Further Thoughts

I've been thinking about gun violence and the events of Monday and I am struck by the idea that the man who was shot four times didn't die...the ambitious member of my graduate program (health care administration) put together a book club which will begin meeting when school begins in September and for the first book we are reading Better by Atul Gawande...in one of the chapters he tackles the improved nature of military hospitals and also the incorrect notion that a lower murder rate means that we are safer:

Little recognized is how fundamentally important the medical system is -- and not just the enemy's weaponry -- in determining weather or not someone dies. U.S. homicide rates, for example, have dropped in recent years to levels unseen since the min-1960s. Yet aggravated assaults, particularly with firearms, have more than tripled during that time period. A key mitigating factor appears to be the trauma care provided: more people maybe be getting shot, but doctors are saving even more of them. Mortality from gun assaults has fallen from 16 percent in 1964 to 5 percent today.

Monday, Monday

After work on Monday I was waiting for the bus as usual when the bus I usually take just drove on by my stop without slowing down. As they went by what I saw looked something like this:



The same thing happened with bus #2 and #3...they were full and they weren't stoppin'. My work is on 9th Avenue in downtown Seattle and I knew my bus route follows 3rd Avenue before turning towards my direction. Walking the six blocks would take some time but in the long run it might save me if the buses just continued to drive by.

I made my way to 3rd Avenue and was pleasantly reminded how many psychopaths inhabit Seattle during the summer and how many seem to love hanging around the Pikes Place Market area. I made my way to a bus stop out in front of the Macy's and right across from a McDonald's.

I got done with work that day at 4:45pm. By the time I missed three buses and made it to Macy's it was 5:45pm. If I had been a little less patient and started walking right after missing that first bus, I could have nearly made it on time for the attempted murder that happened at that bus stop. Read about it here. More here.

It is these little twists of fate that I think about a lot here in Seattle where things like this happen more often than they should.