Grief, both old and new

Two decades and change ago this day, the first of two NASA Space Shuttle Orbiters to be lost with all hands aboard was destroyed as she rose in the blue Florida sky. I was living and working in New Orleans when Challenger blew up, in the midst of a morning at my very first job out of college as a sketch artist for a local sign shop. The boss brought a TV into the front office so we could watch the news coverage...and I went home that evening and hung a black ribbon from one of the porch posts in front of my little apartment in an old converted shotgun house. Yesterday was the 41st anniversary of the Apollo I launchpad fire that killed its three crewmen, and Friday marks the fifth anniversary of Columbia's loss, as she was returning home over the fields and prairies of Texas. (Thanks to wcg for the reminder; he notes that, with the gallows humor that is never far from the risk-fraught field of space exploration, some who work in it have come to call this "Dead Astronauts' Week.") This grief is old, but enduring...and until someone figures out how to build that damn time machine, the past cannot be unwritten.

My Songbird's latest report on the continuing Kenyan tribal/political violence here fills me with more grief. Not much can be done from here (or even there, it seems at times) to stop the homicidal insanity...but you can donate to help the humanitarian aid groups seeking to mitigate the suffering (see her list here); the money we collected at GAFilk is going there this Wednesday.

Greg McMullan's family is enduring their own much more personal grief and shock, having lost both him and everything they owned as their home burned to the ground over the weekend...but the filk community is rallying to them, as you may have noticed from my friends page. Two PayPal accounts have been set up to collect funds for them; the link is in the picture at left (thanks, Deb). The Birdie and I have each kicked in; we dearly hope you will too.

"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus do we refute entropy." —Spider Robinson

CNN and YouTube want to know: What's your answer to The Davos Question?

First Cable News Network and YouTube used their world-leading tech to allow viewers to weigh in with questions at the Presidential debates. Now they're doing it again to give video bloggers a seat at the table in Davos, Switzerland for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. Footage from activists, ordinary viewers and celebrities is being solicited to answer this question:

"What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?"

The sales pitch is that the global political/economic leaders convening in the Alps will actually be shown these and respond. I have to think some about the question myself before answering; I'm not at all sure there is any one thing that can take precedence, so many and complex are the problems our tired old globe faces these days. If you think you've got an answer already, find out more at the Davos Question website...and if you don't feel like making a video for yours or can't, you can always post it in good old-fashioned text here.