There is something loathesome about the way TV news handles any crisis or disaster by focusing on the ”Chicago connection” to any story. As if our concern , care, compassion, and sympathy are to be limited to those who are from Chicago, have passed thru Chicago or have done business in Chicago. Perhaps this is just a corporate extension of a natural tendency to try to keep the world at bay by filtering out that which doesn’t have any direct relationship to us. If we were to be truly touched by all the news, we couldn’t bear to read or listen to it. So we put it thru a triage to decide how much it will affect us.

That is why I have read the reports of the huge car accident north of Milwaukee yesterday. Several times. I stare at the reports. Tho I have seen no names of victims yet, I can’t help but feel personally touched. Words jump off the page - Ozaukee, Sheboygan, Cedarburg, Saukville - and I know these are real places. Places where I grew up. I-43 is a stretch of highway I have travelled on many times and I can easily visualize the way the highway gets close to the Lake (Michigan) and has patches of unexpected fog. My in-laws drive that stretch of highway at least once a month on their way up to the UP. It just all seems so real..........It is real. And I am stunned at the way that terrible things happen every day (for example, the shootings in Maryland/Virginia - I haven’t been there in 20 years.......) and I am able to distance myself. Feel badly, say a prayer, move on.

So I am wrestling with being someone who cares about her fellow human beings, her whole world. But doesn’t want to care so much that she is crippled with sadness and fear and doesn’t want to get out of bed.