The news really is

I don't really watch the news that often, or ever, really. I do listen to NPR on occassion and sometimes BBC News on TV. Nor do I like politics that much. Something strange has been happening to me lately, putting my routine into question. A while ago the first of the protests in the middle east caught my attention and I found myself really listening to what was going on. I went out of my way to listen to up-to-the-minute updates on the radio. I heard a man talk about how he thought the peaceful protest would turn violent in a few hours, right before it did just that. I felt so much a part of this history that was happening so far away from me as a person.

Then the earthquake and loss of life in New Zealand. I lived in that country for a year and a half, and this city I remember was in ruins, many dead. This too caught me up in it.

Now, it's Japan. First the earthquake immediately followed by the terrible tsunami, washing people away into the unknown. Human lives, then the nuclear reactor, the partial meltdown and the lives. So many human lives are lost, and will be lost. The originally 250 people working to stabilize the multi-failing reactors, reduced to a skeleton crew of 50 people, who knowingly remained, offering their own lives as forfeit to save the lives of countless others. Those men will surely die from the radiation poisoning. They are giving their lives. As you can tell, this has swept me along with it.

These people, these individuals all across the world, their stories effected me in a way I was not aware I could be moved. This is real, and happening now. This must be why people read the news, because it involves real people, just like them, just like me, just like you. All living their own lives, and then something happens and they must continue to live, even if that means dying.

I really do not know what this all means, not that I'm following a double rainbow right now, but for me, the reality that the news is truly about real people and not numbers has floored me over the past two months. I now want to be a truly informed citizen of the world.

Let's see how long that lasts.

I am with history now

Mubarak is out. I feel the profundity of this moment. Last week I watched Conan O'Brien make a quip about Egypt, remembering that I heard something on NPR about a protest or something. Then I listened. This was an epic, in real time, one I have never experienced in my lifetime, to memory at least. I turned on NPR at work, starting in the back room alone, listening to reporters talk to protesters gathering in Tahrir. They had been massing for days, protesting Mubarak, telling them that the people were done with his tyrany and ready to build their country, their world as it should be. Night was falling, and people were gathering, people not used to the city, people with camels and rocks and guns, people hired by the government to put the protesters in their place. The police remained between the two parties, wavering between supporting the protesters or more often, looking like they were also agents of sameness, paid by the government to maintain the status quo at whatever cost. As an ominous night fell on Egypt, I changed the station as others came to work. Egypt remained in my prayers and thoughts. I then heard about the deaths and terrible acts occurring, but more moving was the proud defiance of the people. They remained. Their voices would not be silenced. The people are stronger than those they were governed by, as it should be. Today, Egypt is free. The proud Mubarak swallowed more than his pride and removed himself. That is over-due, but no less of what it is. Now, a people stand in the maw of the future. Who will fill the hole? They have shown they are strong and have a voice. They deserve an equally fair leader. As they did on the eve when the violence began, my prayers go out to those people, who came together and did what many in other countries need to be reminded they are capable of. All the while the Chinese government pretends that the Great Firewall will keep out those notions of freedom. I'm sorry to break it to you China, those ideas exist, and no amount of ignorance will squash them. Silence is something a government will never truly create. The only voice that will remain is that of its people. This night of mine, the sun shines bright on a deserving people.