February 3 - 9, 2008 goes down in history.An article by Ted Anthony, an AP writer, tallies it up:
"Fifty-nine dead from the tornadoes in the South. Five dead after Edwin Rivera opened fire on his family and a SWAT officer in Los Angeles. Six killed in Kirkwood, Mo., when Charles Lee 'Cookie' Thornton opened fire at a city council meeting and was slain by police. Five women herded into the back room of a suburban Chicago Lane Bryant store and gunned down by a man still at large... Three dead in an Oregon plane crash, three dead in a Louisiana vocational college shooting, five dead and three missing in a Georgia sugar refinery explosion. An Ohio teacher stabbed in front of her grade-school students after her estranged husband walked into the classroom and pulled a knife. Across the state, hundreds of homes damaged in severe flooding. Hordes of motorists stranded on Wisconsin roads by snow."
Though far too close for comfort, all of this happened at a distance around me, as if I had a dream-like bubble keeping it all at arms length. I had 15 minutes of heavy thunder, lightening and rain, and then it was gone. I wasn't aware of the devastation that storm brought to other areas until after it had passed and the satellite signal came back. I was terrified as I always am when weather hits here. It never just rains, it always storms. There is never a breeze, it's always gales. Then the news reported the tornadoes and whole towns destroyed within miles of me, and I started to shake.
Still, life goes on, as it does for those not hit by disaster. I had three interviews this week, for three very different positions, and though it means a lot to my little life, to me, it is insignificant compared to what others had to deal with not so far away. Yet, my own survival had to take priority, at least during those interviews. I met some wonderful people; smart, dedicated, committed people just as focused on the here and now as I had to be, and all seemingly untouched by the disaster.
I remember the day that President John F. Kennedy was shot. The news broke in to interrupt that morning's Captain Kangaroo to televise the motorcade, and when it said the President was shot, my mother screamed. Soon, my father came home from work. Schools were let out, businesses closed and the world seemed to come to a deathly quiet standstill while waiting for further news of the President's condition. Everyone and everything stopped.
I had a 9:30 class on September 11, 2001. I had just watched the second plane hit the Twin Towers on the TV in the main office and had to walk in to tell my students what I had just seen, though I didn't believe it - yet. Some of my students screamed and ran down the hall to the pay phones; more than a few had family in New York City. Instead of doing what I had planned, we all searched the Internet for updates and talked. I let our collective little world stop to begin to come to terms with what was going on, but the rest of the world went on as though nothing unusual had happened. Nothing closed, schools didn't let out and life just went on in the rest of upstate NY.
It was the same this past Tuesday here in Arkansas. Many died, hundreds hurt, even more lost everything, yet everything just went on as though nothing happened. There was no time to process, to help our neighbors hit by the tornadoes, or to mourn.
A horrible week filled with devastation, and life goes on around it, as though all the horror is just another Hollywood fabrication. Explosions, shootings, tornadoes, floods, and none of us are allowed or able to step off the wheel of the rat race.
When did we become such a cold, cruel and uncaring society?
"PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. - Brace yourself for more wintry weather. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow Saturday, leading the groundhog to forecast six more weeks of winter."