Another great link

As you can see, I just learned how to put links up on my blog. So fun.

If you've spent much dinner-party, chit-chatty time with me anytime recently you know that I am a BIG fan of "This American Life". There are few episodes I have not heard. I dream of telling stories on the radio with Ira. I really think I would get along with Sarah and Jonathan and the rest.

Anyway, they did a show entitled "After the Flood" about New Orleans. If you listen to it, you will hear in the prologue that the radio crew set out to give people who were or are in New Orleans more time to tell their stories than the TV news can give. They created the anti-soundbite and it is pretty harrowing. This was the best reporting on the post-hurricane disaster in New Orleans that I have heard or seen or read. It is a little bit of a commitment to listen to it, but it is worth your while.

For me, the single most important thing I learned about myself after listening to this show was the lingering racism I have in me.

I don't want to admit it, but sometimes even a good bleeding heart liberal like me starts to think: why didn't these people [I am thinking but not saying even in my own private mind where no one can hear me: African-Americans] evacuate? Surely they had a way. This story cleared any misconceptions I had from the news media about that question.

And I know some of you, like me, may have thought: if only they'd stop looting, then...then what? Then they'd deserve help. What kind of bullshit if that?

We (humanity, I mean) are all so afriad of each other. I really think we are. And I still don't know what to do about it. It isn't enough for me to just live my life. I have to make some concious choices about how I live my life. Which bring me to the subtitle of my blog, hanging right above this entry: "What will we do? We're trying to figure this out."