Note To The Kid In The Attic

Since this is Superbowl weekend, I doubt if many of my contemporaries are likely to read this entry—not that many ever do—so I’m using this to address the Kid In The Attic. He’s the reader I envision when I write, a kid who will stumble across my diaries in a dusty box in an attic 50 or a hundred years from now.

I want the Kid In The Attic to see how a Christian life worked out in real time for one lone guy at the beginning of the 21^st Century. This is pretty individualistic stuff, Kid, but to give you a peg to hang things on I think it’s a good idea to mention current news events now and then.

So, here’s your update on two things I’ve mentioned before:

Haiti’s earthquake.

It will be a cold day in Haiti before I send them another penny.

Last week the haitian government arrested ten American aid workers and charged them with kidnapping 32 children.

According to articles in the Wall Street Journal and in the New York Times, the ten Baptist missionaries were sponsored by a large church in Iowa which has sent aid workers into Haiti for years. They had bought property and had drawn up plans for an orphanage for Haitian children long before this earthquake.

Looks like such experienced aid workers would have known who to bribe.

Investigative reporters find no record of criminal connections or wrong doing among any of the Baptists except that one lady owes money from when her business went bankrupt in the present recession.

The ten under arrest for “kidnapping” the children face up to 15 years in a haitian prison—which seems to have escaped earthquake damage while news photos show rioting mobs of native people being served by American troops who appear to be carrying all the boxes.

Talk about bite the hand that feeds you!

So, my first reaction is not to give one penny aid and to stop payment on all checks that have already been written for Haiti earthquake relief, and to fly back from U.S. hospitals all those injured people American rescue workers have “kidnapped”.

An A-bomb would not be amiss either.

The earthquake was not the disaster; those people are.

They do more damage to each other than the earthquake ever did.

That’s my first thought… Then here comes a Bible passage (Matthew 23) to mind (I’ve got to stop reading that stuff!).

Jesus said, “Behold , I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify ; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city…”

But the love of God does not write us off even them. Despite how we all have treated the wise and good people, God keeps on sending them. Those rescue workers arrested in Haiti are just the last in a long line. In spite of their treatment, God’s Love keeps on coming.

He is relentless.

Swine Flu (H1N1)

Although a third wave may be in the offing, the Porky Flu epidemic dose not seem as bad as predicted.

Around the world, governments are trying to unload stockpiles of vaccines going stale. Loud voices accuse health organizations of crying wolf, being doom-sayers when there was no cause for alarm—and of even deliberately falsifying the severity of the flu danger just to get money for pharmaceutical companies.

Politicians bemoan money spent on unneeded vaccines.

On the other hand, Keiji Fududa, World Health Organization Pandemic Influenza Adviser, said that claims that H1N1 is a mild pandemic are wrongheaded.

"There have been over 14,000 deaths that have been laboratory-confirmed, many in young, previously healthy people. Who is going to tell their families that the virus is mild?" Fukuda wrote to TIME in an e-mail.

He said that the WHO's definition of influenza pandemics has always been based on transmissibility and has never had anything to do with the lethality of a virus; it was no different with H1N1.

In response to accusations of overreaction to what has amounted to a mild disease, Fukuda says that once the 2009 H1N1 pandemic had been declared, "WHO consistently made it clear that it could not predict the future course of the pandemic but consistently provided sober, balanced and scientifically supported information and guidance."

The quotes are from Time.

A couple of months ago, through our Civilian Emergency Response Team, Ginny and I trained to work at vaccination sites. But we were never mobilized. The anticipated huge crowds seeking inoculation never materialized.

Being in a high-risk group, Ginny did get her vaccination. Being in the Too-Old-To-Bother-About group, I did not. We took the CERT training courses but were not needed.

I feel disappointed that I missed the show, but grateful that the epidemic did not send death carts rolling down the streets collecting bodies for a mass burial pit (That has happened in Jacksonville in two previous epidemics, Yellow Jack and Spanish Lady).

Soon there will be another CERT disaster drill. I’ll have a chance to be a victim.

Age, arthritis and adrenaline preclude my training as a rescue worker pulling fair maidens from the rubble, but I am able to play the role of pathetic victim…

Sometimes I think I’ve been training for that role all my life.