WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?

 

 

I know most people would prefer to read humorous blogs or just witty observations on daily life, but these days, that gets harder and harder to do.  Every time I feel I have found some part of life that inspires me and feel like I can do some good, it seems like the negative side of human nature intervenes and it all comes crashing down.

Liberal politics seem to be a lost cause in Georgia and now we may have to wear bulletproof vests everywhere we go.  Hopefully they are already manufacturing toddler and child-sized vests because t-ball games are also at risk.  I’ve given up trying to understand the mindset of people who think this is all okay.  I also realize that the only people who will read my blog or applaud Jon Stewart are liberals.  Because the tea-partiers, wingnuts and NRA faithful don’t read much at all.  They may listen to sound bites on Fox News or read convenience store publications that feature everyone who has been arrested for everything (maybe looking for their relatives?).

So I thought that animal rescue would be a safe place to be—after all, people who are devoted to saving the lives of innocent creatures have to be good people, right?  It seemed for a while that the love of animals was a bridge between people from all walks of life and political viewpoints. I suppose basically they are good people—but sadly I’ve learned that a lot of them, in their love for animals, sort of leave people out of the equation. 

I don’t know if it’s a characteristic of the south or just small towns in general, but it seems like all the “do-gooder groups” I have been a part of eventually fall prey to power plays and caste and turf wars.  I even suspect the Civil War is not quite over with some individuals and groups.

I am not naming names or casting blame, but I’m sad.  I don’t understand why people feel a need to be rude and derogatory to those who don’t follow their path.  Please, if you believe in what you’re doing, just do it!  Why is it necessary to degrade and verbally abuse others?  How does that help anything?  Neither my political views or passion for animals will change or diminish, but I may just have to operate within my own little world by the rules and values that make sense to me. 

 

 

In My Shoes

 

 

             

     

                      

 

 

I find myself spending ridiculous amounts of time doing google searches for things from my past.  I guess nostalgia comes with age and unlike my parents, I can google up the past.  As with all young women, clothes were very important; I never had anything resembling a clothes budget growing up so I was always out of style.  Summer jobs during my college years allowed me for the first time ever to shop for myself. 

Aspiring to hippie-dom, the place to go was Greenwich Village.  One summer I fell in love with a store with it’s own line of dresses.  I found one on sale made of a gauzy material with huge butterfly sleeves; not very practical, but I loved it!  Because it was sheer, it came with it’s own green slip and it was almost impossible to keep all the straps in line.  But all through college I remember craving a couple of items I could never afford:  a navy pea coat and Fred Braun shoes.  Many years later, I have a pea coat since they’re back in style.  All through college I wore my high school jacket from I had painstakingly removed the orange letters that spelled “Jefferson”.  It was wool navy so it resembled what I really wanted.

The above pictures are of the shoes and the Greenwich Village of my memory.  Two of the shoes shown are ACTUALLY IN A MUSEUM!!.  The sandals are at the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART!! (Excuse the caps, but I do find it amazing that shoes I wore are IN A MUSEUM).  I actually had a pair of t-straps like those pictures (on sale, of course) but they were not open back.  I never had the sandals or the oxford-types, but it did seem like everyone else did.  The shoes with laces are very rare and sell for ridiculous prices; none are available now—I guess those who had them wore them slap out.

Looking at these pictures creates the same lust I had then; the feeling that my life would definitely change for the better if I just had the right shoes.  There was another hand-crafted shoe store in the Village at that time, Lombardo’s.  I did finally get a pair of their sandals in a similar style and felt somewhat better. 

Somehow I don’t think clothes represent the same thing these days—there are just too many.  Discount stores and inexpensive imitations abound, so everyone can at least pretend.  Styles change so rapidly that no one item can ever really have that stature for long.  Of course, there are always the “in” brands and designer labels, but it just doesn’t seem the same.  I know it meant so much to me because I felt like I was the only one who couldn’t have what everyone else had. 

I’m a long way from desiring things that much and tend to value comfort and quality over fashion at this point in my life.  And honestly, it’s been years since I’ve seen anything that would even come close to a Fred Braun shoe.

A Sad Day in Waycross, Georgia

 

 

Today was a memorable day.  I was called a  “****ing idiot” on Facebook for the first time!  This, amazingly enough, was on a thread about the accidental shooting death of a child in Waycross.  You can probably guess what the argument was about.

If you agree with the name caller, you probably think I just blindly follow the “liberal agenda” and want to disarm the honest citizens that have loaded guns in their homes to defend themselves.  Further, you believe that if children are taught the safe use of weapons, they are protected.  In addition, if children are armed, they also can protect themselves.  The logical question is what are both adults and children protecting themselves from.

Scientific studies have agreed that the National Rifle Association’s number of “2.5 million” defensive shootings per year is an extravagant myth.  I’ll acknowledge that I haven’t read all the scientific studies, but I can cite two:  one from the National Journal of Epidemiology and another from the Violence Policy Center.  Both agree that the presence of a gun in the home correlates clearly with an increase in the number of both homicides and suicides.  The VPC states that the annual average of “self-protective behaviors involving firearms” is approximately 67,740.  This study used data from the National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by the Bureau of Justice.  The VPC also found that in 2010 “there were only 230 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm” compared with 8,275 criminal gun homicides in the same year, “not counting gun suicides or unintentional shootings”.  And this:  the number of Americans killed by guns since Newtown: 3,458.  Another agreement in this line of scientific research: “Those persons with guns in the home were at greater risk than those without guns in the home of dying from a homicide in the home”.

I remember an early lesson in creative writing:  if a gun makes an appearance in the course of the story, it must be used at some point.  For me, that is analogous to having a gun in the home; it will be used.  And guns do kill people.  Handguns were created for that purpose.

I have also read a lengthy New York Times Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/children-and-guns-the-hidden-toll.html?_r=1&&pagewanted=print.  Its main tenet is that accidental shootings of children occur twice as often as recorded because of variations in classification in different jurisdictions.  In addition to actual available data, the huge lobby of the NRA publicizes its own data discounting the numbers and offering up their own.  The New York Times compiled their own study in 5 states: California, Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio and Minnesota.  In the first four, they identified roughly twice as many accidental killings corresponding to the federal data.  In Minnesota, there were 50% more. 

Other interesting data:  60% of accidental firearm deaths involved handguns instead of long guns; and that percentage grows to 85% in children under 6.  Also, while most deaths are with older children, the third most common age is 3, and more than half of the self-inflicted shootings involve children 5 and under.  Very enlightening to me was an experimental study published in 2001 in the journal Pediatrics.  Researchers watched through a one-way mirror as boys ages 8-12 (in pairs) were left alone in examination room at a clinic in Atlanta.  An inoperative .38 caliber handgun was concealed in a cabinet drawer.  Within 15 minutes, ¾ of the 64 children involved in the study had found the gun.  2/3 of the boys handled the gun, 1/3 pulled the trigger and one child (following the NRAs directive to children) went to tell an adult about the gun.  This boy was ridiculed by his peers.  In addition, 90% of the boys said they had had gun safety education.  Dr. Kellerman, co-author of the study and dean at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences stated “Why, if we have childproof aspirin bottles, don’t we have childproof guns?”

Actually, the technology for childproof, or “smart guns” does exist, but the enormous lobbying power of the NRA has ensured that will never happen.  In fact, the lobbying power of the NRA controls everything about guns in this country and even repetitive mass shootings do not weaken their message.

I am positive my feelings and beliefs on this issue are not political in nature, but human and maternal.  There was a loaded gun in my home when my son was a child.  Of course, he knew guns were dangerous and that he shouldn’t touch it; he was an unusually smart kid.  However, first and foremost he was a kid.  Kids can be impulsive and boys are drawn to guns (shooters and victims are overwhelmingly male).  You can’t watch a boy ages 10-14 all the time; there will be the opportunity to seek out the forbidden.  I remember the feeling of terror that something like that could or would happen; the gun was not in the house for very long. 

I’m sorry if I offend anyone, but how can a parent even think of taking the risk of losing a child?  Things happen, not everything is preventable—but this one is.  Our children will always be at risk with bikes, skates, cars and even computers.  There is a minimum age for legally driving; most parents don’t want their young children behind the wheel of a car.  But an amazing number of people put guns in the hands of children as young as 3 or leave the guns where a toddler can pick it up. 

We all have different ideas and styles of parenting, but one thing stands alone and is universal throughout nature:  a parent’s primary job is to protect a child until he or she is old enough to do a fair job of it on their own.  To say that believing this is threatening the rights of all good, honest, god-fearing American citizens—is to say that there is something terribly wrong in the United States of America.