Saturday, November 27, 2010

2 degrees of separation

is what is reckonned to be the case in Aotearoa NZ rather than the worldwide 6 degrees. So much so that one of our local mobile phone networks is called 2 degrees.

I've never had much difficulty accepting this as a concept, after all Quakers have the effect of shrinking the world's networks from what I can work out. But in the last week or so in the light of the Pike Valley mining disaster it has been brought home more strongly.

29 miners died in the explosions. None of whom I expected to have any connection to.... after all Greytown is down on the West Coast of the South Island - somewhere I had been in April, but not somewhere where I know anyone. But as the news of the explosions unfolded I discovered that the husband of a friend of mine headed over as part of the rescue team (I'd even stayed with Ingrid and Martin en route to Greymouth!). Once the second, and definitely fatal explosion happened my cousin George put as his facebook status that he'd sat next to the sister of one of the miners on the plane as she flew over from Australia, then in the hope still of rescue. Next thing I knew Natalie posted this link about quilts for the miners families on my facebook page - being a fellow quilter she rightly thought I'd be interested in contributing. Her comment along with the link was that one of the miners was her Nan's (who I've met several times) brother's nephew.

So, so much for my 'don't start anything new until the last project is finished' theory... although I did finish a project this morning first. I've a stack of 29 hearts waiting now for me to get some calico on Monday, then I'll get the squares finished and off to Rangiora ~ where incidently several relatives of mine live/grew up and where one of them, now passed on, used to be Mayor.

It's a very small world around here.

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