Wilson Hines

What?  I didn't even really like Crisis.  But, it is being published this fall in an anthology.  I was notified yesterday and I had almost forgotten that I submitted it to the publishers.  It will be published with criticial remarks, so I guess that means it was good enough to "conjur the juices of thought."  

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The word crisis conjures up a plethora of things in different people’s minds. 

You are aware of the hurricane that marches for a month from West Africa.  It boils and churns all the way to the West Indies and we see the wrath of someone’s God and the mercy of another’s God, all wrapped up in a 500-mile behemoth of wind, rain, and clouds.  It crosses near Cuba and makes its sovereign mind where it wants to ravage.  It enters the Gulf and picks up steam and we watch.  We watch from Chicago as if we were twenty miles from its landing.  

A good crisis empties the shelves of bread and milk, and even plywood.  The mind of the capitalist thinks, “Oh, if I could only control the weather.”  We will watch a crisis.  We love drama and we love the anguish of other people.  And while we are watching, may we remember to say,  “Oh, the humanity.”  

We love snow and snow stalls all life, no matter where you are on the map.  The Yankee is no better than the Carolinian in the way he deals with snow.  The Yankee decries such statements, but honestly, why can’t he just admit the facts?  The difference is the Carolinian has been trained since birth to react to a snow below frost as a rat to the sound of a bell: stop what you are doing and watch the snow.  

Anchormen and reporters are highest paid; more so than the officer, the medical technician carrying people off in the ambulance, more so than the guardsman captain with his men filling sand bags and absolutely more so than those men filling those bags.  

So, life moves forward as long as the crisis is your crisis.  A good crisis is just fine as long as it is your crisis and not my crisis. To live a good crisis is just not the same, for whatever reason, as to watch a good crisis.  

We love to watch a good crisis.