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Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Storms across the nation

I woke up this morning at a huge crack of lightning, and the rumble of thunder that shook my house following it. True lightning storms are very rare here in Hawaii, because our mountains act as a barrier, and in general, hot and cold fronts don't meet up here often. As a Florida native, it was odd not having an afternoon thunder storm regularly, and after a few years, I actually started to miss them. After ten years of few real storms, a powerful lightning storm, like this morning's, actually spooks me a bit.

Since the day seemed determined to be as boring as possible, I decided to finally tackle some cleaning. Easy way to occupy a small child who's not a scared-of-the-dark wussy - get a large cardboard box, some markers & a flashlight. Give flashlight & markers to child, put box on top of them, tell them we're playing the 'cavemen cave painting' game. Booger is too young to understand the concept of games, but he still gets a good 30 minute kick out of that one.

On an optimistically inclined day, my place looks like a semi hauling clothes collided with an (unoccupied) daycare, which just fell from the sky onto a library. Then there's the kitchen & its perpetual stack of dishes. Cute "cleaning won't kill you, but its best to be safe" metaphors aside, my house is a disaster zone that isn't much improved by cleaning, since there's no real place for most of the crap. I'd love to 'donate' (aka, beat to death with a burning club) many of the Booger's obnoxious loud toys, but ah - that's a post for another day.

I always try to catch the evening news, just to try and feel some small resemblance of a connection to the outside world. A report on a man who commited suicide by drowning himself while firefighters and police looked on caught my eye, especially a clip of his mother asking why no one attempted to rescue him. There's two reasons given they didn't attempt to haul him out of the ocean (he was in the water for around an hour before purposefully drowning himself) or even try to communicate with the man. First, the funding for water rescue training was cut a few years back; however, it's not stated if these officers had received that training or not. Secondly, officers stated they feared the man would be hostile to any assistance; however, this doesn't excuse not speaking to the man, in my opinion. Both these reasons do not explain why when the body floated back to shore in the waves, none of the officials made any attempt to retrieve it and attempt to resuscitate the man. A bystander was the one to pull it from the water.

So many elements are tangled up in this story - should suicide attempters be 'victims', are budget cuts to rescue workers a good idea, what happened to 'good Samaritans', & so on. To keep myself from being too verbose tonight - assisted suicide should be allowed, mentally ill people attempting to hurt themselves should be safely restrained if at all possible, budget cuts should be made in tax breaks to companies posting billion dollar profits, & good Samaritans no longer exist in a society so suffocated by fear.

Have a good night (or morning), and tell your loved ones you love them, as much as possible in the short time we have.

41 comments:

  1. Storms can be fun, or suck. Good luck with keeping yourself occupied.

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  2. Yeah I noticed right away when I moved here that there was no thunder storm for the entire year, I think I've seen two in the three years I've been here. One of them had a thunder crack so loud it set off every car alarm within my earshot.

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  3. You have a good day too. Looks like we're gonna got some storms here today too.

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  4. stay safe m8. don't let the weather worry you

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  5. Wow, what a sad but true post, great stuff!

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  6. we have a tornado warning in my town :/

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  7. full day of stories and thoughts. ^_^

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  8. The drowning man thing is so complicated. I've heard stories of people suing when police or firefighters who didn't have training interfered and saved the individual, but caused physical harm to them to save them. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

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  9. ::not relevant:: I actually been to Alameda beach, I've had to wade out REALLY far for the water to go past my waist, even in high tide, it's a REALLY shallow area.

    I believe a part of it was the officials were "on-duty" and as such, they had to follow procedures, and they weren't allowed to go into the water.

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  10. I love storms like that. The rainy season has started here in Costa Rica and we're having huge storms everyday, I love it!

    That's sad about the man who died, and about the cuts in the rescue service.

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  11. lucky for me to be living in sunny San Diego

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  12. Lots of tornadoes and other bad storms lately, I'm blessed to live in New York where storms are rarely so dangerous...

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  13. Yea, that drowning story just how silly the government is.

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  14. Yep Good samaritans are dead, im actually afraid that if i pick a hitchiker hes gonna kill me and do satanic rituals or something... well maybe not that extreme but you get the idea

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  15. I chuckled at the caveman strategy you use. Sadly that doesn't work for my kid brother since hes 12 now. He just sticks to the xbox360.

    As for the man who committed suicide with those policemen and firemen as onlookers, i feel like they failed hard. Like you said, at least try to talk him out of it, try to go out there. Being afraid of resistance is no excuse to have let that man drown.

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  16. Amazing story.
    Try living in Texas, though! haha

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  17. I live in CT and there have been crazy storms recently..There were tornadoes in Connecticut, its crazy.

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  18. Stay safe! Sad about the story of the police and firemen watching the man commit suicide though...

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  19. these storms are pretty crazy

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  20. The storms have been nuts. We just got some tornadoes like 30 miles of where I live and we never have any.

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  21. nice how you solved that situation with the box :D

    I think sometimes people just are so hopeless so they think about suicide, I think talking goes a long way, a lot of times the person just needs someone that takes care of them in that situation. they could have done something at least I guess.

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  22. there are storms where i live.

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  23. wow im sorry for your bad weather sorry mang.

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  24. I wish my days were this eventful

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  25. I always loved lightning when I was a child, counting the seconds after the flash before I heard the noise in an attempt to guess how far away it was.

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  26. Hey! Its been awhile since your last post!
    Don't forget to keep us updated!

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  27. Please don't blame this on global warming. That's just wrong.

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  28. @Admin Hmm? I didn't mention global warming. I do believe the theory that the earth has undergone, & is continuously experiencing, climate change though.

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  29. i wish i could go to hawaii sometime

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  30. Indeed. If the funding they cut from rescue services was put back into the mental health services...

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