Whom to think about (updated)
Like many people, every now and then over the years I have experienced flashes that may or may not foreshadow future events, or reflect knowledge of current events that I didn't previously know about. As I recently noted, months, sometimes years, go by between these episodes. It's very rare for one to take place on the heels of another. But it's happened often enough to make me to sit up and pay attention when such incidents occur.
I don't know about you, but for me the moments after awakening each morning are a time for random thoughts and musings. A stream of unrelated images flows through my mind for a while. Usually these feelings, pictures and scenes seem to come from nowhere, and aren't related to anything going on in my current life. They flicker for a few moments on my mental movie screen and then fade away, soon to be replaced by some other random thought. This reverie only lasts for a short time, before I swing my legs over the side of the bed and thrust my feet into my slippers with a determination to get up and face the day. After that, I'm dealing with the tasks at hand (breakfast, showering, sitting down to write, etc.) and my mental processes become much more businesslike, orderly and disciplined.
One of the first items that presented itself for review in my sleepy mental theater yesterday morning was the image of a traffic incident many years ago in Florida. I had not actually witnessed the event, but what suddenly appeared uninvited in my consciousness (apropos of absolutely nothing) was the imaginary scene I had built up in my mind upon hearing the incident described to me by the wife of the victim. It was one of those typical road rage episodes that you see or hear about all the time – someone cuts someone off, windows are rolled down, and middle fingers are raised. This one escalated; epithets were hurled, car doors opened, and the two combatants stepped out onto the pavement. Moments later, one man lay on the road, bleeding, crushed and mangled. He survived, but for all intents and purposes his life was over. He suffered some kind of nerve damage in the hit-and-run attack, resulting in a condition that caused the slightest touch on his skin to feel like a hot branding iron. A year after the incident, he was still under constant medical care. That's when his wife approached the TV newsroom where I worked, hoping for our assistance in tracking down the attacker, who still had not been identified. On mentally reviewing this incident yesterday morning, I vividly recalled how horrified I felt at the time to hear of the victim's suffering, and my dismay that the attacker had not been caught.
So it was with thoughts of road rage madness – crazed drivers deliberately turning their vehicles into metallic bone crushers – and with images of the horrifying aftermaths of such incidents occupying my mind that I got up to get the morning paper. Upon picking it up, this top-of-the-page headline confronted me: "Man intentionally runs over 3, killing 2 in New Year's fracas."
Those words tell the story. There was more in this morning's paper – it turns out that one of the victims was a Good Samaritan who came upon the scene of a man assaulting a woman, and tried to intervene. The Good Samaritan is dead. The woman he was trying to save is dead. The Good Samaritan's girlfriend is hospitalized in critical condition. The killer got away. As of this morning, police had not been able to identify a suspect.
Why would I find myself dwelling on a decade-old deliberate hit-and-run attack that I haven't thought about in years just before learning about a similar, even worse incident that had just taken place in the city where I now live? I'm sure skeptics would toss it off to "coincidence" – a strange and bizarre one, perhaps, but a coincidence just the same. I can't prove otherwise. But as John Donne once wrote so eloquently, no man is an island. I personally believe, based on many years of observation and study, that we are all bound together and surrounded by a force – call it the human spirit if you're secular, or God if you're religious – a force that is unseen but not unfelt, and that can manifest itself in strange, surprising, and memorable ways.
"Memorable" is the important word here. There is power, and destiny, in what we choose to remember. Coincidence or not, the remarkable way in which this incident presented itself to my attention has caused it to loom larger in my mind. And now here I am telling you about it – which I would not have been moved to do otherwise. In turn, now I ask you to think about it. There is plenty of evil out there, and we have to walk through the world with our eyes open. But as the Good Samaritan in this story shows us – his name is Patrick Balbastro, age 32, of Tucson, Arizona – good is out there, too. If you go looking for either, you'll find it. In the eternal struggle of good against evil, one of the most important choices we can make is the decision of what to look for, what to remember and exalt, and whom to honor.
I hope that whoever did this is brought to justice. Whether that happens or not, certainly he'll have to face his God, or his demons, eventually. In any case, let his memory quickly fade from the public's mind.
But I hope we never forget Patrick Balbastro. I'm very certain I am not the only one who feels that way. His story was called to my attention under circumstances that caused me to give it a great deal of thought. I now call it to yours, and ask you to do the same.
Please share this story.
Forrest Carr
Writer and recovering journalist
For more on this story:
http://azstarnet.com/news/blogs/polic...
1/9/2014 update:
Here is an update on the Good Samaritan story I wrote you about a few days ago.
The family of Patrick Balabastro is struggling to pay for his funeral, and has set up a bank account. The particulars, according to the Arizona Daily Star, are:
Patrick Balabastro Memorial Fund
Wells Fargo Bank
3381663297
The Star says donations can be accepted at any Wells Fargo branch in Arizona.
I don't know about you, but for me the moments after awakening each morning are a time for random thoughts and musings. A stream of unrelated images flows through my mind for a while. Usually these feelings, pictures and scenes seem to come from nowhere, and aren't related to anything going on in my current life. They flicker for a few moments on my mental movie screen and then fade away, soon to be replaced by some other random thought. This reverie only lasts for a short time, before I swing my legs over the side of the bed and thrust my feet into my slippers with a determination to get up and face the day. After that, I'm dealing with the tasks at hand (breakfast, showering, sitting down to write, etc.) and my mental processes become much more businesslike, orderly and disciplined.
One of the first items that presented itself for review in my sleepy mental theater yesterday morning was the image of a traffic incident many years ago in Florida. I had not actually witnessed the event, but what suddenly appeared uninvited in my consciousness (apropos of absolutely nothing) was the imaginary scene I had built up in my mind upon hearing the incident described to me by the wife of the victim. It was one of those typical road rage episodes that you see or hear about all the time – someone cuts someone off, windows are rolled down, and middle fingers are raised. This one escalated; epithets were hurled, car doors opened, and the two combatants stepped out onto the pavement. Moments later, one man lay on the road, bleeding, crushed and mangled. He survived, but for all intents and purposes his life was over. He suffered some kind of nerve damage in the hit-and-run attack, resulting in a condition that caused the slightest touch on his skin to feel like a hot branding iron. A year after the incident, he was still under constant medical care. That's when his wife approached the TV newsroom where I worked, hoping for our assistance in tracking down the attacker, who still had not been identified. On mentally reviewing this incident yesterday morning, I vividly recalled how horrified I felt at the time to hear of the victim's suffering, and my dismay that the attacker had not been caught.
So it was with thoughts of road rage madness – crazed drivers deliberately turning their vehicles into metallic bone crushers – and with images of the horrifying aftermaths of such incidents occupying my mind that I got up to get the morning paper. Upon picking it up, this top-of-the-page headline confronted me: "Man intentionally runs over 3, killing 2 in New Year's fracas."
Those words tell the story. There was more in this morning's paper – it turns out that one of the victims was a Good Samaritan who came upon the scene of a man assaulting a woman, and tried to intervene. The Good Samaritan is dead. The woman he was trying to save is dead. The Good Samaritan's girlfriend is hospitalized in critical condition. The killer got away. As of this morning, police had not been able to identify a suspect.
Why would I find myself dwelling on a decade-old deliberate hit-and-run attack that I haven't thought about in years just before learning about a similar, even worse incident that had just taken place in the city where I now live? I'm sure skeptics would toss it off to "coincidence" – a strange and bizarre one, perhaps, but a coincidence just the same. I can't prove otherwise. But as John Donne once wrote so eloquently, no man is an island. I personally believe, based on many years of observation and study, that we are all bound together and surrounded by a force – call it the human spirit if you're secular, or God if you're religious – a force that is unseen but not unfelt, and that can manifest itself in strange, surprising, and memorable ways.
"Memorable" is the important word here. There is power, and destiny, in what we choose to remember. Coincidence or not, the remarkable way in which this incident presented itself to my attention has caused it to loom larger in my mind. And now here I am telling you about it – which I would not have been moved to do otherwise. In turn, now I ask you to think about it. There is plenty of evil out there, and we have to walk through the world with our eyes open. But as the Good Samaritan in this story shows us – his name is Patrick Balbastro, age 32, of Tucson, Arizona – good is out there, too. If you go looking for either, you'll find it. In the eternal struggle of good against evil, one of the most important choices we can make is the decision of what to look for, what to remember and exalt, and whom to honor.
I hope that whoever did this is brought to justice. Whether that happens or not, certainly he'll have to face his God, or his demons, eventually. In any case, let his memory quickly fade from the public's mind.
But I hope we never forget Patrick Balbastro. I'm very certain I am not the only one who feels that way. His story was called to my attention under circumstances that caused me to give it a great deal of thought. I now call it to yours, and ask you to do the same.
Please share this story.
Forrest Carr
Writer and recovering journalist
For more on this story:
http://azstarnet.com/news/blogs/polic...
1/9/2014 update:
Here is an update on the Good Samaritan story I wrote you about a few days ago.
The family of Patrick Balabastro is struggling to pay for his funeral, and has set up a bank account. The particulars, according to the Arizona Daily Star, are:
Patrick Balabastro Memorial Fund
Wells Fargo Bank
3381663297
The Star says donations can be accepted at any Wells Fargo branch in Arizona.
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