A moment’s blog.

While you’re nestled in your priest-hole of an office, enclosed by winter, life and death go on elsewhere. Though working today, writing and posting on the Internet, I didn’t hear about the Indian Ocean tsunami until fairly late in the evening. A woman who works in my office is on vacation in Thailand now, and while I doubt she was anywhere near the affected Thai islands, it’s enough to give one pause.

Reminds me of the sinking of the car ferry Estonia a little more than 10 years ago, en route from Estonia to Sweden, which killed more than 1,000 people. A modest change in schedule, plus a whim to go to Sweden that we never actually felt, could have conceivably put us on that ship. At least, we were close enough when it sank for that idea to come to mind—we were in St. Petersburg, Russia, on our way to Finland and the Baltics, including the Estonia’s home port, Tallinn. Not long after the accident, we took a ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn. That’s when the idea really came to mind.

But it didn’t stop us from making the crossing. No point in being chicken when it comes to riding in public conveyances, or seeing distant shores. The only result of that is never going anywhere.