A world gone crazy

Yesterday I was enoying my idyllic life, lingering at the pool at summer's end with my good friend on a flawless sunny day while our respective children toiled away at school. We were happy, carefree women, unfettered by job demands, secure in the knowledge of our children's happiness and safety as well as our husbands' devotion and support. We laughed over silly things and talked about books. But even as I floated in the sparkling water and soaked up the late summer rays, I thought about the innocents in southern Russia who were living through a nightmare. Chechnyan militants, including reportedly Arab mercenaries, had stormed a school (a school!!!) full of young children and parents, and were holding them hostage for what? Chechnyan independence? Islamist idealism? Our morning paper carried the story of a woman who was released by her captors but permitted to take only one of her children, forcing her to choose between staying with both children, possibly condemning all three to death, or taking one child and herself to safety while leaving the other, a six-year old, to an uncertain fate. What cause could possibly be furthered by the taking of children?? By the psychological torture of a mother who had committed no offense but to have taken her children to school that day? For all the militants knew, she may have sympathized with their crusade. By the time I arrived for my day of leisure at the club, reports had already surfaced that the Russian special forces had attacked in an effort to end the standoff and there had been many, many casualties. I closed my eyes as the sweat beaded on my forehead and said a prayer for the people of Russia and a prayer of thanks for my own idyllic life. Last night I turned on the news hoping for positive information about the crisis, perhaps news that the death toll was smaller than originally feared. The first shock was that the lead story on virtually every station I checked was hurricane Frances. OK, so much of the Florida coast had been evacuated but this is a story that hadn't happened yet. The hurricane was still in the Bahamas and it was weakening. This was followed by a lengthy discussion of Bill Clinton's heart problems. Huh? I admit that I'm no fan of Bill Clinton but come on people! His story deserved no more than an end-of-news footnote! The media reacts to his health problems as if a beloved deity was being snatched from our midst. Oh yeah, I forgot. To the media he is a beloved deity. Only then did television serve up any news about the crisis in Russia. I hate to hear stories about how Americans are uninformed about the world outside our borders but is it because the media fails to give priority to the really important stuff, or do they fail to give the news because there's no audience for it? The chicken or the egg. Today comes the horrific news about the bloody resolution to the school-taking. More than 350 feared dead, mostly parents and children. Some of the militants believed to have escaped. Photographs of bloody dead childen mourned over by their mothers. I checked the paper. It's another pool day in Pittsburgh. I'll say another prayer.