The Virginia Nomad

I am a trainer with the State of Virginia. I travel throughout the state to teach Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Management. I try to take the back roads and I like taking photographs. I am a naturalist, trained in biology and ecology with a very deep rooted love for nature. In this blog I like to share my photography hobby, other hobbies of mine, including my passion for sailing, biking, hiking and nature. I will also share my philosophical outlook on life and some of experience.

Monday, June 3, 2019

Here we go again, but now too close for comfort (6/3/2019)

Well, it happened again, another mass shooting. I have written about a few of them in the past, <here> and <here>. However, this time, it hit much closer to home.

The killing did not only occur in the city of Virginia Beach, a town approximately 30 to 40 miles from where I live. I used to work in that city and interact with the folks in the department in which it happened. If that is not bad enough, after working there I moved to the state and six (6) of the persons that were killed were taught by me, or at least attended workshops that I presented. When I saw their faces in photographs in the newspaper, I recognized them instantly. Then came their names and stories.

Do you want to know what drove me completely crazy? The killer and I were colleagues at the same company 17 to 15 years ago. He contacted me in 2013 to provide two workshops for his city department, which I gladly did. In other words, it really hit much closer to home than some of the other killings in the past. I remember so well, it rained cats and dogs on one of those days that I did one of those workshops.

Here I feel selfish for being distraught about what happened in Virginia Beach. I should not be demanding the attention. Those poor 12 victims, the wounded and their families should be getting it! I simply cannot help it, but it is different when it hits so close to home. I am numb, angry, depressed, sad and more. I mourn the event, but I am sure I’ll get over it. It has been a crazy May 2019. This month, two friends died way before their time and another 56-year-old friend was diagnosed with stage 4 inoperable colon cancer that had spread throughout her body. That was before Many 31, 2019 a date that will be etched in history.

I think that we can be angry when things like this happen in Las Vegas, Florida, California, Vermont or elsewhere. We can yell, scream for gun control in many of those cases as I have done in my blogs. However, it seems to me that this is not a case where we automatically need to yell “gun control.” While we do not have a complete reason for the current killing, I have my speculations, which I’ll keep private (absolutely none of them justify the killing and are probably all wrong).

The only thing I will try to tell every one of you who read this short blog post:

Nothing, absolutely nothing is worth killing anyone over and getting yourself killed over,
If you have psychological issues, GET HELP! Again, it is not worth being killed over or going to jail for, and
Getting killed or suicide is not even a solution; you are hurting the people you leave behind (my father and a close friend killed themselves, so I speak from experience)

In the end, lets just be tolerant of and nice to each other. Live and let live folks, that should be our mantra.