For some reason, I left for work early today.  I had a 2 PM interview with Brown graduate Matt Sledge (you'll read more about that later) and I was teaching a jewelry class at 3:15 PM.  Instead of taking the bus, I decided to walk.  My walk takes me through one of the lower income sections of Providence, and never am I more aware of how poverty levels affect neighborhoods as when I leave my relatively cushy federal hill apartment and walk through the west end in the neighborhoods around Elmwood and Broad (touching into South Providence). 

As I was walking down the street today, I saw people gathering on the street, and smelled smoke like burning plastic in the air.  I hung up with my fabulous boyfriend so I could find out what was going on, and I see smoking pouring in thick grey billows from the first floor window of a rather rag tag looking house.  As I walk by, intending at first to just ignore the scene and carry on with my life, I heard a giant rush as flames exploded from the front and side windows of the home.  People were crying, screaming, hugging each other.  A girl in a white bath towel was rushed away by a caring neighborhood.  A woman with wide brown eyes and a baby on her hip starting speaking to me in hurried Spanish.  After an interpretor walked by, I discovered that she lived in the back apartment on the first floor and she was pregnant.  Everyone in her family got out safely, but the news at 5 PM reported that she had been hospitalized as a precautionary measure, along with one other person.  Thankfully, there were no casualties.

The scene was powerful and stunning, sad in its intensity and the knowledge that the lives of the people who lived inside would forever be altered by this one day that I randomly captured with my camera.  I suspect that the story won't get very much press: a brief blurb on the news sites, but not much more: these people don't have a lot of money; therefore, in the eyes of many, they are not important.  I worry for the fates of those who lived inside -- when I passed later, after class, I saw a crew of men carrying furniture that hadn't burned out of the building and placing into into a moving van.  They may have woken up that morning, worrying about their jobs, about what they were going to cook for breakfast, about what they were going to wear, and in an instant, everything changed.

I guess the story isn't "newsworthy" because tragedies happen every day.  It wasn't the house of the mayor that burned down, but some poor hispanic families.  Why aren't these lives newsworthy?  

I felt so helpless watching the house burn.  I felt like a voyeur when I started snapping pictures, but I felt like I had to do something and it was the best I could think to do.  When I asked the translator to tell the woman how sorry I was for her loss, he turned from me and didn't say a word to her.  I felt, in that instant, as helpless as that woman must have felt, but I got to turn and walk away.  She's now in the hospital, being monitored for ill effects, but my prayers are with her tonight.