Point of view...

Over the last few days, I've been thinking about my view of the world. I think I noticed it because of Stewart Pittman's article in this month's News Photographer magazine where he wondered, with all of the death and pain he's waded through over the years, what kind of karma he's collecting. Whatever prompted it, I've noticed that I have kind of a strange view of the world around me -- most of my points of reference on the world are bad.

Following the fire rescue I mentioned in the previous post, I got an email from old friends who live in Archbold. They had heard my name on TV, checked our website, found my blog and emailed me from there. They wondered about when I moved to Toledo. I gave the date, but also described it as about two weeks before the children were killed in the apartment fire at Norwich Apartments.

As I was driving through town with my wife and kid the other day, I mentioned a couple of places I was familiar with as we passed by. The scene of a shooting, a drug house, a place that was raided for prostitution, a fatal crash scene...

When I talk to friends of mine from the business and they're updating me on things, it involves things like, "Remember that kid who shot and killed his dad on that farm just outside town?"

Just this morning, my producer asked if I needed a map to Woodley Street. I said no, it's where that last murder/suicide was.


Read the about me section of this blog. It's basically a list of the worst events in recent Toledo history.

So much of what I remember of people and places has some sort of bad element to it. It has bothered me at different times that it doesn't bother me more. A friend once told me that it's because I have a place to put the emotions that should go with some of the things I've seen in my career and the fact that it bothers me that it doesn't bother me is enough.

In his article, Pittman wonders what kind of karma he's collected over the years. We're observers to these events, so I really don't think we could be collecting bad karma any more than the people we see standing on a corner watching a traffic accident. But I do think that we're collecting an odd persepctive on life and the world.