Facie’s Ramblings

Every year around this time I write a 9/11 post. This year will be no different. Yet in some ways it is different. As the years pass, I think about it less and less. It used to weigh on my heart as the anniversary was a few weeks away. But this year, I don't think I thought about until it was about a week away.  Although I don't think time heals all wounds, time can certainly lessen the memories and the pain. But as I watched streaming video of the remembrance ceremony today, I saw just how raw and painful this day is for those who lost loved ones during that relatively short amount of time. My heart ached for the people whose voices cracked as they read the names of their loved ones. My eyes welled up with tears, particularly as I watched and heard young people say the names of their relatives and most definitely when someone had lost a parent or child. Every year I allow myself to be somber and reflective. I always watch a few 9/11 programs; my favorite is "102 Minutes T...

Many people have blogged, tweeted, and commented on Facebook about the horrific bomb explosion at the Boston Marathon and the subsequent days-long manhunt, which included gunfire exchange and additional deaths. Mercifully and thankfully the tragic saga now appears to be over, at least the scariest part. Because there is so much information and misinformation out there, I won't bother to weigh in on the specifics. I don't think I can add anything new or insightful anyway. I do, however, want to respond to people who feel the word is a dangerous, sad place. You are correct; there is really no denying that the world is hardly all sunshine and lollipops. And I think I can speak for the majority of people around my age by saying that "back in the day" we did not have to worry about someone shooting up many people in a school, a movie theater, or at some event, or setting off an IED and injuring scores of people at a sporting event. (Of course I grew up in a small town,...

I have been trying to come up with something to say about the tragic school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, on Friday. But even though I can normally "write" a coherent, meaningful post in my head, this topic has not allowed my brain to do that; my thoughts are all over the place. Even worse, this tragedy came about 12 hours after the mother of one of J's classmates died, so I was already sad. So I am pretty much just going to do a free-write, and we'll see what happens. One of my first reactions when I read about the shooting was the schools are supposed to be a safe place. If you read my last post, which I wrote about an hour before I heard about the shootings, I said school was the one place that I did not worry about when leaving my kid. You know what, after my initial shock and sadness, I still feel that way. I have also written about how I sometimes think about how easy it would be for a deranged person to walk into the church where I attend daily mass. Wh...

I am unsure how many times in my life I have questioned why people do the things they do. I have probably done it in this blog a half dozen times or more. I know I wrestle with this at least weekly. I get that people have free will. Any one of us can decide on any given day, hour, or minute whether we are going to do something good or something bad. Something that will help others or something that will hurt others. Something that is "right" and something that is oh-so-wrong. I realize that most of us don't generally do really good or really bad things; we just live our lives. Sometimes we perform a random act of kindness and we are hopefully mostly nice to our family and friends. Other times we say something unkind, are not truthful, and do things we probably should not. But the truth is, I grapple with those little wrongdoings as much as I struggle to wrap my head around the really heinous things people do. Yesterday a man walked into Western Psych, a hospital/ins...

I still have so many thoughts swarming around my head regarding the Jerry Sandusky-Penn State scandal, but I cannot take the time to write them all down. And there is no way anyone would want to read paragraph after paragraph even if I could. So let me briefly (for me) sum up my thoughts as of right now. The whole situation is sad. So incredibly sad for the kids, but sad for others too. Sad for the people who thought they were doing the right thing but may not have been. Sad for the people who should have done more and probably knew it. Sad for the reputation of a great school. Sad for coach who did so much for a university. Sad for the fans. Sad for the students. Sad for the community. Sad for sports. Sad for parents. Just sad. I know that Joe Paterno needed to no longer be the coach. I had hoped he would have stepped down on his own, but he did not. I know PSU's cutting ties with him is the right thing to do, but that does not mean that it is not sad. I hate that this is ho...

Every year I've had this blog, I've written a 9/11 post around that day. This year is no exception, though I have a slightly different angle. After having watched a lot of 9/11 programs the past week, I was struck by some things I had forgotten about or had never considered to begin with. As tragic as the great loss of life was, it could have been exponentially worse. I cannot say for certain how many people worked in the WTC buildings, but according to replays of coverage from that day, it was anywhere between 30,000 and 50,000. Yet thanks to the time of day and the heroic efforts of many, the casualties were under 3,000. That is something to be grateful for. Ten year ago, I remember people complaining the Bush waited too long to speak to the nation. However, according to the some of the replays, Bush spoke soon after the second plane hit the WTC, but before the third plane hit the Pentagon. That does not seem like a long time. But then again, maybe I am not remembering...

April is a tough month. Not so much because the weather is often crazy around here (near 80 degrees one day and freezing temps another). But rather a lot of sad/tragic things have happened over the years, particularly two years ago. Amy's (of Callapitter) two precious children were taken from her two years ago. Although the anniversary was two weeks ago, I reminded of it now because it happened during Holy Week. Plus today is her Peter's birthday. Just a few days before that tragedy, three Pittsburgh police officers were gunned down. And it was on Good Friday that a priest at my church accidentally ran over some parishioners, killing one and injuring several others. The anniversary for that too was two weeks ago, but since Good Friday is tomorrow, I cannot help being reminded of it. On some less personal notes, the anniversary of the Columbine school shootings is coming up. Or apparently just passed. I remember that well because it happened on our honeymoon 12 years ago...

I don't have to look at my blog posts from previous years (but I will, after I finish writing this) to know what I wrote about 9/11 the last two years. I have no doubt I said that I used to be paranoid about things (planes flying overhead in particular), but that eventually I stopped being consumed with worry and feeling that impending sense of doom. Time marches on, and people go back to the way things were, as much as they can. (I still don't like to fly, but I did not care for it before 9/11 either.) The reality is that we have tragedies every day. People get sick. People die. People are hateful. People do bad things. But people get better. People continue living. And many people are loving, kind, and compassionate. I don't think I will ever forget 9/11, what I was doing and how I felt. But as important, I want to do my best to be tolerant of others and not to generalize. We must remember that just because one person or even many people from a group do something or...

April is normally a month of hope. The first full month of spring. Typically Easter falls within it. We usually end up with at least a week or two of nice weather (one year we had a week in the 80s). People spend time outside. Baseball season starts (remember, no one starts with a losing record!). This April, however, and particularly over the next two weeks, I will be thinking about the one-year anniversary of some sad things that occurred within a seven-day period last year. The tragic death of Amy's (from Callapitter) children. I will be sending her good thoughts and vibes over the next few weeks. As difficult as this last year has been for her, I am surmising the anniversary will be trying in a different way. I am, however, glad to see that plans for the playground memorializing her children are coming together. If you are interested in donating, please go here. The slaying of three Pittsburgh police officers. Sadly, someone is killed almost every week in and around the ci...

Late this afternoon, I read that Kelly Frey, a news anchor for WTAE in Pittsburgh, had her baby today. If you don't know the back story, you can read about it here. The gyst of it is early in her pregnancy, Kelly discovered her baby had a major brain defect and likely would die soon after birth. She and her husband decided to terminate the pregnancy, but when they discovered doing so (look, I cannot even write the "a" word) would not be covered by his health insurance, they took it as a sign to keep the baby. A local photographer beautifully captured the birth here, and the pictures are at once heart-warming and gut-wrenching. Kelly and her husband's difficult situation brings me back to something I think about almost daily (and mentioned in passing in one of my blog posts). This past April, two kids who went to the same preschool Jordan did were killed in a car accident while riding with their father on the way to his house in New York. I had never met the mom until...

I spent the past two hours watching CNN and Fox News, preceded by a moment of prayer at church. I hope most of us take some time today to think about what happened eight years ago and how it changed our lives. I was so shaken by those events when they happened. For weeks, I spent hours a day watching CNN and Fox, constantly checking those same sites on the web, waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. I remember the Saturday or Sunday after, when planes were again allowed to fly. I was doing sit-ups at the gym and saw a plane fly overhead. I stopped cold. For months, I found myself watching planes, almost waiting for them to fly into buildings. I just reread my post from last year and, not surprisingly, I said some of these same things. They just stick with you. I continue to try to watch programs about 9/11. There was just one last week. I especially appreciate hearing about people who were directly affected, those who still mourn the loss of their loved ones. Watching video fro...

Some people would rather just forget the tragedy of 9/11 ever happened seven years ago. But I don't think we should. After it first happened, I was not sure I would ever be the same, even though I did not know anyone who had perished or had been injured. I did know several people who lived or worked in NYC as well as near the Pentagon, and Flight 93 crashed about a mile from a house on Indian Lake my family had back when I was in high school and college. In fact, I might have actually walked near or by the crash site (before it became the crash site). So in that respect, I felt connected. When I heard about the first plane crash, I was listening to B94 and getting ready for work, and I did not think much of it. But when I got in my car probably 10 or 15 minutes later and heard about the second crash, and then I heard Howard Stern talk about a terrorist attack, I was dumbfounded. At work, Luke, our IT kid, was holding a TV antenna so we could watch the events on TV in the admin co...