(((Sharon's kinda the Wendell Berry of soccer-moms growing their own food. Yet Sharon's got Internet. So we're looking at
Neo-Depression-era social networking in the post-apocalyptic book club.)))
(...)
My own interest, I admit, is in what might be described as the “underarching narrative” - that is the experiences of ordinary people as their losses accelerate. I’ve been watching people send me personal stories of foreclosure, their first visits to a food pantry, their fears of death by freezing and hunger, the job losses, the increasing desperation. (((The tent cities, the webkare artificial Japanese boyfriend, the vice-president who shoots and skins moose to survive. What comes after the "postmodern"? The "preapocalyptic.")))
And under the overarching narrative, their experience provides a useful, and terrible corrective to the sense that we are just beginning something. We are, of course, but just as we are beginning the disaster as a whole, those who always stood closest to the precipice are falling firmly into the hole, and crashing to the bottom.
So I thought it would be worth asking my readers - what is your experience so far? Are you watching the markets with polite interest or watching your children’s college funds and your retirement disappear? Are you already unemployed, or are things still booming? What does the world look like in your neighborhood. It is not all the story there is to tell, but it is part of the historical narrative too - what we experience now is part of, not a single story, but the thousands of historical narratives that will arise from these events....
(((Eighty-one responses. So far. Vox populi, vox dei.)))
