88 hours

If we observed one minute of silence for every US soldier killed in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last 15 years, we'd stand here for 88 hours.

The cost of war is not money.

On this Memorial Day, the least we the living can do is pause in our holiday to honor the anguish of a thousand grieving mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, husbands, and children.  If you have been spared this burden, take a moment, right now, to remember those who were not.

Flash fiction contest special recognition

This blog post is to honor an entry in the last flash fiction contest that is sui generis.

It cannot be part of any competition. It is beyond competition. It is perfect. Dreadful, anguished perfection.

CarolynnWith2Ns

I used to be Wry Wryter.
Go ahead google me.
See, I told you. I’m still there. Sort of.
I wrote about that which suited me, until words failed.

On one December morning, a feral male took twenty-six lives, leaving all of us numb with grief and empty of understanding. In a scene from a nightmare, my daughter’s best friend heroically saved some, sadly lost others and perished in the bloody process. For those on the periphery of grief, it was incomprehensible, for the families, the pain is (still) unimaginable.

This is not flash fiction. It’s tragic truth.

a brief pause

12 people were gunned down in Paris yesterday for what they wrote, or helped publish.  In other words, one of us.

Chris Eldin, friend

Word came today, almost a year after the fact, that my pal Chris Eldin ended her life.  She and I were pals the same way a lot of you are my pals. She read my blog, participated in contests, and was generally one of the regulars.

She lived near Baltimore and once when I was headed to Charm City for a couple days we met and went to the art museum there for a morning and then had lunch together.  We hit it off and had a great time.

But sadly, blog readers can come and go. Life demands attention, circumstances change. I hadn't heard from Chris in a while but the funny thing was, I'd thought about her and our day at the art museum quite recently.

This morning I looked back through my cache of email to see when I'd last talked to her, and it had been a while.  She'd also included me in an email she sent to her friends just after her birthday three years ago:

I am in such a good place in my life, right now, and your friendships have helped get me there. All the little things that are said and done matter. They add up.

Your friendship is the cathedral I turn to.





I profoundly regret the darkness became too much for her.  I know there were people in her life who loved her and wanted to help her. Certainly her friends would have. I would have.

Now all that's left to say is that she is remembered, and missed.

To quote the also-greatly-missed Jane Kenyon's poem Happiness:

[Happiness] comes to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Raising a glass to David Poindexter

Memorial Service for David Poindexter

In memory of David Poindexter, founder of MacAdam/Cage, who died Monday, April 29, a gathering of friends and compatriots with glasses raised will be heldMay 30, at 5 p.m. at Gino & Carlo, on Green St. at Grant Ave. in North Beach in San Francisco.

Some of us at BEA  I will also raise  my glasses to him

Violence

Violence changes you.
A violent death changes a family forever.

It changes how people see you, and talk to you. And about you.
It changes every aspect of your life.

Every Christmas, every birthday, every holiday, every occasion, someone is missing.

Suddenly you're not the middle child. You're the oldest or the youngest.

Suddenly the number of siblings you have, the number of children in the family is a loaded question.

Suddenly you never hear a name without thinking of someone else who had that name.

You're now someone else. You're The One Who Lost A.

Some people find a way out of that lost and terrible new place.
Some people live there forever.


I pray today's violence in Connecticut will change us in a better way.   No one, NOT ANYONE, wants little children to be martyrs to the Second Amendment.  The perpetrators of this crime were not responsible gun owners and but it's not responsible gun owners who are the problem.


We must solve this problem ourselves.  Politicians, in the frenzied grasp of money wielding lobbyists, are unable to see beyond their campaign coffers.
We must do this ourselves.

We must come up with a solution we can all live with.

Live with.

I pray we all want that. Especially those who live in or have glimpsed today the lost and terrible land of After.

Matthew 25:36

In the last few days there has been a swirl of coverage and conversation about comments made by Governor Romney about people who "who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it."

I think it was when he disparaged people who thought they were entitled to food that I'd finally had enough.


Mr. Romney professes to be a man of faith.  I don't know enough about the Mormon religion to know if they use the Bible the same way Catholics and Protestants do.

I don't know if Mr. Romney believes as I do that the central teaching of Jesus Christ as that we do unto other as we would have done unto us.  That our highest purpose in this life is to love one another as Christ loves us.  To feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Visit the prisoners.

A teaching so simple and so elegant it can be the guide for an entire life.

And God knows we will fall short in achieving that. We try knowing we will fail.

But one of the great things about government, about OUR government, is that it IS us.  That it can act in our stead. It can make one person mighty. It can do what we alone can not.

I can not feed a hungry man in New Orleans. My government can.

I can not clothe a man devastated by disaster in Colorado. My government can.

I cannot help a child imprisoned by poverty in the rural west. My government can.


Because I believe that faith without works is hollow, I am glad to support the government doing what it is beyond my power to achieve.

Will there be mistakes, waste, fraud, downright chicanery in the allocation of resources and planning of priorities? Without a doubt.

I accept that risk. I would rather do something than nothing. I would rather try and fail, I would rather my government try and fail, than do nothing.

I pray that Governor Romney is so caught up in the craziness a campaign becomes that he said things he doesn't mean and does not believe. I pray  he has a blinding moment on the road to Damascus and realizes what he said wasn't what he knows in his heart.  Christ does not call us to feed the hungry only if they deserve it; to clothe the naked if they failed through no fault of their own.  To visit only those imprisoned unjustly.

Christ calls us to love all of God's people. There are no ifs ands or buts. No clauses, dependent or otherwise.

It is a difficult and holy calling.

But if you ask me if I can vote for a man who says hungry people are not entitled to food I can not.

We really need to stop shooting our children

Of course I'm following the story of Trayvon Martin. 

Here's what perplexes me about the response of law enforcement:

1. A man in a car reports suspicious activity.
2. He's told to not engage with the person he's reporting.
3. He gets out of the car
4. He engages with the person he's reporting.
5. He shoots the person.

How is this self-defense and imminent peril?
How exactly is this guy not arrested?
He shot someone. An unarmed someone.  On a sidewalk he went to in order to confront this person.

Leave out all the details.  Race,  age,  body size.  Leave it all out, and it still boggles my mind that there's any question of self-defense.

And if for any reason you're still thinking "well, maybe there's another side to this story" think about these two things:

Would the police have handled this differently if a black man got out of his car, shot a white kid on a sidewalk and claimed self-defense?

What if it had been your kid?


Gina Carroll says what's in my heart. Just a lot better. 


President Obama: "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon"

Stop

The weekend carnage in Arizona defies words.  Like many of you, I can't think about what happened, I can only feel. And what I feel is anguish. Raw, hot anguish that makes it impossible to look at news reports in the office because they make me weep.

It doesn't help that too many people think the best way to deal with their anguish is to point fingers of shame and blame. And others to say, God forgive us, the good folk of Tucson who were shot somehow deserved it.

Before you rush to tell me how wrong I am, ask yourself this: if a kid commits suicide do you blame the rock music he listens to?

And if you truly believe a nine year old girl deserved to be shot to death, I'm sorry, I can't think of any  rational reply.  I only pray your journey through life makes a u-turn onto the road to Damascus very, very soon.



We know what happened in Tucson. We know six people are dead, and others are seriously wounded.

We know Sarah Palin did not pull the trigger. We know Jared Lee Loughner did. And we know he's not of sound mind. 



And that is ALL we know.  We FEEL a lot.   We don't want to think and particularly not think it could take years to find out the why.  Or worse, that it might never make sense.





Please, my friends and foes alike, let us step back. This is the time for mourning. This is the time for weeping.  The time for blame is not now. 

Let us be kinder to one another, friend and foe alike,  in our collective anguish and pain.  Stop talking. Stop blaming. Please stop.

"and you should be alive to see it."

Ellen DeGeneres isn't laughing about this.  You won't be either.

I believe this with all my heart

I believe we can learn truth by reading fiction.

I believe it because people tell me it is their experience; I believe it because it is my experience.

Thus I think it is incredibly important that people who are learning how to live in the world get to read about people like themselves.

And very bad things can happen to people.

Let me be specific: I think it's incredibly important that books for teenagers about horrible subjects-rape, incest, school shootings, death- get published. And even more important that those books are available in libraries so kids can read them even if they can't afford to buy them, or don't want anyone to know they are reading them.

If I had my way, if YOU had your way, no kid would ever need to hear or see or know anything about rape, incest, school shootings, death. Not the kids we love. Not even the kids we don't.

But we live in the real world. A world we wish was different. But it's not. It is what it is.

The reason I'm talking about this today is there is a "controversery" about a book called SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson. I put "controversy" in quotes because it feels like people are using this book to make political hay, rather than actually deal with the issues the book is about.

The book is about a young woman who keeps quiet about being raped.

I wish it could be shelved in the fantasy section, but more than half of all people who are raped never report the crime.

I think it is our duty to make sure books like this are written, published, and bought. Not called "pornography" and banned.

Banning books about what real people experience in their lives makes us co-conspirators in their shame.

The reason I'm talking about this today is I read a blog post by Myra McEntire about SPEAK. I have the deepest respect for what she says, and I agree with her. Read it.

Veronica Roth's post on this subject says what I think, but a whole lot better.

CJ Redwine's post on the subject will break your heart.

Truth is not pornography. I believe that with all my heart.

When we say our hearts are broken, this is what we mean

David Thompson, a vital part of the crime fiction community, a friend and valued voice, has died.

It is shocking news, and sad beyond words.

I can't say I will miss him because I can't believe he's gone. There simply are no words that cover this.

This stunned me

I've been in and around water my entire life; years on swim teams, splashing in three oceans, countless lakes, and many rivers.

This article about drowning floored me. Please read it. Please remember it.

Yes I'm a minimalist but this isn't how I hope you pare down

Alyssa Smith, an editor and friend, lost her apartment to a raging fire yesterday. Everything, everything is gone.

She is alive and well, as are the other people who lived in houses around hers. Sadly, some of the animals did not survive.

This is the kind of catastrophe that makes me laugh at how bothered I was by the Great Email Meltdown last weekend. What a silly thing that was to fret over.

91 minutes of silence

Today is Memorial Day. Started in 1865 as Decoration Day, a day to decorate the graves of fallen Union soldiers , it has now become a national day of remembrance for all those who fell during war.

It's a irresistible platform for political blowhards of course and this year is no exception.

They like to swathe the war deaths in phrases like "noble service" and "saving freedom."

All that may be true, but doesn't make the soldier or sailor or Marine or airman any less dead.

4400 US troops have died in Iraq since 2003; 1087 in Afghanistan since 2001.

That means 10,000 grieving parents.
And grieving wives, husbands, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, sweethearts and friends.

Words may comfort, but they never remove the pain of that loss.

I am grateful we have men and women willing to serve our country, and willing to offer their lives as part of that service.

I pray we have leaders who recognize life is precious.
Perhaps instead of political speeches this year, they could simply stand silent for one second for each service member who has perished.

5487 seconds

91 minutes

And that's just this war.



Vietnam: 58,236 dead and 1740 missing

Korea: 36,516 dead and 8176 missing

World War 2: 416,800 dead

And no matter what your thoughts are about who's right and who's wrong in a war, let's all remember those numbers are only American deaths. It doesn't count our allies or the other side. It doesn't begin to count those who perished in The Holocaust or at Stalingrad. The grief and loss in war is uncountable.

Life is precious.
Let us all vow on this Memorial Day 2010 to spend it carefully.

image is Gettysburg, PA taken by Walt Hubis

Eleven Years Ago

we were rocked by the tragedy at Columbine.

The initial reporting, and the "common knowledge" about what happened there was almost entirely wrong.

We know that now because of the ground breaking, ferociously well written book by Dave Cullen: COLUMBINE.

I think COLUMBINE is one of the most important books of the decade. I think it should be required reading for every teacher, school administrator, and reporter in the country.


It's available in paperback now with new material including a 12-page afterword: "Forgiveness." with updates on three victims in very different places eleven years later, and the central role forgiveness played in their recovery.


You owe it to yourself to read it.

Dick Francis has died

I loved his books.
I read most of them many times.

It was widely believed Mr. Francis' wife, Mary, did the actual writing, and after her death in 2000, the subsequent books made me think that was true.

But I loved the books. I don't care which Francis wrote them, I loved them.

Thank you Dick and Mary Francis for hundreds if not thousands of hours of good reading.



The news came in The Telegraph today.

Don't make Santa bring a casket this year

Install/test smoke detectors in your home.
Right now.

A sad moment for those of us who love New York

Five Italian visitors to New York City died in a helicopter/plane collision on Sunday over the Hudson. A memorial service was held for them yesterday here in the city.

I'm reminded of the words of William Sloane Coffin, whose son Alex died at age 24 in a car crash.

Tired of hearing well-meaning friends say, “It is the will of God,” he responded with this: “My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die. That when the waves closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first to break.”

What We Mean When We Say We Will Never Forget