Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Stephen Judd,
We do need decisive leadership – on the radio at 3pm Mayor Bob Parker’s comment that he couldn’t declare a state of emergency was met with jeers of derision from the affected.
*Sigh* I think a raw-nerves free pass has well and truly been earned there, but as I understand the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act he really couldn’t without following a process that exists for a reason. Decisive leadership is about getting things right, not just doing them right now. and sweat the details later. There are too many places today where that kind of approach quite literally put lives at risk.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
(Also, Craig – Ross said that last thing you replied to, not me. I’m on your side! Don’t shoot!)
Heh... No shooting. Instead, I've put on The Four Last Songs, cranked it up and luxuriated in a mighty wave of cleansing, heart-breaking beauty.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
But one has to think what the world will see when the death count starts dropping.
Frankly, I credit the world with enough intelligence to understand the perfectly sensible protocol the Police follow in their official statements, or the consistent refusal of officers on the ground to guestimate or speculate. I know an officer who got torn a new arsehole for an unguarded comment to a journalist at an accident scene that was inaccurate and had to be publicly corrected. Not least because of the totally unnecessary distress and uncertainty it caused to the families of the victims.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Ross Mason,
Please come back to reality. Please.
God, sometimes even my ample stock of rude words fail me…
Ross, the reality is that I’m still waiting for a dozen or so friends to check in – I don’t know if they’re alive or dead or seriously injured. There’s a city full of terrified people, and God only knows how many of them have been separated from their families.
I know the media were doing their jobs, but FFS what useful, humane purpose would be served by emergency workers (or Key and English) speculating?
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Lilith __,
I feel bad for feeling bad about my own situation when all my loved ones are safe and I have a house I can live in.
Screw it, Lilith. I'm full of a mad desperate gratitude that you've given me another name to cross off the worry list. Lucy is right: Baby, you've got it bad enough, so lighten up on yourself.
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I turned off the sound on the television, and put on John Adams’ On The Transmigration of Souls (which was commissioned to commemorate the victims of another senseless tragedy):
For this work Adams assembled a text comprised of three main sources: brief fragments taken from missing person signs that had been posted by friends and family members in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy; personal reminiscences (principally drawn from interviews appearing in the “Portraits of Grief” series in The New York Times); and a randomly chosen list of names of the victims.
The work also employs a “soundscape” designed in collaboration with Mark Grey that surrounds the audience with prerecorded city sounds (quiet traffic, voices, footsteps, etc.) and the reading by many different voices of the names of the victims.
The intimacy and human scale just seemed right; a way to articulate and make sense of the incoherent mood swings I'm feeling at the moment. “Remember me. Please don’t ever forget me.”
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Hard News: Welfare: Back to the Future?, in reply to nzlemming,
Sweetheart, that's the first laugh I've had for eight hours or so. I love this place and every one of you, more often than not.
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+ 1 to what Megan said. While my opinion of politicians is not awfully high, when it counts they step up and it's worth remembering there's quite a few MP's who have friends and family in the zone. Give them a fucking break.
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BTW, anyone have some geekery on why the internet is still working but it's basically impossible to make cell or land line calls, even here in Dorkland?
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Sacha,
That’s a fair point, Sacha, and I’d have to say for the most part the media have actually done a damn good job at avoiding “disaster porn”. (Quietly, I’ve been impressed by how the coverage I’ve seen has not involved cameras being shoved in the faces of obviously traumatised people.) There’s going to be a lot of people who won’t come out of the PGG Building alive, but there’s lines of tone and taste that should be respected. Does reporting that people are “screaming” add any news value to the story or is it gratuitous and insensitive colour? Of course, YMMV and I’m certainly rather sensitive because there’s a lot of people I haven’t accounted for.
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