Saturday, December 15, 2012

...I ask myself – is all hope gone?...


I don’t think so.  I hope not.  This business in Connecticut has me all bollixed up.  I don’t have children (a combination of inability to carry and a very quiet biological clock).  To be honest, most of the time I don’t even like small children (I don’t steal their candy or tell them the Easter bunny is a big fat lie or anything like that)  I just don’t have a lot of experience being around them for extended periods of time.

But I have a younger brother.  He’s going to be 50 (gah…it pains me to write that) in March.  When I heard about this horror in Connecticut yesterday, I immediately thought of him and this favorite photograph of the two of us:




I don’t know how old we were when it was taken, but we’re obviously very young.  The cabin in the background is where my grandfather and great grandfather were born and we were visiting there with my dad and grandfather.  We must have gotten distracted and wandered off; someone took this photo of us picking cotton.  I love it ~ it shows two children simply being children and enjoying the sun and family and just being alive…something those sweet little ones in Newtown will never be able to do.

Most people who know me think I’m a tie dye wearing, bleeding heart liberal, but I like to think of myself as a “nice”~ican or a “kind”~ocrat.  I hate knee jerkism on both sides of the aisle.  I think that people who need it should have assistance, but it shouldn’t be permanent enough to become a generational source of income.  I think people with eleventy billion dollars in assets should probably kick in more in taxes, but more importantly should strive to do good things with those blessings in their bank accounts.  I don’t think kindness and generosity and empathy and love and morality can be legislated.

I don’t have any answers.  I don’t think now, when the details of this monstrous event are changing by the minute, is the right time to start debates.  I guess the one stand I will take is that I don’t understand why anyone (military personnel, law enforcement, etc. excluded) needs assault weaponry.

If Nick Lowe hadn’t already written this, he would have surely written it yesterday:


"What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding?"

2 comments: