A Hero From Georgia

I am sure by now everyone has seen and heard the news about the Olympic athlete from Georgia, Nodar Kumaritashvili, who died after crashing his sled during a training run on the luge. I hear about tragic accidents, homicides, etc. every day on the news, but this situation is hitting me so hard, and I can't get over it. I am so overcome with sadness for his country and his family. Imagine training as hard as humanly possible to represent your country in the Olympics! Especially considering he was representing such a small country, he and his family had to be infinitely proud of him. I can't imagine the pride and excitement that a person feels when they get to compete in the Olympics.

While I am overcome with grief for Kumaritashvili's family, I can not help but feel a bit disgusted by the media's response to this tragedy. When I decided to write about this, I was unable to spell Nodar's name off the top of my head (if you can then I'm very impressed!). In an effort to find out how to spell his name, and perhaps link a news story in case anyone had not read about it, I googled "Olympics death." I found tons of news stories on the accident, but what I couldn't find was a simple news article without videos. ALL the articles had "VIDEO" in the headline- the video that highlights Nodar's horrible crash, showing in slow motion his delicate body slamming into the steel poles at 90 miles per hour. Also piled into the articles were zoomed in shots of the paramedics trying to revive him. The pictures showed his lifeless face, laced with blood.

How is this dignified? How does this happen? Do we have such a curious fascination with death- so much to the point where we will shamelessly document in great detail the final moments of this precious life? How on earth must his family feel? How incredibly horrible to see the video replayed over and over! If this happened to ANYONE I loved and cared about, I think I would be just as much traumatized by the sensationalist journalism, perversion, and greed of humanity as I would  be about the death itself. Obviously, me posting this blog won't take away the millions of videos and pictures of this special human being's life being taken away. I can only hope that in the future this trend of disrespectful journalism doesn't continue. I understand our first amendment rights, but seriously out of respect for the Kumaritashvili family I feel that the press as a whole crossed the line.

Needless to say, I will not be posting any link to news stories regarding Nodar Kumaritashvili's death. I will continue to pray for his family, in hopes that they can find comfort, resolve, and meaning in this terrible tragedy. RIP, Nodar- my heart aches for you and your family :-(

Fourth one? Really?

Blogs are such an interesting thing. In one sense it's a diary, except that it's on the world wide web, so there is a sense of restraint... if you're me at least.  Like many of my peers, this isn't the first blog I have published. My blog first started out on Blogspot. After forgetting to post, and to be embarrassingly honest, after trying to keep up with the hot new blog trends (or so I thought), I switched to Xanga. For some reason it seemed hipper and cooler... I guess similar to the MySpace vs. Facebook phenomenon... oh MySpace... I think I also dabbled in the MySpace blog for a bit too. 

Either way, here is my fourth try. I feel like it's always awkward to start out, so I'm not making this public until I've been writing for a while. Once I do make this public people will be able to read this first post, but I feel like I need to get back into the flow of typing my thoughts before I start telling the world to read my blog.

So what's the point of this blog anyways? I love reading blogs. My favorites include FailBlog, Cake Wrecks, Passive Aggressive Notes, and of course PostSecret.  I imagine how awesome it would be to post something hilarious and/or inspiring every single day. Alas, this is not me. Perhaps some day, but for now this blog is simply my outlet for putting my thoughts "out there." My hopes are that someday, someone out in the universe will read my thoughts and feel less alone than they were before they read my blog.