Boston Marathon bombing: One runner's story
I have to step away from the horror. I can't deal anymore but one last link from Charlie's place to Jon Marcus who was there when the bombs exploded in Boston. It's a somber but inspiring story.
It turns out the race was already won long before the bombs exploded. But it's a big race. The rest of the runners would be coming in for a long time yet. Boston Marathon isn't about winning. As Jon Marcus tells us:
It turns out the race was already won long before the bombs exploded. But it's a big race. The rest of the runners would be coming in for a long time yet. Boston Marathon isn't about winning. As Jon Marcus tells us:
For runners from around the world, the marathon is a life goal. They train not for months, but years, to meet the daunting qualifying times. Crossing that small strip of pavement is an accomplishment that’s as hard to explain as the attack that bloodied it is impossible to understand.Even if you're feeling as overwhelmed by the horror as I am, this is worth reading in full. I found oddly comforting.
This time, some of the last runners to cross kept going, to the hospitals to give blood. Doctors and nurses among them volunteered to help.
But all of that extraordinary generosity couldn’t reverse time. ...
Labels: Boston Marathon
posted by Libby Spencer at 9:27 PM
3 Comments:
Some of us always rush to help. Sometimes such things bring out the best in us. I just wish that mood would last.
I went to the local Red Cross on 9/11/01 and there was a crowd of thousands. Within days we were back to blaming liberals and hunting for bearded witches and calling for war.
I don't feel horror or grief. These things are happening every day around the world and yet we feel like we live in a separate existence where everything is safe as a nursery. We don't. We never have. I'm not mourning and weeping as the media would like to make us believe everyone is. I feel anger. I feel disgust. I'm fed up with the crazy patriots, the crazy militias, the anti-abortion bastards, the Tea idiots, crusaders, racists and the whole endless mob of shouters and screamers and smug morons on their miserable missions, foreign and domestic.
They're all people who don't like Democracy because they don't trust the people to support their crazy causes and so they put nails and glass and explosives into backpacks and garbage cans and leave them around - sometimes just to gain bragging rights as to how many people they can kill. Sometimes to please God, because God, as you know is lazy and impotent and can't do it himself.
The last similar case was all about Abortion and so far this one has the same stink, but it could have been anything -- or even nothing.
I mourn the senseless deaths everywhere, every day. It's the empath in me. But I'm angry too and tired of zealots of every stripe. Life is too fucking short for this crap.
Amen
Post a Comment
<< Home