My thoughts and prayers are with Boston tonight. I walked into my living room at 3:30 this afternoon and saw the news coverage. We leave the TV on for the bird, so it caught my attention right away. Brian Williams isn’t usually on, and his voice is distinctive. So there I sat mesmerized. Absorbing the horror and the mayhem. I walked away an hour later and refused to watch another minute, or read another article, since all seemed to be accompanied by images of limbless people. I read a book for a bit, but my thought returned to Boston. Not the bloodshed and fear. My mind could not understand the choice of target, and the timing. As Facebook lit up with hatred, and anti-arab talk, I could not quite shake the feeling this wasn’t foreign terrorists. If it was about maximum carnage, and mayhem they would have detonated those blasts when the elite runners were finishing. Those are the rock stars, I know, I’m biased, but these are the world’s best. They all come to Boston each spring. Olympic athletes, the very best. Complete with VIPs watching and visiting. But to bomb this race at 4:09 when midpack runners are finishing just leaves me puzzled. My partner and I seem to agree it makes no sense, unless it has some meaning for someone. The devices were not sophisticated, nor incredibly deadly. To detonate two devices, out of 4 or 5, and kill 3. The math isn’t all that good if it is a terrorist. So, I have to think it was someone specific, with a very strange reason. Maybe a disgruntled individual, some nut (and I hate to use that term, but homegrown terrorists that use pipe bombs are nuts in my book) or possibly someone far more disturbed and delusional. I guess at the end of the day we may not know for a while. My partner thinks it is some gun control person making a statement. That seems a bit far fetched though the bombs were in mile 26, the one dedicated to Newtown. Who knows, anything is possible I guess. We live in a society where violence is commonplace. As Americans there seems to be belief that it shouldn’t happen here. Why not? Are we any better, or somehow greater than the rest of the world? Every day a bomb goes off in Bagdad, or Israel, or Kabul. It is the norm, not the exception. Why should here be different? Because it isn’t a war zone? That is meaningless in a society that is pulling apart at its moral seams. We no longer pause or recoil at reports of murder, and death. Our evening shows push the envelope of violence with The Following, and Hannibal. So gruesome and mind numbingly violent, I often joke, “how many people died in that episode?” But we watch anyway. The news no longer shelters us from the most graphic of images. If a dozen sites I visited today, only one blurred the man without a leg. Why is that necessary? Do we need to see the blood and gore? Worse yet, do we expect it? Is that what keeps us coming back? I don’t know. I know that there is something that draws us in. The more violent and bloody the harder the draw. It is what the 24/7 News cycle feeds on. It is what we feed on now because it is what we see, day in and day out. We have a taste for blood and it just doesn’t stop. So very sad, and disgusting, yet we are human and we kill one another. Have killed one another since the beginning of time. The only difference now is the endless capturing of images, and video which are fed to us. does that intensify the violence? I don’t think it intensifies it, it only numbs us. We have lost touch with the reality of violence and terror. It is part of our world, and is a part of our lives in greater or lesser degrees. The horror of Boston, and the blood on the streets is only the beginning. America is not exempt from the violence the rest of this world sees everyday. Sadly, today we learned what happens when a soft target gets bombed. Prayers for those in Boston, and their families.