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Showing posts from April, 2015

Two Minutes

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Long about the last week of April I become obsessed with the upcoming Kentucky Derby.  It's my  Springtime dalliance, my rite of passage, my love of thoroughbred horses that offers a convenient escape.  I think, too about the week spent in Louisville some 33 years ago now.  I've carefully pressed the sights, sounds, smells, and satisfactions of that experience so that it will last a lifetime.  So far, so good. Yet this year feels different in so many ways.  Most likely it's the international tragedy complicated by the recent massive earthquake in Nepal and the current domestic hostility and unrest that centers around the constant battle many inner city residents have with their local police departments. The Baltimore Orioles actually played a game yesterday with an official attendance of Zero.  The media continues to tell only parts of the stories that comprise these complicated and nuanced situations, and lost is the ongoing poverty and deprivation  that refuse to yield

Like Bookends

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Last week I had the opportunity to talk to a friend from the middle school days of my life.  He found me through social media and, as it happens, we live in the same state about 3 hours apart.  It has only been about 50 years since we last spoke. Although we did not go to the same high school, we kept some of the same middle school friends.  He happened to go to a reunion that I did not and learned where I was, hence the contact.  What a conversation we had.  Though he went to Vietnam and I resisted that war, we found we had many similar interests and that our lives had overlapped a few times in the last few decades.  The version of the person I talked to the other day was a mature, thoughtful,  survivor who had overcome many of the challenges and obstacles that accompany PTSD and the resultant consequences.  How wonderful and encouraging this was.  Probably the reason we never talked about our middle school days,the girlfriends, the teachers, the parties, the adolescent drama. Pa

So Far Away

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Seems like every other day last week a new video surfaced of police either shooting or using too much force on a person.  Two cases in particular saw the cell phone video of a bystander and the aerial footage from a helicopter find the news shows and daily broadcasts.  In both cases, law enforcement seems blatantly at fault.  No need for body cameras to record a man flat on his face with his hands behind his back getting kicked and wrestled to the ground by as many as 7 officers.  Same goes for a traffic stop that ends in 8 shots fired in the back.  Disturbing on many levels.  What resonates for me is that we are just now getting footage of things that have, no doubt, been going on for decades...centuries? People who live near or beyond the other side of the tracks have known the reality of this video brutality all along.  I recall my supervisor, while a Vista Volunteer, assigning me to take a Latino man and his young son to a camping place near a lake for the weekend with no quest