I dismantled the Christmas lights outside my front door today and put them back in the attic for another year. So I figured it was also time to take down the holiday decorations and greetings in the sidebar.

But I've decided not to put back into annual storage a couple of worthy causes that we highlighted during the "season of giving." The ongoing catastrophe in Asia and the continuing pre-election violence in Iraq remind us that the call on our assistance isn't just a seasonal thing.

Clearly, we have a responsibility to lend a helping hand if we are among those who enjoy both the material comforts of a wealthy country safe from disaster and the freedoms that intimidation and fanaticism are trying to deny Iraqis. But the call to help involves more than just the responsibility to share with those less fortunate.

In some ways as important for both those who give and those who benefit is the sense of connection -- the old-fashioned notion of solidarity -- forgotten when things bumble along but surging to the fore in a crisis. It is in the great struggles -- in disaster, war, fighting to overhaul self-serving, corrupt, or unjust institutions, regimes, systems, to rebuild when the old no longer serves its use or has been swept away -- that we create the memorable bonds that unite us. When we feel most alive, most human. When both the best and worst of mankind shows forth.

I found my way to the blogosphere less than a year ago, and I marvel at how rapidly it's evolving. Perhaps it's simply what attracts me to the blogging phenomenon personally, but I believe one of its driving forces is its new way of facilitating connection. Not the simultaneity of a phone call or chat room that demands interaction whatever one's mood, but rather a more considered and elective engagement. Yet not either the definition of the reader as a consumer, separate from the production of shared meaning as in a magazine or journal, even online, but rather a participant in the creation. And above al, the privileging of individual, distinctive voices, from anywhere quite literally on the globe.

Two examples of connections that I've found personally important have appeared in just the past week or so. In response to the tsunami, it's been amazing to watch the growth of tsunamihelp.com, the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami (SEA-EAT) blog and wiki project about which we've posted information in the sidebar. From an initial source of sporadic bits of news out of the region on the first day, and then a growing set of donation links and organized contact points, it's become a clearinghouse as well for those who are trying to find news of loved ones, or for those who have news and are trying to get it to where it needs to go.

In less than ten days, from a standing start, scores of volunteers, thousands of information contributors, and over a million visitors. Dina Mehta, who has been involved in the evolution, has some of the story. As described in morph (the blog for the Media Center at the American Press Institute) the SEA-EAT project also has managed, in under ten days, to produce a new section of Wikinews, the pilot news service of Wikipedia, and a wiki for volunteer resources set up with the help of Ross Mayfield of SocialText.

My other recent "connection" is actually a reconnection with a single voice, Ali of Iraq the Model. Finding himself uncomfortable for personal reasons with the trip to the US undertaken by his co-bloggers, he determined to stay behind and then to strike out on his own. The manner of his departure and new destination was mysterious and, he now admits, melodramatic. Many of Ali's readers who had found our way to the world of Iraqi bloggers through his wit -- sometimes warm and sometimes caustic, but always good humored and passionate on the score of freedom -- were concerned about him personally. His reappearance , with sheepish apologies accepted by one and all, is a welcome delight.

So the old Ali is now the new Free Iraqi: "I was not living before the 9th of April and now I am, so let me speak!" Whether you believed the US should have invaded his country, now almost two years ago, is beside the point today. The essence of solidarity with Ali and others who share his profound need to speak is to give support to those voices in whatever way we can.