We are destroying so many young people on so many battlefields.
 

Very timely. Yesterday, I went for a walk down our towns "main street." As I puttered along, down the sidewalk came a man in shorts, carrying a cooler of some sort, and draped in a large white blanket. His eyes would not meet my gaze. . .he was alone in the middle of crowds.

I stopped in the next shop to borrow the phone. Clearly, this man needs help of some sort. One of the shop assistants said, "Oh, he does that. The police already know about him. So sad, he has PTSD and his family tries to help. . . but, well, there's nothing any of us can do."

It sort of took a bite right out of the savor of the day. So very helpless I felt. When they count the escalating "costs" of this war. . .somehow, this human suffering is left off the tally.
 

Read this post earlier via my Google reader. I still have no words to describe just how haunting and tragic this is. Also reminds me of why I could not put down The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell for two nights straight until I finished it.
 

...why does this make me so angry? Is it because I lost my dad, a WWII vet, to suicide via PTSD, when I was a little kid? Is it because I keep hearing the names of Oregon towns: Roseburg, Sweethome, Vernonia, Hillsboro; and trying to fit them together with Fallujah and Mosul and Baghdad and I can't make them fit? Why does this make me so angry? That these miserable excuses for humanity in the white house are cutting up and throwing away my Oregon boys like so many orange peels? Christ have mercy on us all... I suppose thank you for posting this...