Sad things

A hard week here, with workshops that didn´t go as planned, and resulting procrastination on other things coming up. I still struggle with a low-level lack of purpose and relevance, which ebbs and flows, and sits in contrast to my nice life and kind friends here in Cuenca. The missteps involved trying to learn how to do good education on HIV, family, violence, sexual health, and self esteem with women and families are supposedly the things that you learn from, but it´s brutal when you do something wrong, or even just adequately, and have to admit the mistakes and think, how on earth could I have done that differently and what in God´s name am I really accomplishing for anyone anyhow?

Took note of a Peace Corps volunteer who was killed in the Phillipines. Her name was Julie Campbell and I was struck by some uncanny characteristics which I had in common with her. She was a New Yorker, older than your typical volunteer, who left a sucessful career (in this case as a journalist) to do the Peace Corps.

And this of course was eclipsed by what happened at Virginia Tech, which I didn´t mention here up to now because I hadn´t really been able to process it from so far away. Reading Emily´s words over at I´m So Pretty helped make it all too real.

"And I'd give myself a harder time for taking it all so hard if I thought any part of my reaction were controllable. But it's not. I can't not feel this sad. I can't not be totally normal and laughing one second and on the verge of tears the next, the lump in my throat swelling for the millionth time in a day."

I do remember this same ragged, visceral grief from the weeks following September 11, 2001. The guilt for being sad even though it wasn´t something that had happened to you exactly countered by the physical pain that accompanied sudden and unexpected and senseless death close to home.

Over at Washington Monthly, I found Kevin Drum´s comments on press coverage and policy implications somehow comforting. Because it does seem to be that out of all the screwed up things that happen in the States, more screwed up things tend to get done in response.

All I can say is: I still hope everyone takes this very, very slowly. There might be lessons we can learn from Monday's tragedy, but our first reactions are almost certain to be wrong. Probably our second reactions too. Whatever we do, let's not make the cure worse than the disease.

Amen to that.