Tsunami Tragedy....

Spending a lazy day yesterday....it was a no-shower-in-our-sweats-day for me and my son to play with xmas toys and read the Sunday papers. Logged online about 4pm and read about the Tsunami....the pictures and stories are horrifying...I had to stop looking....the babies and children that were killed...the numbers stagger me...the devastation....

My sister boarded a plane from SFO with her BF yesterday morning to head to Thailand for a 3 week vacation they've been planning for over a year...most of their stops...in the most devastated areas hit such as Phuket and further south.....they didn't know when they boarded the plane what they were heading into.

She left me her itinerary...but I called and she had cancelled her hotel reservation....I know she's okay...both her and her BF are experienced world travelers but it suddenly hits close to home....suddenly the tragedy had a personal face on it for me.

I'm now working my way from "worried older sister" to soon to be "dammit you better have a goooood explanation for not checking in with us!" stage... .

The really scary part hit me today....talking to a friend who said, "Thank goodness they weren't there a day earlier" and then I realized, that she was supposed to be there a day earlier, in Phuket. Their plans for Thailand are pretty much in her words "we're going to lay on the beach and do *nothing*".....but I bitched and moaned and whined at her for not being with me and my son for Xmas and she caved and pushed her reservations back....

I don't know why it is, but my perception of the coverage on all the major sites is a lot of gory coverage of the death, of the bodies, of the gut-wrenching, can't-breathe sorrow these families are going thru....the UN is estimating that almost 1/3 of the victims are children...children. I know the above statement sounds completely naive b/c this is a massive tragedy...but I've worked in media for 10 years now and spend most days examining how the media work....is this an example of how conditioned we've become to the death and gore that's out there? *Am* I being naive? After having the beheading of Nick Berg played across the Internet, seeing the pictures of the burned and dismembered bodies of contractors hanging from bridges splashed across the front pages of newspapers across the country while we drink our morning coffee have we become so immune to reading about the tossed bodies of unclaimed children hanging from barbed wire fences and seeing picture after picture of the dead that we need to elevate it to higher and more extreme images in order it to elicit a response? Would we have seen images like this a couple years ago?

A mixture of emotions rocking thru me right now. First, that my sister and her boyfriend are safe which I'm sure they are, second for the families and the loss, for the devastation to the cities and towns and countries and the far reaching affects of this down the road...a generation decimated, plague and disease soon to ravage these countries.....and here I sit, in my home with heat, electricity, a beautiful son, a bounty of gifts, a good job, great friends, safe, secure and sound....