Dear readers:

I started work on today’s editorial with thoughts about the future.

Kindergarten, middle school, high school and college graduation season tends to prompt such notions.

Plus, last week the Wall Street Journal announced the possibly-in-our-lifetime-if-we-should-be-so-lucky-infinitely-cool-where-can-one-get-one jet packs, long dreamed of by science fiction fans, engineers and other great minds in hi-tech.

Online, the jet pack news was announced on the WSJ.com website beneath the headline, “personal flight, once a pipe dream, is now within our reach.”

And, if you are a listener to the radio program “Marketplace,” you are aware of the intriguing notion offered by a segment on the program suggesting a cabinet-level position of “Secretary of the Future” to focus on what lies ahead in years, decades, centuries to come.

Here is how this editorial was to start: “Self-help culture is very fond of condoning living in the present, the importance of the Moment (capital M) and the currency of right now.”

I was on my way to talking about how we, citizens of June 2016, are living someone’s distant and elaborately imagined future.

And then, came national news of two horrific moments in two days.

On June 10, singer Christina Grimmie, a contestant on the reality television singing competition “The Voice,” was shot and later died after a performance at a venue in Orlando, Fla.

Grimmie reportedly was signing autographs and chatting with fans at the time.

Overnight June 11, club-goers at a popular LGBT venue in the same city were attacked while dancing and enjoying an evening out. As I write this, the death toll is reported at 49 victims and the gunman.

The man who shot Grimmie reportedly took his own life at the scene.

Police shot and killed the gunman who attacked the club after a siege lasting into the early morning.

The present, the Moment (capital M) and currency of right now suddenly stopped for so many, too many.

According to media reports, Kevin James Loibl planned the attack on Grimmie, allegedly traveling from another Florida city, armed with guns and a knife. Loibl and Grimmie did not seem to know to each other, according to news coverage.

News of the attacker in the club shooting was sketchy so early in the investigation. The man also was described as heavily armed, possibly with explosives, and his attack was described as elaborate, involving a gun battle with an off-duty police officer, a return to the club and a hostage crisis.

Theories of domestic terrorism peppered coverage of the second attack. Monday morning news reports identified the attacker as Omar Mateen, 29, also of Florida, who allegedly pledged allegiance by phone to extremist group ISIS.

A report from the Associated Press noted police found no signs of Loibl stalking Grimmie. Grimmie died at the hospital several hours after being shot.

An aspiring singer, Grimmie, who reportedly frequently posted her performances on social media, likely pictured her future in music.

And the futures of those lives lost while enjoying a Saturday night out, along with those lives lost at a holiday party in California, a movie theater in Colorado, an elementary school in Connecticut, a heavy metal concert, soccer venue, newspaper office and grocery store in France, towering office buildings in New York City, military bases in the United States and overseas, a prayer meeting at a church in Charleston, S.C., the deaths of an award-winning photographer and journalist while covering the conflict in Afghanistan and so many others, too many others, to many to count, also will go unrealized.

The planned headline for this editorial was “The future of the future is now.” But, for far too many in just the last two days, that statement rings hollow.

April Peterson

editorial assistant

East Penn Press

Salisbury Press