Give...

The surrealness of what happened last Sunday has faded, and, for me, grief has set in. One hundred and twenty thousand dead so far, millions displaced, decomposing corpses, and disease and epidemics potentially looming.

For the past week, the tragedy in Asia was an abstraction to me. It was numbers going up, the same or simlar peverse images. The detachement I felt was explicable only to the extent you accept compartmentalism as a natural, not necessary, way of life. It is amazing how shallow we can be sometimes, in the name of the banal. Stuff was happening in Sri Lanka, etc., and it is crazy, but I got to get this memorandum done before the New Year's weekend. Speaking of New Year's I got to hit the wine store, and get some bottles for the gathering and suddenly you realize the nothingness of your every day life in the face of the regular catastrophes of the world.

People don't just sift through sewage for water and food in earthquake/tsunami disaster sites. It is happening in Baghdad, Calcutta, Nairobi, Rio. A comfortable, healthy, satiated existence is the luxury of blissfully ignorant minority on this planet.

You got $5? Give it. Ten dollars, twice as good. Give something. Anything. Some sites to check out when you feel it is your time to share:

• www.oxfam.org
• www.doctorswithoutborders.org
• www.icrc.org