Tag: story

Feb 10 2012

the blind leading the blind

As we do on most days, Bobby the dog and I walk through Cronesteyn Park. Today it was rather late, around 5ish. But it doesn’t get dark now til after 6pm.

I thought we’d only do half the park and turn around, but it’s hard to stop once you’re there. So we crossed the Rijn-Schiekanaal via the Lammebrug and ended up exiting on the west-north-west side of the park. We walked over the train tracks and onto the the Kanaalbrug.

There was a blind lady on the bridge, using her long pole and other senses to make her way. She was going slowly and seemed a bit tense, a little tentative. So I walked up beside her, saying HELLO, HOW ARE YOU?

Then I realized: she’s not deaf, you idiot! I resumed in at a normal volume: How is everything? Okay? Hey, would you like a hand?

She didn’t hesitate and slipped her arm through mine. She seemed to relax and told me it was okay.

cross posted at writing in the rAw and daily kos

May 28 2010

Stories Of Impact Will Push Us To Fix The Oil Spill, Homelessness, And Other Big Problems

While I was on a recent radio show, a student called in from a campus “Rally Against 1070,” that challenged Arizona’s draconian immigration law. The rally was a great idea, part of the public outcry that’s needed. But I wish they’d called it something like “Rally Against the Show Us Your Papers Law.” Headlining it with a bill number gave people nothing to respond to emotionally.

Over nearly forty years that I’ve spoken out on various causes and written about citizen movements, I’ve come to believe that people work for justice when their hearts are stirred by specific lives and situations that develop our capacity to feel empathy, to imagine ourselves as someone else. New information–the percentage of people out of work or children in poverty, the numbers behind America’s record health care costs, the annual planetary increases in greenhouse gases–can help us comprehend the magnitude of our shared problems and develop appropriate responses. But information alone can’t provide the organic connection that binds one person to another, or that stirs our hearts to act.