37/4 Cinderella

There's a new teacher at our school, starting tomorrow I think. Her name is...wait for it...Cinderella.

There's something unreal about my life at the moment. Lately I have been following the news even more intensely than usual, and at times, it's hard to see that what is happening is real. The horrific conditions in New Orleans are almost unimaginable, and made worse by scores of indidivuals now taking their revenge on a society they may feel has ravaged them.
When you go to work tomorrow, and you see a beggar behind the windscreen of your car, or curled up against a step of a bakery store, consider that persons anger at his personal malaise. Consider how alienated they feel by a society that rushes by them on the way to work, on the way to buy more air time, on the way to a movie. Consider an act of kindness, wherever you are in the world.
Katrina has wrought, unquestionably, a real test of human survival, and on a massive modern scale. I hope that we will all learn from it, and not be smug or malicious about it.

Once again it is shocking that the President seemed to do nothing of value before the storm hit. I had read the reports, and the threat seemed to justify a massive evacuation, a civil and military airlift really. You have a city below sea level, and weather people saying there will be a 22 foot storm surge. What else is there to think about doing but make sure the people who could not leave are helped to safety?
One can speculate that some people didn't want to leave, or even that some stayed purposefully to loot. These must be in the minority.

Other inverted fairy tale news is that Bird Flu has killed another person in Vietnam. You may think it is irrelevant. Global warming may seem irrelevant. But it is all part of a connected world which is now swinging against what has become an unhealthy human cancer throwing our whole organism out of balance, and creating what Kunstler calls The Long Emergency. It is a collection of long term threats we face in every area. From supplies of energy, to disease (massive infections of deadly flu's), to food and fresh water shortages, with the background noise being filled by sizzling droughts or gushing floodwaters all slowly converging, destabilising. This is followed by the restoring of imbalances in favor of all the living populations we have preyed on for generations now, on our planet - and imbalances wrought by us will now be unwrought to our cost. These cannot be prevented or even mitigated, unless, as Kunstler puts it, we decide to be good neighbors. Not just to each other, but to beetles and foxes, owls, fish and earthworms. The question is, will we?

The next few weeks ought to be interesting, and important. It is unreal to be doing the work I'm doing, when the world seems to be moving inexorably towards one emergency after another. I think there needs to be a very real sense of things each individual needs to do to mitigate these effects, which seem to be gaining momentum.
One of the most crucial is developing vaccinations. Lobby the medical authorities in your area. One vaccine we need to have everywhere is for bird flu (H5N1). Another is starting to develop local capacity. Local renewable energy investments. When large systems of infrastucture breaks down because of energy shortfalls or extreme weather damage (or disease contamination)once our food stores are gone, aka our supermarkets are stripped and looted, where else can people go to feed themselves? So perhaps it is a good time, to start growing vegetables in our gardens. One of the major casualties of high oil prices, will be the mobility of food grown on foreign and faraway farms. Worsening climates will make the job of actual production difficult as well.

There are not too many other things to suggest. Eat healthy, and begin to support small local food producers (people selling fruit at stalls, or farm stalls on the sides of roads near your neighborhood). Right now is not the best time to buy a car, or a house. If you do buy a car, buy a small one, and buy a new one, they're more fuel efficient. If you buy a house, make sure it's as close as you can find (walking distance close) to a school, a farm, a fresh water supply, and where you intend to work. Consider changing your job.

It may also be a good time to look at selling stocks. Katrina will likely shave 1% off America's GDP growth this year. But its net effect may be a viral-like affliction locking into financial markets, tipping the world into recession. But it might not.
No one really knows. It's up to the individual to buy on the rumor or on the news. When no one really knows, one rumor is as good, or bad, as the next. All we can do is stay alert, and take care of those left alive, even if only in our hearts.
In a crisis it is only kindness that will save us.

Not much else to report. Am glad this week is almost over, and am hoping it will get drier and cooler soon.

Next week I start working in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I really want to enjoy this weekend, and emerge refreshed on Monday. I think I'll be going to the Hard Rock Cafe in Apgujeong to meet Karlee and co.

Had a nice dinner tonight, deji galbi (been wanting to have that for a while) and stocked up on some groceries. Had a good chat with Diana, who lives in the same building as I do.

Need to go for a run tomorrow.