one is the loneliest number...

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do
Two can be as bad as one
It's the loneliest number since the number one (One, by Three Dog Night)

The Paper Clips Project is a project by middle school students from the small southeastern Tennessee city of Whitwell who created a monument for the Holocaust victims in Nazi Germany. It started in 1998 as a simple 8th-grade project and evolved into one gaining worldwide attention. Soon the students were overwhelmed with the massive scale of the Holocaust and asked their teacher if they could collect something to represent the lives that were exterminated during the Holocaust. Through Internet studies, the students discovered that Johaan Vaaler a Norwegian, designed a loop of metal, and the Norwegians wore paperclips on their lapels during WWII as a silent protest against Nazi occupation. The students decided to collect 6,000,000 paper clips to represent the estimated 6,000,000 Jews killed between 1939 and 1945 under the authority of the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler. (Wikipedia)

The number 6 million was too big to understand for these students. It seemed the larger the amount of people affected by the Holocaust the more impersonal it was to the students, not because they did not care but because grasping something bigger than their themselves or the lives they lead seemed like reaching for a piece of hay in a silo filled with wheat. They knew there was tragedy in the suffering and death of one person, but how to understand or explain that same feeling for the other 5,999,999 was hard to comprehend. The number 6 million almost made the entire Holocaust unreal, invented, unimaginable. But one person at a time, one paperclip at time added meaning and momentum to the villainous actions that took place.

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, according to a commerce department report, released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or noninflation-adjusted terms. Corporate profits have been doing extremely well for a while. This breakneck pace can be partly attributed to strong productivity growth — which means companies have been able to make more with less — as well as the fact that some of the profits of American companies come from abroad. (The New York Times).

We are a nation built upon Capitalism and free markets. We celebrate success and our bottom-line dressed in black provides us with the incentive and motivation to do more to do better. We can understand when at the end of the month in our own personal lives we have $100, $300, $500, a dollar in our checking accounts how much jubilation there is that at least for this month we did not go broke or borrow from ourselves to pay ourselves. How many of us have even seen what a trillion dollars looks like, feels like, smells like and yet in one of the roughest times in our current history corporations have amassed $1.659.

Yet for those who at the end of the month who have spent their unemployment check on either food or rent or medical coverage, those who have been the recipient of charity from friends or family to at least eat one meal a day, those who roam the streets begging for a dollar here or there…yet for those something so grand as $1.659 trillion seems like counting the water molecules in the ocean as they drown finding their way to shore.

The number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs fell

from 8.9 to 8.5 million in January. The number of long-term unemployed

(those jobless for 27 weeks or more) edged down to 6.2 million and

accounted for 43.8 percent of the unemployed.(Bureau of Labor Statisitcs)

Politicians campaigned on jobs, jobs, jobs. The President provided speeches on job creation, job growth; each and every newscast spends at least 15 minutes in an ominous, dour and somber tenure explaining the jobs situation. We hear the number of 8.9 million dropping to 8.5 million and as we are told of the drop of 400,000 we are to silently celebrate that some jobs were had, some people were hired.

We see the big picture, the national outlook, but seldom does the camera pan into the home of one family, one individual who alone has to face the fear of foreclosure, cutting back on healthcare, feeling less than and useless. We hear the big numbers of millions and millions yet those numbers mean nothing because we are encumbered by our own small number of one, the one we happen to be who is unemployed.

For some of us the greater good has no chance of surviving when 8 million is bandied about and the focus on millions seems to supersede just one.

Coalition Troop Casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom as of February, 2011 (4754), Coalition Troop Casualties in Operation Enduring Freedom/Afghanistan as of February, 2011 (2322). (icasualties.com)

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged in his new autobiography that he made a "misstatement" in asserting in the early days of the 2003 invasion of Iraq that he knew the location of weapons of mass destruction in the country, the London Guardian reported today.

In his 815-page memoir, "Known and Unknown," Rumsfeld said he erred in a March 30, 2003 interview by disregarding his normal practice of being exact and cautious when discussing intelligence assessments in responding to a question on Iraq's alleged unconventional weapons stocks.(National Journal Group)

We hear the number 4754 from one war and then the number 2322 for another war. Many of us with clear conscience, lucky enough not to have had a loved one accounted for in those numbers, ring our hands, touch our hearts, and heave a big sigh sharing an overwhelming bit of sympathy for the families touched by these deaths. Some of us become infuriated that life, so precious had to be destroyed. Many of us see the big number, few of us realize what it means when just one of the 4754 or 2322 Troops killed was our father, mother, sister, brother, lover, spouse.

Adding the numbers from both wars, 6876 makes the total even more difficult to tolerate, yet understand. Then there is 1 man, Donald Rumsfeld, who helped share in the responsibility to drive these Troops to war who suddenly standing behind the shield of his pen and paper provides America after the death of 6876 Troops who says, oops I may have erred, my bad, maybe those Weapons of Mass Destruction’ were more of weapons of my imagination. One man’s oops, thousands of people’s death.

Sometimes we want to see the big picture, canvassing the horizon in a 360 degree range. We amaze at how many or how large, and see the colors, the hues, the shapes but many times miss the smallest of details.

We know 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, we read that corporations have earned $1.659 trillion in profit, we sigh over 8.6 million Americans unemployed, we cringe at the number of 6876 Troops killed in two wars. But somehow until it affects us, smack us right in the face splattered all over our silent defenses we seldom realize that all it takes for those large numbers to grow is one person, just one person.

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do
Two can be as bad as one
It's the loneliest number since the number one.

No is the saddest experience you'll ever know
Yes, it's the saddest experience you'll ever know
`Cause one is the loneliest number that you'll ever do
One is the loneliest number, worse than two. (One, by The Three Dog Night)