Weird things to be happy about

There's something wrong, and yet very right, about being cheered up by people's amazing strength and cheerfulness in response to horrible things happening to them. Fr'instance, there's Emily Henochowicz, the 21-year-old Jewish-American activist who had her eye smashed out by an Israeli high-velocity tear gas canister at a peaceful West Bank demonstration only a few weeks ago. One of her reactions to losing an eye, something which as an artist can't be great news, is to design a really fucking cool pair of glasses, with a beautiful pattern half-covering one eye socket. There's a picture of them on her blog here.
And then there's Tristan Anderson, who was also hit in the face by a high-velocity tear gas canister fired by an Israeli soldier against peaceful protesters (spot a pattern here?). Despite spending the first six months after the incident in what was often described as a coma but which was something which I guess to most of us would look similar, Tristan is now in a wheelchair, able to speak and function in many ways, although severely constrained in others. He's back in the USA and at a rehab centre, which is probably more than many of us who were following his situation from afar ever thought would be possible (and is of course very far from what most Palestinians who suffer similar injuries would ever be able to access). A Q&A on his progress is here.

On a completely different subject, this neat little site gives an easily digested run-through of why all the Tory cuts which are currently cutting a swathe through public sector and probably third sector employment in this country, as well as many not-as-useless-as-they-might-make-out services, are ill-conceived, economically damaging and hypocritically and ideologically selective.