My comments are below PAT's.
TELECOM Digest Editor noted:
Our thoughts and prayers are with the community and families of Sago WV; an undeniable tragedy.
The song to which PAT alludes above is "Sixteen Tons" and was written by Merle Travis, and subsequently popularized by Tennessee Ernie Ford in the 50s. The words are worth reading and reflecting on to this day:
"Some people say a man is made outta mud A poor man's made outta muscle and blood Muscle and blood and skin and bones A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong
You load sixteen tons, what do you get Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal And the straw boss said "Well, a-bless my soul"
You load sixteen tons, what do you get Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store"
The balance of the lyrics and an interesting history of the song is at:
The poignancy of unofficial word reaching familiy members by news, cell phone, email, text messages, etc before official notification is played out every day in our military, be it peacetime or wartime casualties, and our cities and highways. There's no going back that I can see though. No one with a relative in potential harm's way answers a phone these days without at least slight trepidation.
Hope the rest of the New Year gets better.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Its really hard to say about the rest of this new year, when you consider how rough the last two years have been right at the very start at least: 2004/05 at New Year's brought us the tsuami in Asia and all kinds of violence in Iraq which continued throughout the year. In the new year now going on, we started with (a) California mudslides and flooding [although apparently 'typical' for parts of California, still a bit extreme, IMO] and (b) lots of fires raging in Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico and (c)the coal mine disaster in West Virginia; additionally (d) continued violence in Iraq with over a hundred American troops killed; all that between the first and the fourth of January. On a more local note (you would not have seen it in your newspapers, although it was in the Independence Reporter) a young, 23 year old man committed suicide here in our town on December 31. Apparently his 'farewell note' said simply that "things in the world are just to screwed up for me." I did not know him -- never met him but how I wish that _someone_ had been able to reach him in time. Just anyone, someone who could have made an emergency interven- tion. The newspaper said Independence EMS had found him at his home southwest side of town, a young man named Christopher Bates, originally from Bartlesville, OK. PAT]