That’s an accent-mark, not an apostrophe. My Option-E key combo doesn’t work on WordPress title bars, apparently.
I probably shouldn’t write this post. Because it touches on why I snapped over at Aunt B.’s last week. And clearly, once you read this, you’ll see that I’m far from done with the snappishness. Blame the post-traumatic stress, or blame the fact that I can be a real bastard sometimes.
In case you didn’t know we had a flood, and odds are you might not have because a bomb that didn’t explode is far more interesting that a sky full of clouds that did, apparently. Especially when said bomb is less than a mile from your office and the big storm is somewhere out in Fat Rednecks With Bad Teeth territory. Griping about how no one knew about our flood has become one of our favourite pastimes here in Nashville.
But it seems our other favourite pastime, at least the places I frequent, is making a name for ourselves and our charitable ‘brand’ by capitalising on the desire of others to help.
Yes, this is a song I’ve sung here before, perhaps 100 times. The song where I say that it’s better to just give to the needy than to buy a pink ribbon shirt or a [Red] iPod or a funky-looking can of Pepsi. And I know your answers: People like to have a souvenier of their participation; anything that brings notice to the cause is a good thing; this route of fundraising is bringing in far more for the needy than I and my kvetchy whinealong.
You may be right.
But I’m sorry. I can’t get past the place where I find it somewhat distasteful that there are not one but two places you can buy 1 of at least 7 different t-shirt designs. None of which say “Folks died, folks lost their homes, folks lost their livelihoods and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!” or “Been There, Gawked At the Suffering, Got The T-Shirt.” And yes, I know some of the people behind the shirts and I like the shirt designs and doggone it, part of me wants one. Maybe long after the flood, when the stench of raw sewage has left the lawns and whatnot. But it still seems so new, so close to the end. Like selling souveniers of the apocalypse. Why then do I want one?
And it’s not just the t-shirts. I’ve lost count of the number of Facebook groups, websites, neighbourhood newspapers, HOA newsletters, church weekly mailers, etc., where you can offer your services to the needy. Or find something to fill your needs. It’s a good thing in that we’re a gregarious and generally kind-hearted bunch of folks who just want to help.
But I have the creeping suspicion that there are more than a few people who are pretty proud of themselves for being the Face of Nashville Compassion. And that irks me. It bugs me that resumés (see?! It works in the body copy!) will inevitably list “Organised Blank To Help Victims of The Nashville Flood”.
I suppose that’s the downside to living in this town. Our major businesses are showbusiness and printing. Both of which involve a heck of a lot of marketing. So we’ve got a lot of marketing-savvy people here. But sometimes, just sometimes, I’d like to feel like we’re all making genuine connections and not schmoozing for the next Opportunity. I
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Is this like Kat’s unfinished symphony? 🙂
I’ve said it elsewhere: this region has an unusually high percentage of emoters in the populace. If one could give a mass Myers-Briggs test, I’m sure you’d see higher than average amounts of “E’s” and “F’s” in middle Tennessee.
Having been to churches in just about every neighborhood in Middle TN, I feel pretty confident about that assessment.
Just to my untrained eye, the citizenry here has a different mass personality than, say, Cedar Rapids, Iowa – the last place to have a major flood. It seemed to me that the people there were more stoic and they internalized whatever they were feeling and doing about the disaster. They quietly went about rebuilding their lives.
The midwestern temperment is admirable.
However, we just don’t have that in us here. We are who we are.
(And we’ll be the first to tell you about it 🙂 )
Nashville is such an extroverted, feeling place because that’s where all the extroverted feelers went. 🙂
We write songs, we print T-Shirts, we create Facebook groups, we say our prayers out loud.
Personally, I think the world needs a city like Nashville. I know that makes it harder on our INTJ minority, but it is what it is.
You can tell me all you want how it’s just an emotive thing that I can’t understand with my poor widdo wobot heawt, but it’s not the touchy-feelyness that bothers me.
I don’t have Asperger’s or some other condition that prevents me from having emotion or sensing and displaying those emotions.
What bothers me is the sheer arrogance that some people are displaying. Like they’ve trademarked the Flood Relief market and rubberstamped it with their brand.
Flood Relief has become a hipster-doofus calling card in some circles and that chills me a bit.
Kat, I know what you mean. I’ve been hesitant to publicly criticize any of the t-shirt or “we are nashville” type things, because I’ve been trying to be charitable about people’s motivations, and remember that people grieve and try to help and try to boost morale in their own ways. But as far as buying flood t-shirts, especially flood t-shirts that seem to have a subtext of either “look at my cool logo/brand!” or “well, at least we’re more awesome than *those people,* who didn’t do nearly as well with *their* flood?” Count me out.
Well, I’m with Kat and Rachel on feeling a bit put off by it. (Or bemused at the people — and I know they exist — who will eat out Monday as a contribution, rather than making a contribution directly.) But I think there were people (for instance, the women at Nashvillest, or firefighters who were out rescuing people, even people sorting clothing donations for the Red Cross) who provided real services of different sorts at a real moment of need. And if, after the fact, those folks want to do a little resumé padding, at least they’re less ridiculous than someone being trying to be the Face of Caring who didn’t do anything. For some reason, I’m thinking of Al Haig just now….
I will go ahead and poke this bear with a pencil: What the hell?
Flash floods in the mid south are like tonados in Kansas. Yeah, they get bad, but when you have one or two every year, it seems crazy to go nutso about it. I know people lost their lives, but on a both economic and human cost scale, the flooding in Nashville was several orders of magnitude smaller than even the last big tornado outbreak, let alone the San Francisco earthquake, Katrina, Andrew, etc.
I haven’t lived in Nashville in a number of years now, but I kept looking at the flooding photos and videos on YouTube. The great majority of them I saw were taken within hundreds of yards of the place I lived in Bellevue around the Harpeth bottoms. The thing that was crazy to me, that area would flood two or three times a year in regular times, yet they built up more and more in the years since I left in low lying areas and relied on a very limited storm drain system to protect them.
Even as they built the Arena, I thought about it being a flood risk because it was low set and only feet above the river in regular times.
The “We Are Nashville” thing strikes me as borderline offensive mostly because it seems like people bowing up over something that is damned near commonplace. I have spent most of my life in midsouth river towns. I have gone diving in 10 feet of flood water to recue my grandmother’s jewelry in Paducah and saw my middle school with 6 inches of water in it.. twice.
What happened was sad. Sad things happen a lot. You clean up and get on with it, or you don’t live by a river in the middle of the country. The implication that somehow Nashville is better than everywhere else — for what reason again? — really seems just crude.
I expect an apology and retraction from what you lied about me at Silence’s.
You have my #. YOu have my email. DId you fact ck? NO
YOU JUST called me a liar.
I moved over a year ago from that condo and lost my house in Sylvan Park. Had you ca;;ed pr emailed, you would have known that. But withoput talking to me all this time, you blatantly put up a lie.
Retract and aologize
I am in no mood for slander and libel….and you blatantly called me a liar. Why didnt you call? Wht didnt you email?
You don’t get to do this to people aNd I am in no mood to take it from you or your sick friend.
IF you write about me, you damn well better get it 100 percent right
Don’t come here and bully me. I’ve had enough of your tantrum throwing. Nowhere did I call you a liar. I said LAST I KNEW. I made it clear I didn’t know everything.
You need to get over your histrionics.