"Liberal elite."

"The educated people who look down on you."

Well, as previously noted, I am both a liberal and educated, and that definition of the liberal elite just doesn't ring true. "Looking down on others" is not one of our espoused values. Which is not to say that no liberal intellectuals looks down on others. Some of them do. But not because they're liberal intellectuals. No, it's just because they're jerks. And lots of people are jerks, from all walks of life. That's a wholly different thing.

But of course, it resonates. Who hasn't been pissed off at someone who looked down on you? No one, that's who. There is no dearth of people out there to look down on you. Everyone has had one. Probably many. We hate people who look down on us.

But you know what we hate more?

We hate the people who oppress us by owning corporate empires that create bad jobs with crap wages and spill toxins into our communities. And we hate having to work for them. And we do. Have. To work for them. Because they have the power and they have the money and they made the jobs and we don't all get to have PhD's, liberal elite. Some of us gotta work for a living. And what other options are there?

The most ingenious thing the powerful, wealthy, corporate-empire-owning people have ever done is to blame the liberal elite for the struggles of the people who work for the corporate empire. But let me tell you something. The CEO of Exxon? DuPont? Cargill? Lockheed-Martin? Merrill Lynch? Lehman Brothers? These are not members of the liberal elite. They are the powerful, wealthy Right. If not in actual person, then they are the ones paying the actual person you are listening to on Fox News or Capitol Hill going on about the dangers of the liberal elite.

This is ingenious because we have this belief in our country that education will set you free. You don't have to work the crap job if you get an education. And if that were really true, and everyone believed it, and then everyone went out and got an education (which they could do with all the tax money that's going to pay for people to get educated) (thanks to the liberal elite who believe in education), there would be nobody left to work for the toxic, dangerous, crap-wage paying corporate empires. And so the toxic, dangerous, crap-wage paying corporate empires would begin to crumble. The powerful, wealthy Right therefore have to dissuade people from becoming educated. And they do this by villainizing the educated.

The "liberal elite" are the cause of all your troubles, they say.

They will ruin this country and destroy your values, they say.

(Education is your ticket out of your crap job, you hear).

(But if you become educated, you will become the liberal elite, you think).

And so what do you do?

Going to Tuvalu

Hey. So, this afternoon I got the incredible news that a small grant I applied for has been funded. Basically, the grant covers a project I'll carry out this summer and fall to develop my dissertation research proposal on site in Tuvalu. My brain hasn't quite recovered from the shock of the grant being approved, so, while I want to explain to everyone what this means, I don't feel quite capable of it. Lucky for all of us, I've already explained what this means, in grant application form. It's neat and concise and, thanks to the super-editing skills of my beta Jeremie (thanks, Jeremie!), it is also well-written enough that some people decided to give me money for it.

Below is a section from the grant application, explaining what I will be doing in Tuvalu and why. I don't think it's jargony or difficult to read, so it should be cool here. But if you think it's jargony or difficult to read, please comment as much and I'll post again later when my brain is working once more so that I can explain in non-academia American English.

2. Description of activity and applicant’s role in it

The purpose of this activity is to develop my dissertation research proposal in collaboration with key community stakeholders in Funafuti, Tuvalu. By developing my research proposal on site in Tuvalu, I will be able to effectively collaborate with multiple community members who are stakeholders in the topic of my research in both professional and personal capacities. Their face-to-face involvement in the choices about specific research questions, sources for data, methods of inquiry, and analysis paradigm will ensure that the research to be conducted will be both truly representative of the experiences of Tuvalu within this topic and will be meaningful to the people of Tuvalu. This trip will further deepen my own understanding of the culture and community climate of this country.

The research topic to be addressed is the psychology of climate change in Tuvalu. Tuvalu is a small, low-lying island nation near Fiji. A vast majority of this chain of atolls is less than one meter above sea level. Tuvalu and other low-lying island nations are experiencing a unique threat from global climate changes in that the projected sea level rise will consume their countries. Tuvaluans, therefore, experience the threat of climate change differently than do Americans or Europeans. For several years already, Tuvaluans have been leaving their island home for New Zealand and other countries as “environmental refugees.” Meanwhile, the Tuvalu government is considering options for the future. The threat of climate change is very salient in this country.

The Psychology of Climate Change is a growing field. In 2009, a task force from the American Psychological Association released a 200+ page report about current research and potential future directions. The task force noted that current research suffers from a developed-nations bias, in that a majority of the research has been conducted in wealthy (and continental) nations. Current research is therefore not representative of the experience of people in developing or island nations. My research in Tuvalu would seek to address this gap.

While in Tuvalu, I will meet with private individuals to whom I am connected through colleagues and classes (community members with no professional stake in climate change, only personal stakes); as well as with professional individuals and organizations such as Alofa Tuvalu (an international climate change organization); the Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy, and Environment; and the Tuvalu Meteorological Society. During both formal and informal meetings, we will determine the exact research focus and methods that will best address the broad topic of “Climate Change and Tuvalu.” My hope is that this research will reflect both private and professional understanding of the threat of climate change, although such decisions will ultimately be made in collaboration with these groups and individuals.

The entire research development activity will consist of three parts. 1) Connecting to these individuals and organizations through phone calls, mail, and email from Honolulu so as to establish interest, relationships, and willingness to collaborate. 2) Traveling to Tuvalu for two weeks of hands-on collaboration in the development of the research framework. 3) Further communication through phone calls, mail, and email from Honolulu in order to finalize the research framework.

My role in this activity will be to organize and synthesize the multiple viewpoints and priorities of these diverse community stakeholders, and to ensure that the research framework is consistent with the cultural and community values, norms, and priorities in Tuvalu. Another important role in this activity will be to establish rapport so that the overall research process can be conducted as smoothly as possible with a very high level of open communication and trust. The initial ‘research framework development’ activity which will be funded by this grant will take place in the 2010 calendar year, between the months of August and December. The fieldwork of the larger research process (outside of the scope of this grant) will take place in the 2011 calendar year. Analysis and reporting will be completed in 2012.

No Complaints Here

At least, not during Lent.

This was not an epiphany. This was not even an ah-ha moment. It was more of a "huh. yeah, I guess so" moment. It even happened on a delayed reaction.

Gina asked me if I was going to go to a party tonight. It's actually a party that I want to go to, but as always, the timing sucks. Timing is just not good in general for parties these days. That's grad school for you. But this year I am trying hard to be more social... to not ditch out on fun events (as much as usual), and to do fun things with people I like on a regular basis.

And so Friday we staged Tacos and Telenovelas at my place. And it was fun and it was with people I like, and so I was positively social and it was awesome.

Today I had my first day of CERT training (Community Emergency Response Teams). It got out early, and so of course I was all excited about the extra hours with which to cross things off of my to-do list. But then Leslie emailed, inviting me over for enchiladas and hanging out with her family and a few friends. My first reaction was the "ugh, so busy" reaction that leads me to having no social life. But then I thought, "no, I got several extra hours in my day today. I'm gonna go hang out with Leslie."

And so I did and it was awesome.

AND THEN after all of that Gina asked me if I was going to the party tonight. I was stuffed with enchiladas and still had my to-do list items, and furthermore had a little beer in me which makes my steely discipline turn into pudding, thereby making the accomplishment of to-do lists even more difficult. I dove into a litany of all of these things, these things preventing me from saying yes to this party. Gina quipped, "oh your life is so hard."

This is actually one of my favorite jokes. I make it to myself and others when we complain about awesome things. Other people make this joke to me. It's a fairly normal joke, this "oh your life is so hard" joke. It keeps us honest, and I enjoy that. At the time I hardly noticed it.

An hour later, I was reading for Comps and for no discernible reason the conversation replayed itself in my head and I thought, "You know, I've been pretty negative about things lately, even good things like enchiladas and beer turning me into pudding. I should be more positive. I should give up complaining for Lent."

And there you have it. No complaints here.

Of course, though, because I'm me, I need a plan. So, I shall try, *try*, consciously try to think of my life (even the burnout draggy things like studying for Comps) in the positive terms associated with them (like how I'm learning such awesome things in such a short amount of time). Failing that, when I find myself complaining aloud about how very hard I have it (or when someone else catches me who knows about my Lent), I will then recite a litany about the positives/benefits of whatever I was just complaining about.

But don't think this means you can sexually harass me or something and get away with it. I will still file a complaint against you. Lent will understand.

In the interest of time

1) As Gina pointed out to me last night, a highly stressful situation which consumed a large portion of my fall semester has now become a funny story. It is now easy to share laughs without (much) bitterness, and I am still just very, very happy to be living in this new place. I heart my current living situation.

2) Work is going well. I feel useful and competent, and I definitely enjoy what I do. Nevertheless, I am taking days off this week so that I can catch up on other important things.

3) I've fallen behind on Comps readings. I'm not sure how much-- I've hesitated in counting up my chapters read this week versus chapters that should have been read this week. Even subtracting extra chapters I'd read in previous weeks, I know I'm behind. I hate being behind. But that's okay. Work required my attention and I decided not to stress falling behind just yet. I'm gonna take some days off work this week and devote myself to my studies. I'm going to ask Cliff on Monday to loan me some particularly interesting books this go round so that it will be easy to catch up, and hopefully, get a bit ahead again.

4) My stomach hurt this week, and so I didn't go to the gym, and I didn't want to eat, and I know I ate anyway but I don't have too much memory about what I ate. But this past week aside, I have learned that eating with the goal of adding more fruits/vegetables makes me feel good in general, and going to the gym for thirty minutes in the middle of the day makes me feel really good in general, and so I'm going to just keep doing those things into the foreseeable future, because I like feeling good in general.

5) I haven't written fiction in about two weeks, but I've kept it in my passions by keeping the story in my thoughts, figuring out character growth, scene details, story arcs when my mind is in between work/study thoughts. I want to cultivate my interest in writing this story so that I don't randomly decide one day to put it down (again) indefinitely and start on something else (again) before putting that down and... again and again and again. We'll keep on this.

6) My professional writings have received no technical gain, although I wrote a new section for the teacher handbook for work, and I based much of it off of a lit review I'd been working on, and I think this has given me new focus for editing/finishing the lit review for publication.

7) I met someone from work, Melanie, two nights ago who says she knows just the person to connect me to in Tuvalu about psychology of climate change research there. Kiriko said, "I told you she would know someone." Melanie said, "Email me in three weeks." She's on her way to Guam and Saipan right now. She knows everyone in the Pacific.

8) I have time for all of this and more. But time is an interesting thing in that sometimes, I just don't want to be productive and so I don't get anything done for many hours at a stretch.

The Scoop on Haiti

Haiti has suffered a very severe earthquake, a catastrophe the likes of which all humans should hope they will never personally experience themselves. The most recent death toll estimate I've heard from credible sources (upwards of 200,000) will place this earthquake in the ten worst earthquake disasters in all of human history. It's really bad.

I'm taking another Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (DMHA) class this semester, as part of my DMHA certificate. Our first assignment on hurricanes was hastily changed to a first assignment on Haiti's disaster, and so I've been reading up on it a lot this week. I've been reading up on it a lot this week with an eye toward understanding what makes this natural hazard event a "disaster." Several things stick out to me as particularly poignant and important on this topic.

Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere. Her infrastructure was not that advanced or strong to begin with, and it has sustained very severe damage. This is one of the major reasons the death toll continues to rise. Not all of the people who were buried in collapsed buildings had the mercy of dying immediately. Many of them died after days. I am heartbroken to say, I believe very many of them are continuing to die.

Machines that may have been able to aid in search and rescue were not able to make it into Port au Prince due to collapsed roads and roads blocked by fallen buildings. Instead, people were digging others free with their bare hands.

Search and rescue machinery, medical supplies, and food and water began arriving in Haiti with predictable, and honestly, somewhat remarkable speed-- within a day of the earthquake. However, the airport only has one runway. It was operational, but working below capacity for two major reasons. First, staff members were surviving (or had not survived) a major catastrophe. They were therefore not coming to work. Second, refueling became a major issue, meaning that planes could land and unload their supplies, but they could not take off again. This caused a major clog of the single runway so that other planes with more aid were not able to land.

Further, search and rescue machinery, medical supplies, and food and water were also arriving by boat. However, the crane at the port which unloads such heavy cargo had sustained heavy damage, and so while these supplies were there, in Haiti, in the harbor-- they could not get to land.

And then the roads were out.

I watched and read many news reports that discussed these things, and then I watched and read other news reports that talked about tensions building among survivors who were not receiving the aid they so desperately needed. The major problem in this (I should say the major MISTAKE in this) is that to me it seems not to have become part of disaster rescue/relief policy to inform people why exactly aid is not coming. The result was a city full of suffering people who don't have access to CNN thinking that the world has turned their collective backs on their tragedy.

Communication to the people about why aid has not arrived, some would argue, is far from top priority when there is no food or water and people are trapped under buildings. But I'm a social scientist. Let me tell you why this is important. When aid arrives, people will be glad to have food and water and medical supplies, finally. But they will hate the aid for having taken so long. They will hate the aid for all of the people they know and love who died because the aid did not arrive sooner. An already marginalized community (poorest nation in the Western hemisphere) is already primed to believe that those in power will abuse, misuse, and neglect their interests, because the people in power have already abused, misused, and neglected their interests. They will not trust the aid. They will believe it is all part of the standard line of trickery and deceit. They will believe the aid was purposefully withheld to create maximum casualties of unimportant people, or they will believe the aid was diverted to the wealthy, a standard practice of corruption. The extreme lack of trust in the midst of great suffering has a high potentiality to turn volatile.

On that subject, I watched as clips were shown of people running to pull water or food out of rubble. Several people reaching for the same item. Newscasters voiced over the clips that violence was beginning to break out. People on the ground were quoted as saying, "Oh, people will struggle or argue for maybe 30 seconds, and then it calms down again," and newscasters would repeat that violence was beginning to break out.

Stop it. Just stop it. People have a right to grab at water they find, and they have a right to argue with each other when they're hungry. If you're going to report that violence is breaking out after such a huge disaster, you'd damned well better back it up with footage of riots. Because violence. is. not. what. is. happening. in. Haiti. People are still digging up their loved ones. People are removing unidentified bodies from the city by the wheelbarrowful and truckload. People are searching for water and food and carrying others to makeshift tent hospitals for medical care which may or may not be enough to keep them alive. People are coping and are caring for each other, and if they yell at each other because they both want a cup of water... well, I've yelled at people for far less and in far less dire situations.

But we in the United States have this expectation that poor people, and especially poor black people will resort to violence for anything and everything. The expectation is that violence will happen, and so we look for that argument as proof that it has finally come. A nation born of slaves who have freed themselves, the poorest nation this hemisphere, we look for this to happen. It makes me swear at my computer screen, this racist, classist, sensationalist crap.

Ten worst earthquakes in human history-- you don't have to sensationalize it.

So these are the things that stick out to me about Haiti. These things and the ways in which people must survive. How people cannot trust even the buildings that remain standing because there have been so many secondary collapses, and so everyone-- EVERYONE-- in the city has become homeless, sleeping outside in the relative safety. Piles of bodies blocking roads, and people who are certain in their hearts that they are alone and forsaken. People who will never know what happened to their loved ones, if they were lucky enough to die quickly, if they were placed into a mass grave, and if so, which one.

Oh, and Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, I have two words for you.