{"id":1030,"date":"2015-01-09T11:45:20","date_gmt":"2015-01-09T17:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/?p=1030"},"modified":"2015-01-09T08:06:46","modified_gmt":"2015-01-09T14:06:46","slug":"heartache","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/?p=1030","title":{"rendered":"Heartache"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are times when a person can&#8217;t help but feel some heartache.<\/p>\n<p>On a personal level? My Peanut has been sick all week and clearly suffering. His head cold clearly came from his daddy. He had vaccinations on Monday which also spiked him a fever and really put him under the weather. He hasn&#8217;t been my happy-go-lucky kid all week, and I hate not being able to do anything about it.<\/p>\n<p>On a community level? This week an FFA advisor and shop teacher, while driving a bus, was involved in an accident at a train crossing that killed both himself and a 17-year-old student, with virtually every other student on the bus injured. I didn&#8217;t know any of them personally, but my heart still aches for their families in Larimore. My nightmares are made of the very stuff a couple living near the accident experienced &#8211; wrapping injured kids in blankets and pulling them out of the wreckage of a school bus while waiting for first responders to arrive.<\/p>\n<p>On a world level? Twelve people shot dead by Muslim terrorists over satirical cartoons.\u00a0<em>Cartoons<\/em> are worth killing people over? Not only that, but the sons of bitches escaped. As of this morning, when I&#8217;m writing this, they&#8217;re apparently cornered in a hostage standoff outside Paris, and have made statements that they wish to die as martyrs. How many more will they kill?<\/p>\n<p><em>And in despair I bowed my head;<br \/>\n&#8220;There is no peace on earth,&#8221; I said,<br \/>\n&#8220;For hate is strong, and mocks the song<br \/>\nof peace on earth, good-will to men!&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t help that we&#8217;re in the middle of a deep freeze in the Midwest. Outdoor temperature (before windchill) barely even approaches zero, and we&#8217;ve had windchill warnings pretty much every day this week. Cold and gloom tends to sap the will and cheer.<\/p>\n<p>Some days it&#8217;s a struggle to remember that things can be, and\u00a0<em>will be<\/em>, better than they are right now.<\/p>\n<p><em>Then pealed the bells, more loud and deep:<\/em><br \/>\n<em>&#8220;God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;<\/em><br \/>\n<em>The wrong shall fail,<\/em><br \/>\n<em>The right prevail,<\/em><br \/>\n<em>With peace on earth, good-will to men!&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are times when a person can&#8217;t help but feel some heartache. On a personal level? My Peanut has been sick all week and clearly suffering. His head cold clearly came from his daddy. He had vaccinations on Monday which &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/?p=1030\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personalthoughts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/cropped-villagers-21.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p52rlt-gC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1030"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1032,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions\/1032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingunderduress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}