Holidays, and disaster-porn

Yeah, I know. These things  have very little relation to each other …

ㅁ Monday is the Korean version of Thanksgiving, which is called Chuseok, and I will be going to the mother in laws house along with other family members to eat and perform ancient ceremonies  involving the worship of dead people. Not really. There is one part of it where we pour from a bottle of soju and wave the glass in the direction of a table devoted to the ancestors – I tend to think of it as offering to eat and drink with people who could not be here, due to circumstances. There is also some bowing and gifts of money. It’s all worth it though because the mother in law makes damn good food.

It’s not a religious event at all – it’s all about family and duty and obligation, and gratitude for a good harvest. Nevertheless, Christians who are, shall we say excessively devout to the point of being narrow-minded sometimes make a choice to stay away. I think people like that are probably taking things way too seriously, and it’s just as well if they don’t show up because they probably wouldn’t be much fun at the party.

In fact, though, most Koreans do not look forward to these holidays (the other one is Sollal, usually late January, what Americans call Chinese New Year) in delightful anticipation the way western people do about things like thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s just something you have to do, more than being something you want to do. For many people it means traveling, traveling great distances over probably a long period of time and definitely on busy roads or crowded trains. I’m luckier than some of my friends who married into Korean families, as some of them have to navigate their donkeys all the way to Busan or some funky little town up on a mountain or some place like that, whereas all I need is a 45 min ride on the subway.

My wife says she’s lucky because whereas other married Korean women are expected to go to the husband’s parent’s home, The Bobster here doesn’t have any family, not in this country anyway, so she can keep going to her moms place every time holidays come around. Like I said, the food there is good.

ㅁ Yes, I know. Today is the 10^th anniversary of a terrible thing. I’m not going to talk about it. It’s all been said, anyway. For those junkies who can’t get enough of other people’s grief and pain, Slate has collected a couple dozen plus one photos from Magnum photographers. New York Street photographer Max Weber has some images here. I like his stuff, so I’ll toss in his flickr page here.

I will recommend a longish article from Esquire, though, (“The Falling Man”) first published back in 2009. It’s about photojournalist Tom Junod’s ‘s attempt to discover the identity of a man whose picture he took, one of the dozens who leapt from the flames in the Twin Towers that day. Good writing, mostly avoids mawkishness and pandering to political posturing.