We Are Losing Too Many Young Men

It has now become not unusual in this college town to open the paper--about once a month--to read an all-too-familiar story that goes like this, with some variation: Roommate returns home, tries to rouse sleeping roomie, finds him unresponsive (this year always a young man), calls 911, autopsy reveals accidental overdose of combination of prescription drugs, OTC things, and usually cocaine, a variant being drinking poppy tea. So I am talking with yet another mourning mother, who thought her son was doing all right for the past few years. A big funeral for him at St A's--many young people, including my own Carla, whom I have know since birth. And then, in our own family, a young man just out of rehab, another reporting (we pray) faithfully for UAs, a son of a nephew caught up in his own turmoil. What is this about, I wonder? Availability of all this stuff? Surely the world is not more dangerous than my own time as a young persom, when we thought the world would be blown up and completely destroyed by nuclear weapons.  No, it is not a more dangerous world, but we didn't have so many pharmaceuticals to deal with that danger then, although Valium has been around for a while. Sowhat? What are the answers--delayed adulthood? too many choices? seeking escape from...? Environmentally causes addiction? We are losing too many young men.

Home again--this time from Utah

How June just flits away and how I love returning to routine. So it's Sat morning, and I've finished yogalates and have this interim at B & N before going to NIA at noon. No sooner were we back in the country than we set out for our home in Utah--and also a farewell reception for the 10th Bishop of Utah, Carolyn Tanner Irish, who ordained me. That was quite wonderful, catching up with Utah clergy and sharing a long lunch with friend Mary at the Oasis in SLC.
Also good to connect with friends at our place, to arrange for some floor repairs, sleep late, not having to get up for early morning walks or Weds. Eucharist. Cleaning and throwing out things, which I'm trying to do in both houses. Then back to Boulder, where life catches up--not knowing what has happened to our mail, for instance. Mary Kate+ has had bike accident with a mangled finger, stitches in another one, bruises and pain, numbness. I move back in to St. A's duties, feeling a tug with wanting some moer time to go back and forth, stay at home, write, and watch the portulaca bloom.
Summer reading:The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and the next one, something about a hangman's knot, features the 11-year old detective Flavia, a specialist in poisons, who has her own chem lab.  Can't remember the author's name.
Must get in contact with my Chartres group, have heard only from dear Annabel.
Portulace blooming, honeysuckle outrageously blossoming orange and theyellow columbine, must be 30 in all, up against that  bright color while the lobelia becomes a brighter blue in its yellow pot and the geraniums stubbornly refuse to put out any blossoms. Jupiter's Beard taking over the cone flowers in front, and some timid cosmos plants, small and lacey, try one more summer after being poisoned by grounds keepers last year. Lavender blooming and flox past its time. It's June in our yard--tomatoes planted once more in their bin, and we hope for the yield we had last year.
Doug scheduled for rotator cuff surgery on Tues--I manage my ulcers, and my eye checkup led my dr. to have me return in a couple of weeks for peripheral vision test re: glaucoma, since Patsy has it, and my original test showed some "thinning" of something. Just trying to keep above water here, re: the body--