Sunday, August 13, 2006

A Shiney Sunday Morning

It looks as if it's going to be a bright and dazzling day, and The Weather Channel agrees.



Baseball fans will be torn: to play outdoors or watch the play inside!

The Yankees take on the Angels in the Bronx at 1:05 and Baltimore meets Boston again, today, at the Fenway at 2:05.



This blog was never intended to be my personal "soap box," but please bear with me for a minute or two.


My grandmother’s favorite grace, which she insisted be said before all meals, with everyone holding hands around the table, was: “For these and all His mercies, God’s Holy name be praised.” My first recollection of learning these words well enough to please her and join the ritual chorus - sometime during the Second World War, when we ate alot of oatmeal sweetened with Karo syrup - brings back the clear sense that, at that stage in my life, the best “mercies” were mashed potato, chicken with gravy and cranberry sauce. It certainly never occurred to me, then, that “mercies” could include the kindnesses and generosity of everyday people!

Early this morning, those words were brought back to me. “This is Mercy Flight. Our ETA is four minutes.”



"Mercy Flight's" spotlight shone across the village as the helicoptor rose from the high school grounds and turned toward Syracuse.




It had begun some time after two o’clock when the siren rang. Scanners throughout the community were clicked on and, for more than two hours, listeners followed the actions of first our own Waterville Volunteer Ambulance Corps as members rushed to the scene of a motor vehicle accident. Then the “mutual aid” of Oriskany Falls Volunteer Ambulance personnel, who brought the “jaws of life” to the site; a NYSEG crew, hurrying to deal with power lines, and - at around 4:30 - the sound of helicopter rotors as Mercy Flight circled to land at the High School in what must have been a carefully pre-planned rescue maneuver.

We don’t need to know how the accident happened or who the injured was to count the many “mercies” that saved a life, last night, and that are there for all of us to count - and count on.

You can read about Mercy Flight on the internet and find an address to write to, but I couldn’t find any web address or link to WAVAC (the Waterville Volunteer Ambulance Corps) or the Oriskany Falls Ambulance or the Waterville Fire Department. If I had, I’d have sent a quick E-mails to say: “Thanks for being there for all of us!”

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