Taking flight

Remember these event posts from earlier this year? Well I have some updates!

Yesterday marked the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, but it also marked the 6 month anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that occured in Japan. My close friend L (who started the crane folding event) and I got together to bring all the cranes we've amassed so far from all over the world to Seattle's Peace Park, which has a statue of Sadako, which L thought would make for a great location for a photo op with all the cranes we've amassed so far.

We began to unload boxes and boxes of cranes stacked to the gills out of my friend's car, along with the boxes collected from the event I coordinated and participated in. The count to date is....

11,843 cranes!!!


It's madness, I tell you! L and I were amazed at how many there really were. It took us a good portion of the afternoon to count them all before we put them all away after taking photos. The cranes made such a stunning display, cascading around the statue in so many colors and sizes, just as diverse as the people that the cranes represent in this project (did you catch the 2 super huge cranes at the base of the statue?).

It's one thing conceptualizing a specific count inside of your head; it's completely another thing to visually see that number laid out in front of you. It is also heartbreaking to know that each count, each folded crane, also represents a life lost.

Because the park was near one of the main biking/walking trails in Seattle, we had so many people stop by asking about the project and asking if it was ok to take photos and just having a genuine interest in knowing more about it. We even had some people ask if they can help by chipping in money for the shipping costs to send these cranes to Japan. It was truly incredible being surrounded by all this warmth and compassion that it took me on such emotional highs and lows that I was quite drained by the end of the day.

We have roughly 8000 more cranes to go to reach my friend's goal of 20,000. I don't think we're going to have any problem reaching it, it's just a matter of time now.