Nobody can fail to be shocked by the devastation in Japan. Word like apocalyptic and cataclysmic are flying around. Historians recall the Minoan civilisation was one destroyed by a tsunami.
The threads of modern life are multiple and complex, but fragile, vulnerable to stretching and snapping in seconds. Futurologists predict that tiny individual incidents in accumulation or suddenly en masse could trigger the end of everything. And there’s the old saw that we are three meals away from savagery. Japan isn’t half a world away; it’s your neighbour, your work colleague, a large proportion of your personal life goods.
So, we need to take action en masse, to accumulate individual incidents but in a positive way. And every person’s individual effort counts.
Writers are raising funds via Authors for Japan, where donation bids are auctioned for a token prize. It opens today and runs to 20 March. Perhaps it may not raise millions, but it’s one of those hugely important individual efforts. Proceeds go to the British Red Cross.
Close to my heart, as I’m a practical person, are shelterboxes.
To quote their website: “The ShelterBox solution in disaster response is as simple as it is effective. We deliver the essentials a family needs to survive in the immediate aftermath of a disaster.
Each large, green ShelterBox is tailored to a disaster but typically contains a disaster relief tent for an extended family, blankets, water storage and purification equipment, cooking utensils, a stove, a basic tool kit, a children’s activity pack and other vital items.”
So your twenty quid is needed. Now would be good.
Couldn’t agree more, Alison. Shelterboxes had my donation yesterday.
There SO practical and more importantly, on an individual human scale. Better than chucking bags of stuff off a lorry into the hands of a mob…