List(less)

I am feeling under tremendous, falsified/trumped-up pressure to
finish for Spanish translation several stories unstarted,
come up with something for an intern to do today,
socialize both at work and afterwards,
clean the apartment, wash clothes - organize, minimize
keep attention on all seven pets,
be a nice wife,
exercise,
get enough sleep,
keep my hair under control,
eat nutritious things,
make sure my car is legal and operational,
save money, plan for vacations/education/retirement,
maintain a number of filial and friendly relationships,
remember to go to Kiwanis lunch every week,
ask people for things while offering nothing in return…

…and I feel mildly endangered by the people I encounter…

Yesterday I was surrounded by unfettered, unguarged (but for a lacadasical parks staff member) MCI inmates, people dressed in khaki and picking up fireworks in exchange for time off sentences for, as "Stacy" described it, "traffic violations for the most part."

A white man without top incisors walking an amber toy poodle felt it neccessary to come up to me and then say, after we'd chatted a bit and I'd gotten nothing useful for publication, that he had wanted to "make sure" I was "OK" - that I knew "where I was."

Umm, yes, I'm here all the time…stop making me feel worse…

Exactly seven years ago, I was babbling at workers in another park strewn with fireworks trash, gathering information for my trial story, my audition, so to speak, for the position I have still.

I was just as nervous, random and uncomfortable.

My interest simply falls to feign (mode) when I'm forced to follow along someone else's thoughts. Even the seemingly safest of strangers sequestered in suits inside their office suites fill me with discomfort. Fight or flight ends up being squashed, while I remain…

Out in the random field, I never feel afraid, though obviously, I carry a pervasive dread.

After all, nothing grants me a particular immunity to go traipsing in sandals through trash piles, walk as a woman through abandoned lots alone, go into hostile situations and talk to strangers - and always expect to remain unscathed.

The perhaps greater duty compelling some journalists to do their vocation inside of combat zones has not turned out well for the likes of Daniel Pearl, a patron saint of sorts, as well as the rest of the men and women whose names I've not bothered to learn.

It's a testament to some of my personal malaise, that no one has expanded most of the other reporters' stories: clearly, reporters pander to a public who does not want to endure "another one" about a hostage or martyr journalist.

Otherwise, would I have had to search for mentions of them at places like Reporters Without Borders?

So far in 2007, 128 journalists have been imprisoned worldwide, and 53 killed. Media assistants are not immune; nine have been killed, six are in jail

Interesting to me today that this popped up in the Kansas City Star; the editorial board wrote about fearless journalism after Alan Johnston was released after 14 weeks, citing:

"According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an international nonpartisan organization of journalists based in New York, more than 460 journalists have been killed in the line of duty in the last 15 years.

"In 85 percent of the cases, the journalists were murdered. And most of the killers remain free.

"More than half of the journalists were killed by people in the government, political groups or the military. In most cases, the journalists are operating in their home countries." it cites.

Their names, though, unlike Pearl's, never have made it into my memory, and if you search around for even a moment, it's clear that some of them were killed by "friendly fire" or even something more sinister; there are accusations about U.S. troops' deliberate killing of non-U.S. journalists:

Journalist killed after investigating US-backed death squads in Iraq
On June 24, Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi special correspondent for the news agency Knight Ridder, was killed by a single bullet to the head as he approached a ...
www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jul2005/iraq-j01.shtml

British journalist killed by American troops
By Henry Michaels 25 March 2003.
www.wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/jour-m25.shtml

I'm being a bad writer and am surely confounding topics, so I want to emphasize that just because "everyone" around me is going to concealed-and-carry class, that I don't liken myself to the actually heroic writers and reporters who work in China, Iraq, Sri Lanka, etc.

Still, I'm rather tired, as I've said before, of dealing with feuds, crazy people, feuding crazy people, and liars.