ugh, NRU, and sigh

For those who misread protest against violent police as anti-police sentiment, please take a minute to read this:  As citizens we deserve to feel protected and served by our law enforcement.  The largely just, competent and proactive police officers should repudiate the unlawful behavior of their violent and racist co-workers.  They should stand with fellow citizens in holding the "bad apples" accountable; as should the courts, rather than contributing to a climate that defends and, thus, encourages unlawful, violent and deadly behavior.

All this before Beirut, Paris, the latest in Baghdad and Syria.

On a different note, this time last year, I was picking up my distant aunt's ashes because I read an article about the unclaimed dead in Los Angeles county.  This year, thanks to that story, the list is digitized so anyone can look for their departed ones.

What about willpower?

Oh, Charlie Sheen, may you find some peace for all this turmoil.   I worry about Charlie.  Not in a teen idol gone awry way -- I worry about him in that way he is a poster child for mental illness not being treated properly in our society. It seems like we either demonize it or use it as a source of amusement. Would we do that with cancer?  Anyway, I met Charlie Sheen once at LAX.  He was sitting in a little bar waiting for his luggage.  Sweet as pie though he was obviously irritated by the travel mishap.  We chatted; he tore a piece of the paper bag holding whatever he had bought at the concession stand and he signed his name.  He wished me well, and I hurried off not wanting to be a bother.  He had really been very nice.  I saw him again at a nightclub some years later.  He was out carousing with Nicholas Cage.  I didn't speak to him, and he didn't seem like the nice, young man I had met at the airport.  Ah... life, it takes us down so many different path and tempts us with mysterious alleys.  I hope he can find peace.

And as we all search for meaning, here are Anne Lamott's thoughts.  We all need some perspective, peace, gratitude and compassion right now.