Thanks for Asking

My email, my Facebook, my phones (both land line and cell), the cashier at the grocery store and classmates in Romantic Composers...... every one wanted to know how I was doing.

I appreciated the love.  Really, I did.  Thinking of you right now made me smile.  Heidi's How do you keep your sanity made me smile.  All the heart emoji's warmed my real one, and the hugs and loving looks reminded me that life is good.

I was lucky.  I was in the South Bend airport, ready to board my first plane, when the news broke.  By the time I landed in Tucson it was no longer a breaking story.  TBG told me the facts as we left the lot; MSNBC on XMRadio filled in the personal stories of eye witnesses leaving the YMCA and hiding behind their cars.   I'd been eased into the idea of another shooting; I didn't make the connection to our Congress on Your Corner until I saw Mark Kelly on CNN later in the afternoon.

It didn't make me sad or scared.  It made mad.  This is the United States of America.  We do not shoot people who disagree with us.  We just don't.  We argue, we write letters, we protest, we hold rallies and we make personal visits to local offices.  Violence has no place here.

And so I'm irritated, which is a much better place to be than any of the alternatives.  I'm watching Republican Congressmen and their associates describing things that I've been saying for six and a half years.  Did they think I was making it up out of whole cloth? Did they think I was exaggerating?

Yes, it's terrifying.  I've been telling anyone who would listen that the moment is seared into my memory, that it has a quality unlike anything else, before or after.  And yes,  now there always will be a Before and and After for you and yours, as there is for me and mine.

Yes, it's unfair; you were only playing baseball.  Didn't I mention that I, too, was participating in an American tradition when the bullets began flying?  Do you get it, now?

So there it is; I'm disgusted.  Thanks, once again, for asking.