I got this email...

Dear Emily & Phil,

I don't mean to upset you. I just can't put this description out of my mind.

Love,

Marlow

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/08/national/nationalspecial/08orleans.html?th&emc=th

I got this email from my friend the other day. He's a second year medical student at Tulane. It is a pretty shocking story. I recommend it.

After you read it, you may think, how can this be happening? How can they let this happen?

Let's be careful there.

I remember growing up in Salem quite clearly. My daily life never really gave me glimpses of people living in poverty. Sure, my parents took us to work in soup kitchens and drew our attention to these forgotten people when they had a chance. But, we could put it out of our mind for 99% of the time and we did.

Then I left Salem and went to New York for college. I remember what I liked about the big city is that all these people are crammed in a small space and that this makes it harder to ignore each other--at first. The rich see the poor and the middle class sees its other half. In a big city most people of different races have to at least lay eyes on each other everyday. Of course, New Yorkers and Londoner and Bostonians and Salemites and all the rest of us still find ways to ignore each other. We have become pretty sophisticated at it. We don't think about the lives of those people who clean our workplaces or what that other part of town is really like. We just don't go there in our car or our imaginations. What do they have to do with me?

After Katrina a question has nudged itself to the front of my mind: Who is lying dead in the gutter somewhere who I am not helping up? The easy thing for the Samaritan in the Bible (Luke 10:25-37) was that the guy lying in the ditch was right next to him. He had to look at this dirty, bleeding mess of a person and then make a choice: should I help or not? We don't have this same luxury today. Our parents and grandparents and we have insulated ourselves from those who lay in the gutter and get stomped on. I tell myself that it is sad how they live and that it has nothing to do with how I live or what I do. I don't think I can say that anymore. I think there is something I can do. I just have to figure out what it is.