I don’t know — I’m stunned at nature, angry at bureaucracy, awed by resilience, and a half-dozen other thoughts harder to articulate. Seems to me, like most of you out there probably, that the thing to do is send money and maybe drive less, but not sure what else. We watched The Ghosts of Rwanda tonight, which just compounded our sense of helplessness and frustration. Optimism, solutions, the will to see difficult things through the long haul…and on such a massive scale! Where will we find these things? Somehow we have to.
Some quick research reveals, interestingly, that it’s actually rather difficult to become an aid worker. Connections count in the relief-work world, as much as in politics or the music business; people in precarious situations want colleagues they can trust absolutely to get the job done, and so rely heavily on referrals. As for the rest of us, it’s our hearts and checkbooks they want. I count myself lucky that it’s easy to multiply my own support: all I have to do is declare a concert a benefit, or a share of CD proceeds a donation. It costs me nothing but the playing of music, which I’d do anyway. The generosity of the audience does the rest, and has impressed me so many times.