Countless Heroes In "A Tough Week"

 President Obama called it right when he said, "it's been a tough week," but he also called it right when he continued, "we've seen the character of our country once more." In this terrible week where bombs were set off at the Boston Marathon, where a horrific explosion occurred at a fertilizer plant in the small Texas town of "West," and where the the likely perpetrators of the Boston bombings terrorized a part of suburban Boston, many an American rose to the occasion to help others, often at great risk to themselves. The Boston bombs killed three and injured more than 150. Casualties from the Texas explosion are uncertain, as many people are unaccounted for, but at least 14 died and more than 150 were injured. The terrorists in suburban Boston murdered a 26 year year old MIT police officer and then later severely wounded a transit authority police officer, who hopefully will recover. The physical and psychological scars in all of these things will remain, but so will the courage of first responders and just plain old individual Americans who chose not to run away from the potential danger, but TOWARDS it in order to help others. They didn't ask if victims were Republicans or Democrats, progressives or conservatives, American born or foreign born, no, they just acted to help. The casualties then went for transport and treatment to others who dedicate their lives to helping others, the people in medical care: EMS workers, doctors, nurses, medical technicians, assistants and others, whose job titles I likely don't even know.

I take heart from the courage and dedication of all of these heroes. It gives me hope that we might again be one nation, not a bunch of individual states and groups. The question is, will the dividers now step in for their own interests to keep us apart, and will we let them, or will WE run toward the danger?    

WORD HISTORY:
Tell-Like its close relative "tale," this word goes back to Indo European "del/dal/dol," which had the meaning of  "to count, to count off (recount) events of a story." This gave its Old Germanic offspring the noun "talo" (the ancestor of "tale") which meant "number, a reckoning of numbers." From this was derived the Old Germanic verb "taljanan," with the meaning "to count off, enumerate, recount events." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "tellan," with much the same meaning. This then became "tellen," before the modern version, although the counting meaning was taken over by borrowed words, like "count" and "enumerate," leaving the "recount events" meaning as its principal meaning. The original "count" meaning is preserved in the derived noun "teller;" that is, "a person who counts money." Common in the other Germanic languages: German has both "zählen," which means "to count," and "erzählen," which means "to tell a story, recount an event;" Low German Saxon and Dutch have both "tellen" (to count) and "vertellen" (to tell a story or narrative, recount an event); West Frisian has "telle" (to count) and "fertelle" (to recount, to tell); Icelandic has "telja" (to count), but they express "to tell" with a non related word;  Danish has "taella" (to count) and "fortaelle" (to tell, to recount a story); Norwegian has "telle" (to count) and "fortelle" (to tell, to recount); and Swedish has "förtälja" (to relate a tale, story, event), Swedish does not use a form for "to count."