The last few days have been pretty depressing in Western NY. The crash of Flight 3407 has effected a lot of people. I watched it unfold on the local news on Thursday night. The NBC affiliate couldn't get a real crew to the scene for a couple of hours so they were broadcasting these weird out of focus images via Skype. I took a couple of pictures of the screen. When I heard that 49 people had died, I knew there was a good chance that I would have some kind of connection to someone on board (within a couple of degrees of separation). That turned out to be right. I had only met Allison Des Forges a couple of times, but Colette and I know a number of people who were close to her (including her son). When they started to publish pictures of the victims, Colette recognized a regular customer of hers (from waitressing years earlier), and my mother found out that a former student, that she knew well, had also died in the crash. It's all so incredibly sad.
