Real Places, Real Lives
It was probably a year ago - maybe even to the day - I was living in Cincinnati. I lived within the city limits, in a decent neighborhood, but one filled with ostentatious shitheads. You just would not believe the snobbery. There were some cheaper apartments to be had...and I had one of them. Perhaps in another rant, I'll discuss the scatterbrained bitch of a landlady who never returned my security deposit.
Anyway, I was in one of those moods: gotta get out of the city, see some land, see a small town, someplace a little more real...a little more placid.
On the particular day I'm thinking of, I headed east about 20 miles to Batavia, Ohio. It was a cold day and I remember parking the car and walking up and down the main street of a typical American downtown of that size. Lovely old buildings, lots of desserted retail space, a charming small city that the big box stores have almost killed off, yet many people still live there living sensible, quiet lives. Reminded me a lot of my hometown, Oswego.......and Batavia, NY.......and Ottawa, KS, which I took a similar trip to just a couple of months ago.
News story the past day has told of a US soldier in Iraq, missing for a week, who - according to the AP - "was shown unhurt but clearly frightened in an Arab television broadcast in which the 20-year-old was surrounded by masked gunmen who offered to exchange him for imprisoned Iraqi fighters and claimed they had more hostages."
The soldier, whose name I won't even mention, has been identified as resident of Batavia, Ohio.
A news story I heard this morning described him as having worked at a Sam's Club, I'm guessing the one that I visited often.
To pResident Bush and Donny Rumsfeld, these are just names and numbers. The anonymous poor, young, lower class who must do their dirty work work while they sip martinis and slap the backs of their rich friends.
To the people of Batavia, and even to me, based on just a 20 minute walk there a year ago, the story is real and sad and it hurts. A lot.
-M!
