Meconopsis grandis captured by Love_Child_Kyoto
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/7294954@N02/)
Well, I've clearly been remiss on the blogging front for the past week or two. Health reasons, family reasons, Guardian ad Litem-related issues and just the general observation of the world around me have left me weary and rather blue. My own personal admixture of happy and sad has come up sort of on the upside. I'm still worried about a thing or two, but hopeful that things will just sort of smooth out.
About a week ago, my friend Cathy was very struck by the tragic story of the good samaritan Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, who died in Queens after stopping a knife wielding man who was arguing with a woman. Mr. Tale-Yax was here in the US, working as a skilled carpenter and sending money home to his native Guatemala. I've known quite a few Central Americans in just that same situation, working here, often illegally, and supporting extensive family at home. He hailed from a town ironically called La Esperanza (Hope) and was left to bleed to death while bystanders walked by, and one even appeared to photograph him with a cell phone camera. Mr. Tale-Yax, who was homeless and evidently an alcoholic, clearly had a much finer sense of morals and ethics than everybody that passed him by. K’iché, a diminishing group of Mayan origins, he came from a humble start, but not so humble that he didn't instinctively know right from wrong, unlike the dozens if not hundreds that passed by a dying man in this Brave Free First World country of America. Where was la esperanza for Hugo Alberto Tale-Yax?
On a personal front, I guess I've been witness to something similar albeit on a very different scope and scale. And more than all the rest of what spins around me, personally, it is that which leaves me oh, so very blue. Why is it that the person who tries to do the right thing is the person that gets the lash? Why does the whistle-blower invariably get punished?
Sometimes the price for doing the right thing is just intolerable and so miserably unfair.
Y a veces, se siente como la esperanza por la justicia es sólo una pérdida de tiempo....*
*And at times, it seems like the hope for justice is just a waste of time...
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