I came home from work tonight and logged on to the Post. I opened a bottle of Chianti that I had schlepped all the way home from Tuscany. I took a sip of wine, and nearly choked when I saw the headline "White Sox Win Pennant"???? Is the world ending? I can remember being young in Chicago, I was a good little lesbo back then, I followed baseball studiously, much to the dismay of my mother who wished I were more interested in Barbie dolls, or something a little more dainty like sewing. I remember my Dad (who was a Cubs fan, poor guy) saying to me, "The Sox will win the World Series when Pigs fly".
Okay, excuse me for just a second, I'm going to look out the window just to make sure that there aren't any large airborne animals.
If you are like me, and feel the need to know what's going on in the world, keeping up with the news lately might seem like some far-fetched science fiction movie. I'm thinking that CNN can just start a spin-off of it's network, maybe they can call it the Disaster Channel. I used to make fun of the stupid guys following tornadoes with cameras, or some crazy reporter standing on the beach filming flying debris from buildings. I don't make fun anymore, I worry everytime I turn on the Weather Channel and see those swirling blue Doppler things that look like moving circular saws. We have had so many of these natural disasters this year, beginning with the Asian Tsunami, and the recent tragedy in Pakistan.
As if these disasters are not enough to frighten even a hardened realist like me, we now have to contemplate the tiny harmless migratory birds bringing the next plague to our suburbs. The way the newspeople are talking about the avian flu makes me want to fill up my basement with canned goods and bottled water with a wireless radio and a Morse code machine. Is there such a thing as a Morse code machine? My secret decoder ring that I had when I was ten, (it came free with my pair of red PF Fliers, the air Jordans of the sixties) would come in real handy right about now. It seems as if I have landed in the middle of some new reality TV show, a kind of strange mixture of Survivor, and Fear Factor. If I am lucky enough, I will survive the flu and the flood, but if I survive, I can just hear my partner A. saying "I'm hungry! Can you go out in the yard and dig up some worms?" I see myself putting on my biohazzard suit with my shovel and one of my good stainless steel mixing bowls and asking her, "Do you want them sauteed with dried mushrooms, or steamed?"
It would be a good idea in the face of these natural disasters to eliminate the man made ones. Maybe we can think of a way to make peace in Iraq. There might be a way to alleviate the hunger in Africa. It makes sense for humans to help other humans when we all live in the same deadly and unpredictable world.
On one hand, I think that a healthy fear of nature is a good thing. It's one of the first things you learn in sailing school, right after they teach you how to put on your life jacket. Being prepared for emergencies is a smart thing to do. On the other hand, if this is really the end, I urge you all to be kind to each other and enjoy your good fortune while you still have it. Because no matter how much we fear the future, right now we are not buried under a pile of rubble, or wading down mainstreet up to our asses in flood waters. My thinking is that the bird flu will not be as dramatic as predicted, but if it is, being prepared and being kind to each other will make our survival much easier. Before the next disaster happens, I think I need to celebrate the miracle of the White Sox going to the World Series.
