Thursday, December 30, 2004

Another busy day at work. It just never seems to end.

Off the clock I stayed at work an hour or so to put together a leaflet for the January 20 anti-inaugural anti-war demonstration in January. The leaflet was a riff on the leaflet put out by the Answer Coalition in Washington, D.C. The internet and Acrobat PDFs made it possible for me to rip off the art and headline type of the D.C. event and then add in our own local demo information. Years ago, I would have needed a hard copy of the D.C. flyer, a knife and a whole lot of wax to piece together something I did in a matter of minutes today. Progress has occurred, for those who doubt it! If I can find a way to link the PDF here, I will post it in a day or so.

The news from Asia is stunningly, shockingly bad. The death toll has risen over 100,000 and still climbs. I don't think it is possible to understand on any level what is going on there right now. I wish we could all just drop every petty thing we are doing right now and do whatever it takes to help out the people affected. Each day another example of incredible selflessness and generosity is revealed on the part of individuals and organizations all across the world. One shocking thing I heard today: that the survivors who collect the dead are cutting off fingers and saving them to use for print identification before disposing of the bodies.

I am reminded of the floods in the Red River Valley a few years ago and how the local newspapers and radio stations transformed themselves into bulletin boards for people trying to find each other after that disaster. I imagine that in this time of crisis, amazing progress will be made in all such areas in order to solve some of the many problems that result from such tragedies. And yet, the tragedy is still beyond anything we can ever imagine.