Sunday, March 30, 2008

Randy's Parents

Today I visited the Powless guest housing located just across the road from the Center for the Intrepid. I met the parents of a soldier named Randy. He was in the family's room sleeping. Mom and Dad were outside in the smoker's gazebo. Randy stepped on an IED on January 13 of this year. His immediate prospects were grim. His left hand was gone and the rest of the arm was mangled and his legs were both mangled to the point that they were not sure the legs could be saved. Randy's Mom described the doctors from both Landstuhl where Randy was first Med-evaced and Brooke as "amazing." Randy is the sixth of seventh children of a blended family from West Virginia and the only soldier.
More later, they just closed the door on my flight so I have to sign off.

"Blindness" by Jose Saramago--terrifying look at society falling apart

  Blindness  reached out and grabbed me from the first page.  A very ordinary scene of cars waiting for a traffic introduces the horror to c...