12,012

The death toll in China from the earthquake, as of 7 this morning, according to the Chinese national Xinhua News Agency. (Reports put this at "Tuesday night, 7 p.m." because China is twelve hours ahead of EST.)

I read a NYTimes article reporting that a school in the suburbs of Dujiangyan had collapsed, and gasped and actually put my hand to my heart. It took careful reading and a search for Xinhua news information to discover that it was not the private school I worked at in 2003-04, which has been plagued by fires and other strange disasters since then.

I am shamefully relieved, though with no basis. I have heard nothing from my former teammate, still teaching at that school, and have no evidence that the school is even still standing. Either way, up to 900 second and third graders died at Juyuan Middle School, nearby. The city of Dujiangyan, by all photographic accounts, has been destroyed.

I don't know how to turn this into satirical and sarcastic observation, but I also don't know how not to, which might be the surest sign of Armageddon.

I wish, absurdly but more than anything, that Douglas Adams was alive right now.