Sam and I weren’t sure what I should write about this posting so we settled on death -not our own of course - just death in general.
Death is easy because it is so often a big news/bad news item. Just in the last few days we’ve had airplane crashes and railroad oil tanker explosions and wildfires out of control. Ironically, the wildfire in Arizona killed 19 people while the rail car explosions in Canada killed 13 (at last count) and the plane crash in San Francisco miraculously only killed 2. Too bad it may turn out that one of the victims of the airplane crash was run over by an emergency response vehicle (oops!).
The people killed by the oil tanker explosions never knew what hit them; not a bad way to go if you have to go. The Arizona firefighters had a chance to run for their lives, but they couldn’t outrun the wildfire. The people in the Asiana Airlines crash had a chance to escape death once the plane crashed, but I can’t help thinking how horrible it would be to die in a plane sandwiched in (shoehorned in?) with a couple hundred other passengers.
Whenever I fly somewhere my claustrophobia crops up and I think, “I don’t want to die scrunched up with all these other people.” I don’t want to have to fight my way past other people to get to an exit. My panic response like everybody else’s could very well be, “Get the H out of my way.” That won’t likely be my response because I react well to emergencies and keep a cool head. Still, I’ll probably be thinking it.
But speaking of death, Sam and I read with interest an internet article in the Mirror News by Harriet Alexander that a lady named “Colleen Burns had been taken to St. Joseph's Hospital Health Centre in Syracuse, New York after taking a drug overdose. She was thought to have passed away, a victim of "cardiac death", and so her family agreed to turn off the 41-year-old's life support machine and donate her organs. It was not until she was wheeled into the operating theatre and opened her eyes in response to the lights that doctors called off the procedure.
Ms. Alexander reports that Ms. Burns, a mother of three, was discharged from the hospital a fortnight after the operation, but committed suicide less than two years later.
"These sorts of things do happen," said Lisa McGiffert, director of Consumers Union Safe Patient Project. "It's pretty disturbing.”
Ha! The really disturbing news ala death is the fact that so many Western-genre films are dying at the box office. The new Lone Ranger, even with Johnny Depp doing Tonto, is earning abysmal income for Disney. Harrison Ford’s Cowboys and Aliens is dying. Will Smith’s Wild Wild West train wrecked. Cartoon features are killing more cowboys at the box office than Indians and bid guys ever did. But no wonder. Movie producers have forgotten how to produce good Westerns like High Noon or Stagecoach or My Darling Clementine anymore. Somebody should have known that putting goof-ball TV shows like Wild Wild West on the big screen wouldn’t work; and Cowboys and Aliens? Oh come on! Kevin Costner got it right when he made Dances with Wolves, why can’t anybody else do that? We need more good Westerns because cop shows are BORING me to death.
Anyway, three bags of poop on dying. Too bad we don’t have much choice about that - except maybe in the movies.
Death is easy because it is so often a big news/bad news item. Just in the last few days we’ve had airplane crashes and railroad oil tanker explosions and wildfires out of control. Ironically, the wildfire in Arizona killed 19 people while the rail car explosions in Canada killed 13 (at last count) and the plane crash in San Francisco miraculously only killed 2. Too bad it may turn out that one of the victims of the airplane crash was run over by an emergency response vehicle (oops!).
The people killed by the oil tanker explosions never knew what hit them; not a bad way to go if you have to go. The Arizona firefighters had a chance to run for their lives, but they couldn’t outrun the wildfire. The people in the Asiana Airlines crash had a chance to escape death once the plane crashed, but I can’t help thinking how horrible it would be to die in a plane sandwiched in (shoehorned in?) with a couple hundred other passengers.
Whenever I fly somewhere my claustrophobia crops up and I think, “I don’t want to die scrunched up with all these other people.” I don’t want to have to fight my way past other people to get to an exit. My panic response like everybody else’s could very well be, “Get the H out of my way.” That won’t likely be my response because I react well to emergencies and keep a cool head. Still, I’ll probably be thinking it.
But speaking of death, Sam and I read with interest an internet article in the Mirror News by Harriet Alexander that a lady named “Colleen Burns had been taken to St. Joseph's Hospital Health Centre in Syracuse, New York after taking a drug overdose. She was thought to have passed away, a victim of "cardiac death", and so her family agreed to turn off the 41-year-old's life support machine and donate her organs. It was not until she was wheeled into the operating theatre and opened her eyes in response to the lights that doctors called off the procedure.
Ms. Alexander reports that Ms. Burns, a mother of three, was discharged from the hospital a fortnight after the operation, but committed suicide less than two years later.
"These sorts of things do happen," said Lisa McGiffert, director of Consumers Union Safe Patient Project. "It's pretty disturbing.”
Ha! The really disturbing news ala death is the fact that so many Western-genre films are dying at the box office. The new Lone Ranger, even with Johnny Depp doing Tonto, is earning abysmal income for Disney. Harrison Ford’s Cowboys and Aliens is dying. Will Smith’s Wild Wild West train wrecked. Cartoon features are killing more cowboys at the box office than Indians and bid guys ever did. But no wonder. Movie producers have forgotten how to produce good Westerns like High Noon or Stagecoach or My Darling Clementine anymore. Somebody should have known that putting goof-ball TV shows like Wild Wild West on the big screen wouldn’t work; and Cowboys and Aliens? Oh come on! Kevin Costner got it right when he made Dances with Wolves, why can’t anybody else do that? We need more good Westerns because cop shows are BORING me to death.
Anyway, three bags of poop on dying. Too bad we don’t have much choice about that - except maybe in the movies.
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