Change is Good…, by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture | @MDWorld

August 29, 2012 Whitney Farmer 5 Comments

Whitney works at a rock music venue on the beach in L.A.. She has an MBA, and found about $30.00 bucks in change in her desk at home.

My parents used to live in the mountains outside of Denver, the same territory that hatched South Park. One day while going grocery shopping, my Dad was introduced to a stray dog that was being offered up for adoption by the local shelter. After returning home, he couldn’t get the little guy out of his head. So he called their hotline.

When asked about which dog he was inquiring, my dad said, “His name is Paul. He is a wheaten terrier with a broken spirit.”

He was told that Paul had already been adopted, and he hung up the phone with both a lighter heart and a heavier heart. Years later, he swore that he saw Paul starring in a movie, trotting down a street with “Walking in L.A.” by Missing Persons as his soundtrack. Stranger things have happened.

I came to the mountains near that time when my Dad’s congenital heart problem changed into an immediate problem that required surgery. Then my marathon-running rocket scientist brother-in-law who lived in Denver was diagnosed with an aortic valve that needed replacing…Both ended up with matching zipper scars, and I stayed near in the mountains while they healed. After getting cut wide open, both are now better than they were before.

One day as I sat outside in the hot-tub and tried not to worry about mountain lions, I watched the sky overhead. On a mountain, weather changes. Above, I watched clouds collide and battle and swirl. My parents had once run naked from the same hot-tub when lightning struck the ground close by. While it would have made a great obituary, it was even better to have them with us longer to tell about it.

When the cold air from the Rockies collides with the warm air from the plains, storms are born. The big ones can wipe the landscape clean like a chalkboard. Devastation – if it is survivable – is perhaps a prerequisite to a fresh start.

As the weather forecasts first declared that the RNC convention was in Hurricane Isaac’s forecasted path, I need to confess that I had a part of me that was glad. My prejudice makes me conclude that conservatives need to be reminded to care about the poor, and for the Party Elite to be faced with a Katrina experience made me hope that some deep-seated compassion could be the result. True, the infrastructure of Tampa Bay hadn’t been deconstructed by decades-long corruption and neglect that may have been racially based. But I thought that fear born as the wind outside screamed and tore at the city might have caused even one in power to be humbled and a conscience to be stirred.

Then I learned that the storm was due to cut through the heart of Haiti. Then reports said that the storm had shifted course and was moving upon New Orleans, due to strike on the seventh anniversary of Katrina. The elite power structure that stretches back in time and includes those whose policies are responsible for Haiti’s current desolation and were responsible for the neglect that led to the complications that led to the devastation of New Orleans because of Katrina…they were still going to get their party.

But the world is different now.  Almost half a million Haitians are still living in tents from their earthquake two years ago.  People had forgotten about them, until perhaps now.  And New Orleans is re-building and covering up the places where people had died, but enough witnesses exist. They continue to tell what had happened before and remind us why the country was first enraged about what had happened to them, and then mobilized to hope for a change. So far, no politicians have brought it up for their personal gain. It has instead come to the surface of public discourse organically. People are remembering why the watermarks reached so very high.

I prayed that Hurricane Isaac would change course. But maybe I was praying that it would miss Haiti and nail the RNC.

The answer was “No”.

Perhaps I was asking for something that in this circumstance was none of my business, or perhaps the cruelty in my heart prevented my request from being granted.

Or perhaps there is a better plan in mind, one that brings to remembrance things that have past and things that might still need to be changed – even if it hurts.

Quote of the Blog from Robert Taylor’s character in The Bribe: “Everyone has got a place where you live where he can get to you.”

Image of a victim of the Haitian earthquake…oops…I mean a Hurricane Katrina victim, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense.