Month

By mid-November, I’m usually busy preparing for Christmas, but this year I've also been acutely aware of how the typhoon in the Philippines, one of the worst storms on record, has been overshadowed by news of inconvenienced Thanksgiving travelers and all the hoopla around Black Friday.

Over ten million people, as much as the combined populations of Belgium, Belarus and Hungary, or the cities of New York and Houston, were affected. As of this writing, 5632 parents, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, children and babies were killed, at least 1600 are still missing, and an unknown number of people grieve their loss. The survivors now live in the rubble of the total destruction of life as they knew it and are dependent on government and multinational aid organizations for daily subsistence.