Atomictumor

While I was spreading peanut butter on one slice of bread and jelly on another for the kids lunches this morning, I kept thinking about several articles I’d read.

There’s an interview with John D. Crossan where he talks about the first Christmas.

Our conversation ranged from virgin births and Roman censuses to how you became a god in the ancient world, and why it was a bad idea to mess with shepherds.

After seeing all the plastic nativities, who’d guess that the Christmas story was all about revolution.

The nativity story is far richer and more challenging than familiar sentimentalized versions allow. Not simply tidings of comfort and joy, the gospel stories of Jesus’ birth are also edgy visions of another way of life, confronting the status quo and demanding personal and political transformation.

There’s this article about a black guy who got bullied, shoved, cussed and generally terrified by some racist ford pickup truck driving assholes earlier in the week. He was walking home when this happened.

Then there was this article that the Oak Ridger ran about the parents of Ashley Paine. The Paines are saying the city hasn’t done near enough to make Oak Ridge streets safe. Ashley Paine was run over by a school bus earlier this fall.

Mom called yesterday and told me that my sister’s best friend from school died earlier in the week. She was at work when she collapsed. An ambulance rushed her to a hospital where the doctors couldn’t keep her heart beating. It just stopped working and that was the end.

And so it goes.

What does all this have to do with Christmas?

I don’t have a clue.

Word around the campfire is that the paper of choice up here, the Oak Ridge Observer, is about to abandon it’s current business model of giving away papers and subsiding off advertising and subscriptions in favor of a paid paper.

Its a ballsy move.  The thing has some good word of mouth right now, but you never know if its that way because its a well written and managed independent paper, or because its a well written and managed independent free paper.   That four letter f-word can bring a lot of goodwill.

Personally, doesn’t matter to me, because I subscribe to the thing anyway.  I like the idea of it being around, and I figure it wouldn’t go paid like this unless the needful was there.  I have a bad feeling about the move, simply because its going to completely throw a monkeywrench in the works as they’ve been standing for 4 years or whatever, but hell, who knows.

Personally, I’d much rather write a story about how they’re starting up an online edition so that when I link to local stuff, I can throw it their way…

I’ve been spending some time this week thinking of the Ashley Paine situation, just like damn near everybody up here has.

For me (and others, as Netmom indicated), it hits at an odd time, happening at the same time we were all dealing with BJ and her illness last year. Today, the paper had a story about the girl who seems to have (hopefully) had a successful heart transplant after Ashley’s family was thoughtful enough to donate her organs.

Been there, done that.

While I can’t deny that it would be SO MUCH WORSE to lose a child to an accident like this than, its still something I can relate to.  Its interesting, because I’m watching a tragedy happen to strangers that are nonetheless connected to me through neighborhood bonds, and its the first time I’ve seen this happen since living through one myself.

I want to be angry.  I want to yell and holler about the things that would have prevented this.  I want to blame the city, and the schools, and the police, for creating a situation where a child has to cross an intersection that is simply not made for pedestrian traffic.

But thats not fair, is it?  Because I can put as much of the blame on myself, for starting a movement to try to solve problems like this, and then letting it drop.  Eaves, Bos, and I have expressed to each other much of the same kind of thinking, that if we’d kept this thing going, and let it grow as much as it was looking like, instead of letting life get in the way, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

Maybe.  Just like, maybe, if GAC wasn’t on the Keflex, or if we hadn’t played tennis in the rain that day in August, or a million other maybes, it wouldn’t have happened the way it did.

I guess my point is, it happened.  And all the planning in the world wouldn’t have stopped it.  Not better crosswalks.  Not police.  Not busses.  She was on a bike, fell off, and died.

Maybe because we’ve seen tragedy too close, we’re taking it harder.  I fear for those people, tho, that don’t have the insight that I’ve learned, who deal with remote tragedy like this by growing angry, and pointing fingers, and jumping up and down like rabid monkeys.  The people who deal with pain by getting angry, like I did when I was 3, because they might never have experienced it.

Who knows. I’m ramblin, and I have stuff to do.

I’ve had a good morning. We all had the morning off, and it was one of our firster times as a family, fixing oatmeal, drinking coffee, relaxing while the kids played videogames. Relaxing.

Thats good stuff.

Yesterday, poor Ashley Paine, a 13 year old on the way home from school, was run over by a bus at a major intersection here in town when she fell off her bike into the path of the big ass bus wheels. I heard about it when I went to wait for Pigpen to get him yesterday at Eave’s house, when it was just rumor mode, but she had been stuck in the traffic and saw something on the news about it afterward. When the kids got home from school, October and Spotz were talking about it, as they heard rumors from school. When I went to Realtorchicks house to pick up MastaG, she was talking about it.

Apparently Netmom knows little Ashley, she’s a friend of the family.

She’s listed right now, according to the latest reports, as being in unstable and critical condition.

I’m thinking of her parents, who had a normal Friday evening turn into a hellishly surreal nightmare, as their little girl was flown by helicopter to a hospital with an unknown and dire future.

I’m thinking of the bus driver, making the last run of the week, a driver who apparently had been driving for years, and who is evidently blameless in the accident, waking up Saturday morning with this in her head.

I’m thinking of the 28 kids on the bus, middle schoolers, just like Ashley, and what they saw, or heard, during the wild minutes that the bus was stopped, who were feet away from calamity.

I’m thinking of poor Netmom and her youngest daughter (I never can get those damn greek numbered names right, I’m thinking its Delta or whatever).

I’m thinking of last year, when my life was a hellishly surreal nightmare, when I was thinking of pressure inside a loved ones head, and the weird way that the brain just barely has enough room to fit in that hard ass skull, and how amazingly fucked up it can get when theres trauma up there.

I’ve held my kids and my fiancee tight today as I prayed to myself, both for peace, grace, and strength for these people who are living things that nobody should live, and for thanks, that I’m surrounded by the love and beauty, without pain, without fear, without doubt.

Ashley Paine.

Remember that big ass empty ass Food Chitty building on the east (aka, the awesome) end of town?

Right, the end of town that had the stabbing.

And yes, that guy getting beat up last week.

And yes, me.

Anyway, that big ass grocery store between Pinkerton (they’re still around, and they’re watching you) and the likko sto’ is going to be, with any luck, the new home of the needful in Oak Ridge.

Tractor Supply Co.

And I, for one, give a hearty hell yes.  Not that I’m specifically interested in tractors, or overalls, or Llama food (they do have sandblasters, tho), but it falls into my new thinking that ANYTHING would be good there.

Tractor place?  Bring it on.  Hell, I’d be willing to accept slaughterhouse or a porn shop at this point.