disconnected
Sep. 9th, 2005 06:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleI've been doing business with a local company I think of as Fittings Land, though they have a more professional name. They don't really have an online presence. When I found myself with a time-critical need for odd bits of high-tech plumbing, one of my colleagues mentioned this local place. Of course, I went looking for their website, which doesn't exist. Then I went looking for their listing in online phone directories. That doesn't exist either, which made me think they'd gone out of business, or left the state, or somesuch. They weren't even in business directories like Thomas Register. I was about to give up on them when I found a 6-year-old archive from a microscopy mailing list. Someone had dumped hundreds of email messages into one file, presumably thinking it might come in handy someday (but not *really* expecting anything useful to be in there.) Google returned the whole file because the company name I was looking for was mentioned near the end. "If you can't find a local source for [weird fitting], try [Fittings Land] at [phone number]. They've always been great about helping me." I called the phone number, hoping to be told where they'd moved, or what their new name was. Nope. They answered the phone. They're still in their old location, less than 10 miles from my workplace. I could go right over.
It was convenient that I had my car at work. (If I hadn't, I might have been able to talk somebody into driving me there. Or found some other way of dealing with the consequences of my clumsiness. Well-planned projects never have moments of "Oops. We need a different piece to make all this work together." Do they?) I listened to public radio on the way over. I had part of the audiobook of _The Hundred Days_ with me, but it's hard for me to turn away from the media focus on the aftermath of the hurricane. NPR was discussing whether people who fled the hurricane should be collectively known as "refugees" or whether that might be heard as derogatory.
The people at Fittings Land were very helpful. They're more of a warehouse than a store, but they were tremendously nice to a clueless person who just walked in with a credit card and some disjoint fittings. ("I need this to connect to that, over 11", in something that won't corrode.") As a lot of people do, they listen to the radio at work. It's not a station I'm familiar with. As I listened, I realized how people who aren't political fanatics can get such a clear, consistent picture of what's happening that bits of contrary information just seem implausible, like malicious nonsense. It was scary.
I think the radio station is part of the Clear Channel network. There were little bits of national news, interspersed with sports, weather, and music I didn't like. I didn't notice whether they used the word "refugee" or one of the tactful substitutes like "evacuee." I was too overwhelmed with noticing the pervasive use of "those people" for everyone who "chose to stay" in New Orleans. Also "FEMA rescuers and Red Cross workers," consistently linked, as if FEMA's work had been uniformly positive. I don't think it's possible to listen to this radio station's news coverage and read something like Making Light (and that whole large community I care about), and take them both seriously. If you take one seriously, the other doesn't look like, "oh, there's an error in fact" or "that judgement of character is biased the wrong way." It looks like "those people are malicious liars, totally deluded fools, and/or nutbar conspiracy theorists. Don't they know anything at all?"
It was convenient that I had my car at work. (If I hadn't, I might have been able to talk somebody into driving me there. Or found some other way of dealing with the consequences of my clumsiness. Well-planned projects never have moments of "Oops. We need a different piece to make all this work together." Do they?) I listened to public radio on the way over. I had part of the audiobook of _The Hundred Days_ with me, but it's hard for me to turn away from the media focus on the aftermath of the hurricane. NPR was discussing whether people who fled the hurricane should be collectively known as "refugees" or whether that might be heard as derogatory.
The people at Fittings Land were very helpful. They're more of a warehouse than a store, but they were tremendously nice to a clueless person who just walked in with a credit card and some disjoint fittings. ("I need this to connect to that, over 11", in something that won't corrode.") As a lot of people do, they listen to the radio at work. It's not a station I'm familiar with. As I listened, I realized how people who aren't political fanatics can get such a clear, consistent picture of what's happening that bits of contrary information just seem implausible, like malicious nonsense. It was scary.
I think the radio station is part of the Clear Channel network. There were little bits of national news, interspersed with sports, weather, and music I didn't like. I didn't notice whether they used the word "refugee" or one of the tactful substitutes like "evacuee." I was too overwhelmed with noticing the pervasive use of "those people" for everyone who "chose to stay" in New Orleans. Also "FEMA rescuers and Red Cross workers," consistently linked, as if FEMA's work had been uniformly positive. I don't think it's possible to listen to this radio station's news coverage and read something like Making Light (and that whole large community I care about), and take them both seriously. If you take one seriously, the other doesn't look like, "oh, there's an error in fact" or "that judgement of character is biased the wrong way." It looks like "those people are malicious liars, totally deluded fools, and/or nutbar conspiracy theorists. Don't they know anything at all?"
