A good fire department consists of a group of rugged individuals agreeing to work as a collective to accomplish great things. Without the group, the individual is ineffective. Without the individual the group falls apart. Firefighters are by definition rugged. We have to be. Delicate firefighters break. A collective of delicate people will fail as a firefighting force. Fire doesn’t care about words, or feelings, fairness or equity. Fire consumes everything in it’s path using whatever fuel it is provided. It is imperative that the fire service recruits rugged individuals to fill its ranks. A college degree is a bonus, but the most important piece of a devestatingly effective firefighting force is, was, and will continue to be the rugged individual.

A lot of people have gone out of their way to degrade EMS over the appointment of Lillian Bonsignore as FDNY Commishioner. It’s as if EMS does not exist except to Uber worthless people to emergency rooms for free healthcare while the cities and towns of America are burning.

The indignation over a person with thirty-one years experience in the busiest EMS system in the world, well liked by her peers and respected by the firefighters of the city in which she served has been rabid. Yet had a person with zero EMS experience been appointed to the position nobody would blink. FDNY includes FDNY EMS. The city’s EMS force handles thousands of 911 emergencies daily. Many of those calls are life threatening emergencies that involve very real threats to the lives of the responders. EMS is every bit as much FDNY as fire suppression, and the person who retired as Chief of that division deserving of the position of FDNY Commishioner.

I thought we had come to a place where a person’s achievements were more important than checking the right boxes. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion hiring and advancement practices were given traction for a reason; ignorant people excluding capable and deserving candidates from consideration exclusively due to their race, gender and or sexual orientation.

Maybe I was wrong.

Loren at I Saw Lightening Fall hosts an Advent Christmas Story event every year, the rules are; write a kind of spooky Christmas story, 100 words, no more, no less! This is my contribution to the festivities, if you have a moment stop by his site and enjoy some of these stories from some very talented writers.

https://isawlightningfall.blogspot.com/2025/12/advent-ghosts-2025-stories.html?m=1

Cold outside, he thinks, not quite certain though, pajama bottoms don’t help much in a snowstorm. His home on the banks of the Providence River is left behind, door open, house empty. The blinking lights on the other side remind him of Christmas, when things were better, when he was better. It doesn’t seem so far away now, not so cold, not so distant. His feet break the thin ice that had formed on the river’s edge; no pain. Eyes focused on the distant shore he moves forward, and the colored lights comfort him, and the current sweeps him away.

I live a few miles, as the crow flies from Brown University. I know people who work there. I know people enrolled there. I worked on first due fire companies in Brown’ district for years and retired from The Providence Fire Department ‘s Rescue Co. 5, stationed at North Main Street and first due at Brown. I’ve been on the campus, in the classrooms, in the dorms, in the apartments the kids rent and in the building where the tragic shooting last Saturday occurred. I’m more familiar with the heart and soul of the Brown community than most, yet I am as much in the dark concerning the incident as the people expressing their opinions and criticisms freely.

Now that the community is international news, and fodder for the internet voyeurs, the pundits, the thrill seekers, the revenue whores and the armchair detectives everybody is an expert. The Brown police are being ridiculed, the Providence Police too, the politicians are not helping themselves with their poor press conferences at the Brook Street Fire Station and the entire region is fast becoming synonymous with incompetence.

The psychopath responsible for the rampage is still at large. The investigation is ongoing. The people doing the work are doing their best, which is as good or better than anybody anywhere would be doing. The truth will be told. The details will be revealed. The rest of us need to be patient, and not succumb to the culture of instant gratification.

There is a lot of suffering going on, and a lot of work being done. Let the people affected most grieve, and the people responsible for cleaning this mess up do their jobs.

Image courtesy of Shield Media

Funny thing about learning something you already know; learning how to do things right is a lot harder than just doing things. But just doing things is how a lot of things that wouldn’t happen get done. For months I’ve been learning scales, and theories, and practicing licks, and spending far too much time watching people on YouTube show me how easy it is to do things that no matter how hard I try, I still can’t do.

What I can do is simply play. Simple things done well are quite satisfying. So I made a decision; play what I know. Turns out what I know sounds a lot better now that I know a little more.

Life is kind of funny too. Just when things begin to click, other things begin to clack. Clickety clack, don’t look back sounds good in a song, but when life throws a clack in your click, not so much. Me and Eric had to slow the band down for a while, other obligations take precedence. But that doesn’t mean the music has to stop. I think about it a lot more now, and listen to it different. I picked up the acoustics after a month of plugging in, cleared my mind and let it all go for a while.

And it felt great to simply play.