Since my last post 2 weeks ago, the world has changed dramatically.  The financial world is collapsing, the presidential campaign has turned a very ugly page and I have no idea where to turn to learn each critical fact as it unfurls.  Such an uncertain time has changed what had receded into a casual awareness of the lack of Tim Russert on the media landscape and cranked it up to an active longing.

Evidently I am not alone.  Maybe it was seeing poor ancient Tom Brokaw attempting to wring value from the final presidential debate, maybe it was running into Tim’s son Luke on the streets of my neighborhood, but I started poking around to see if there are others who feel the same.  Tim left us almost 4 months ago now, but the loss to the nation seems heightened because of this nasty election +economy one-two punch.

If you feel the same, check out the official MySpace tribute page featuring a greeting from Luke or 1 of the 187 tribute groups on Facebook.  There have been a few new comments on these tributes in these last 48 hours since the debate.  But for an immediate pulse on the emotion of the country, there’s nothing like Twitter.

The image above is just a snippet of the interesting Tim related tweets from the last few hours – you can check out the most up to date Russert tweets here – Maybe this is yet an additional use for Twitter – a tool to host a collective, primal scream for what we lost on June 13, 2008.

RIP.  Elections and Sunday mornings will never be the same.