I have had thoughts over the last week or so on my next post here, but my brain has been overtaken by residual grief wrapped up in losing my dad 3 years ago today.

All the highly personal whining I could do about missing him pales, sadly, in comparison to today’s events in Boston.

I don’t have a lot to say (yet) on the subject. Earlier, I posted this on Facebook:

Aside from the marginally humorous Eff-You PSA messages in replacement for DJ chatter, Jack FM has one thing to go in favor of it. I had zero idea of what was going down in Boston until I checked my feed while selling records at CD Depot. I’ve finally gone back the requisite 5 hours and change to see the chain of events.

I refuse to discuss or analyze anything until I hear something concrete regarding motive and responsible parties. There simply isn’t enough information to gather anything other than that it’s likely a group effort. WHO that group is/was and WHY they did it should not receive speculation.

And a comment: In other areas of the world, bombs go off every single day. As horrified as we are when it happens here, we should remember that we’re lucky (some might even say blessed) it doesn’t happen more often.

I think I’ve heard from everyone I might have known there today. Regardless, my heart goes out to the victims, their families and friends, and to the thousands who were not hurt physically but were there and will remember this day forever, with pain, in Boston and elsewhere.

And I hope for peace, everywhere, soon.

No matter what happens now, the truth – people injured, maimed, killed;  many of them, children – should serve as a reminder of how fragile life really is, more than anything else, and how much we often take for granted waking up each day.

It’s easy to descend into self-indulgent speculation, but such philosophical navel-gazing accomplishes nothing except to anger the falsely accused and give you a sense of false control over a situation for which there is no sane or reasoned explanation.

I hope this is not the start of something terrible. It’s all I can hope for at the moment, until we know more about what happened and why.

And there’s an end in itself. We wait.

In the meantime, take care of yourself and those you love, and in a week or so, when the fury and immediacy have died away, go to the Red Cross and give blood.