On a shitty news day ...

I read Christine Kenneally's story on the Victorian bushfires in the New Yorker (last week's edition in the US, this week's in Oz), as well as the news from Fort Hood today, and part of me felt miserable, but part of me thought how astonishingly brave people are.

Because, faced with a brain-snapped colleague who was heavily armed, people at Fort Hood ran to protect and save each other where they could, with news reports even telling of a shot solider who ran to warn others to move away from the area where the shooter was. And faced with walls of flame so intense they were spreading by exploding gas clouds, volunteer Victorian firefighters saved hundreds, including two teams racing to a campsite where they loaded their trucks with the campers before driving the trucks into a river and sitting there as the fire went past, saving all 19 campers from being incinerated with their campsite.

It's so easy to focus on the needless deaths that seem to occur daily, but I think that every now and then we should also focus on the fact that without acts of courage that are often shaken off by those who make them as being 'what anyone would do', the world would be a far grimmer place. Things are often crap, but people can be remarkable, and I'm grateful for that.

On a shitty news day ...

I read Christine Kenneally's story on the Victorian bushfires in the New Yorker (last week's edition in the US, this week's in Oz), as well as the news from Fort Hood today, and part of me felt miserable, but part of me thought how astonishingly brave people are.

Because, faced with a brain-snapped colleague who was heavily armed, people at Fort Hood ran to protect and save each other where they could, with news reports even telling of a shot solider who ran to warn others to move away from the area where the shooter was. And faced with walls of flame so intense they were spreading by exploding gas clouds, volunteer Victorian firefighters saved hundreds, including two teams racing to a campsite where they loaded their trucks with the campers before driving the trucks into a river and sitting there as the fire went past, saving all 19 campers from being incinerated with their campsite.

It's so easy to focus on the needless deaths that seem to occur daily, but I think that every now and then we should also focus on the fact that without acts of courage that are often shaken off by those who make them as being 'what anyone would do', the world would be a far grimmer place. Things are often crap, but people can be remarkable, and I'm grateful for that.