Deaths

In a 72 hour period in Louisville, Kentucky, this past weekend, 152 people died from overdoses of heroin.  I learned, while on the Grand Jury for my county, that you can now purchase two hits (or doses) of heroin for $5, if you know the right (or, to my mind, wrong) people - street dealers.  If you want to buy an illegal dose of Oxycontin or Hydrocodone, you have to pay $10 to $22 per pill from those same street dealers.  I don't know why I was surprised.  "Illegal drugs" have been available from the beginning of time.
   I'm not even sure why I chose this topic for this blog - maybe because I was amazed by reading about those 152 deaths in Louisville in 72 hours.  Or maybe it was because I just watched episode #35 of  The Resistence on GQ Facebook/YouTube with Keith Olbermann, in which he ended each paragraph with the questions, "Are they high? - Or what?"
   People have been experimenting with plants and alcohol and distillations of compounds for hundreds of thousands of years (OK, that may be an exaggeration).  People have sought things to ease pain and to make them happy or feel good and to forget.  A lot of people are happy with what they have in their lives, and a lot are not.  It seems to me, with the proliferation of television, cinema, the internet - and more recently, with the explosion of cell phones, i-pods, tablets, etc - that most young people who live at the middle- and lower-income brackets feel left out.  They feel they deserve more. They want more.  Because everyone on TV has all of these things - and in the movies, too.
   I have an old-fashioned land-line telephone.  I don't like to talk on it.  I have a cell phone, too - but it only makes and receives phone calls and text messages.  I hate that one more that I hate my land line.  I prefer to contact my friends and family by writing, or by speaking face to face.  I do have my personal computer.  It is a desk-top model, and it's almost ten years old.  I have to sit at my desk to use it for anything.  And I like that.  It does not have a camera built into the monitor; it does not Skype; the Instant Messenger program was turned off as soon as I got the unit home and set up.  I use this computer for my own interests, and my own reasons.  I do a lot of research, and I hate being interrupted. I suffer from depression, but I manage to hold onto my sanity.
   I guess I'm really trying to say that I feel deeply sorry for the people who die from drug overdoses.  Most are trying to escape from some kind of pain - whether it's physical, mental, psychic, financial, or just imagined.  I can understand wanting to get away from any type of pain. I comprehend not wanting to hurt and wanting to be able to accept things as they are.
   I suffer from my own self-inflicted mental anguish at times.  I suffer a lot of physical pain daily, having to do with previous accidents.  Today, my recurrent Shingles has flared up again, and I have constant pain, along with sharp stabbing zings that occur irregularly.  My last memory of a pain free day was after my shoulder surgery back in the early 1990's - or maybe it was 1989.  I had 30 hours that were pain free - and I fell in love with my orthopedic anesthesiologist for 48 hours.  Then all of my usual aches and pains returned.
   No one wants to live in pain - but sometimes, it's the proof that one is alive.

Devastation in Oklahoma

Having grown up during the Viet Nam War, I got used to seeing napalm bombs and explosions and the aftermath on TV while I was eating supper.  I also lived and worked on a farm, served on a Grand Jury for 6 months, and worked in a teaching hospital for more than eight years, seeing duty in the Emergency Room, the Operating Room, Labor and Delivery, and several Intensive Care Units.  I have seen births and deaths - beautiful, joyous, ugly and heart-rending.  I grew up, essentially, on the East Coast of the United States, in Florida and Virginia; Mom was a Virginian, but my Dad was born in Oklahoma and raised in Kansas, near the Missouri River.  I grew up knowing about hurricanes, while Dad told tales of "twisters."  Mom told us about hurricanes and flooding on the island she grew up on.  Dad countered with the Dust Bowl and tornadoes.  Dad's family thought we were crazy for staying on the East Coast with all the hurricanes; Mom's family thought Dad's family was crazy for living near Tornado Alley.
  Mom and Dad always tantalized me with old family tales of being related to famous families in Europe, and I became a history buff.  I have poured over photos from many wars, trying to understand the minds that could plot and plan such horrific battles.  Looking at photos of the aftermaths of battles and bombings, I have always felt grief - for those lost, for their families, for history lost, and for all the multiple possibilities lost because of the deaths of young men and women.  I realize that is the shape of our world today, but I deplore it.
  Yesterday afternoon, a huge tornado touched down in Moore, Oklahoma, a suburb of Oklahoma City.  The "tip" of the funnel touching the ground is estimated at being one mile wide - and it traveled through Moore on a path more than 40 miles long.  Currently, the winds are estimated at having been about 200 miles per hour.  The devastation is complete and horrific.  It looks as if the town had been bombed off the map - and the tornado swept through two elementary schools, causing multiple deaths.  Seven school children drowned in a shallow pool of water at one school.  Many other students have been rescued from the wreckage overnight.  The search and rescue efforts continue today.  When I arose this morning, the national news was saying that at least 91 people were dead, including 20 children.  That number has now been revised to a somewhat lower number...  But many are still missing.  One young man was working at a horse farm on the outskirts of Moore; he had 80 horses in his care.  When he heard the tornado warning, he turned all the horses loose; he was trapped in a stall.  The barn collapsed around him. The young man survived, as did one of the eighty horses...
  I wrote about studying the photos of battlefields and bombing sites from different wars.  The photos of the results of the tornado yesterday are comparable to the bombings of Berlin, the bombings of London, and the bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  The devastation is so overwhelming that words cannot really describe what is left.  If you can afford to, please donate to the American Red Cross to aid those in need in Oklahoma.  Thank you.