Earlier this month, on Sunday June 11th, at 6:20 AM, an overpass collapsed due to a violent fire on I-95 in Philadelphia. It was noon here in France and I found out about it almost in real time scrolling through US news on my phone. A couple of hours later, while speaking to my sister in Pottsville, I mentioned the fire and she reacted with surprise. From the other side of the Atlantic, on another continent, I’d been the first to know.
News travels fast, and thanks to our smart phones, 24/7, we have the world at our fingertips. Often this means living our lives against a backdrop of violence, war and tragedy.
I think about this a lot as I carry on with life. I think about distance. For example, 1,000 miles from where I live, a war is going on. An entire generation of young men is being sacrificed in Ukraine, a country with a population of 43 million. Today fighting is going on in eastern Ukraine as, village by village, the Ukrainian army tries to regain territory lost. The death toll is heavy on both the Ukrainian and Russian sides.
We live in a world where it’s hard to ignore what’s going on at home or on the other side of the globe. To escape the news, we’d have to live like Henry David Thoreau, in a cabin we built ourselves, eating the food we raise. Even if you tossed your cellphone in the Schuylkill River and turned off the TV, current events would catch up with you somehow.
During the night of June 13-14, off the coast of Kalamata, Greece, a boat carrying refugees sank. More than a week later, the number of deaths, most likely in the hundreds, remains unknown. The 104 survivors, all men, speak of 750 passengers on board, with most of the women and children trapped in the hold. This is the worst refugee boat accident in the Mediterranean since 2016.
I am not a morbid person and I am not trying to depress my readers, but I ask myself and I ask you how to live life against a backdrop of bad news.
My response may be a cowardly one—I am not an activist by nature, but my decision is made. I try to make the best of each day, fighting bad news with a smile. I suppose that makes me a Pollyanna. I loved the 1960 movie with Hayley Mills, now a classic, and I enjoyed the book.
Playing Pollyanna’s “Glad Game,” I’m glad for my morning cup of coffee and fresh bread with honey, a breakfast fit for a queen. I’ll admit, I’m glad to no longer be teaching. That alone makes each day a gift. I live modestly but what does it matter when I can read, write, walk, garden, visit friends, live.
The morning after the tragedy in Kalamata, I heard about it on the radio while I was picking red currants in my garden. I have to use scissors to cut the fruit from the tiny stems. If I try to pull a berry from the bush, it crushes between my fingers and the berry juice stains my fingers red. That morning, while others’ hopes, lives and families were destroyed, I was enjoying summer’s splendor. The contrast made me feel beholden to life.
Only yesterday, just as I was sitting down to write this article, my friend Sophie called with a spur-of-the-moment invitation to hear her son sing with the youth choir of Opéra comique. They were giving a free concert in the main hall of Musée d’Orsay, the museum of 19th century art across the Seine from the Louvre. Art and music all under one roof. Carpe diem. I seized the day and hurried to Paris. It’s not hard to play the “Glad Game” in circumstances like that.
Somedays, though, it is. This past winter, I shivered through each day, huddled in front of the fireplace, my only source of heat, in the apartment I moved to in January 2022. Taken in by the look of the place, I overlooked there was no heat. The few radiators are good for nothing except running up the electric bill. There were days when, without my coffee and bread, I’d have found nothing to be glad about. The only way to warm up was to take a swift walk outside.
Now it’s summer. Last year I planted some honey suckle. This year it’s in flower and I can smell its sweet scent, one I came to love as a child. On our way to the East Side pool, my friends and I would stop at a honey suckle hedge, pick the flowers, and suck out the sweet nectar.
On this summer day, the windows are open, birds are singing and the air is fragrant with the scent of linden flower. And all’s right with the world, I’m tempted to say, except it’s not.
Here, the natural world is in peril and so are we. There is not enough water. For the moment, we are practicing voluntary water restrictions. In a neighboring département, strict conservations measures have been put in place, along with fines. What happens if we run out?
That’s another thing I wonder about. If we were the refugees, fleeing drought, who would take us in?
I also wonder what it would be like to play the “Glad Game” if I didn’t have shelter, food, friends and family always there to love and help. What if I were all alone and had to face mortal illness, war? I’ve not been tested. I don’t know.
On June 11th, when the I-95 overpass collapsed, rescuers first believed there were no victims. Later in the carcass of the fuel truck that caught on fire, the remains of Nathan Moody, age 53 at time of death and father of three, were found.
Let’s hope in the months and years to come, his family can overcome loss and find things to make them glad.
