Food for Thought
Two additional items I came across this morning:
1. Rod Watson’s column in the Buffalo News is fantastic. It succinctly breaks down our civic outrage, and how we prioritize nonsense and largely ignore really important stuff.
2. This story from the BBC details how Jewish composers imprisoned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II wrote music in cabaret style – music that has been largely forgotten, until now. A show in Tel Aviv features that music, which was recovered almost archeologically through interviews and demonstrations the organizers conducted with about 20 survivors from that camp. The survivors say that the finished product faithfully recreates what the music sounded like at the time. It’s a testament to the human spirit even at its most hopeless.
Disagree on #1. Rod manages to find 3 isolated incidents of racism in the last 14 years or so and tars us all with the same brush. I don’t see anyone in town brushing the latest incident under the rug, but as usual, the whole story is more complicated than just “white folks in Lovejoy hate the brown folks”.
You think a civic freak out complete with candlelight vigils would make it better somehow?
Is there a specific acceptable threshold level on these? Is it a time frame as in x number of incidents in a 5 year period? Or do we go by 1 is 1 to goddamn many? And no, a candlelight vigil will do nothing. Punish those responsible. Hopefully the laws of Darwin will thin that crowd out soon enough.