Plug the word “context” into the Google News search box today and you’ll get 29,176 results.  This is a continuation of a downturn over the last couple of week.  The totals are driven by coverage of the national health care debate, the announced review of the CIA torture program and the uneasy future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

There are even people calling for more context when there is little to be found.

What may be my favorite use of context this week may come from the Boston Globe.  It reviewed a new book dealing with the historical record of the Donner Party, which, on the way West 170 or so years ago, resorted to cannibalism in the face of deprivation.  The Globe gives the author, Daniel James Brown, credit for “…humanizing the people and putting their travails in historical context.”

Context has a way of letting us see what we don’t at first.