15 miles and a world apart

      

     I have blogged before about the contrasts between Howard County and Baltimore.  Even though we are separated by only a few miles our worlds are many miles apart.   I usually fast forward through the local news that I DVR because it is usually about the latest shootings in Baltimore and other aspects of crime in Baltimore that seems miles apart from what we experience in Howard County.  Recently a couple of murders brought this distance back into perspective. The first was the murder of a young rapper named Lor Scoota.  My world would be unlikely to have brought me in contact with this young man but the son of a Howard County friend knew Lor Scoota very well and he described a promising young man whose gang past came back suddenly with his murder.  This part of his past was impossible to put behind him.
      The second murder was closer to my reality.  I have been in regular contact with a grandmother in Baltimore raising her 5 grandchildren for the past 10 years.  I have seen her grandchildren grow up from young children to now being in their mid to late teens.   I learned that one of the granddaughters was in the hospital in serious condition after been assaulted in a street robbery at 4 pm in the afternoon.  Her boyfriend was shot and killed in the robbery.  Another statistic in Baltimore's yearly murder total.  Somehow the reality of going to a store on a routine shopping trip ending so tragically for young people in Baltimore made me recognize how our daily experiences can be so different. It did stop me and think about how callously I fast forward through news stories from that other world.

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