22973: Kilgore: Re 22946 Cruise into History (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: clay@kilgore.com

>From a long time this-list lurker, suddenly encouraged to be shot down for
having an opinion... just couldn't hold back a little rant about changing
the voyage in-question's destination - pardon my people-not-buildings
hippie-tourism speak, but...

S A D. & So typically "meriken" to make everything safe and clean and
purposefully correct. With my american white-pickett-fence boy training, I
naively managed to wait, watching, for almost 20 years (for one reason or
another) to make my first visit to Haiti until it seemed "safe" and
"correct." I will kick myself to the urn for putting off for so long
getting to know what I now think of as LIFE - not political life, not SAFE
life, but LIFE, complete with kids on my lap and friends I've come to call
family who live in Haiti.

Sure, bad / upsetting things are going on in Haiti these days and in other
parts as well. And when has there not been? Take a cruise into THAT history
and there will ALWAYS be some reason NOT to take a chance at having an
experience that could transform you.

The big ugly stories of Haitian HISTORY kept me away (and some of them
would have kept ANYONE away), but now the Real Stories (some of them my
own, some that are so amazing they can do nothing but to make me proud of
folks long gone) make me want to go and to stay longer, to get to work, to
live outside the comfort of the hotel walls AND the political madness to
where the people live and work, a little short of dough, maybe, just like
me, and a little shy of total physical security, just like every single
life...

But why not play it REALLY safe and cruise to club med or disney world
where you can where your political ID on your sleeve and nobody will be
even be interested? After all, Safe is nice, Bed is comfy, I hear prozak
works... Although a tad risky, why not stay home and WRITE ABOUT how cool
it might have been to actually take a personal stand against the
never-ending Political BS from the ivory tower?

If you are a person signed up for this Cruise (which I admit did sound like
an interesting group event), I'd like to hear HOW YOU FEEL about it being
shunted from a potentially REAL and memorable event to yet another church
basement function - from a commemoration to a just a ration. If I'd have
signed up (AND Saved Up) for this cruise, I'd be pissed - I'd be looking to
jumping ship within swimmable distance of the REAL celebration. Can't
really call it "cruise into history" any more, but maybe "cruise into yet
another group's version of history" will fit better.

Now that I know something of this LIFE in Haiti (I'm NO expert, but I've
been around the block...), I try to make my decisions about it based on my
impressions of how life CAN be, and by my instincts (which have kept me
pretty safe, so far) about what needs to be done - not by the unfortunate
influence of well-fed yet never-sated politicos and their goal-oriented,
advertising-driven Corporate Media.. and not about irrational fears about
personal safety.

If it helps (hippie time again), I try to mostly concentrate on "the
peace"... and it IS often interrupted, but not by really dangerous rebels,
not by potentially corrupt presidents and talk-show hosts selected by other
really dangerous selected presidents, and certainly not by their whining
about not having enough dough-nations for some really really expensive and
inedible floridian and most certainly lending to verifyably
fraudulent-election Voting Machines (run by ELECTRICITY!) - but by a real
conversation with a real good friend over a perfectly delicious and
lovingly-prepared plate of rice with bean gravy... or by kids, laughing -
or crying, a little hungry maybe, a little thirsty, a little lonely,
growing up without ever having known you and the safety of your arms...
somebody gotta go get them, pick them up, hold them on their lap, let them
feel safe for a minute... I'll go do THAT, anyone wanna go do THAT? I'd
take a bullet for THAT...

My mother says, "If you are meant to go by ___blank___, you'll either be on
it or under it."

Anyone care to Jump Ship?

Clay