Artistry With Words

The statistics just keep on pouring from the radio and television.

Allan Finder . . .

498 dead in New York City last night,  move on, a couple hundred in Detroit, Memphis had a bad night, look out, Boston, the numbers are rising, can’t get that damned curve to flow downward yet, but hope springs eternal.

Lorena Borjas . . .

And I hate to admit this but hey, someone has to, I am so accustomed to all of the death statistics that they barely register with me now. It’s like background music in a dentist’s office, you know.  I hear the sound but the actual tune is nebulous at best.

Bob Glanzer . . .

The thing is, and it’s something I’m trying to absorb today, is that each statistic is someone’s brother, someone’s wife, someone’s aunt or uncle or father or mother or child.  Each statistic is a loved one to someone, you know, and I think it’s crucial that we remember that fact.  I don’t ever want to reach the point where those statistics mean absolutely nothing to me.

Janice Rodman . . .

I think back to the Vietnam War, and how television really brought the realities of war to us all.  While eating our Swanson TV dinners, on our folding tv trays, we could turn on the news and watch as body bags were unloaded from transport planes, and witness,  up close and personal, the anguish on the faces of soldiers, thousand yard stare intact, as they grabbed a smoke on some numbered hill in the middle of some country none of us had heard of ten years prior and  God almighty, the pain we saw on those faces, and the burning corpses and amputees and rivers flowing red after the airstrikes.

Ron Hill . . .

And they built memorials for those soldiers, black granite walls for all to see, for all to remember, and hopefully for all to learn from,  but . . .

Time has a way of muting the memories, now doesn’t it, and I wonder if, when this is all over, we’ll go back to the way it was, or will we wake up, snap to attention, and let this lesson sink into our gray matter, change the way we go about our lives, and appreciate the sweet wonder of life itself.

And will the dead be remembered, those sons and daughters, wives and husbands, fathers and mothers, will there be memorials for them, the victims of a faceless enemy, one who crept into the night and filled so many with dread and nightmares . . .

Wishing you all good health and happiness

Love,

bill