Lift Up Your Hearts!

The terrifying power of panic to disrupt and destroy was best illustrated this week in Iraq, where the stampede provoked by rumor of a suicide bomber killed and injured innocent people in numbers exceeding the wildest expectations of any individual with a bomb in his backpack.

As a far-off planet reflects the fiery sun, panic made its power known here on Wednesday, also. Driving to choir rehearsal on Wednesday night, we could have filled our gas tank easily at any of a number of stations along the way, for the price of $2.69/gallon. On the way home it was a different story. While we had been happily singing, word began to spread that Florida was running out of gasoline. The Orange County School District cancelled all non-essential bus service (sports, field trips) and announced that even with the cutbacks parents might have to begin driving their children to school in another week. This was enough to convince half of Central Florida that they needed to buy gasoline, NOW. Those calm, quiet gas stations we had passed earlier in the evening now had lines of waiting cars that stretched for blocks, and police officers on site to keep order. Prices had jumped at least 10 cents per gallon. A few stations had no lines—because they had run out of fuel.

We chose not to join the snaking lines, trusting that our 3/4 full gas tank would see us through until the situation stabilized. During hurricane season, the recommendation is that you don't let your gas tank get below half full. Maybe that's a good idea year 'round, because it wasn't Florida's disaster that caused this shortage.

Even before Hurricane Katrina, when we were paying around $2.55 for a gallon of gasoline, the adjustments made necessary by the increased price fueled many a news story. From the tone of the reports, one would think we were in a crisis of terrible proportions, but their content was encouraging. People now had to think twice, it was said, before making a trip by car. They were combinging trips, carpooling, using public transportation, walking, and riding bikes. All of which looks like good news to me.

News reporters, it seems, are most enthusiastic when reporting bad news, and love to expand problems into disasters. I don't believe you can call our fuel problems a crisis, even post-Katrina, any more than I believe we have an obesity crisis, although most Americans are undeniably overfed and underexercised.

Nonetheless, I will use the media's terms and make the encouraging prediction that if we don't interfere with the process too much, the energy crisis may go a long way toward curing the obesity crisis.

If you have contacts in the Mississippi area, please check out this friend's plea for locating missing relatives.