5/24/07 - Yankees take 2 outta 3 from Boston, but the pregame ceremonies leave me wondering.
Last night I got to go see a Yankees/Red Sox game (for the non NYer - these tickets are hard to get), and amidst all the pageantry of the stadium and almost pristine baseball weather - there were ceremonies held for the victims of the 33 students killed in the Va Tech shooting of a few months ago. The field had the logo of the maroon ribbon with the black 'VT' across it by the on-deck circles, the Yankees wore the same logo on the side of their hats, and there were many dignitaries that appeared behind home plate to be recognized by the crowd. Some were University people, some were members of the emergency services that were involved in the tragedy. And it was very emotional (I have a friend who is a Va Tech alumni), right up until the moment when the Yankee Captain, Derek Jeter, trotted out from the dugout with one of those over sized checks in the amount of One Million Dollars addressed to Virgina Tech University - and my immediate thought was; what the fuck?
Sad as that may seem, its the truth. I, sat in the stadium and thought; if you can give $1,000,000 to a University that lost 33 people, why cant you give money to the sick first responders in your own city? So I allowed these thoughts to marinate in my brain for the duration of the game, and they got worse as I had to excuse myself to nebulize shortly after the first inning, and worse still as I ran into a guy I worked with in the concession stand line and him and I spent 30 minutes swapping stories of how fucked up our lives are now, thanks to the WTC. So by this point in time, these horrible thoughts were ripe in my head.
It was here that I started to calm a bit, the Yankees started to win and I began to calm down, and think with a bit more clarity. I remembered that after 9/11, Yankee Stadium was the site of a ceremony and they had the first responders to the stadium for a game of thanks. I was in that toxic shithole, Ground Zero (of course I wasn't calling it that then - back then there was a purpose still; bring home as many people as possible) but I did hear that they had done some really nice things there. And it was then that it hit me that tragic events have a really fucking short 'shelf-life'.
Back then, late September and October of 2001 - man, WTC was all anybody could talk about. Now, its a tourist attraction, a logo on a shirt and a 20 second sound byte as the 're-building' progresses. But what happens to the people after the glitz and glamour (if you will), the media attention fade? There are people involved in these tragedies, what becomes of them? Well as for the people effected by 9/11 I think I've spent enough time ranting about whats happening to us, but what about other tragedies? Well as far as the victims of Katrina, in the gulf coast, we will probably never know any additional cost of life - however while New Orleans is 'up and running'; a short trip outside of the city will show anyone who cares to look - that all is not well in the Gulf Coast.In the Tsunami in Asia of 2004, the death toll was calculated at 229,866 - however, 2 and a half years later - due to diseases caused by the lack of sanitation; the death rate has now risen to 283,000. That's 53,134 additional people dead from diseases following a tragedy - and they went completely unnoticed! Now Va Tech is the site of the latest tragedy, and so they get a trip to the mecca of baseball and a million dollars from the Yankees and are pretty much on their way to obscurity like the rest of us.
My problem, and hopefully one that wont emulate the Tsunami, is that this tragedy isn't ready for the history books just yet. See everyone that passes now, is still a number to be calculated in 'the butchers bill' of 9/11. But THIS is how short a shelf life tragic events have. Its like our action movies - we have a max tolerance of about 120 minutes for it. This is how long term events like war and genocide continue - the people perpetrating it know that even of they are discovered; all they have to do is wait a bit for people to forget and then they can get right back to the business of warring and killing. So here we are - after our allotted 2 hours of action movie are up, plus after the news stories of 'the sick rescue workers' have all be written and we suddenly find ourselves in what category now? Passe'?
Sad as that may seem, its the truth. I, sat in the stadium and thought; if you can give $1,000,000 to a University that lost 33 people, why cant you give money to the sick first responders in your own city? So I allowed these thoughts to marinate in my brain for the duration of the game, and they got worse as I had to excuse myself to nebulize shortly after the first inning, and worse still as I ran into a guy I worked with in the concession stand line and him and I spent 30 minutes swapping stories of how fucked up our lives are now, thanks to the WTC. So by this point in time, these horrible thoughts were ripe in my head.
It was here that I started to calm a bit, the Yankees started to win and I began to calm down, and think with a bit more clarity. I remembered that after 9/11, Yankee Stadium was the site of a ceremony and they had the first responders to the stadium for a game of thanks. I was in that toxic shithole, Ground Zero (of course I wasn't calling it that then - back then there was a purpose still; bring home as many people as possible) but I did hear that they had done some really nice things there. And it was then that it hit me that tragic events have a really fucking short 'shelf-life'.
Back then, late September and October of 2001 - man, WTC was all anybody could talk about. Now, its a tourist attraction, a logo on a shirt and a 20 second sound byte as the 're-building' progresses. But what happens to the people after the glitz and glamour (if you will), the media attention fade? There are people involved in these tragedies, what becomes of them? Well as for the people effected by 9/11 I think I've spent enough time ranting about whats happening to us, but what about other tragedies? Well as far as the victims of Katrina, in the gulf coast, we will probably never know any additional cost of life - however while New Orleans is 'up and running'; a short trip outside of the city will show anyone who cares to look - that all is not well in the Gulf Coast.In the Tsunami in Asia of 2004, the death toll was calculated at 229,866 - however, 2 and a half years later - due to diseases caused by the lack of sanitation; the death rate has now risen to 283,000. That's 53,134 additional people dead from diseases following a tragedy - and they went completely unnoticed! Now Va Tech is the site of the latest tragedy, and so they get a trip to the mecca of baseball and a million dollars from the Yankees and are pretty much on their way to obscurity like the rest of us.
My problem, and hopefully one that wont emulate the Tsunami, is that this tragedy isn't ready for the history books just yet. See everyone that passes now, is still a number to be calculated in 'the butchers bill' of 9/11. But THIS is how short a shelf life tragic events have. Its like our action movies - we have a max tolerance of about 120 minutes for it. This is how long term events like war and genocide continue - the people perpetrating it know that even of they are discovered; all they have to do is wait a bit for people to forget and then they can get right back to the business of warring and killing. So here we are - after our allotted 2 hours of action movie are up, plus after the news stories of 'the sick rescue workers' have all be written and we suddenly find ourselves in what category now? Passe'?
posted by Iloveny_marf @ 11:16 AM
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