How to Help Tsunami Victims

Amazon has this link to the American Red Cross. The first day, it seemed a disaster of horrifically ordinary scale. The next day, I saw a picture of a father grieving over the body of his baby son. His son looked like my son, and I haven’t been quite myself since. That day, I left work early to spend a completely computer-free evening with my own (we learned that rolled-up socks make superb father-son projectiles; I learned that such opportunities can never be regained when you learn, too late, that you missed the last one). This is all I can manage to write. What can you say about something so completely random, natural, and hideous, other than admitting to your anguished gratitude that it wasn’t your family?

Money can’t bring the dead back to life, but it can save live people who might well die of cholera within the next few days. At times like these, the words “international community” briefly mean something . . . to most of us.