A horribly violent week ...
I realize that most of my posts to date have primarily dealt with Hiroyuki Sanada who is starring in Danny Boyle's Sunshine which just opened throughout the world, except for the North American markets, but I state for the record that this blog was never intended to be a fan blog ...
I currently work as a senior legislative staffer for a state legislature that only operates for a portion of the year, and ours is perhaps one of a handful of state legislatures that actually commemorate Medal of Honor recipients due to a fairly large military presence throughout the state. This year's ceremony took place on Monday, April 16 -- the number of honorees were less than previous years, but the sadness and a profound sense of loss were evident as ever. As we listened to each honorees, we all realized how young they were -- they all were barely out of high school and most of them probably couldn't drink legally! I was trying to absorb the absurdity of the death of these brave soldiers and Marines when we were hit with the news of the massacre at Virginia Tech ...
On Tuesday, the Mayor of Nagasaki was shot to death by a disgruntled yakuza member who had a beef with the city's bureaucracy, while Thursday, April 19th was the 12-year anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing ... and we close out the work week with a murder-suicide at NASA's Johnson Space Center! Not to mention that scores of people are dying every day in Iraq and other regions throughout the world ... I'm still reeling from all this violence and the only question that comes to my mind is, WHY?? Why is there so much anger and bloodshed??
Perhaps I'm overly sensitive due to the fact that I'm a direct survivor of the 9-11 World Trade Center attacks. (I had a 9:00 a.m. meeting in the #2 Tower on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 and the only reason I'm alive today is because of my split-second decision to go out of the building for coffee -- I was barely halfway across the street when the first plane went in.) Or maybe it's because I used to work for CNN as a news producer where breaking news became de rigeur. Whatever it is, something is just not right with this world. The only silver lining I can see right now is the renewed discussion over gun control in this country, but it's distressing to see that this country is so divided over the whole issue of gun violence.
