The Burrow

She's 7 years old, now, 18 months or more after her best friend, Jacob Hall, the only boy she'd ever kissed, the one she was going to marry someday , was gunned down in front of her, at recess. They had just started first grade.  Ava Rose Olsen is home-schooled now. https://tinyurl.com/ycqweq9w She was on CNN this afternoon, teleconferencing from a large leather chair.  Her mom was there, too, describing in agonizing detail how her happy child was now diagnosed with PTSD.  She has her good days, but she is often angry and sad and frightened for her brother, who is still attending that elementary school. That Elementary School.  The one where she heard and saw what guns can do to someone she loved.  That Elementary School, where, she wonders in pencil to her President: Are you going to keep kids safe? How can you keep us safe?” Good questions, ones that the President, who watches a lot of tv (as the interviewer told the little girl), might be watching....

Not many grown men cry ... not many grown men cry at work .... not many grown men cry on television.  Our President did all of that, and more this morning.  I am so very very proud of him. My friends were there - Roxanna and John and Daniel and Pat and Pam and Mark and Gabby - representing our shooting, which has gotten lost in the shuffle as time passes and more deaths are recorded.  My President hugged and smiled and hugged some more.  The audience clapped and cheered as the simple solutions - mental health services, expanded background checks, responsibility for lost and stolen weaponry - were detailed. As he said, It's not enough.   Those of us on the right side of the issue (my side, obviously!) must be as loud and committed to action as those on the other side.  As Mr. Obama reminded us, 90% of Americans want action on this issue.  If our elected representatives can't give it to us, then it behooves us to vote them out and replace them with t...

Again and again and again, I tell myself that I won't let it affect me. Over and over and over, I remind myself that I am safe. The words are futile; I'm terrified and angered and sad. Like a scummy film on the surface of a pond, gun violence blunts the shining sun, diffusing it and muddying it and making the world a scary place. Leaving the house wasn't easy this morning. Then, again, watching the television wasn't any easier. One of their own was shot down on a sunny morning and suddenly all those stories the anchors had been reporting over the years were no longer about the other – the victims were one of them. I watched the CNN correspondent try to hold back his tears as Alison Parker's father said that his soul was crushed. I listened as Ashleigh Banfield tried to make sense of the senseless, describing how Adam Ward's fiancee watched him die from the production studio... in real time. Just saying the words made them facts that smacked her ...

The loaded pellet gun was in a glass-fronted cabinet.  The 12 year olds had access, so the security must have been pretty thin.  One picked up the rifle, one walked in front of him, and the evening ended in the emergency room. No one is dead.  No one is in jail. I'm disturbed. Is there a person on this planet who believes that unsupervised tweens should be holding an ammo-filled weapon at 2:30 in the morning?  The most trouble my kids got into at a sleep-over was calling the most popular boy in the 6th grade and hanging up .... over and over and over until it was Little Cuter's turn and his mother answered, asked who was calling, and my child gave her name... her real name.... which led to a phone call to me and a phone call to the poorly supervised party's hostess and notes of apology written the next morning.  It never occurred to me to worry about loaded rifles in unsecured cabinetry.  It never seemed likely that a 12 year old would e...

I only saw it from the other side. When I wrote about seeing a holstered handgun at breakfast, all my questions were directed at him.  Was the world such a frightening place to him?  Were the eggs looking back in a threatening manner?  Was he fueling up for robbing the cashier instead of paying his check?  I never looked inside myself.  I assumed that I was right.  I couldn't understand how anyone could see the situation in any other way.  That's never a promising way to begin a conversation, but I wasn't trying to have a conversation.  My way or the highway, buster, and don't look back.  Then Brenda Starr wrote about our breakfast in her weekly newspaper column.  She expressed the same outrage and dismay you found in The Burrow.  She has a much broader readership than I; we both have a few frequent commenters who keep us on our toes.  There were some pieces of an ongoing conversation about the right to bear arms in S...

It used to be education.  To my naïve heart, equal access to quality instruction seemed the obvious solution to all the world's woes. If we understood how things worked, if we saw the historical path which led to our current situation, if we held philosophers close to our hearts, peace would reign. Oh, to be 15 again. In college, reproductive rights pushed schooling aside.  I was enjoying freedoms, but there was a dark cloud hovering overhead. Birth control was available, but abortion was do you know someone and how much cash do I need?   Then, as now, I was appalled that men in positions of power deemed themselves worthy of deciding how my body should spend nine months.  No one asked the father of the unborn to carry that same burden.  It was that unfairness which spoke loudest to my late teen self. Crossing the threshold into adulthood and self-support, the minimum wage begged for my attention.  Sexism in the workplace reared its ugly head, and, onc...

By the time it went live, yesterday's post was old news.  I tagged on a quick update before I went to bed, but I woke up thinking about it and then Megan commented and I have to revisit it. Not the why do you need to bring an assault rifle into a taco joint?  issue.  If we have to argue about the propriety of such behavior we are too far apart to agree on much of anything else. I'm not a defeatist, I'm a realist.   I'm thinking about the meta-issues, those that hover over the facts, providing context and nuance and a window into our world.   How about the undeniable influence that Moms Demand Action was able to assert?  Chipotle is a feel good, healthy, hot, fast dinner stop for a family shuttling between piano lessons, karate, and t-ball.  It's not the only choice, though, and without that organic, range-free chicken, no GMO's vibe... with, in fact, a decidedly anti-warm-and-fuzzy feeling... when it's linked in Mom's Decider Button to guys with...

I was shot standing ten feet from my Congressswoman, on a sunny Saturday morning, in front of a grocery store. My little friend, Christina-Taylor Green, died while holding my hand.  A licensed, legally carried weapon was used. Today, I opened Facebook and saw these guys Yes, those are the round trash holes and marginally comfortable stools you find at every Chipotle in America. I stand in line at Chipotle at Foothills Mall about once a week.  There's lots of glass,lots of people milling about, and no reason on God's green earth for an AK47 to join me. I wonder if the Chipotle's in Dallas, where this photo was taken, are somehow less secure. I'm wondering just how strong the fellow on the right thinks he is.  That weapon he's holding has quite a kick.  It also shoots more than one bullet at a time.  Should his spindly arms get tired while he's aiming at the bad guy, those bullets might just stray and spray the families sharing guacamole nearby....

I was waiting for a new friend on Saturday, and Starbucks across from Body Works made sense for both of us. Fortuitously, Moms Demand Action 's call to action for the weekend was to show up at Starbucks and thank Howard Schultz for taking a stand.  I'm obedient..... even if I wasn't terribly impressed or convinced.   Baby Steps , I keep reminding myself.   Baby Steps will get us where we need to be. Incrementalism has never been my cup of tea. I smiled about that as I ordered my passion fruit ice tea... my shaken  iced tea... on Saturday afternoon.  It was too precious for words, but that wasn't the barrista's fault (shouldn't he be a barristo?) so I took my attitude and my large and expensive and very pink drink outside. There was shade, a breeze, comfy steel tables and chairs, and sunshine, all conspiring to keep me smiling as I tried and failed and tried and failed and tried and failed to take a selfie that didn't send me screaming for a plastic surg...