Utah & Utah

I'm strangely heart-broken about the lost miners in Utah. I believe in miracles, but by now I am sure thay they are dead - I only hope that it happened right away, quickly, without pain and not three days ago. I want to do something, but have settled for prayers and hopes -

Then I found out that thousands (literally) of miners die in China each year. With all that we have learned about mine safety in the last century, is this the best that we can do?

Then there's the collapse of the stock market, which affects me only in as far as my hope that interest rates will drop and my student loan payments shrink.

Anyway, I was wallowing in self-pity, melacholy and whatnot, so I picked up the textbook for this fall's class. It's been two years, so naturally there's a new edition. Unusually, actual significant changes have been made. This necessitates actual careful reading - American History has not changed, but the book has. The book's collective authors have added lots (wonderful) about the Mormons. Somehow reading about people who lost everything not once but several times, then walked with wheelbarrows from Illinois to Utah -

my life is mindbogglingly safe, protected and boring. This is actually a good thing.