Bad News

It seems like there has suddenly been a flood of bad news in the world. Bombs in Mumbai. Nukes in North Korea. Nukes in Iran. Israel fighting with Palestine. Israel bombing the bejeezus out of Lebanon. More murmurings of global warming. And all that on top of the two wars that are still going on. Is it just me, or does there seem to be an overproduction of headline-grabbing news events lately?

All of which, of course, contributes to a broader perspective on one's life . . . I had been slogging away at my work, feeling beset because I'm up to my eye-balls with work, but at least I'm not getting bombed or flooded or starved to death. You would think that a constant barrage of how bad things are out there would condition people to be darn grateful for what they've got . . . but it doesn't seem to work that way. It just seems to make the suffering of the world a little more unreal and unrelated to our world, the world of "drycleaning, Pampers, and plans for dinner," as Augie would say.