I am not a Catholic, but the Pope has still been someone I have found to be someone to be held in respect, if not reverence. He is not my religious leader, he is not a sacred person to my mind, but he has done much for world peace, and been a leader in the world. I am sure there will be those who, as they did when Ronald Reagan passed on, that will try to point out to his flaws, and turn them from blemishes to gaping holes. I will leave such things to them. He had a hand in the fall of communism, made history as the first Pope to visit Cuba, and also as the first non Italian Pope in the history of the Catholic church that goes back centuries. be he known in history as Karol Wojtyla, or as Pope John Paul II, he will be remembered by many fondly.
Recently in Reflections Category
Robert Blake innocent. Scott Peterson to get death penalty. These are the stories I have seen on the few rare occasions I have looked at the cover of the local papers. It is no wonder, then, when in doing research into something so far under the news spotlight radar, I found out that back in 2004 I missed an amazing actors passing. Maybe I didn't miss it, maybe I just forgot. Those were my first thoughts. So many have dies in the last few years, the expected and the unexpected, from Johnny Cash and John Ritter, to Ronald Reagen and many more whose names aren't front page news, but this is an even worse excuse. I guess either way, the death of Richard Biggs, who starred all 5 years of Babylon 5, has just hit me, and made me think.
It was interesting, in reading up on Richard's death, which occurred back in June of '04, that he died of a similar cause as John Ritter. I only found this out by thorough research, as there was nothing in the news about this. Apparently Ritter's widow was at the Biggs memorial and advised that if anyone knows of history of similar causes of death in their family, that they should be checked out. I also had the chance to see some pictures from the memorial, and saw a lot of B5 stars that I kind of miss seeing in new stuff. Patricia Tallman, Jerry Doyle, Bruce Boxleitner, Mira Furlan(who now has an inconsistent role on Lost) and a lot of others. This all started because I was bored without TV, and decided to watch the tapes I had of the movies, and noticed the panned B5 movie, The Memory of Shadows, has been cancelled.
The odd thing is that this one persons passing, however huge it was to the B5 fan community, is minuscule compared to the lives we have seen lost, and likely will be lost int he coming months. There are still tens of thousands dead in Asia, thousands more in Iraq, and more on the horizon, since I have little faith anymore in it being a quiet year in the world. Why is it that these few, these names we have known, take precedence in our minds to the tens of thousands who die in the world? It baffles me, it really does, and I am no better, no wiser, other than that I have shaken myself to think a little, to ponder such things. The media has focused us on the mundane, the trivial, while we miss and forget to mourn the greater losses.
