I've been critical of the order of importance of the stories on the Strib's front page. Hell, I've been critical of the stories themselves. But I must thank them for leaving the shuttle coverage, now heading into it's fourth day, to just a small box, no bigger than any of the other stories sections. And, unusually for a Tuesday, they have a ton of really interesting feature stories. The kind they save for Sundays. I'm glad they're being bold and stepping away from the shuttle story; yes, it's a national tragedy, and yes, it's more important than anything else right now (yes, even Iraq and North Korea). But it's just damned depressing. And when NASA is him-hawing between what caused it, it's not that interesting anyway. Naturally, by the end of the week, we'll all be sick and tired of the word "tile."

So while it is still basically the only thing going on right now, I'm glad the Strib realizes that while this is an event that shocks the world, it does not stop the world. The Wolves continue to play; buildings continue to get built; movies no one would hear of otherwise still premiere (and frankly, I've never seen a movie at the U Film Society, but I think I'm going to try and make my way to this one). The reason why I wasn't as tramatized by the imagry of debris and whatnot is probably because I spent the weekend getting my mind off of it; the events we had planned and the tragedy happened to coincide with each other, but either way, it was getting my mind off of it. September 11th was on a whole different level, of course, and it was so shocking that we did want to cuddle up with the news and reflect on our brave new world, with such people in it. But maybe I would have ultimately been better off had I figured out a way to do something else (a bit tougher of a feat then, because the whole world essentially did stop). Maybe I would have missed a new angle on the disaster; apparently, there's one of the astronaut's arm patch that is one of the more powerful images to come out of this, but I haven't seen it yet. I'm regretting not seeing it yet, but that says something about our nature during these events.

May the seven killed abord Columbia forever live with God.