First post from brand-new home internet connection
Now, is it just me, or is the world going completely to hell without even bothering with the hand-basket, with the American Southeast leading the charge?

I think half my problem of perception is that I’m immersed in them beautiful, beautiful Current Events all day long in my job at Small Pub’. Yesterday, I went down to southwest Atalanta to talk with refugees from just west of here who were pouring into this new Red Cross shelter. At first, I had a hard time getting past that irritating and so unique-to-this-time-and-place-in-history sensation that had creeped over me from too many hours of CNN: that Gee, this was just like a movie!

But somewhere between talking with one spokesguy who was obviously at a loss for the shelter’s long-term plan, watching a volunteer plead with him in the hot August sun outside, just to tell her what the hell she needed to be doing here to help out here, and talking to three or four people from New Orleans and Mississippi with one or two grocery bags of belongings and an identical far-away look in their eyes—yes, yes, it hit home. Which didn’t make it any easier to comprehend; just sadder.

My job consists of talking to people, getting information and, objective-as-I-can: describing the scene, relaying what they said. It doesn’t require explaining or trying to put anything into perspective. Which, frankly, in some ways is a relief: When the throngs of people are arrested for chanting in the lobby of City Hall after a law passes that bans panhandling in both downtown Atlanta and yes, the Martin Luther King Historic District, I can stick my mic in the faces of those who are crying and yelling. I can watch as city officials tell them they won’t get arrested if they just go downstairs and then, once they do that, the police arrest them anyway. Then I can jot a few notes down in my little notebook, drive back to the office, write it all down, realize it’s too long so take out the part about the police and the protestors, hit print, swipe my time-card and go home. Same thing with the stories about Atlanta mothers of dead soldiers in Iraq speaking out. Same thing with abortion protests on both sides. Same thing with a new law requiring a photo ID to vote in Georgia, (protested and protested against by every middle-of-the-road group from the NAACP to the League of Women Voters, who all point to research showing that by and large, the problem of voter fraud is not even touched by this law.)

I report on all this, then I leave. And again: the ability to do that without being required to process each and every thing when it happens is useful to my sanity. But I’m starting, actually, of course, to wonder how true that really is. Because of course, I’d like to make a difference in the damn world. I can’t be an open, bleeding wound about every single issue without completely losing it, but the approach I’m now required to take isn’t working, either. Instead of a bleeding heart, I’m being slowly, surely rubbed raw.