God I like simple. I think that's why I liked, even just as a visitor, the wilds of Ireland. I'm sure they have their problems as well, but on the surface, I just free driving the small towns where the houses were modest, the fields green, and there just wasn't a lot of people around. Small towns with small town feelings with always a feeling of "Failte", or welcome.
I spent 9/11/25 at new hire orientation at Capital Health. Surprisingly to me, faculty in the nursing school are considered hospital employees, and every nurse has to go through a new employee nursing orientation. We were all given our competency books to fill out and complete. It was like being a new nurse all over again. It's been a week of IVs, patient transfers, glucometers, central line dressing changes, and computer EHR (electronic health record) training. This week it's orientation and next week I go live with the students in the hospital. I'm assigned to a trauma/ ICU step down unit. Should be a good learning experience for my students.
But yesterday was the anniversary of 9/11. And as we know, it takes a really big event to stop the world. 9/11/01 did that. John Lennon's assassination did that. Katrina did that. But these days we've become numb and too familiar with tragedy and remembrance to take a minute to do a collective pause. Orientation started at 8 am. At 846 nothing happened. That was the minute when the North Tower of the World Trade Center was struck. Then 903, then, 0959, and finally 1028. No pause. No announcements. No moment of silence. I took a quick bathroom run and in the lobby of the hospital the scene was like any other day. People getting checked by security, checking in for chemo or infusion therapy, and soon to be Mom's getting wheeled into OB triage. On the TV there was the annual coverage of the families reading the names of the people killed
on that day. As I paused to watch I asked myself, "How long will this continue to go on?". Will it last until next year, the 25th anniversary, and then slowly fade away channel by channel?
It's been a bad week. If you live in a healthy place, like not watching the news or social media, then you've been protected from the host of reporting, posts, opinions, and attacks from people from all over every spectrum you could imagine about recent news events. I try and stay away but I can't. It's like driving past a bad accident scene and not looking over.
Since we have gotten away from mostly local news and interest, to a more national, international and global view, of stuff that really has no impact or meaning in our day to day life, the bar, and the interest, and the empathy has changed. Just in the past few days we've had a school shooting in Colorado, the murder of a young woman on a train in Charlotte, the murder of media personality Charlie Kirk, and the anniversary of 9/11. Locally it was reported last night of another very serious accident, possibly fatal, in Toms River, this one involving a mother and child. With all news all the time the waves of information just go in one ear, quickly travel through our brains, and out the other. That's if we don't decide to dissociate and let one of our alter egos, usually the asshole one, with an asshole opinion, feel the need to take a position on it, and attack others, either in person, or behind that ever muscle making tough guy or girl keyboard one sits behind.
With every story I mentioned above the vitriol in people's responses are nauseating. People are so quick to lay blame on other's who may have a different opinion, or were even a victim! . The goal is to separate themselves from wrong, or in many cases pure evil. School shooting, it's a republican/ NRA/ gun control issue. Murder of a young innocent woman, what if she were black, he did because she was white, where is Al Sharpton now. The murder of Charlie Kirk, he brought it upon himself, it was the left, it was Trumps fault. The anniversary of 9/11, seems to just matter these days to those that lost people, those that responded, and those that have had health affects from the attacks. And accidents in Toms River or around that slice of Ocean County, especially near Lakewood, it was drugs, it was the Jews, it's people from New York driving on the wrong side of the road. It just doesn't stop. And it's not good. And it's not healthy.
By the afternoon yesterday I was just about done. Since Lauren goes to Rowan, and both Ryan and Sean went there in the past, I got an alert from the university that it was on lockdown. Ho hum. A quick text to Lauren and all was good, "You home?", and the answer, "Yes".
And that was it. Yes there was a guy with a gun running around campus but it was "only" a road rage incident that leaked onto the campus. Just someone shot in the head. (I say that not disrespecting the victim, but our approach to those types of incidents these days). It was quickly reported, ran through our brain's computer, and gone. That's the way things go these days. Information, like from a news story, or someone else's actions or opinions, enter our brain and it either sets off our sympathetic "fight or flight" or parasympathetic "rest and digest" nervous system. When most peoples sympathetic nervous systems get tweaked by an opposing opinion these days that's where they become unhinged, and quickly attack.
We ended the day with PICC dressing changes. PICC lines, peripheral inserted central lines. Those are for those patients that are really sick. They're either getting lots of fluids or feedings, hard core meds like chemo, or are under close cardiac monitoring. Those are everyday people who don't make it to the news, but maybe social media these days with Go Fund Me around. People are sick. People get injured. Life sucks at times and it's hard. So why are we spending so much time looking down or at things that don't affect us directly at all? And when we do look up and at each other our first move is to judge, attack, and blame?
And I won't even go into something minuscule like fishing with all of the big and important things in the world going on now. It's supposed to be fun. It supposed to be simple. Everyone these days is an expert and is quick to comment on everything, to either "help" or stir up the pot. (I can't tell you how many Facebook friend's put out a "If you think this okay drop me as a Friend" post this week. Oh please, spare me the drama.)
Now as we head into the ASMFC's winter meetings on striped bass we now have another reason to be divided and take sides, and attack and blame others. It's always one versus the other these days, and whatever team I am on is right, 100% of the time. And that goes from striped bass (Save them or kill them all), to healthcare (like vaccines and austism and Covid), to politics ( Trump is Hitler to he's the best President ever), to sports (Griner is a guy to the Clark vs Reese debacle, FYI- Sophie Cunningham is my new crush), to all things country (Like USA vs the world- I'm okay with that", to just about everything else color, creed, religion, town, state, to the car you drive (Oh no not a Tesla).
So on days like yesterday when everyone's mind is filled with whatever news feed takes up their cerebral space people like Charles Wolff are in a different place. His wife Katherine was killed on 9/11. She started a new job a few weeks before and her start time had just been switched from 0900 to 0830. They last saw each other at 806 am that day before she left their
Greenwich Village apartment. She headed to the 97th floor of the North Tower to the offices of Marsh and McLennan. At 846 the North Tower was struck. There's a million stories out there about 9/11. Most times people want their story to be heard and rated amongst others experiences. That's what we've become, a "me" generation and country. While each of the victims stories are unique, and worth listening to, we've become numb to it all. We don't take the time to sit and listen or read and put ourselves in another persons shoes. It's more about "my" and "me". Hey shut up for a minute and listen to someone else!
It's okay to be doing okay at this moment. Maybe things at home and work are good. The monies there. The health and the kids are okay. The dog is still lingering round. The car isn't on its last leg and it's almost paid off. But others may don't be doing okay, or are having a bad day or moment, having some empathy, or sympathy, and offering an ear or a hand can go along way and be healing no matter which side of anything you are on.
Busy week. No fishing. Mom rolls into town today for our daughters wedding next week. Clinical starts next Tuesday. Still picking and poking at post house-flood repairs. After a quick trip to the Vineyard it will be wrapping up another year down in Cape May. And then the leaves will fall and the house will get cold. Then it's another Thanksgiving and Christmas, God willing. It's all okay right now, and that's okay, because things could always be worse.