2013-04-18

Explosive events

Over the weekend, a pair of explosives went off near the endpoint of the Boston Marathon.

Also this week, a large explosion happened at a fertilizer factory in Texas. This blast had more fatalities, and apparently a larger blast radius.

(Educational note: ammonium-nitrate compounds, in truck-sized quantities, pack a big punch. Much bigger than portable quantities of black powder. But I think that's old news...)

Attacks like those in Boston are rare in the U.S. So are industrial accidents involving large amounts of explosives.

Yet they are just common enough to remind me that death and harm can come unexpectedly, and in many forms. I pray that these events don't become more common.

2013-04-13

And old book, revisited

A couple of decades ago, I read a novel about the news business.


This novel had a TV News anchor as a central character. It includes lots of vignettes about life inside a TV News room, interactions between politicians and reporters, and the interactions between political power-brokers and low-level criminals.*

In an early scene, the anchorman sees his father preaching against abortion at a political rally. The Governor is conspicuously pro-abortion. Somehow, the event turns from a disturbance into a fight. And the TV News anchor has to watch his own father apprehended and escorted away by police while he reports the event...

2013-04-02

Feel kind of sheepish

I had a great post planned for Easter Sunday, and I lost track of it.

Easter is a surprise ending; the kind of surprise ending that shocks and amazes. Yet it has become such a part of our culture that the surprise has died out. (This author at PJ Media does a better job than I in discussing Easter.)

I spent most of the weekend traveling (which might account for lack of sunrise-Easter blogging). One pair of grand-parents live separately, due to the stress of dealing with Grandfather's deteriorating mind. It is sad to see in action.

It is also encouraging to realize that the stories I now hear about his life are ones that he would never tell about himself. He was a minister, but tried not to bring much attention to how his ministry affected others.

Partly because of the things that other ministers of Christ's Gospel have taught to me, and partly in memory of the hope and consolation that one old minister has brought to many others...

Happy Easter.