Day 284

Last Friday, my friend Shane had a birthday and threw a party with one of the best themes ever--at least for people like us. Disaster! Not the party, you understand, the theme.

Let me 'splain. Shane, my friend Debbie, and I are all disaster junkies. That does not mean (as one coworker wondered) that we enjoy causing disasters or seeing them happen. It means we're fascinated by them and love learning about them. For me, at least, it's a way of delving into what it means to be human, how we react, think, and behave in the face of devastation and danger.

Shane has us all bring a disaster of some kind--manmade or otherwise--and share it with the group. Like a little disaster class.

I brought the tale of the first United States school bombing.



Never heard of it? Neither had I until last year. My best friend sent me a link to a different disaster, thinking I might not have heard of it. I had, but the links on that page took me to the school bombing in Bath, Michigan in 1927. Michigan! It's right outside the city in which most of my relatives still live. And yet I'd never heard of it before.



I immediately started reading books and doing research. And Debbie got me this book for my birthday. We do that, you see. We buy disaster related things for each other. Her copy of Stewart O'Nan's book on the Circus Fire is courtesy of me-- a heartfelt thank you for telling me about the fire in the first place.

She feels the same.



I know sitting around talking about large amounts of people dying wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. I completely understand that. But for me (and, one hopes, for the birthday boy), it was one of the most fun nights I've had in a long time!