Today

in 1968,

Robert F. Kennedy

died of gunshot wounds while campaigning in the U.S. primary elections...

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Today is

the anniversary of a tragedy made famous by the songwriter/singer Gordon Lightfoot:

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
 

(As far as the music goes, who hasn't played the famous song on their guitar? Ching-chinga-ching, ching-chinga-ching - believe me, the rhythm part is really boring...) 

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I'm trying to be charitable

Resolute jet crash survivor shares her story

This is a horrible tragedy, and a miracle that even this small number of people survived. The one young woman who survived is very well-spoken and articulate. I guess what I'm struggling with is the media again. Having to impose on someone who has just gone through a horrific event in order to get their 'story'. What kind of story can they have? I listened to it on CBC while I was driving to work yesterday. It happened so quickly and they were found so quickly that there wasn't much to tell, and none of the three survivors can shed and light on the cause of the crash or anything else. Just more 'catastrophe media' as I've started calling it. And CBC is getting to be as bad as any of them.

Keep all those affected by this crash in your prayers, though, if you will. Such a terrible, terrible tragedy...

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Damned if you do...

and if you don't? Same thing.

Clergy Insulted By Speaking Ban At Sept. 11 Events

If you open it up you'll end up with followers of the flying spaghetti monster wanting to talk... (No offense to follower of the flying spaghetti monster meant, of course.)

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Please

Russian plane crash puts Canadiens, hockey world in shock

Take a moment and say a prayer for these players and their families and friends.

(I have only two criticisms - while a horrible tragedy, how is this more of a tragedy than the innocent people who are killed every day in Afghanistan, Uganda and all those other hotspots in the world, or the poor people starving in the Horn of Africa?

Secondly, I listened to a sportscaster being interviewed yesterday who said two controversial things. One that Sidney Crosby should have picked a different day for his press conference about not coming back to hockey until he had recovered 100% from his head injuries and calling for a ban on head shots in hockey. What better time could there be? The sports commentator also commented on the plane tragedy to say that it wouldn't happen here, that kind of thing could only happen in Russia. As if we never have air tragedies?

What a fool!)

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No comment

For those interested, I won't be doing any coverage of the 9/11 tragedy remembrance-fest. While a horrible, horrible event, and while I have the utmost sympathy for those families who have suffered in any way because of it, and also because I deplore the fact that our Western sense of security has been destroyed and that we've joined the rest of the world in dealing with terrorists on a daily basis, I find that there's enough memorializing being done by so many other people that I have nothing to say that can add to the mix. As well, unfortunately, I can't stand the American expressions of ultra-patriotism that are so blown out of proportion during these events. So, unless it really adds something to the discussion (or unless something really irks me into commenting) this will be my last post on the issue...

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A couple of days old...

Scientology Sees Fundraising Gold in the UK Riots: "We Have a Strategy"

...but I don't blog on Sunday as a rule, and Scientology certainly doesn't rate getting me to go against my general rule. Other things, perhaps, but not this cult.

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Yes...

Atheists file lawsuit over Christian cross at New York City 9/11 memorial

...it never ends...

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Public Prayer

Rabbi Holds Prayers in Street After Manhattan Synagogue Burned to Ground

While the fire is a terrible tragedy, I think it's wonderful that they have held prayers in the street. Prayers in time of trouble are a community event, something for people to join in with...

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An even more important memorial

Titanic launch 100th anniversary marked in Belfast

"A religious service has taken place in Belfast to mark the 100th anniversary of the launch of the ill-fated Titanic."

So many lives lost, so many acts of heroism, and proving once again that human pride in themselves is wrong...

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While he makes valid points...

Charles Lewis: Jack Layton’s credit card cure is worse than the disease

...they're valid only because we, as consumers, should be reducing or eliminating our debt. What he doesn't say, in his defense of all that is holy in the world of capitalism, is that if your name was Luigi (yes, I'm using a stereotype to make a point), and you loaned money and charged the interest rate the banks charge on credit cards, you'd be arrested and you'd likely go to jail.

Just because consumers should rein in their debt doesn't mean that it's not immoral and unethical to charge the interest rates that the banks charge. One doesn't exculpate the other. It doesn't mean that it isn't unethical or immoral to charge 12% on a consumer loan but give 1/4 of 1% interest on a savings account.

In Canada, banks are chartered to legally take as much money from you as possible and give as little back as possible. I really think that, once people get their debt under control, they should stop using banks. Why continue being a tool of the unethical and immoral capitalists?

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But

<sarcasm on>I thought nuclear energy was a safe form of power?<sarcasm off>

Japan to scrap stricken nuclear reactors

"Japan is to decommission four stricken reactors at the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant, the operator says."

Such a tragedy. They'll be suffering the effects of this for, well, for as long as it matters to the human race, I guess...

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More and more frightening

Japan plant water radiation may be from core

"No evidence yet of containment vessel damage: spokesman"

But they don't know, they can only guess - and hope.

No one knows anything. No one knows for certain what will happen in a meltdown, if the core continues down, through the earth's crust. No one knows anything. All we know for certain in the West is that "it can't happen here" and so we go ahead with our nuclear projects blithely ignoring the tragedy unfolding before us, despite what seems to be a majority feeling against continuing. Because the little people are nothing before the power or politics and the dollar.

We deserve what we get. Too bad it can't just be the politicians and business people, but there you are.

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A sad anniversary

Today was the day, in 1968, that American troops in Vietnam started the

My Lai Massacre.

This event, more than any other at that time, led to the shedding of the American people's naive innocence about the war in Vietnam. It was also the event that caused a helicopter crew, led by Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr., to display great bravery by forcing the American troops to stop their killing.

Human beings are human beings, whether Russian, American, Canadian, Rwandan or Congolese. We so often find ways to show our fallen side and commit atrocities against others...

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Another prayer need

New Zealand earthquake: 65 dead in Christchurch

After the floods in Australia comes an earthquake in New Zealand. Please, if you're the praying type, remember all these people in your prayers. Some people doubt the efficacy of prayer, but for myself, I know it works...

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Avast! Ye...



whatever, whatever, and so on and so forth (I can't do pirate very well)...

188-yr-old shipwrecked whaler linked to 'Moby-Dick' discovered

Moby Dick is a good read. So is Melville's 'Billy Budd'. They're probably not too popular today, though. The sentences are too long.


Archaeology is cool...

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Such sadness

The Year of Living Anxiously

Mentally ill people will always be with us, and we have no way to predict what violence they may commit, but our own violence, and the violence of our culture, doesn't do anything to help. This is just such a tragedy. It's no place to point fingers, no place to cry Democrat or Republican, no place to try to further any other agenda. It's a place to mourn. To pray. To decide, for ourselves, to live closer to compassion than anger, and to comfort each other...

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Such tragedy

Lost sailors haunt pilot who helped sink "Bismarck"

"John Moffat's sparkling eyes grow dim when he remembers the 2,000 sailors swallowed up by the Atlantic after his torpedo bombers consigned the German battleship Bismarck to its doom nearly 70 years ago."

While the Allies had no choice but to fight a war that was unprovoked, the tragedy of the human cost to war comes through in an article like this. "All these heads bobbing up and down in the huge waves, and not a chance in hell of being saved..."

So tragic...

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This is a terrible graphic example

of why we shouldn't trust business when they say nothing can go wrong...

Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hours

"Investigators have dissected BP’s well design and Halliburton’s cementing work, uncovering problem after problem."

...

"What emerges is a stark and singular fact: crew members died and suffered terrible injuries because every one of the Horizon’s defenses failed on April 20. Some were deployed but did not work. Some were activated too late, after they had almost certainly been damaged by fire or explosions. Some were never deployed at all."

Lord have mercy on all those killed and injured, and on their families. I pray for justice for them in this life, not just after death...

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When life gives you lemons...

Loss of Jesus statue a positive for church, says pastor

"Fire that destroyed Solid Rock’s King of Kings statue
 caused church’s name to be ‘heard around world.’"

The pastor has the perfect name for ecclesiastical promotions (at least in the world of one of Joseph Heller's novels).

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