[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>     One of the issues that has been of concern to me in work to help
>     folks in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region is that we not show
>     up as 'tourists of disaster'. 
>
> I don't comprehend such a remark.  What is wrong with wanting to see a 
> disaster?  And can that not successfully coexist with helping?    It 
> is also important to own up to our own tourist-ism, when we are 
> actually tourists.  And, generally, tourist has acquired an unearned 
> negative connotation.    Like Chekist.        Christopherist
c,

After the flood in Corning in the late 60's, early 70's I and a few 
friends drove down there from Ithaca. We had never seen such a thing. 
Folks in their yards were yelling at us for gawking. I don't know if we 
were gawking or not. It made an impression on me.

Further than that, for one to not have been affected by whatever the 
tragedy I feel that there is a certain amount of a vicarious 
disconnect... like the idiots on the four-lane highway that come to a 
dead stop in order to see if there is a dead body in the crumpled car. 
They are not exactly helping anything. The world is full of disasters of 
various magnitudes. A barn burns... or the African American center at 
Cornell... I will be quite happy to rush over there to take a look. 
Though I may not go so far as to say that folks piled onto tour buses to 
go down to the Gulf region in order to look out the windows - there is 
for any group traveling under such circumstances within an area of 
disaster to look around as if it were a something more real and more 
impressive reality than Disneyland... but just the same not exactly 
their world. To me a tourist is one who goes to a place, looks around, 
takes it in, but does not engage their lives at that place or with the 
people who reside there. I am reminded of the travelogue Mark Twain 
wrote. I am also reminded of circumstances where folks I have witnessed 
run into environments all full of hope and promise, and a lot of odd 
ideas that they believe strongly, then find that they have no clue where 
they have arrived to or any longer an idea what to do about their being 
there or how quickly they can get away. Some times people get shot doing 
this kind of a thing. If they had seen a sign that read Tour Bus to Hell 
they may have thought twice, or not, but the advertised tour 
destinations can appear quite banal at times.

I don't think it has anything to do much with wanting to see a disaster, 
or with wanting to help. I do think it has a whole lot to do though if 
one comes off as an inadvertently obnoxious ass while doing it.

][<en

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