I lived in Phuket for two years. A friend died in the tsunami. If someone handed me a plane ticket and some money today I’d be over there tomorrow. Yes, to some extent, I could help because I know people and where to go to ask where help is needed, and I probably would do some of that. But mostly I’d visit restaurants and bars, shop and take taxis and spend every cent I have (and even what little I have would help).

The Thais, you see, are (mostly) a proud people. They don’t like taking handouts. They’d much rather be paid for doing something or selling something. And the people themselves would be getting the money… not some government project.

So, please, y’all… go to Phuket on your next vacation. I promise you’ll have a great time, and benefit some very nice people. Even if your next vacation is next week.

See here how much they’ve cleaned up already.

But I can’t imagine going there for a vacation right now, despite my libertarian instincts. A girl I knew, when she was little, the daughter of some friends of mine, is among the missing- they’re still hoping, but I think it is a slim thread of hope at this point. Not that that is relevant to the above- had she been killed in a car accident in Thailand it would not dissuade me from vacationing there- but for some reason finding that out finally brought the scale of this catastrophe home to me- multiplying that concrete fact by 100,000 or so is different than having an abstract conception of that 100,000. For that reason I think that the disdain people show for western media concentrating on western casualties is somewhat misplaced- the devil is in the details, as any poet will tell you.

And I guess that that is what I think about vacationing in the immediate aftermath of this event- if people were purely rational actors it would be the right thing to do. But I’m afraid that I am not rational enough that I could enjoy sunning myself on those beaches right now. So kudos, in a strange way, to those who _are_ capable of it- they are doing a good thing in the utilitarian sense. All the same, I don’t understand it.

Good point! A rabid conservative I am.

As for going there, I don’t know what to think either.

I think they might need the tourist money, but the smell of death is not conducive to sun bathing.

I heard the president has ordered the flags at half staff.

When I think of the Swedes, I think of that big man holding the child he thought he had lost. He cried like a baby himself. It broke my heart.

Best Wishes to all for the New Year.

A Very Happy New Year to you all!

I do remember the gratitude New Yorkers felt for the many gestures of ‘return’ made by Americans from all over the country in the months after 9-11.

IIRC, Rosie O’Donnell got together a busload of older people from CT to come in to the city together & attend a Broadway play. All those people had to be scared and nervous–everyone was–and I don’t think any of them were even people who normally went to a lot of plays.

But they all got on a bus and went to a play on purpose.

My husband an I did the same thing. We had every right to take a pass, since we’d been directly part of 9-11: my husband saw the first plane hit the first building and was trapped inside the basement of his office most of the day after a woman ran in off the street screaming that there was a man with a bomb outside. There was drama here in Westchester, too. I was told to come pick up my eldest from school because there had been an attack up north, at Camp Smith, I think it was. I didn’t even know there was a Camp Smith, or where it was located. The phones were dead, my one typical son was crying, BOCES couldn’t seem to get my second autistic son home from his school across the county, and the wait for him stretched on for hours. Meanwhile his teacher was waiting to find out if her brother was alive or dead, and the principal was waiting for the same news of her husband. (The teacher’s brother lived; he had one of those alarm-malfunction stories, and he’d woken up late. I never found out what happened to the principal’s husband.)

So, objectively speaking, we would have been within our rights to head north for a break, but we didn’t. We went to Broadway, then we went to Ground Zero.

Then, on November 11, we went to Washington D.C.

You want to talk about a ghost town. It was an incredible experience. The entire city was braced for an event. There was chain link fence everywhere, and I mean everywhere. There was so much chain link fencing we were trapped inside a real-life case of You can’t get there from here. All public bathrooms were closed and locked; public mail boxes seemed to have been removed—at least, we couldn’t find one, after driving for blocks and blocks searching, because my niece had a school project where she needed someone to mail her postcards from lots of different states, so we were trying to get something to her with a D.C. post mark.

My dad and mom were with us, and my dad just kept saying, “This used to be such a beautiful city. This used to be such a beautiful city.”

None of us was able to articulate what we were seeing; we just kept saying things like ‘the city used to be beautiful’ and ‘turn around, we can’t get through that way’ and ‘this bathroom is locked,’ as if being-locked was an attribute unique to this particular bathroom. We were reduced to a kind of defensive literal-mindedness, just reporting to each other the ‘facts’ of whatever physical situation we were trying to negotiate at the moment.

Needless to say, we were the only tourists visiting with 3 kids in tow.

Later I told all my friends: I wanted to visit a place that has even more anthrax than we do.

But when I got back I realized that the reason I went–and we’d made the trip on the spur of the moment, when we realized my mom and dad and my husband had all gone to conferences in Virginia, close to D.C.–was that I, too, was braced for an event.

I wanted to see Washington before it disappeared.

Just in case it did disappear.

OK, this is not a cheery post.

I guess my point is: play it by ear.

It may be a good thing for some to travel to Thailand, or it may be a bad thing this week.

But very soon, I imagine, it will be the right thing to do.

“This is what should be done

By one who is skilled in goodness,

And who knows the path of peace:

Let them be able and upright,

Straightforward and gentle in speech.

Humble and not conceited,

Contented and easily satisfied.

Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.

“Peaceful and calm, and wise and skilful,

Not proud and demanding in nature.

Let them not do the slightest thing

That the wise would later reprove.

Wishing: In gladness and in safety,

May all beings be at ease.

Whatever living beings there may be;

Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,

The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,

The seen and the unseen,

Those living near and far away,

Those born and to-be-born,

May all beings be at ease!

“Let none deceive another,

Or despise any being in any state.

Let none through anger or ill-will

Wish harm upon another.

Even as a mother protects with her life

Her child, her only child,

So with a boundless heart

Should one cherish all living beings:

Radiating kindness over the entire world

Spreading upwards to the skies,

And downwards to the depths;

Outwards and unbounded,

Freed from hatred and ill-will.

“Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down

Free from drowsiness,

One should sustain this recollection.

This is said to be the sublime abiding.

By not holding to fixed views,

The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,

Being freed from all sense desires,

Is not born again into this world.”

Thanks for the reminder, Anne.

Aha, you’re one of us!

*gassho*

may you be peaceful

may you be happy

may you be free from danger

may you have ease of well-being.

may we all share a wonderful 2005.