By Dan Domsic
Sometimes the production cycle at a weekly newspaper can be flat-out frustrating.
For last week, I wrote a column about people that are shining examples of goodness that can be achieved with strength, hard-work and soul. The point being we sometimes need to look close to home for happy stories.
Then, someone or some people, set off bombs at the Boston Marathon, and everyone, including myself, was reminded just how low, and awful, society can treat itself, and my point was sadly reinforced.
Watching others react is fascinating and sad. Conspiracy theorists screamed about “false flag” operations, ordinary people were raised to heroic heights, and we were all thankful for the people that when danger strikes and everyone else runs away from it, they run straight into it.
All I know is that a lot of people were hurt, and American lives were lost, and I hope by the time this in your mailbox, the perpetrator(s) will be closer to feeling the full might of justice.
Is this how we are to live from now on? It just seems like all we do is live, breathe and eat violence.
The conversation about guns and mental health continues to play out, and the finger-pointing, conjecture and talking points that go along with it are frustrating, if not bordering on the absurd.
For weeks it’s been common place for me to log onto Facebook, and invariably, shake my head at least once at how far discourse has fallen. But then again, that might just be my social circle.
And then I wonder whether the world’s been this bleak for quite a while, and the fact that at the push of the button I can tell someone in California how wrong he or she is without fear of much reprisal, and then I can drudge up a bunch of articles about all the grisly things that have happened makes it quite apparent that it has indeed always been filled with tragedy.
We just have the ability to learn about it and to a greater detail in a timely fashion now.
But with everything sad in life, there is a beautiful flip side. Because of how we can communicate, we can honor the people who do good for us and band together.
Let’s band together.
I’m now holding coffee hours at Hearthstone Coffee House & Pub on Mondays from 3 to 5 p.m.