Showing posts with label Opioid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Opioid. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Random observations on 'Annie,' book orders, Uber deaths & who we should kill first if we're serious about killing drug dealers

• President Trump’s vow to mete out the death penalty to drug dealers has me thinking of applying to medical school. I sense we’ll soon be in critical need of fresh doctors.

Because this opioid crisis wasn’t instigated by shady dealers in urban allies.

No, this crisis was spearheaded by esteemed doctors and pharmaceutical executives who correctly sensed enormous profit in anesthetizing people who suffered from depression, sleeplessness, lethargy and other side effects of being human.

• I thoroughly enjoyed watching our daughter Josie and her Greater Latrobe High School cast mates perform “Annie” this weekend. I’m grateful to all the performing arts teachers who put in so many long hours helping bestow discipline and poise in our children. It’s acting, yeah, but the skills and confidence these kids earn will help them succeed in many professions. Bravo!

• I feel default terrible about the woman who was run over by driverless Uber and reserve the right to feel less so if it's revealed she was distracted walking when struck.

As a friend of mine pointed out, this robo-car had a designated safety driver on board. It’ll be another sad irony if it is revealed that as the car struck the doomed pedestrian, the safety driver was updating his/her Facebook status to, “I'm riding shotgun in a driverless car!”

• Frontrunner for @8Days2Amish tweet of the month: “The pious nudist will always feel conflicted about becoming a man of the cloth.” 

• Thrilled by all the friends who’ve pre-ordered “Arnold Palmer: Homespun Stories of The King.” This book is already doing so well I’m thinking of including the name “Arnold Palmer” in the title of each subsequent book. 

If this book succeeds the way I hope it will, my career is set. I just have to move in next door to another beloved American icon and spend the next 25 years ingratiating myself. 

• One quibble about “Annie” performance: The starring dog got way too much attention. Apparently the dog, “Sandy,” is a big deal and has performed the role on Broadway. La-de-dah. It’s one of those canines that behaves as if all the real dog has been trained right out of it. It acts like a dog would act if it were controlled by Uber.

Bad example. 

It’s maybe the one time I’d have rather had my stupid dog Snickers instead of a well-behaved dog. Oh, what fun it would have been to see these bright students improvising around the noisy mayhem of Snickers loose on stage.

The only thing more entertaining would be a monkey on roller skates, but that goes without saying. Put a monkey on roller skates in the mix and I’m even subscribing to the ballet.

• I wonder if the Uber car honked the horn before it ran over the woman. Think of all the things self-driving cars won’t need when they ditch human drivers. You won’t need mirrors, headlights, seat belts, fancy dashboards or even steering wheels. The car of the future will be like a rolling living room where we all sit around talking about how cool it used to be when cars were cars.

• I’m grateful to all who’ve shown interest in the “Homespun” book. Special thanks to friends Bob and Diane in Lake Wales, Florida, for ordering 12 books; 6 “Homespun” and 6 a combo of “Crayons” and “Last Baby Boomer.” I’m particularly pleased whenever anyone buys or says something nice about “Boomer.” It gets precisely the kind of reaction writers dream of when they’re working on their first novel. It hasn’t earned a wide readership, but I’m convinced it one day will. It’s my most proud professional achievement. 

• From what I hear from heartless friends, one of the more controversial parts of Trump’s opioid plan is the part that involves saving lives of dying addicts. I know many people who are adamant that we should let overdosing addicts expire rather than bless them with a nasal dose of life-saving Narcan.

One friend said they should get three strikes. “And they should tattoo a big ’N’ on their forehead so the EMTs know when they’ve had their share.”

What if it’s his son? What if it’s me? I don’t care if I wind up with a face full of “Ns” I want you to keep squirting that juice up my nose until I get my life straight or the Pirates endure another two consecutive decades of losing records, whichever comes first.

I advise these people to grow a heart, gain some compassion, to cool it.

I’d say take a chill pill, but I worry chill pills might be gateway drugs to addictions they’re ill-prepared to handle.




Friday, October 20, 2017

Opioid scourge in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood


It was 4:45 yesterday afternoon. I was home and Val could sense I was beginning to feel anxious. I had somewhere I had to be.

Was I late for Happy Hour?

No. I was late for prayer.

In some ways I was late for an Unhappy Hour. 

I’d accepted an invitation to attend a prayer service in recognition of the opioid abuse crisis that’s poisoning all America. It’s happening in big cities and small. And it’s happening right here in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Fred Rogers was born here in Latrobe in 1928 and devoted much of his 73 years to ensuring the well-being of his beloved hometown. He did this while simultaneously doing the exact same thing for the entire planet.

The Greater Latrobe Ministerial Association chose to host the service under the bright autumnal sunshine in the Fred Rogers Memorial Park under the smiling gaze of Fred’s statue.

It was appropriate for reasons I suspect I alone knew.

See, I know a secret about Fred Rogers, one I’ve been reluctant to share since, oh, about 1994, when I was paid to share it with 6 million strangers.

Fred Rogers did time in rehab. 

That was the story I wrote for National Enquirer.

I remember in vivid detail how I secured the facts. I’d been sipping beers with Paul and Jimmy Plazza, the late owner of The Lantern, a popular Latrobe tavern that once sat on the spot that’s now the senior living facility where my dear mother spent her last year.

The bar phone rang. It was Val calling to say my Enquirer editor called with an assignment about Saint Fred. I was instantly dismayed. I correctly figured it would be something unflattering which my revealing would make me a pariah among certain elements of Latrobe society.

As you’re about to learn, none of those elements were right then drinking hootch in The Lantern.

I told Paul. Sitting and overhearing about four stools down was Dickie Kemp. He died a few weeks ago, relatively young — I don’t think he was 60 — of natural causes after many years of indulging abundant vices. We all liked Dickie very much.

He heard the name Fred Rogers and piped right up: “Fred Rogers? I was just in rehab with his son. I met Fred when he’d come to visit. Great guy. What’s the story about?”

I pulled a fifty out of my wallet and told Dickie to slide on down. I’d be buying all night. Just like that, I had my “A” source. I just sat and listened to him tell me his story of how he was kicking one addiction while I was abetting another.

The thrust of the story was how the scourge of drugs can happen to even the most loving of parents. But the best part was how Fred, an ordained Presbyterian minister, set up an impromptu ministry right there in the rehab rec yard.

“When we saw him, everyone started cracking up and mocking him. A lot of these guys were hard core junkies,” Dickie said. “But one-by-one, every one of these low lifes went up to him and started telling him their stories. And one-by-one, they all started bawlin'. He just had so much compassion. He was saving lives.”

Did you see Sunday's “60 Minutes” report? I can’t remember being more appalled by a news story.

Most of the news that appalls is instigated by some low life. What’s happening with Congress, the DEA and their drug distributor overlords is being conducted by scores of people with respectable pedigrees. They’re educated, attend church, serve on boards of prestigious charitable organizations.

And they’ve sold their souls to medicate ours.

Are we all doomed to live in an age when the low lifes are the leaders?

That evident greed so tips the scales over common humanity makes me for the first time ever proud to be poor.

My pastor told me she was recently summoned to the hospital to inform three young children their 29-year-old mother had died. The kids will be raised by their grandparents. Their father ODd years ago.

An attending friend told me he knew of the deaths of six classmates in the last few months. He’s 38.

Every single day the local obituaries feature another smiling face of someone too young to die.

This is Latrobe, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, the town we’ve chosen to raise our children.

So what do I hope to accomplish? I don’t know, but I hope prayer helps.

I do know it’s all hands on deck.

There were about 30 people there Thursday. I hope double that are there for the next one Dec. 14 at Latrobe Presbyterian Church.

I fear a day is approaching when the dead outnumber those still left to care.


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