Dear Ferret Folks-
 
When I was a little girl, I was absolutely fascinated by the Titanic
disaster.  My mother knew a woman, one of her grandmother's friends,
who actually survived the sinking in one of the few, too few lifeboats
available to the passengers.  The ship was not equipped with enough
lifeboats to have accomodated all of the Titanic's passengers.  At the
time, there was no law compelling the Cunard Line or any other company
operating a passenger liner to carry enough lifeboats for everybody, so
they didn't.  Lifeboats cost money, and they spoiled the view off of
the deck.  Thus, they were not a priority.  To add insult to injury,
the first few lifoboats were launched practically half empty.
 
One story that enraged everybody (remember, more than 1000 people drowned
for lack of lifeboats in icy-cold water at night, a particularly bad
death because they had lots of time to consider their coming fate, as the
last lifeboat was launched...without them) was a story about a particular
lady.  This very wealthy lady was loaded into a lifeboat with her dog.
She and her dog survived.  So very many did not.  And for the rest of her
life, many people looked down upon her, and reviled her, for what they
considered her incredible arrogance.  Someone could have had her dog's
place in the lifeboat.  Her act was never forgiven nor forgotten.
 
The recent arguments on the FML about 'should we save the animals or the
people' remind me of this lady's story.  And the fact that for as many
years as I have puzzled over it, I don't know quite what to make of it.
Was the dog one of those little bitty things that could sit on her knee?
If so, it didn't take anybody's 'place' in the lifeboat, really.  It's
presence wouldn't have made any substantial difference in terms of
available room in the lifeboat.  Was it a big dog that truly took up a
human's amount of space?  Then I guess we're trading a canine life for a
human's.  If it had been left behind, it would have perished along with
the passengers who bought the 'cheap seats' aboard the ship, the ones
who were initially held back from filling the lifeboats in favor of the
wealthy.  The sacrifice of a big dog might have saved one of them, but
only one, and there were so very many of them..
 
How should I feel about this, I wonder.  Should I be outraged, as so many
of her contemporaries were, people who cut her dead socially and never
spoke to her again?  (But did not object to the fact that the wealthy
were preferentially given seats in the lifeboats.  Apparently, that was
another matter altogether.) Did she hold her dog for comfort in the
lifeboat when the ship finally slipped under, spilling hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of screaming, terrified people into the dark water
between the chunks of floating ice?  She heard them scream.  She did.
Probably every day for the rest of her life.  Did she feel guilty?
 
People have been talking about her and her dog for more than ninety years
now, the story is so upsetting to many folks that it has never been
allowed to just disappear.  It has an established niche in our shared
cultural history.  It's not going away.  Think about that, if you are of
the mind that the animals should be given priority in this, our recent
disaster in the South.  The 'people firsters' have their right to an
opinion, and their distress is genuine, very real and present for them,
as the sheer endurance of this story suggests.  The woman is still paying
for her decision to save her dog, long after her death.
 
The anxiety of the 'animals, too!' or even the 'animals, first' group is
also genuine.  Their distress is equally real, equally painful for them.
Why not the dog?  The dog did not book a passage aboard a ship that
didn't have enough lifeboats, a supposedly intelligent human made that
decision for it.  Supposedly intelligent humans made the decision to
launch what was the single biggest moving object in human history through
the water without enough lifeboat space for all aboard, AND to describe
that object as "unsinkable" in our desperate arrogance.
 
Rather than come away from this essay of mine (and it's not funny, not my
usual stuff at all, but then neither is the disaster we are faced with
now) with a hard and fast decision to defend one viewpoint over another,
I would hope that at least some of you will instead be moved by what so
intrigues me about the story of the woman and her dog.  Perfectly
reasonable, equally intellegent and compassionate people have been
listening to it for nearly a century now, debated it, and have come to
two diametrically opposed conclusions.  The dog should have lived, the
dog should have died.  They were given the same information, yet came to
two totally different conclusions, usually taking up a heated position
on one side or the other.
 
But here is the thing....the man or woman whose conclusion stands in
opposition to yours is ALSO decent, principled, and moral, whether you
like to think so or not.  They are.  They really are.  They are your
friend, your neighbour, whatever.  Overall, there is more uniting you
than dividing you.We are Americans.  And we all agree that we need to
unite in support of our southern neighbours, who are suffering so
terribly.  Let us all help in the ways that we are best suited to give
help.  What is important is that we do give that help.  Why waste energy
*itching about the way your friend, your neighbour chooses to help?  It
is only important that he or she does, in the grand scheme of things.  If
someone on this list wants to save a dog, well, that's one less dead dog
contaminating the water in Louisiana, isn't it?  And that may save many
people.  Work together, people.  Don't turn on one another, when there is
enough perfectly good blame to go around for the guys who were supposed
to supply the lifeboats, here and now.
 
Alexandra in MA
[Posted in FML issue 4995]