Divided

For a little treat, Kris and I took a few days off and drove to Richardson to spend some time with my folks. Kris had seen an advertisement for a Titanic Exhibit and bought tickets, which gave us an excuse (not that we needed one. It's just hard to leave our pets right now (more about that another time).  Anyway, I was a bit skeptical, but it turned out to be super interesting.

I didn't take many pictures during the whole weekend, much less the exhibit. But I took this one.

Here's a better graphic:

I don't know. I was just struck by how blatant the class division was and how it had such a direct correlation to who lived and who died. Which made me really sad because it's such a metaphor for what is going on now in this country, where the most fragile populations have the fewest lifeboats, you know?

It didn't make me feel a bit better to know that this sort of thing has been a reality forever. Especially because we've lost some basic chivalry as the fearmongers peddle their policies of cruelty and intolerance. There were a lot of stories of heroism amid all the hubris surrounding the Titanic disaster. I don't hear as many of those now.

I'm also trying to look for the heroes today - the Helpers, as Mr. Rogers' mother called them. But there's also a call to be a Helper. It's been difficult to know how best to do that. We're trying to disengage from making the oligarchs even richer, so we are giving up Amazon as much as possible. I'm off of all social media (mostly. I had to get back on to try to unload some ceiling fans on Marketplace but then I'm back off and thinking about not just deactivating but deleting my accounts.) I'm donating to my favorite causes and trying to make sure I hold space in my work for people who wouldn't ordinarily have access to a good therapist who doesn't take insurance. (Someday, I will write an entire book about insurance, and it will consist of this one sentence over and over and over again for 600 pages: Insurance is the legal organized crime.)

There's not much else we can do except call our supposed representatives and our feckless Governor. 

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I've been sitting on this post for weeks now and have no idea how to end it so I'm just going to publish it in order to move on. I hope y'all are hanging in there.