The Burrow

Almost everyone I love was marching last Saturday.  I couldn't get off the bed to join them. I wasn't ill.  The weather was perfect.  I had the text for Mr 11 and 13 created and ready to be sent. I couldn't make myself do it.  There is something absolutely immobilizing that takes over my heart and my soul whenever I consider being publicly political. I held a sign on the street corner in front of my Representative's office , but went inside when the police protection drove away.  I was fine going up in the elevator and talking to her District Manager, but I went out the back door and avoided the protest on the way to my car. I was scared.  I'm not usually scared.... at least the before-I-was-perforated me was not usually scared.  I suppose I am often scared these days, now that I put fingers to keyboard and think about it. I sat in the middle of the row in the middle of the movie theatre watching Sing!  with Amster and Mr. 11.  I did...

I was listening to Ben Markus on NPR reporting on the Aurora trial, driving slowly because I was paying more attention to his words than to the traffic around me. At least I wasn't texting. The trial of the young man accused of opening fire in a Colorado movie theater in 2012 is expected to take six months.  The lawyers are introducing an insanity defense, so there will be days of explication and elucidation before the details of the shooter's mental state are exposed. Will it make a difference?  He wielded the weaponry which took and damaged the lives of people whose only offense was watching a Batman movie.  Of that, there is no doubt.  Was he insane?  Does it matter?  Perhaps, as Ben Markus said, only in the penalty phase.  His lawyers are expected to use the details to of his mental illness to lay the groundwork for a prison sentence instead of a death sentence. I managed to tell you all of that without once mentioning the name of the perpe...