Cry Me A River

Early Hurricane Relief

This post is about hurricane relief. Please skip to the bottom if you’d like to be spared the poetic wind.

It was so good to talk with her. The TV said it would be impossible. You know, friends sitting over a coffee, with different ideas.

Doesn’t it seem like there’s liberal and conservative voices (on a wide spectrum), still there, lost in a sea of madness? But what is the madness?

Could it be categorized into pro-human vs. anti-human?

“By what metric would you decide, Josh?” you might ask, read to strike with an infographic.

By what people do, not say.

It’s in vogue to criticize the media, to say it has a bias away from your own team, and balance it with the other.

I’ve got an easier way. What part of it actively seems to hate you, to make your life worse, to pump your veins full of fear and pharmaceuticals sold on incessant airwaves, to divide, alarm, other, blame? Maybe they do hate you, view humans as a cancer on the earth or filthy masses best washed away in a tide of muddy water, or at least silenced so they don’t pollute real progress. Or maybe they only hate themselves, and it gets ripped forward to us.

Tune that out.

The pro-humanists (and of course you’re one if you’re here reading this) are vitally required to have different opinions. How else would we tackle the near-infinite complexity of living?

Still, I feel so small.

There’s something crushing, overwhelming, and murderous about big systems. The ordinary people gather over coffee, and wonder what can be done.

There’s also something cumbersome and ineffective about them, either by incompetency, malice, or both.

The governor of Pennsylvania signs bombs with Zelenskyy, bought with your tax dollars. His autograph will pulverize people you’ll never meet in a war that can’t be won, and Appalachia is swept away by a boiling current, while leaders shrug. That looks expensive. We can only watch them grin . Or…?

What can ever be done? We sat around, sipping coffee, wondering.

Questions have a funny way of finding answers. The more I look for real, tangible things to be done, the more I find them.

So I just sent 80 rolls of toilet paper to a relief effort in Tennessee. Saw it on X. Yeah, yeah, the guy running it has strong political opinions. Shocker. He’s also wearing boots soaked in hurricane water at the moment, and that’s a better man than me. And he’s a pro-humanist. You’d might disagree with him, but I know you both want people to thrive, and not drown or starve.

He’s working with a Tennessee state rep to receive and distribute orders. I’m not there, and maybe it’s a scam, but I think not.

If you’ve got a good place to give and an effective way to help, drop it in the comments below. Let’s help ‘em out!

I feel like I’m learning something along the way, too.

In the meantime…80 rolls of TP on the way, compliments of the Great Cornholio.

-Josh