Andrew Tobias gave us all a little perspective when he posted this six years ago:
I am listening to [the book] 1776 on my Nano, and it’s 2 degrees Fahrenheit (in Boston, in 1776) and people are dragging 120 tons of can[n]ons from Ft. Ticonderoga 300 miles to General George Washington in Dorchester, and the suffering of the troops — civilians like you and me, who’ve left their families to fight the British — is astounding. Sentries are literally freezing to death. And all I can think about is how upset we get if we’re assigned a middle seat.