Tsunamis suck

Marin’s been keeping much closer tabs on the effects of Sunday’s tsunamis than I have, but the overwhelming impact of them remains: 118,000 dead. That number endlessly rises, it seems, as time passes.

Though it’s easy enough to ignore in the humdrum of my unaffected, normal life, my mind boggles when I try to actually think about what the survivors are going through.

After September 11th, both Amazon and Apple (and I’m sure other sites, though those were the two that stuck in my mind) did something that struck me as fundamentally good: they took the majority of their main pages and converted them into advertisements for organizations such as the American Red Cross.

I never actually donated anything in response to 9/11, mostly because there didn’t seem to be any real need for what I had to offer—yes, people were donating, but they were doing so because it was pretty much all they could do, and they felt the need to do something.

Now, thanks to these tsunamis, Apple and Amazon have modified their main pages again. (And this time, it seems, there is a need.) Amazon actually offers an easy way to donate using any credit card you have on file with them, and keeps a running tally of how much has been donated: in something around three days, as I write this, Amazon customers alone have donated $6.9 million to the Red Cross’ efforts.

Damn.

My contribution isn’t even a drop in that total, but you might think about pitching in—if you haven’t already.

I know that I’d hope people would do the same for me, if the ocean saw fit to try and strike me down. Stupid ocean.

 

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