I close my eyes. Oh God I think I’m falling, out of the sky. I close my eyes

When falling from a 12 foot platform, along the arc of a rope swing, but not quite to the water’s edge, it is advisable to shield one’s face with one’s arms.  The time it takes to fall from such a position is surprisingly long.  Well, it seems surprisingly long.  One of those times when time slows down. A lot of information coming in as the roots, branches, and leaves come up to greet your face, chest, and stomach.  The resulting scrapes go good with a mohawk, by the way.  They also tend to elicit the question, “Why didn’t you do something?”

It’s not a very helpful question, because its not like you can go back nor is it likely that you will do it again.  Besides which, the information is coming in too fast for the processor to keep up.  Information without analysis is cable news.  Which brings us floods, oil spills, and hurricanes among other things.  Modern day, mass falling-off-the-rope-swing events.  Reading the New York Times’ coverage of the oil spill in the Gulf is like reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Diary of a Death Foretold. We all know where this is headed and there seems to be nothing we can do about it.  Circumstances in this instance may prove different, but I doubt it.

Same for  the flooding along the Cumberland and its tributaries.  In that case, it seems to have taken us all a while to even realize that there was something going on.  Well, all of us who do not live there anyway.  See, that’s the issue.  Given what is available to us by way of information technology and mass media, we think we live everywhere.  Of course we know what it going on, we’ve got Twitter for God’s sake.  But you can’t milk a cow with Tweets.  You have to lay hands on the animal.

So much connectivity and so much information does not mean we have exponentially more capability or knowledge.  Even as the ground rushes up to greet us, we don’t put it together to cover our face.  The useful question, then, is not “Why didn’t you do something?” but “What can we do now?”  That’s a little bit more challenging question.  It implies that if you tell me what you need, I’ll be willing to help you get it.  All of a sudden the rope is beginning to slip again.