When Hugo Chávez first became president of Venezuela I was sixteen years old and just coming into my political consciousness. Now I am in my thirties.  Through all that time I can think of no political opinion, no vote, no broad social view that has not been affected -- even defined -- by this singular man and his unstoppable vision. And now he is dead. Officially dead. The enormity of that one fact is such that the myriad uncertainties this news bring with it, for now, seem somehow unimportant. 

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Years ago a group of us headed down from the Venezuelan capital, to visit a friend's ancestral home in the country's interior. Over aged rum and playing cards, one member of our group -- a very proper Caracas society girl -- headed into the kitchen to fetch more ice for the table: A scream. Shattered glass. When we found her she was deathly pale, and crossing herself. Upon a decorative silver platter, the decapitated head of a small goat had been positioned as if to stare up at one from the icebox. Its eyes had been gouged out. And a laurel crown had frozen fast to its head. 

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Gaza resident Asem Alnabeh posted a photo of his little sister Nesma earlier tonight in their home. Her name means breeze. "But she really isn't," her brother writes me. "she's very impish!"

Nesma's house has lost electric power. There are fighter jets roaring over the house, and there are explosions never too far away -- not sufficiently far for the worried parents to attempt to calm their kids by lying to them that "oh, that was nothing."

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