I personally know two families who lost everything in the flood. They’re not what you think of when you hear “lost everything”, probably, because they used to be upper middle class. Expensive houses filled with the things you collect when you both work good-paying jobs and have been married for awhile.
They weren’t supposed to be in a flood plain, but this was a freakish flood. So they didn’t have flood insurance. They couldn’t have bought it if they wanted to, though, because the insurance company will only sell to you if you’re in a flood plain. And like I said, they weren’t supposed to be. But tell that to them now, when the water was at their bedroom windows. On the second story.
And of course they were upside down on their houses, having bought in with those freak loans where you gamble on your home’s value going up. I don’t think that’ll happen, now that their “ground” floors are entirely swimmable.
So not only do they not have anything left, they owe tones of money on sodden piles of bricks and weepy sheetrock.
And still I have read like 18 news stories now about how people have lost lots of expensive guitars.
Yes, I AM sad about that. Because it sucks to lose something you’ve worked so hard for, something that was so well-crafted and essential to your work.
But the one thing I had hoped to have come out of this is for the rest of the country at least–if not the world–to get that Nashville is a major metropolitan city with three highly-valued non-music industries headquartered here. We are a major publishing center. Health care across the country is headquartered here. I can’t even count the number of institutes of higher education we’ve got, and I’m not even including all the diploma mills in that. Tourism and music are just a fraction of Nashville.
But all anyone wants to talk about are the flippin’ guitars.
It makes this tragedy seem remote to other parts of the country, less tragical because it was “just guitars.” Nobody wants to know that all of a sudden there have been THOUSANDS of middle and upper-middle class families who are, in the blink of an eye, impoverished.
Meh. It’s a little annoying, but if it gets Mary in Portland Oregon (who otherwise wouldn’t have even known we had a disaster here) to send $100 to the recovery efforts, thereby helping your friends and mine, it’s worth it.
But what if it keeps Susie in Champaigne Urbana Illinois from sending $100 to the recovery efforts because it gives the impression that all we lost were a bunch of high-end Gibsons and some vid screens and tour equipment?
Because the word I’m hearing from friends in other parts of the country is that it sounds like all that was lost was a bunch of (this is a direct quote)
“stupid country music crap.”
That’s definitely not working in the favour of the 1000s of families in shelters across the state.
You have a point there.
We live in a strange world today, and it’s really hard to know how to navigate it.
Oh, and I don’t know if you saw the telethon last night, but FWIW, the celebrities almost seemed apologetic that the subject even came up.
I understand the frustration with focusing on one part of what Nashville’s about. But … you say “lots of expensive guitars” as if they are a collection of Waterford crystal pieces or pricey computer games or something. But they are heirlooms and tools of a trade, too. Why is someone’s fear that he’s lost the guitar his father taught him to play on less than someone’s fear that he’s lost his parents’ wedding picture? Why is someone’s lost equipment less meaningful if it’s a guitar than if it’s a color press? I hate our cultural fascination with celebrities and the way we use celebrities to motivate mass action; I hate the fact that almost the only national celebrities in Nashville are musicians; but they (collectively/generically) are why a lot of people visit and live here. At least they stepped up.
Why is someone’s fear that he’s lost the guitar his father taught him to play on less than someone’s fear that he’s lost his parents’ wedding picture?
It’s not “less than”. I’m simply trying to make the point that it’s not the only loss here.
Yet time and again it seems to be the only one the media are focusing on.
I KNOW we’ve lost priceless, irrepplaceable pieces of history. That picture of the Opry under water is a punch in the gut–and I’m not even a big country music fan.
But that seems to be the go-to story over and over and over again. There are a lot of other books on the shelf.
Oh, Coble, I do hear ya. But really, the news had two go-to stories, the oil spill in the Gulf and the attempted bombing in NYC. And not with much nuance in either case. So a bunch of bloggers and tweeters shamed them into spending a couple of minutes on the floods in Nashville, and you’re expecting them to all of a sudden present a complex viewpoint? Not gonna happen.
You do realize that the networks have no news-gathering staff. Between layoffs and budget cuts and the salaries of the anchors, where is the reporting that would let the full story be told going to come from?
And speaking of themes that were dealt with in The Wire (ooh, really bad segué), Friday Night Lights starts on NBC tonight and the actor who played Wallace the first season of The Wire is going to be a regular cast member on FNL this season.