The Ultimate 11:11 Event

I know there is something important and significant about seeing 11:11 on a digital clock -- inadvertently, accidentally, somewhat subconsciously.  It happens to me too frequently to ignore it.  So today is Thursday, November 11, which is 11-11 once again.  And because of that, I am hereby beginning the official countdown on my website to The Ultimate 11:11 Event, which will occur next year in 2011, when November 11 will be 11.11.11.
More details will be forthcoming, but for now, my announcement contains these three elements:

• Here on this website there will be a reverse timeclock counting down to the time 11:11:11 AM on the date 11.11.11.
• I am soliciting comments and posts from you about your own "11:11" experiences.
• I will re-release my book, Once: Once, which means "11:11" in Spanish, and the official publication date will be 11.11.11.  This will actually be a revised, updated version -- including a new title and new cover art.

One footnote:  as I have mentioned in previous blogposts, today, being November 11, is Veterans Day.  And I've questioned why Veterans Day is always 11.11, regardless on which day of the week it falls, unlike most other holidays, which got moved to Mondays.  Part of this answer is the fact that Veterans Day began as Armistice Day (also known as Remembrance Day), commemorating the day on which the armistice, or peace agreement, was signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany, for the cessation of hostilities along the Western Front, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning -- the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918.  


  

Earthquake Envy

March 12 will mark the two-month anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. With only a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter Scale, 212,000 people died because of the quake, and more than 300,000 were injured. The presidential palace collapsed. Mass graves were dug. In all, an estimated three million people were affected by the quake. These statistics are according to CNN.com, reported one month after the event.

I write “only a magnitude of 7.0” because more recently, on February 27, at 3:34 a.m., “a magnitude 8.8 earthquake strikes Chile while most people are sleeping,” according to CNN. However, as of March 4, this far greater earthquake has only killed “more than 800 people.”

As a result, the president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, might feel deprived. No one would blame her. Her country received the larger earthquake, but less damage. Not only that, the Haiti earthquake had already stolen the spotlight. So her public relations job has been to drum up support for a second-rate earthquake.

This is very important because $1,554,992,908 in contributions and commitments have already been raised for the Haiti disaster. In other words, there is a lot at stake.

Under these circumstances, leaders of nations and relief agencies become envious of other countries’ calamities. They develop “earthquake envy,” trying to demonstrate that “my earthquake is worse than yours,” and thereby cash in on the catastrophe gravy-train. At 9:10 p.m. on the day of Chile’s earthquake, CNN reported that Bachelet stated the quake “has affected two million people” (albeit leaving merely 214 dead and 15 missing). Earthquake envy.

Another example: after the February 27 earthquake in Chile, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake rocked Taiwan on Thursday morning, March 4 (which was still March 3 on this side of the International Date Line). Since there was no immediate report of any deaths or injuries, the third short paragraph of the story reverts instead to the Typhoon Morakot, which “killed hundreds” last August. Envy.

It’s like, who remembers the name of the second devastating hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast following Katrina? I can’t remember. I think maybe it was Rita.

Meanwhile, back in Chile, President-elect Sebastian Piñera – who takes office tomorrow – said, “Our government will not be a government of the earthquake. Our government will be a government of reconstruction.”

Amid all the hype, I think one of the more sincerely poignant declarations came from the Haitian President Rene Preval when this current rash of earthquakes began. CNN reported:

“The presidential palace in Port-au-Prince was in ruins. Preval, Haiti’s president, said he did not know where he was going to sleep Wednesday night.”

(Note: both the presidential palace and his own home had collapsed.)

“‘I have plenty of time to look for a bed,’ he said late in the afternoon. ‘But now I am working on how to rescue the people. Sleeping is not the problem.’”

Personally, I am a survivor of multiple earthquakes and aftershocks (e.g., Thessaloniki, Greece, where approximately 50 people died; Mexico City; California’s Bay Area; etc.), and I know what these different magnitudes represent, and how they feel. An 8.8 quake – the one that hit Chile – is a monster. It is hard for me to imagine that the death toll was not higher – i.e., comparable to Haiti’s. I still wonder what could account for the wide disparity? How could it be that Chile received the far larger, monster earthquake, but far less damage?

The beginning of my quest

This marks the beginning of my quest. I don’t know what the answers will be. The unfortunate format of a blog is that it will appear in reverse chronology. In other words, in the months to come, this initial post of this series will be buried at the bottom, and my later conclusions will appear at the top, thereby concealing that it began as a quest, today, when I didn’t have any answers.

And the point where I’m beginning is with the “anchor babies.” I followed a link on the http://www.aztlan.net/ website, called “Anchor Baby Power.” There is a short video, roughly four and a half minutes. At the end there is some sort of pro-U.S. demonstration occurring along a sidewalk in some downtown area. It is filmed by somebody walking up to this group with a video camera. There are some tall palm trees along the street. Then, from across the street, you can hear children yelling, like chanting, “Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico” repeatedly, over and over, with the soft “x” like an “h”, as it is correct in Spanish, not with the hard “x” as in English. The invisible cameraman walks across the street, while still shooting video, and lifts up the camera over the wall, to get a shot of the schoolchildren chanting/yelling “Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico…” obviously in response to the pro-U.S. demonstration that’s happening across the street. Then the camera pans back quickly to catch a final shot of the pro-U.S. demonstrators.

“The border remains a military zone,” the voiceover says. “We remain a hunted people. This is our homeland. We cannot, we will not, and we must not be made illegal in our own homeland! We are not immigrants that came from another country to another country; we are migrants free to travel the length and breadth of the Americas because we belong here! We are millions. We just have to survive. We have an aging, white America. They are not making babies. They’re dying. It’s a matter of time.”