Though I have been thinking about the South Asian earthquake/tsunamis, I wasn't sure what I could really say about it, beyond the obvious humongous awfulness. But this morning, unexpectedly, I heard a small bit of wonderful that I want to share. A correspondent on the radio described learning about a village -- I can't remember the name, nor where it was, Indonesia somewhere I think. This village, for some reason unlike most others in the region, had folklore that mentioned tsunamis, in some way. It sounded like it boiled down to, "If you ever see the ocean disappear, drop everything and run like hell to high ground." Which everyone in this village did. Their buildings were just as smashed as everyone else's, but none of those villagers died. All the people who had saved their village's stories over hundreds of years -- listening, remembering, retelling -- helped to save all of their people.

contents of purple tricycle are copyright 2005 carrie lynn king unless otherwise noted.