July 7, 2005

"Sadness."


dead starling
Originally uploaded by paul van eik.
"Sadness" is a "hot tag" on Flickr today, along with tags like "londonbombblast," "bombings," "aftermath," and "terrorism." But not every photo tagged "sadness" depicts the London bombings. This picture simply shows a little boy (in the Netherlands) who is sad that the starling he tried to save has died. The boy's pure outrage at death touched me.

3 comments:

Link said...

Flickr is having a massage.

I wish I was having a massage.

amba said...

This picture reminds me of a wonderful "Calvin and Hobbes" strip in which Calvin and his father find an injured baby raccoon in the woods, put it in a box and try to nurture it back to health. But it dies. Calvin cries full out, exactly like the little boy in this photo. In the last panel he is seen from the back, going over a hill with his toy tiger/imaginary friend Hobbes, and saying, "What a stupid world." I've long wanted that on a T-shirt.

Oh, someone's posted it! Here it is, the whole story:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Chuck said...

A Sunday School teacher began her lesson with a question. "Boys and girls, what do we know about God?"

A hand shot up in the air. "He is an artist!" said the kindergarten boy.

"Really?! How do you know?" the teacher asked.

"You know - 'Our Father, who does art in Heaven. . ."