A Note about Chile

This is Steven Petrick Posting:

It is almost a given that this blog will be about the mine in Chile. It is the big "good news" of the day (so far, and hoping this does not jinx it). It is very rare for a problem in a mine to not end with a body count, whether one of the larger disasters all to common in China, or those albeit smaller ones in our land.

We do not yet know the whole story, or who the real heroes are. We only know that 33 men somehow came together, and somehow maintained morale and self-discipline to survive for days on what must seem like rainbows. Somehow they shared what little there was so that all of them made it.

If all of this is true, it is a shining example that all of us as humans, when faced with disaster, can aspire to emulate.

Life and disaster is not always so pleasant.

Sometimes we do have to make life and death decisions. Sometimes when a ship sinks someone has to decide who is, and who is not, getting in the lifeboat, because if too many people get in, all will die.

Nature does not care one wit about the existence of human beings, and whether an earthquake, hurricane, volcanic eruption; whether rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; will impartially wipe us all from her path of destruction.

So let us celebrate this triumph of human spirit and resolve. It will mark these men in times to come. Some of them may further stand up as leaders of their own country. Some may reveal after this that their feet are still made of clay.

But for now, they are all heroes, and all of us should thank not just them for having hung on until they could be saved, but the men who saved them.