The thanks I give

Still in New York with my girlfriend on a bright, crisp December morning. Ventured out of the Hotel Gansevoort and had a delicious breakfast of poached eggs and salmon with Hollandaise sauce at Pastis while reading the Times and the Journal. The front pages had the latest on the tsunami devastation.

I don't care how corny this sounds, but I started thinking about how lucky I am and what I'm thankful for.

During the terrorist attacks of 9-11, I was on a business trip in Tokyo instead of in my apartment at the time, at 130 Water Street in Manhattan's financial district.

This past May, my girlfriend and I went to a seaside resort in Thailand during Japan's "Golden Week", when we could have easily chosen to go now, during the year-end holidays. (Given that our hotel was on Ko Samui in the Gulf of Thailand, not the Indian Ocean, we probably would have been relatively safe anyway.)

Thanks to my two loving parents who made sure I had the best they could give me in life, and also to just plain dumb luck, I have the opportunity to enjoy another beautiful day when many around the world are suffering.

Being a conservative and a capitalist doesn't mean I turn a blind eye to the needy. I'll be making a donation to help those hit by the tsunami disaster, and, if you feel as fortunate as I do to be where you are in life, why not do the same? Among many other ways to give, you can make an online donation to the American Red Cross International Response Fund here.

FOLLOW-UP:
As of this writing, private citizens have donated almost $3 million to the Red Cross via the Amazon.com website. That figure obviously does not include donations made directly to the Red Cross, as well as to dozens of other relief organizations. In the face of tremendous tragedy, we can take some small solace in the fact that ordinary people are responding with tremendous generosity.