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Among Friends |
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Small blessings in a scary world I drove my husband to the party, dropped him in the driveway and returned to the bliss of an empty house. Without the distraction of a single electronic device or human need, I gave thanks for a home protected by a solid roof, for clean water from the tap and for a readily accessible, well-balanced supper. I deliberately set aside this rare evening of solitude to count the many blessings most people on our troubled planet can't depend on -- adequate hygiene, nutrition and shelter. Like the rest of the world, I have followed the heartbreaking rescue efforts in China's northern Sichuan Province, where at least 68,000 people died in a May 12 earthquake that left 360,000 injured, 23,000 missing, and 5 million survivors homeless. Farther south, in Myanmar, at least 134,000 people were killed by the cyclone Nargis when it struck the Irrawaddy Delta on May 2. Rescue workers prevented by the country's brutal military junta from bringing food, water and medicine to 2 million left homeless in the country formerly known as Burma say many more will die needlessly. Unless you have lived through tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes, it's hard to comprehend the loss and despair such disasters wreak on their victims. Growing up in "tornado alley" on the Kansas-Missouri border, I ran for the basement many times when twisters roared overhead. As a young reporter in Miami, I twice sought shelter in my bathtub, with my mattress over my head, as hurricanes grazed the south Florida coast. Strong temblors in Alaska sent me racing barefoot outside into January snow. An early-morning 6.9-point quake in Hawaii drove me outdoors, wrapped only in a towel. Illusions of safety and security vanish with a tiny shift of a tectonic plate, ocean current or jet stream. Dictatorships, wars, diseases and numerous other human-caused calamities can undermine civilized life in a single news cycle. It's tempting to focus on our own belt-tightening as global economic forecasts paint an increasingly grim picture of worldwide rising unemployment, more home foreclosures, skyrocketing gasoline prices, more bankruptcies and doubling commodity prices. Already this year, the cost of my favorite bread has risen 30 percent, but in Afghanistan, the flat bread that is a staple of every meal costs six times what it did last year. My favorite local restaurant has upped its prices twice, but in Egypt, commodity shortages have triggered food riots. We've gotten by on "cheap gas" for decades as Britons and Europeans shell out twice and now three times as much to run their vehicles. Farm subsidies -- reinforced in the new bill President Bush vetoed and Congress overrode -- have kept our sugar, milk and commodities inexpensive for decades. Never a good budgeter of time or money, I'm paying more attention to friends who plan meals around sales circulars and coupons, faithfully send in rebates, plot car trips in a circle so they don't backtrack and leave their credit cards in a drawer. As I cut back on buying meat and $5-a-box cereal, I know that no matter how tough it gets, I live an unimaginably luxurious existence compared to life in Darfur and other violent flash points. For all the bureaucratic bungling at every governmental level following Hurricane Katrina, America has a vast social-welfare apparatus, even for the poorest of our poor. No despotic generals deliberately block relief supplies from our flood victims, as the military junta does in Myanmar. Local food banks, state welfare agencies, and federal food stamps provide constant buffers. That is not the reality of victims like Cho Mar, who lost not only her parents and 8-year-old brother in the Myanmar cyclone, but also any hope for help as she searches for other missing family members. "We were hopeless before; we are hopeless now," the New York Times quoted Cho Mar as saying. In hard times, Americans are, by our history of democracy and social reform, conditioned to hope. We hope circumstances will change, that justice will prevail, that happy days will come again. It's why we buy lottery tickets, watch Oprah, tune in to "American Idol," put our savings into the stock market, go to Vegas. It's good to use a quiet night to add up what we've got, which, by anybody's standard, is a lot. |
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