It's Official!!!! I'm Better! But what about everyone else?

That's the word on the streets, thanks to my most recent (Tuesday) and LAST visit to the orthopedic specialists! I am now in possession of one surgically fixed fifth metatarsal on the left foot. You are probably not jealous, but that's just because you haven't seen the cool scar that I have now. I also managed to bring home all the x-rays that they have done over the length of this (6 month) ordeal. Some are better than others, but the ones that show the screw are the most interesting. I'll scan one someday and post it for the edification of my readership.

In other news, I have taken up a cause. Or maybe a couple causes. I am not a political activist, nor am I even a social activist. But I have, over the last few months, become more and more concerned about the way the US and Europe deal with problems in different African nations. Most of the time, we just don't do anything. When we do do something, it's often for the wrong reasons, and when we do things for the right reasons, somebody out there (I think it might be The Man) does everything they can to keep us from hearing about it in the media. So I have joined up with the people of the SaveDarfur organization to try to do a tiny bit to pressure my politicians and representatives to make finding a speedy solution to the genocide that is currently going on in Sudan. There are probably two sides to this issue, but I can't imagine what the other side is saying. My side has two different public images, that of savedarfur.org and the other (probably more moderate and more impersonal) of bbc.com .

So while we're over here on the western side of the Atlantic panicking about the rising price of gas - still little more than an inconvenience for nearly everyone - it might not hurt to keep in mind that there are a lot of people suffering much greater injustices than this in any number of African nations. I don't know how much difference it can make to donate some money to the right people, or to put some pressure on people in power here at home, but I feel compelled to do something. This representative democracy business is nice and everything, but in situations like this I fear it may allow us to become too detached from the immediate effects of the policies and actions of our country. One of the nice things about the American tradition of benevolence is that, even when the politicians are too busy doing politics, millions of other people (usually, but not always, affiliated with religious organizations) invest personally in causes like feeding the poor and protecting the defenseless.

That's my patriotic and personal message of hope for the week.