Life is full of random things

File this under “Life is full of random things”.  I rarely add people to my ‘Friends’ list on Facebook.  I have a bunch of invites, but just don’t ever think about it/get around to accepting.  The other day for some reason I was at the list and clicked a few, including one name from the past.  It’s a convoluted connection: her mother Martha, or Marty as everyone called her, is my age, a younger sister of one of my aunts, but even though just ‘in-law’ related, our families shared get-togethers and we kids grew up as an extended group of cousins.  Marty was in my class in high school for a while, and we hung out together there.  After school, everyone went their separate ways.  She married young, had her family, my aunt moved away, the generations slowly passed on, and it has been many, many years since I’d seen her.  But the other day when I saw her daughter’s name in my invites I accepted.  The daughter is Annie, named after her grandmother.  I had to think a bit to put people together, to be honest, to figure out why this person wanted to Friend me.  That was earlier this week.  I meant to message Annie to ask how the family is, just hadn’t gotten to it yet.  Tonight Annie posted that her mother passed away today.  You know the things you wish you’d done sooner?  Yeah, that’s on the list.  Marty, I hope your life was good since last we met.  Go in peace.  Annie, I hope that fond memories make this time easier for you all.

How did he get the guns?

What happened in Webster, NY yesterday could have happened anywhere.  It could have been people I know, people I am related to, could have been any of us in slightly different circumstances.  It was, a couple of years ago, again here in NY when an EMT was shot and killed at a house he tried to enter on a call. 

“Police say Spengler was convicted in 1981 for beating his grandmother to death with a hammer and was released from prison in 1998. They’re trying to determine how he had weapons in his possession.

“Spengler was a convicted felon. He’s not allowed to possess weapons. Did he legally possess those weapons? No,” said Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering.”

So then how did he get the guns?  If there are all the background checks every time someone gets a gun, how did this man possess them?  How does anyone with criminal intent get a gun?  We’re not talking the gritty city streets where guns get stashed in trash cans for anyone in the neighborhood to use, and a lot of people can supply a weapon of choice for the asking.  We’re talking a quiet almost rural town, like the one I’m in and many of you are in.

How did he get the guns?   

“Four firefighters shot, two killed”

“Four firefighters shot, two killed” - the latest updates on an incident in Webster, NY this morning (12/24/12). 

Firefighters, going to do what they do, and a gunman opens fire.  Two died.  So far.

The others pulled back from the fire scene, and more houses are involved, ruining more people’s lives. 

Add these to the other headlines about shootings across the country, and it is a sad commentary on our people, our times, our society, our laws and the ways to circumvent them.  It’s just a sad, sad story to add to the far too many ones we’ve already read and heard, and to the ones we will continue to read and hear.

No, I’m not advocating that guns be banned.  Guns serve a purpose, whether it be for hunting, hobby, law enforcement, or a number of other legitimate purposes. 

I’m not going to quote the much mis-interpreted 2^nd Amendment to defend having guns, either.  I’m also not going to try to get into a debate about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of having a gun for personal defense.  In some cases this has proven to be a right choice.  In some it has caused tragedy.  

Since this is my blog, I’m going to give my opinion: that there is no single place to place the blame.  There is no single thing that could have prevented any of these tragedies.  Yes, maybe more difficult access to the guns, especially automatic weapons could have helped in some cases.  Yes, maybe better mental health care could have helped in some cases.  Yes, maybe armed guards at schools could have helped in some cases (although some are saying that there was an armed guard at Columbine, and there for sure were armed people at Fort Hood).  Yes, maybe everyone having their own gun could have helped in some cases.  Yes, maybe banning violence from tv or video games or and even headlines could help in some cases.  And so on.

The truth is, none of us know what could really have helped in any of the cases.  The truth is that there is no absolute cure, there is no complete and total answer.  

But maybe, just maybe, we all can help tame this epidemic.  Maybe we can try to reach out to someone who is withdrawn, not fitting in.  Maybe we can try to stop bullying when we see it happening.  Maybe we can let the ‘different’ people know they are important, too.  Maybe there are a lot more ways each of us can do just a little something to try to keep even just one of these tragedies from happening.  We’ve got a lot to say after they do, let’s try to say something before.  And maybe, just maybe there will be fewer headlines and fewer tears.  Maybe.

Check your facts, please, people!

I hate politics.  I hate politics a lot.  I admit I don’t pay a lot of attention to political things, and try to keep out of discussions about those for that and many other reasons.  I know that there are a lot of people who don’t like President Obama, and that’s fine with me.  I’m not saying whose side I was on at election time, just that I voted for the person whose platform I most agreed with.  Obama won the election, for good or bad, right or wrong for our country.  Is he gonna be right all the time?  Hell, no, because you know what?  He’s a human being.  The best he can do is hope that he makes more right than wrong choices, and that the rest of the governmental process supports those and helps correct the wrong ones. And, let’s face it, that’s the best all of us can hope for, both from our President, and in our own lives. 

However, I hate untruths a whole lot more than I hate politics.  I totally don’t mind the fact that people have other thoughts than I do, and it doesn’t mean I don’t still like them and want to be friends.  They are entitled to their own beliefs, just as I am and everyone else is.  But it really pisses me off when those beliefs are based on, and fostered and inflamed by untruths.  The latest that several of my friends have posted on Facebook is a speech by Ben Stein (and I admit I’m so out of it that I don’t really know who he is), allegedly regarding the Obama’s decision to call the tree a ‘holiday’ tree rather than a Christmas tree, and to not put religious themed ornaments on it. 

And even more than untruths, I really, really hate that people just spread them around when it is pretty easy to check them out.  Just go to snopes.com or hoaxbusters or any of the several other sites that research things and tell you if they are true, false or some of each.  The Christmas ornament thing?  False, according to Snopes.  The Ben Stein speech?  Yes, it was made, but not as a response to the Obama’s White House Christmas tree.  That would have been impossible, since he made it in 2005, when the president was named Bush.  Any doofus can put two things together and call it facts.  People who care about what they are passing on check before they further spread untruths.

So, people, please check your facts.  You don’t like that Obama got reelected?  That’s fine.  You don’t agree with him?  That’s fine, too.  I won’t argue politics with you.  I will argue spreading things that aren’t true.  Please don’t do it.  If you’re my friend, I’d like to think you’re better than that.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/christmas/ornaments.asp

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/confessions.asp

Really, Mr. Akin?

Todd Akin On Abortion: 'Legitimate Rape' Victims Have 'Ways To Try To Shut That Whole Thing Down'

Don’t bother with your lame apologies – the damage is done and you can’t spin it back. 

Aside from the absurdity of your thinking and your comments, voters in  Missouri should ask themselves if they really want someone who does not know any better than to make these statements representing them.  I for sure know don't want you helping run my country-hell knows what other stupidly uninformed and narrow-minded things you might say about critical issues or to critical people that could led to frightening consequences.  You are so caught up in your own ego that you can't be bothered to find out the truth.  Your mind is made up, don’t confuse it with facts.  Just what we want in national government.  Please, people of Missouri, do the right thing, and send this idiot  back to the obscurity he deserves.  If you elect him, think what it tells our country –and other countries - about yourselves and your state.  Mr. Akin, do the right thing and withdraw – someone like you does not deserve the position, nor the respect it should carry with it.

Are volunteers the reason?

From "A Day In The Life Of An Ambulance Driver", a blog I read, written by a guy whose outlook and writing I usually agree with and often admire: “Except, of course, that those wages come from a finite revenue pool of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement that runs about 30% less than the actual cost of providing the service. And that reimbursement was derived from some arcane formula calculating the average cost of providing EMS services across the country… including the volunteers who provide the service for free. So, thanks for doing your part to keep EMS wage levels in the toilet, Mr. Noble Volunteer.”

Ah, AD, ya got me again.  I swore to myself after the gun debacle that I wouldn’t run the risk of all the dissention by commenting, but as a volunteer with our local rescue squad for over 35 years, I gotta take you to task on this one, and run the risk of getting shot down yet again.  Volunteers are not doing what they do to bring down wages for paid services.  Volunteers are doing it because they are a necessity for both EMS and fire services.  In many areas across our country that’s all there is.  That’s all there is because given the many factors that include location, tax base, potential revenue and operating expenses make having a paid service out of the question.  And let’s not even go in to finding trained people in some of the areas, never mind keeping them trained. Then there’s the whole thing about how even if there were enough trained people to go around, would any of them want to pick up and move to the isolated areas that depend on the volunteers for whatever help they have?  We’ve got a lot of places like that here in New York State, and I know you must in Louisiana, too. Look them over and ask yourself if they’re better off without the volunteers, without any help at all, or should they wait for a paid service to arrive from an area many, many miles away – if that service would provide the coverage.  The county I live in now has five rescue squads.  Every one of them started life as part of the all volunteer fire department and eventually branched off on their own, and now we all have career staff 24/7/365.  Ours operate out of two stations to cover roughly 150 square miles.  But we thankfully still have volunteers who help those crews when things get busy. The EMS system the country knows today is founded on what volunteers provided for decades.  Please don’t put down what your predecessors did, and what thousands of us still do - yes, for no pay except the satisfaction that we’re helping our neighbors and often our own families.  For whatever reasons, we couldn’t go get the training and make it our life work.  But please don’t make us the scapegoat for what’s wrong with the system.  And don’t make it sound like getting rid of us would solve the problem.  I doubt it will, especially not in my lifetime. 

Thanks for at least reading the other side, even if you don’t agree.  I will now put on my armor and wait to be blasted with your response – and no doubt that of others. 

Ice creammemories

A radio ad keeps talking about memories of being taken to get ice cream, when you were a kid, by your parents, grandparents, whoever.  I remember all us kids (my sister and I, and whatever assorted cousins were around at the time) being loaded into the back of pickup truck, after a day of haying, milking, other chores, for some reason I think it was on Sunday nights, and taken over to Spencertown where there was a little ice cream shop.  Probably home made, although I don’t remember that for sure.  There were many flavors, and we all had our favorite, I think mine was pistachio, but also no doubt something chocolate.  There was a huge sundae, and cousin Reggie tried that once, and I don’t thing he finished it – can’t remember the name of it but it was something challenging, of course.  Then we’d ride home, maybe singing – or arguing. 

I remember getting an ice cream cone once and holding it out the car window because I thought the breeze would keep it from melting – after all, the breeze was cool on us – yeah, that didn’t work so well.  And not understanding why my father wrapped a package of ice cream in a blanket to keep it from melting, when everyone knows that blankets keep you warm.

And I think it must have been at Jones Beach, where my grandparents would take us, where you got ice cream cones, but the ice cream was the three-flavor, in a square shape, and the cones were the same shape; the ice cream was wrapped in paper and the server put it in the cone and you had to unwrap it without dropping it.

When Stewart’s stores with the make-your-own-sundaes were new and how we wished there was one nearer than Saratoga so we could go more often than just stopping on the way to or from Indian Lake, if we went past when they were open.

Ice cream memories.  Yum!