Talk about a fucked up week.



While paying attention to local news broadcasts and local papers is usually good for inducing a massive case of depression — after all, it’s the smaller news outlets that cover homegrown stories like grandpa drunkenly running over his 2-year-old grandson, or a dad attempting to sell his kids to pedophiles to support a drug habit, or the baby that got left in a hot car and died all alone — the news out of Tacoma and Pierce County this week has been even more horrifying and disturbing than usual.



The most gut-wrenching story came out of Graham, where a distraught — and obviously unstable father — shot and killed his five kids, ages 16, 14, 12, 9 and 7, and then drove to Auburn to kill himself. Apparently, his wife — and the mother of the children — was about to leave him, prompting the gruesome meltdown.



Then, Tuesday as I made my way into the office, news broke of another senseless and yet unexplained tragedy. In the early morning hours of April 7 someone heard a gunshot ringing near the 500 block of South Seventh Street and called 911. Police responded to find a 50-year-old woman lying dead on the sidewalk — the victim of a gunshot wound. Though the area was quickly taped off and crawling with officers, morning commuters took the time to slow and gawk at the tarp-covered body.



Throw these events into a bag with other recent horrors — like the brutal killing of 22-year-old cab driver Mohamud Ahmed and last week’s Salishan shooting — and what you get is, well, an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness in a cruel world — and the question I posed to my boss upon arriving at the office on Tuesday.

“What the hell is going on in the world?”



Of course, neither of us really knew the answer to that question, but — being the wise man that he is — he did have a working theory.



“People are hurting. There’s a loss of hope,” he said.



He had a point. While it would be questionable at best — and almost certainly flat out wrong — to unequivocally pin all the recent death, despair and heinous activity on the current economic state of the world, it is worth thinking about.



Is this economic meltdown affecting more than just people’s pocket books? As people lose jobs, lose income and lose hope, are we in for more seemingly unfathomable atrocities? Will cabbies continue to have their throats cut for pocket money? Will bodies continue to be found dead in the streets? Will the grizzly headlines continue?



And more importantly, if there is a connection between economic despair and an increase in unthinkable crimes — as a community, what can we do to help? How can we affect the trend, and offer hope to those that have lost it?



I don’t have the answers to these questions, and by yourself you probably don’t either. The world is full of despair. It always has been. That doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon.



But as things get worse, the real question becomes, what can we do to help? How can we take ownership of the situation and have a positive impact on the lives of real people in our communities that need it most?



Now seems like as good a time as any to start that conversation.