If the state of Oregon were a person, and that person came in for therapy, and I was the therapist on duty, here’s what I would say: As a child your parents forced you to stay at home too much. They denied you the experience of participating in your own narrative. As a result, every time you see another group or individual having an experience that you’re not a part of, you act out in ways that allow you to be at the heart of the action, confused into a state where you believe the experience is your own.
On that dark and tragic June afternoon when our Michael was taken from us, the regular radio and television programming was interrupted by the national town criers, who were in turn interrupted abruptly with word that for those of us in Portland the loss was indeed personal. That’s because one of Michael’s former guitar players lives in one of our suburbs. As more than one stunned interviewee stated, often through tears, this really hits close to home. So close, in fact, that many of us gathered that evening at vigils that sprouted up like hope itself throughout the city. There were songs and speeches and prayers and lots and lots of weeping. But we supported each other in our moment of grief and together we got through it. Michael would have wanted it that way. He loved us so, and we loved him.
That was nothing compared to the coverage of the tsunami this week, reported live from the Oregon coast. If you are reading this and you don’t live in Oregon, you may be wondering what the disturbances in the Pacific – an earthquake and a tsunami, in American Samoa and Indonesia – have to do with Oregon. That’s a great question. And here’s a great answer: absolutely nothing.
According to news this morning, the death toll has surpassed one thousand. Lives have been lost, roads have been washed away like a mistake in a water color painting in progress, buildings have been turned upside-down and inside-out, people are missing. But here in Oregon, our reporters jumped in their vans and raced one another to the coast, where they beamed updates back to the gravely concerned news anchors, who reassured all of us that there probably wasn’t anything to worry about but still, a little precaution was probably in order.
When it comes to the 10 o’clock news on our local Fox station – channel 12 – I am a hopeless addict. I know the danger of the needle, but I shoot up anyhow, just this one last time. Each night, about 12 minutes into the newscast, a booming voice announces, You’re watching the 10 o’clock news, and we are just getting started.
And Fox 12 does not disappoint. On Monday, in addition to having a reporter standing beside the shore in San Francisco and many more reporters on the coast in Oregon, one guy really delivered. He held a plastic water bottle that was about half full. The camera panned in on the bottle, which he held sideways. He jiggled it a bit from the bottom, the South Pacific, and water subsequently splashed toward the top of the bottle, which represented the Oregon coast. “That’s how a tsunami works, basically,” he said.
With award-worthy performances like that, who cares about a bunch of dead and displaced folks halfway around the world? This story is ours. It hits close to home, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
On that dark and tragic June afternoon when our Michael was taken from us, the regular radio and television programming was interrupted by the national town criers, who were in turn interrupted abruptly with word that for those of us in Portland the loss was indeed personal. That’s because one of Michael’s former guitar players lives in one of our suburbs. As more than one stunned interviewee stated, often through tears, this really hits close to home. So close, in fact, that many of us gathered that evening at vigils that sprouted up like hope itself throughout the city. There were songs and speeches and prayers and lots and lots of weeping. But we supported each other in our moment of grief and together we got through it. Michael would have wanted it that way. He loved us so, and we loved him.
That was nothing compared to the coverage of the tsunami this week, reported live from the Oregon coast. If you are reading this and you don’t live in Oregon, you may be wondering what the disturbances in the Pacific – an earthquake and a tsunami, in American Samoa and Indonesia – have to do with Oregon. That’s a great question. And here’s a great answer: absolutely nothing.
According to news this morning, the death toll has surpassed one thousand. Lives have been lost, roads have been washed away like a mistake in a water color painting in progress, buildings have been turned upside-down and inside-out, people are missing. But here in Oregon, our reporters jumped in their vans and raced one another to the coast, where they beamed updates back to the gravely concerned news anchors, who reassured all of us that there probably wasn’t anything to worry about but still, a little precaution was probably in order.
When it comes to the 10 o’clock news on our local Fox station – channel 12 – I am a hopeless addict. I know the danger of the needle, but I shoot up anyhow, just this one last time. Each night, about 12 minutes into the newscast, a booming voice announces, You’re watching the 10 o’clock news, and we are just getting started.
And Fox 12 does not disappoint. On Monday, in addition to having a reporter standing beside the shore in San Francisco and many more reporters on the coast in Oregon, one guy really delivered. He held a plastic water bottle that was about half full. The camera panned in on the bottle, which he held sideways. He jiggled it a bit from the bottom, the South Pacific, and water subsequently splashed toward the top of the bottle, which represented the Oregon coast. “That’s how a tsunami works, basically,” he said.
With award-worthy performances like that, who cares about a bunch of dead and displaced folks halfway around the world? This story is ours. It hits close to home, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
