{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Pilgrim To Greece","description":"Hampton's journalist Joanne Pilgrim from The East Hampton Star travels to Greece to help the mostly Syrian refugees arriving on a small Greek island. What makes Joanne take the leap from compassion into action? \u201cHe said \u2018If you have 100 friends\u200a\u2014\u200afor me 98 of them are gone.\u2019 It was hard not to cry, but how dare I cry? I haven\u2019t been through this!\u201d When I heard that my friend and colleage was travelling to Greece to help the boatloads of mostly Syrian refugees that had been arriving, I was jealous\u200a\u2014\u200aand impressed. Why wasn\u2019t I going over to Greece to help the refugees? I gave myself all the usual excuses\u200a\u2014\u200aI\u2019m way too busy, I can\u2019t just leave my life! Watching the world go by on our computers and televison sets every minute there\u2019s something worthy to give to, and after a while I feel like you just have to start shutting some of it out or else you cannot tend to your own life. As I saw her posts on Facebook, and some of the photos that were coming back, I wanted to know what made her shut off her computer, get up off the couch in The Hamptons, and fly across the world to help people she didn\u2019t know. Why does one person take the leap? In her case, she told me she jumped because it was time for a re-calibration of herself. She needed to feel gratitude for all that she has, and what better way. Joanne told me that she feels \u201clike it wasn\u2019t a completely selfless act. I will admit that I had my own parallel thought process going into this that has to do with me as a human being.\u201d We both live in East Hampton and it has a reputation for being only for the wealthy. But she and I are both writers and we both struggle to make ends meet out here. Joanne says, \u201cLiving in The Hamptons, there\u2019s a big divide between the haves and the have-nots and I\u2019m probably more on the have-not side. Part of the motivation for putting myself in that situation, giving to people who have lost everything, was a way of working through things in my own mind. It says \u2018How dare I aspire to have any more than I have!\u2019 What I have is incredible by any standards, and I am grateful. She wondered how she could possibly help, but she learned to say \u201cWelcome to Greece\u201d in Arabic, and to smile as women handed their children to her across the water. \u201cYou can\u2019t even conceive of what these people are facing, where they\u2019re coming from, and what happened to them. These are people like you and me.\u201d She told me she realized that although she didn\u2019t have financial resources to help, she had other resources. \u201cIt was a recalibration in some ways. I\u2019m not getting any younger. At this point in my life\u200a\u2014\u200aits time. I do have the opportunity to go give something\u200a\u2014\u200awhat little it was. Its a nice feeling to be that person who says \u2018I\u2019m here because you\u2019re a human being and I care about you.\u2019\u201d Photo by Doug Koontz. ","author_name":"Phantom Hampton Podcast","author_url":"http:\/\/phantomhampton.libsyn.com","html":"