Ten years ago. My oh my.
What was then called the Sumatra tsunami was the first continuing news story that I followed after disconnecting from television. No visuals, just the worsening updates on my primitive cell phone that I read all day.
The medium affects the message. I thought it strange at the time that I felt the horror more viscerally than I would have had I been able to see it. I think when we used to get news bulletins off a ticker-tape that it must have been worse for the same reason. When Walter Cronkite was handed that bulletin that JFK had died he read it, paused, took off his glasses, smacked his lips a couple of times in visible attempt to control his emotions.
I remember that day after Christmas in 2004 just laying on my stomach in bed constantly reading and refreshing the page and reading again and it just got worse and worse and I developed just a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. 226,000 people killed. When I finally saw video--I had imagined a skyscraper size wave--I was surprised. The people on the beach didn't know what the hell was going on either and they just stared at it for a few seconds. And then the goddamned thing hit and the force...the force of that wave. Jesus Christ. 226,000 people. What an awful day.
What was then called the Sumatra tsunami was the first continuing news story that I followed after disconnecting from television. No visuals, just the worsening updates on my primitive cell phone that I read all day.
The medium affects the message. I thought it strange at the time that I felt the horror more viscerally than I would have had I been able to see it. I think when we used to get news bulletins off a ticker-tape that it must have been worse for the same reason. When Walter Cronkite was handed that bulletin that JFK had died he read it, paused, took off his glasses, smacked his lips a couple of times in visible attempt to control his emotions.
I remember that day after Christmas in 2004 just laying on my stomach in bed constantly reading and refreshing the page and reading again and it just got worse and worse and I developed just a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. 226,000 people killed. When I finally saw video--I had imagined a skyscraper size wave--I was surprised. The people on the beach didn't know what the hell was going on either and they just stared at it for a few seconds. And then the goddamned thing hit and the force...the force of that wave. Jesus Christ. 226,000 people. What an awful day.
