Push back against the world’s woes

You never had to pop into Roseland Community Hospital’s ICU to see how the battle against COVID was going, because the Sun-Times did it for you. Here, nurse Alma Abad fixes an IV flow. (Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times)

Scary times, these. If you’re not terrified, you’re not paying attention. With wars in Ukraine and Gaza — the latter on pause, for now, but that will change, and either could easily explode into a greater conflagration — and thousands of migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees flowing into a Chicago still wobbly from COVID-19, there’s a line around the block of Big Frightening Problems to worry about. Did I mention the real chance of democracy dying in America next year? Or that the world is on fire? Those too.

But fear is not a success strategy. You don’t solve problems by fretting about them. You solve them by doing something. Tuesday was Giving Tuesday, an online effort to get people to pause from fire-hosing their money at streaming services and sports betting apps and direct a few trickles of cash at worthwhile causes instead.