No subject given

[susan.palmer@mail.ww.cc.wa.us]

     Forgive me. What follows is a public expression of grief. It is also a 
     public expression of rage.
     
     For as long as I can remember, my mother has had the ability to 
     unexpectedly gasp, alarming everyone in her vicinity. I heard and felt 
     my mother's familiar alarming gasp escape from my own throat today 
     when I received the worst e-mail I have received to date. The man whom 
     I cannot imagine living without, my partner Kurt, e-mailed me to 
     notify me that Elsbeth Bush had been killed jogging this morning on 
     Mountainview Road. John and Elsbeth Bush are among those that Kurt and 
     I consider as our community of friends.
     
     I am in Walla Walla. At this moment, it feels like an enormously 
     isolated place to be. My colleagues here have mostly never been to 
     Moscow, don't know where Mountainview is located, and never had an 
     occasion to meet or know Elsbeth, a faithful jogger and a living 
     definition of integrity.
     
     Contemporary technology allowed me, from a distance, to swiftly 
     receive Kurt's e-mail, and just as swiftly read--online--Nina 
     Staszkow's story in the Daily News in which Councilmember Tom LeClaire 
     appropriately laments the "terrible tragedy."
     
     Although it may appear that I am changing the subject, what follows 
     couldn't be more ON the subject. Last Thursday, I returned to Moscow 
     to hear playwright Tony Kushner speak at the University of Idaho. In 
     my view, Kushner is among the most exceptional contemporary thinkers 
     in the United States, and perhaps the world. Following his 
     presentation, when I returned to Walla Walla, I accessed--online 
     again--Kushner's "Notes about political theater" published in the 
     Kenyon Review. Just this morning, probably about the time Elsbeth was 
     receiving CPR, I read the following words of Kushner on "tragedy":
     
             "'Tragic,' like 'natural,' is one of those 
          rhetorical dead ends that stops the mind from 
          reaching to the full awfulness and criminality of 
          an event. The correct response to tragedy is 
          tears, not rage. Tragedy offers catharsis, and 
          transcendence; its spectators are enobled by 
          having witnessed it. Its victims, of course, are 
          dead, but tragically dead, which is somehow more 
          elegant than plain old dead. It has that classical 
          ring. The presence of a malign kind of human 
          agency is elided, uncomfortable questions not 
          asked..."
     
     Kushner's words came back to me when I read the Daily News account. 
     While I share Councilmember LeClaire's empathy and grief, I must 
     disagree with him that "the same accident could have happened on many 
     streets in Moscow." Not that many. Most streets have sidewalks...and 
     most are better lighted...and most with that volume of traffic are 
     wider.
     
     Kushner urges me/us to be acutely aware of seemingly obscure 
     relationships and to take responsibility for those that I and my 
     community have some role in. Assuming what responsibility is mine, I 
     am angry at myself for not having campaigned more aggressively on 
     behalf of the Mountainview Road bond three years ago. Passively voting 
     was not enough. Although I am aware of the adverse conditions on 
     Mountainview this morning, Elsbeth's death was not an isolated tragic 
     incident, rather, it was an unintended outgrowth of a community 
     decision. I am enraged that we had an opportunity three years ago to 
     diminish the possibility that Elsbeth would die so tragically, so 
     instantly, so senselessly. 
     
     We were too late with the Chipman Trail for Deborah Budwig, and too 
     late with Mountainview for Elsbeth Bush. Let us not trivialize 
     Elsbeth's death by claiming it is not, in part, our fault. For 
     Elsbeth, for John, for all of us, I grieve.
     
     Susan Palmer
     Walla Walla
     
     509-629-1634 voicemail
     susan.palmer@mail.ww.cc.wa.us