Tuesday, September 13, 2005

New Yorker book review of books about N. Korean tyrant

Is that how you spell tyrant?

I'm just settling in to write a bit about my feelings upon reading about the misery and suffering that characterize life in North Korea, according to this article I just read, when my cat comes in.

He's carrying one of his little toys. One of the tiny stuffed kitties he stole off my daughter's bed so many times that it finally became his. He mews a tiny mew when he has a stuffed kitty in his mouth. Mew, mew, mew, mew. He never properly meows like a normal cat. Then he drops the kitty at my feet and puts his paws up on my chair and nudges my elbow, purring at very high RPMs. And I look at him and I wonder why he wants to stop me from expressing my feelings about imagining the suffering in North Korea? Clearly he's intent on stopping me from carrying on in that vein. I pet his head a little bit. His fur is unbelievably soft.

It's just chance, which of us get to sit at our kitchen tables sipping coffee, petting cats, typing on our laptops, and which of us have all of our belongings blown away in a storm, or our daddy dragged off by the government in the middle of the night. I suppose chance can also craft a scenario where someone gets some mix, or even all of those.

NPR had a quote today from a woman at Medicaid, or one of those agencies, describing a for instance: 55-year-old grandmother who's home and job are gone in the hurricane/flood, needs medical treatment, clearly has no way of providing for herself, and can't be helped by this agency because as a childless person without a permanent disability, there is no category for her. Homeland Security, supposedly, has some emergency health care system for disasters, but they -- meaning Homeland Security -- don't seem to know how to work it.

What a nightmare.

I would like to throw myself down right now, again, and give thanks to you and you and you and you and all the other gods that my life is so damned blessed.

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