camwyn | Questions courtesy of khaosworks (Reply)

1. What's so fascinating about China?

Mrrph. Not entirely sure, but. . . I think much of it has to do with the fact that no one bothered to tell me much about it for most of my life. As far as my grade school histories were concerned, China more or less sprang into existence around the time Marco Polo left Italy, winked out after he went back, and came back again once the Dutch and the Portuguese started showing up. It hardly even registered then - it barely merited mention in the history books until the Opium Wars, and then it was mostly there to show the origin of the phrase 'spheres of influence', at least until the Communists came to power. Sometime during high school I joined Mensa, and one of the articles in my first issue of their magazine talked about Chinese medicine. Totally, utterly different from allopathic medicine so far as I could tell, but still - apparently - a workable medical system.

The idea that there could be something so radically different that still accomplished a lot of the same goals as Western medicine hit me like a brick through a window. I was preparing to apply to a six-year medical program at Boston University at the time, and the thought that there were other ways to do this stuff was just astonishing. When I got to college and saw Asian Medical Systems as an available anthropology course for freshlings, I signed up for it. The general Asian history that the teacher gave us in the first two days of the class - well, if the existence of Chinese medicine was a brick through a window, the actual dose of history was like dropping the Mall of the Americas into the pond behind Milton Avenue School. I left class at the end of the second lesson and screamed "Nobody ever taught me anything!" to the skies.

After that, it was the idea that civilizations could exist that had absolutely nothing to do with the roots of civilization in the West - the idea that one could start from a totally different set of assumptions and conditions and still come out with a true civilization. It was an Alternative, and it was a viable one, not some half-baked spinoff like the Utopian colonies we had learned about in American history. Things did not have to be the way they had come about in Europe and America. There was another way. And it was real. And I had been denied it by stupid-ass assumptions for most of my life. It was time for me to make up for all of that. It's been like that ever since.

2. What made you join the Red Cross?

In 1997 my mom yelled at me for being a lazy lump who hardly interacted with anyone outside the house or the computer. One of the things she said was that I had been much more compassionate and interested in helping other people in high school and she didn't know what had happened to me at college, but that I had been a much better person in high school and now was all self-absorbed and she didn't like it one bit. I was kind of stung by this, so I thought I had better find something to volunteer at. (I didn't realize it at the time, but years later I came to the conclusion that sometime early on in college I had fallen to a form of depression and had never gotten it diagnosed or treated. It did not lift until some time well after college, but because I didn't recognize it, I didn't take steps to try and get out of it. Hence the holing up in the house and hardly dealing with people.) I was riding my bike to the local drugstore, and as I started to cross the street, a white BMW decided to turn right on red without looking to see if there was anyone crossing from the right. I got knocked over, though neither I nor the bike was hurt; as I staggered to my feet I found myself thinking "Oh. I had better volunteer for the Red Cross, then." They said sure, they could use First Aid and CPR instructors, so I paid for the instructor training and did teaching for a year.

In 1998 I really, really needed a job other than temping, so I applied for a lot of stuff- including an ad I saw asking for an executive assistant to the CEO of a large Red Cross chapter in northern NJ. Between my m4d P0w3rp01|\|t sk1llz and the fact that I had Red Cross volunteer experience, they hired me. I've stuck around because it's an honorable organization, because I've always wanted to help people, and because I've done pretty well acquiring skills and experience so far. I'd like to work elsewhere in the Red Cross with more salary and responsibility, though.

3. You don't have to answer this if it's too traumatic, but what were your actions in the first few hours of 9/11?

The first plane hit the Tower when I was installing a patch to a co-worker's McAfee Anti-Virus. I spent the next few minutes in the board room staring at the TV along with everyone else, and then ran out to my car to change into my Disaster Services shirt- I'd thrown it in the car the day before, just in case I had to go to a fire. After that it was waiting for word from Greater New York chapter in Manhattan. I was in the ERV (our emergency response vehicle, a converted ambulance) along with Derrick by ten-fifteen; we were in Manhattan by eleven, and down on West Broadway and Church Street by noon. The first few hours were mostly spent traveling, to be honest, with the exception of getting out of the ERV to try and phone my parents from a lone working pay phone - a process interrupted by something supersonic roaring overhead, which caused me to try and hide in the phone booth. (It didn't work.)

4. What's your most rewarding job-related experience?

Either shepherding Kosovar Albanian refugees through Newark Airport on their way to new homes in America, or talking to a woman in surgical scrubs outside Battery Park on September 12th. The woman in scrubs wanted to talk, so I let her; I don't know if she was a nurse, a paramedic, a doctor, or what. I just know she was freaked out beyond all reason, and that she seemed to be calming down by talking - not to me, but to the Red Cross. When you put on that shirt, people don't see you, they see the Red Cross. Which maybe led to the answer I gave her when she asked how I could be so calm: "Ma'am, as long as I'm wearing this, I'm not allowed to be afraid. When I get home and hang up my car keys, I'll dissolve into a puddle on the floor, but right now being afraid isn't an option." She needed reassurance, and I was able to give it to her. The only reason dealing with this one woman even comes close to working with the Kosovars is because she mentioned she worked at an ER. I still marvel at the fact that someone who deals with New York City's emergency rooms on a daily basis could be that badly frightened. I would've thought seeing that much chaos, hurt, and death day in and day out would've inured her to that; I guess I was wrong.

The Kosovars were kind of neat, though. I'd gotten a realistic Folkmanis wolf puppet a few days before, thinking that I should use it the next time I went to a fire. Small children in Newark don't always deal well with strangers who show up and ask them questions or try to help them - they've just been traumatized, and more often than not the strangers are of another race. But everyone speaks Fuzzy Puppet, so the wolf got pressed into service. I took it with me to Newark and wound up keeping a lot of the Kosovan children calm; some of them cowered away from him, but most of them ran up to the wolf and stuck their hands right into his mouth, or otherwise played with him. For the very small ones I made origami cranes to play with (there was one three year old who tried to pull the crane apart and eat it, but his grandfather made sure he didn't get far with that). It seemed to help the adults to not have to worry about their kids much, so that was a really good thing.

5. How did you meet Seanan?

Through a MUSH called Paris: Les Fleurs du Mal. I was playing a Hermetic magus named Anselm Glendower Brooke, and she was playing her eshu, Mags. We knew each other well enough from there that when the possibility of meeting at a con in Virginia came up, it seemed like a really neat idea - although I did have to come out of the costume closet at that point and admit that I was female RL, as it hadn't come up before.