One Bad Apple Ruins the Whole Bunch

I will be the first to admit that I haven't read much about the problems that Children's Hospital of Seattle has faced in regards to their much needed expansion. On Friday evening I attended a Symphony Guild fundraiser for Children's Hospital, I listened to a report about this issue on NPR, and I talked to a friend of mine who is a web designer for Children's Hospital at a party last night. These are my sources.

The fact is that Children's Hospital needs to expand. They currently have 250 beds and approximately 247 of them are filled. Children are sometimes not able to be placed in the area of the hospital that would best meet their needs because specialty areas are filled to the brim. Sometimes, children are turned away for services. The Children's Hospital of Seattle is located on a fairly nice piece of property near Lake Washington. In order to expand, they must build up. There are a handful of wealthy, aged, and influential people who have made their homes on the hill above the hospital and are actively thwarting expansion because they don't want their view blocked.

Needless to say, many of the businesses in the vicinity of the hospital are kept going by the employees and visitors at Children's. I am guessing that hundreds of employees live in the area. If the hospital is forced to move, it would be to the east side of the lake. There are two bridges that provide access to the east side from Seattle and they are both hugely congested many times during the day and evening as it is. Adding Children's Hospital traffic (assuming that most people don't want to or are unable to sell and buy in this economy) is going to make a large traffic problem that much worse. I would also like to mention that Harborview is the emergency hospital in Seattle, the one that a helicopter would land at if one were to need such services. Helicopters also land at Children's. Families who have been in accidents can get pediatric and adult care on the same side of the bridge and not be separated by a lake.

But, some people just don't want to lose their view. Is a view really more important than displacing and inconveniencing hundreds of employees and patients, No. I support keeping Seattle Children's Hospital in Seattle and wish the city council and government the best of luck in overriding some seriously self-centered individuals on this important issue.

Needless Death

Today in Seattle a memorial service was held for officer Timothy Brenton of the Seattle Police Force. Now I know that I have sometimes been critical of speed traps in my blog, but my criticisms of police departments in general is limited only to needless speed traps. I do have respect for their position and this was an egregiously needless death. Officer Brenton and his partner, a woman and trainee, were parked on a quiet street reviewing some paperwork on Halloween. The trainee saw, out of the corner of her eye, a car start to pull up and she sensed trouble. She ducked and yelled for officer Brenton to do the same. Unfortunately, he was too late, as the car drove by they let out a spray of bullets into the police cruiser and officer Brenton was killed. It was obvious that the driver had wanted to kill both police officers, but only got one that day. Brenton was a young officer with two small children that are now fatherless because of this senseless act of violence. No one should die this way.



My hope is that they will catch whoever did this. I have another hope as well and that is that the media will not sensationalize the perpetrator. Undoubtedly this is too much to expect, as the media sensationalizes everything. In this case, I really don't want to hear about the suspect's background, race, religion, or history of problems with the police. I would like for him to be caught, tried and found guilty, and put to death as quickly as possible. I frankly don't even want to know his name. There is no excuse for this, no excuse at all.

Act of God

I saw the documentary film, "Act of God" last night. I actually had a difficult time following the sequence of stories in the film. Although there were some pretty spectacular images of lightening, I did not like the music used to narrate the film, it reminded me of fingernails on the blackboard. What brings me to write about this film viewing today is, it got me thinking about the randomness of life. Some may call this randomness "acts of God," others may refer to it simply as "chance." I consider myself to be somewhere in between. Yes, I believe in God, but contrary to the views expressed by some of the people interviewed in the film, I don't think of disaster (natural or otherwise) as a blessing or something to be considered good in any way. I also think it is somewhat dangerous to view a lightening strike that kills people as something considered to be "good," because it keeps the people still alive from going through the grief process. The film focused on stories about lightening strikes in South America, Cuba, France, and the United States. The participants in South America definitely had a more "this is God's will" view of lightening induced family deaths. I think of these lightening strikes more as chance rather than acts of God.

In the South American deaths, the young people who died had climbed to the top of an unsheltered hill knowing a storm was going to strike. In doing so, there was definitely a chance that they would be struck by lightening. In two of the American stories the participants were in areas of the country where thunder and lightening storms are not uncommon and were also outside in fairly unsheltered areas. If we take these examples away from lightening and look at the randomness of life in general, I think much of it leads to chance based on choices (knowing or not) and behavior that affects the outcome. I don't think of God necessarily as a puppeteer controlling our lives minutely from above.

Are these deaths sad, yes, all death by any means I think of as sad. One thing that we have to come to grips with in our humaneness is that we all have a finite time on this earth and this is something we can't change or control. Sometimes death comes early and sometimes late. I guess, overall, that I just didn't really see the "act of God" connection to the stories presented in this film. I would have gotten much more out of it viewing lightening scenes and actions narrated by beautiful music.

The Beginning of the Holiday Season 2009

Happy Halloween!!!

Important Birthdays

It's the birthday of British satirist Evelyn Waugh, born in London (1903). He came from a literary family: His father was the managing editor of an important British publishing house, and his older brother was a distinguished writer. But Waugh didn't do well in school, and he left Oxford without receiving a degree. He tried working as a teacher, but he got fired from three schools in two years. He said, "I was from the first an obvious dud." He was seriously in debt, without a job, and had just been rejected by the girl he liked, so he decided to drown himself in the ocean. He wrote a suicide note and jumped in the sea, but before he got very far, he was stung by a jellyfish. He scrambled back to shore, tore up his suicide note, and decided to give life a second chance.
He didn't know what else to do, so he wrote a novel about a young teacher at a private school where the other teachers are all drunks, child molesters, and escaped convicts; and the mother of one student is running an international prostitution ring. His publishers forced him to preface the book with a disclaimer that said, "Please bear in mind throughout that it is meant to be funny." The novel, Decline and Fall, was published in 1928, and it was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of modern satire.

Cat Stevens- If you want to sing out

Autumn Waiting by Tom Hennen

Cold wind.
The day is waiting for winter
Without a sound.
Everything is waiting—
Broken-down cars in the dead weeds.
The weeds themselves.
Trees.
Even sunlight
Is in no hurry and stays
For a long time
On each cornstalk.
Blackbirds are silent
And sit in piles.
From a distance
They look like
Something
Spilled on the road.