As part of my preparation to return to work earlier this week, I filled up the car with gasoline (I tend to go through a tank of gasoline every week or so) and was less than delighted with a price that was about forty cents higher than I'd paid the week before.
Yeah, I'd seen the stories on TV about the impact of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey had on the refining operations maintained by the major oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico and how as the storm approached, many had been shut down. Once that happens and the laws of supply and demand get to work their magic, you become a somewhat brittle white guy in his mid-sixties standing at a gas station pump vaguely unhappy at the turn of events that brought him here.
I suspect I'm not alone in having that twinge of self-pity, based on the number of news stories I'm seeing on this, except what I have to remind myself as the media microscope shifts our attention from Harvey to whatever is hottest, sexiest, and next up on the news cycle (maybe DACA? Hurricane Irma? North Korea? Trump and the Russians?), that the death, damage, and destruction caused across Texas and Louisiana by Harvey will leave a mark and make a lasting impression that won't soon fade, even if the interest of those located elsewhere already has.
It's human nature, I know, to view the world's events through a prism of our own personal perspectives but I'm not as good as I should be on remembering to not only react to the painting but also to the frame of reference it's in. I recall from childhood an old placing-things-in-their-proper-perspective tale that suggests "I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes until I met someone who had no feet." Again, today, I'm wearing slip-ons.
-bill kenny
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