this washes over us that while it may feel we’re
in similar straits, in fact this is a moment that is
experienced differently depending on the eyes
that see it.
The question, though, is whether that’s useful
in a moment that — just like everything
about this 21st-century world — is a strange
and surreal collection of fragments that resist
real understanding.
Consider the words of Edna Register Boone of
Mobile, Ala., who was 11 when the influenza
pandemic hit as World War I was ending. She
remembered those days in an oral history given
to Alabama Public Health before she died in 2011.
“It brought families closer together. It brought
our little town closer together because we all
suffered losses, one way or the other,” she said.
“We were like a great big family, you might say.”
That was 1918, when an American mass culture
was just beginning to emerge. Today, just
substitute the word “nation” for “our little town”
and you’ll see one place where the United
States could end up by the time the first frost of
autumn arrives.
“You look at communities that have experienced
disasters. And they change. They change the
ways that they have of communicating with each
other,” says Kate Yurgil, an expert on disaster and
trauma at Loyola University New Orleans.
“It builds the community in ways that future
disasters don’t necessarily have the same
catastrophic effect on them,” she says. “This is an
opportunity for us to connect with each other.”