Changing Times

Last week, across the Netherlands school bags dangled from flag poles above many front doors. This quirky habit broadcasts to the neighborhood that a kid has just graduated high school. It also signals the start of the school holidays, when families pack up and head off.

Flags are again flying In the Netherlands this week.  They hang at half mast on public buildings to memorialize the 193 Dutch men, women and children who had headed off to Asia, but died when their plane was shot down over the Ukraine by a missile.   

The Netherlands is a small country, just 17 million. There are cities in the world with larger populations.  Here suffering 193 dead is comparable to a loss of 4,100 lives in a country to size of the US.  So it was inevitable that I would know someone or know of someone who knew someone on board. And so it was. Within an hour a friend called to tell me she had lost a colleague who was traveling with children. Next a family member reported the same.  Thus a national – no international-- tragedy unfolding in some far off place quickly assumes the character of “up close and personal.”   This event has affected us all.

Thoughtful friends living abroad have called and written expressing their condolences. I don’t deserve them, thank goodness. My loved ones are safe and accounted for. But I accept these simple acts of kindness because we must foster kindness.  There is so much hate in the world. It swirls around like some invisible, toxic radiation.   It can reach 10 kilometers (35,000 feet) above the Earth’s surface to snuff out the lives of men, women, and children, who, oblivious to its existence, were just “passing through” on their way to do good or just have fun. 

I am old enough to remember a time when getting onto a plane was glamorous, even thrilling.  Into my hand luggage went an embroidery canvas, needles, thread and, yes, scissors, to while away the hours between Amsterdam and places my employer sent me.  Other women in the cabin knitted. How times have changed. And not for the better.  Sharp objects and many other things, too, are now banned on board as potential weapons. The list grows. I accept this as a necessary precaution. Yet, this week the fate of 300 souls on MH-17 demonstrated that despite all the technological improvements to aircraft, despite increased security precautions of all sorts, flying long haul is not a calculated risk, it is a deadly gamble.