What will we remember about 2005? On the positive side, Asian Pacific Americans saw individual and community accomplishments in politics, sports, film and other endeavors. On the downside, we endured the passing of Asian Pacific American heroes such as Fred Korematsu and non-APAs who gave so much to us, including redress researcher Jack Herzig and civil rights advocate Herb Holman.
For me, the top APA story of the year was the heroism, strength and resolve shown by our brothers and sisters in the Gulf Coast as they battled to regain their lives after Hurricane Katrina. The description of the chaos and despair in a Houston relief center that was published by Tram Nguyen of the service organization Boat People SOS a few weeks after the disaster (http://news.asianweek.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=fca0d3c7e804fdc477e996048db41c5f) paints a searing portrait of a community in crisis that is not soon forgotten.
Unfortunately, in the era of 24/7 news, events that are a few months old are rarely heard from again. How many of us remember the cataclysmic tsunami that rolled across the South Pacific the day after Christmas 2004? Unless we ourselves are from Sri Lanka or other places hit hard by the tsunami, how many of us are doing anything to help those with continuing needs? And how many of us are monitoring our government and nonprofit organizations to make sure that they follow up on their pledges and promises?
My mom passed away at the end of November 2004, so 2005 was the first year since 1925 that she was not on this planet. I have sometimes wondered what she would say about the hurricanes and other events of this past year, and, when looking at her smiling picture on the side of my desk, have often wished I could have her back for just a few more minutes.
A half-mile from my house is the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the superhighway of the mid-1800s, which stretches 185 miles inland from Georgetown in northwest Washington, D.C., to Cumberland, Md. According to contemporary calculations from 1818 found in a National Park Service pamphlet, four horses could pull a one-ton payload over ordinary roads 12 miles each day. On a turnpike (dirt highway), these same four horses could pull a bigger load for 18 miles each day. On a flatwater canal, however, which used an ingenious lock system to move boats to higher elevations and avoid rapids and falls, those same four horses could pull 100 times as much freight for 24 miles each day.
Benefits such as these provided an impetus for the building of the C & O and other canals in the early 1800s. By 1825, for example, the 363-mile Erie Canal had been completed in upstate New York, linking the Hudson River near Albany to Lake Erie near Buffalo. If the Erie Canal had not been completed, New York City might never have become a world trade center.
For example, Midwest farmers and manufacturers in 1818 could ship their goods more quickly and cheaply down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans, or over improved roads leading to Philadelphia and Baltimore. After the Erie Canal was completed, however, New York City’s advantages were clear: The freight rate from Buffalo to New York City dropped from $100 per ton to $12 per ton, and the formerly 20-day trip was shortened to eight days.
If canals were so great, then why don’t we still use them? And why didn’t they become a primary mode of transportation all over the country? Ironically, at the same time on July 4, 1828, when President John Quincy Adams was turning the ceremonial first shovel of dirt to start the building of the C & O Canal, Charles Carroll was in Baltimore launching construction of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. When the railroad tracks beat the canal to the coalfields in Cumberland, Md., that sealed the fate of the canal system. It was never completed beyond Cumberland, and the C & O is used today solely for touristic entertainment.
The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said, “Life can only be understood backward, but must be lived forward.” We can look back and wonder what could have been if only things had happened differently over the years. But with so many people continuing to suffer the effects of natural catastrophes in South Asia and on the Gulf Coast, the new year provides an appropriate moment to rededicate ourselves to helping others in whatever ways we can.