Blizzards Past and Present

I just happen to be reading a biography of Ella Grasso this week. In 1974 the wise voters of CT (including me!)     elected Ella the first woman governor to secure the position in her own right. I’m especially interested in Ella because, a few years ago, I moved to her hometown. I’ve been trying to figure out just where she lived for a while now. I had it narrowed down to one street of modest homes about  a mile from me. Finally, Jon E Purmont’s biography  of Ella pinpointed the exact address: 13 Olive Street, across the street from her parents’ house at 12 Olive Street.

Ella’s first term as governor  put her in charge of the State’s response to the Blizzard of 1978, an epic storm that cast “nearly two feet of snow,” over three days, February 5 to February 7.  Coincidentally, today, thirty-five years later (almost to the day!) the Blizzard of 2013 rivals the 78-er with about the same amount of snow having fallen in half the time.

I thought I was on top of this weekend's storm. Yesterday, as the snow fell gently but steadily through the morning and afternoon, I kept a path open for Winnie, my elder doggie. I shoveled an inch or so at a time, through the day, figuring this would keep the snow removal “doable” in the morning. Last mini-clean-up ensued during Winnie’s last “run” for the night – about 9 PM. That’s when I noticed the wind blew stronger than during the earlier part of the day.

Off to bed reading Ella, and then off to sleep, I woke up in the middle of the night. The snow- glow through the window, so typical of a nighttime  storm,  drew me to take a peak outside. Flakes weren't falling. Not down, anyway. Sheets of whiteness fiercely flew horizontally, before my eyes. The sight bordered on the preternatural.!



Hmmmmmmm

Took a while for me to get back to sleep with that image frozen in my mind, accompanied by the howling of the night’s idiot wind. By 7 AM, when Winnie was ready to do her morning thing, I got up to open the back door. A wall of snow stood before her doggie eyes. The barrier  piled up past my thigh. This was just one of many mighty high piles throughout the yard that drifted far above the official two feet that had accumulated overnight. Pre-shoveling my backyard driveway through yesterday hadn't made a bit of a difference. My driveway and yard were impassable.



Best neighbor in the world

Today, when I talked to the best neighbor in the world (after he had snow-blown my driveway) he said he had been up at 3 AM too. Unlike me, who just took a peak outdoors, he went outside and watched one inch . . .two inches . . . three inches accumulate before his eyes. What had taken a full day to accumulate earlier took only minutes in the middle of the night! 

This afternoon, tired from snow-clearing and tired of 24/7 TV coverage of the blizzard, I picked up the Grasso bio where I left off, the start of her second term election year. I was reminded how nine months before the election Ella prevailed in a Mother Nature vs. Mama Grasso blizzard showdown. The Governor  took “full charge of the emergency operations." Even spent one night “catching a few hours of sleep on an office sofa” in the emergency headquarters. For the sake of safety, she closed the roads for three days, made herself available to press and media, and got President Carter to send federal troops from Fort Hood, TX to help the Connecticut National Guard with clean-up.

I've decided to put the bio aside a few days.Now where did I put  Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer?

Repeating My Sandy Hook Promise . . .

Click here to order

. . . to have conversations on all of the issues . . .

Who would have thought Stephen King, master of contemporary American horror and, some would say, gore, would so deliberately enter the American debate on gun control?

 Not only does his creatively sinister mind wage in on the issue that has been pushed to its tipping point by the Sandy Hook tragedy last month; he does so with precise measures of common sense and just a touch of the macabre. It’s as if this writer of extreme fiction took the Sandy Hook Promise with one hand placed over his heart and the other atop a copy of Carrie.

The acclaimed author of real and psychological horror does not suggest repealing the Second Amendment’s Right to Bear Arms. King's Kindle single Guns, published this month, offers a concise rationale that  boils down the issue of gun violence and control to three “reasonable measures” that would curb gun violence 

• ·         Comprehensive and universal background checks
• ·         Ban the sale of clips and magazines containing more than ten rounds
• ·         Ban the sale of assault weapons such as the Bushmaster and the AR-15

As a longtime teacher of the argumentative essay, I’d give King an A+ on his essay (an accolade he can add to his National Book Award in 2003), not just  because I agree with him, but because he presents his case so well. It’s worth $.99 just to see how carefully he did his homework (research) and structured his argument.*

Yet, it is not King’s rhetoric I am most impressed with. It is the personal narrative that opens the piece about steps he took in the late 1990s, almost fifteen years before Sandy Hook. That was when he pulled Rage, a novel he  wrote in 1977 (under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman), out of print because it had come to be loosely connected to four different teenagers who committed school shootings.

King addressed the difficulty he had making this choice in a keynote address  to the Vermont Library Conference in 1999, clarifying he did not feel that, just because these troubled teenagers had copies of Rage, they committed the shootings. “My book did not break them or turn them into killers; they found something in my book that spoke to them because they were already broken,” King said.

King’s statement reveals what rational Americans know: there is no simple cause and effect to maniacal acts of violence, acts that take a greater toll when guns are accessible. Yet, even though King believes in the First Amendment's Freedom of Speech as well as the Second Amendment, he agreed to surrender a portion of his right to free speech, because, as he states in Guns, “I did see Rage as a possible accelerant, which is why I pulled it from sale. You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it.”

King admits regretting having to remove the book from, essentially, the reach of deranged teens, but he goes on to say he did it because it was the right thing to do.

Let’s look at this: In King’s case, the morally right thing for him to do was to voluntarily give up a bit of his First Amendment Right – Freedom of Speech – even as  essential as that right is to a writer.

With King as a model of reasonable concession, it should not be too much to ask an adherent of the Second Amendment, the Right to Bear Arms, to voluntarily give up the bit of the arsenal that has repeatedly become the mass destroyers of innocent lives. Innocent lives like the 20 first-grade children and six adults of Sandy Hook Elementary School who were gunned down because of a lethal mix of mental illness, accessible weapons, a culture’s penchant for violent entertainment, etc., all of which King addresses in Guns  -  just as he is compelled to address  the most real horror he has ever put to mind: the “gore-splattered rooms and hallways (of Sandy Hook Elementary School) when the first responders entered them."

*proceeds of King's Kindle Single Guns goes to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Promising

Oh the power of the human spirit. The ability to work that which binds folk to folk and dares to redirect a grieving  community to a teaching community – a  community that has turned its misery into a mission to teach a nation how to untwist heart-wrenching tragedy to straightforward action. Not remain tangled in the mire.

The townspeople of Newtown, CT (where the horror, the horror of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred just one month ago) these grief-stricken townspeople are determined to have the force of their collective good supersede the evil act of a crazed gunman who took twenty-six innocent lives, twenty of them first-graders, the rest administrators, faculty, and staff.

In an attempt to refocus their grief, the town has renamed its Newtown United group - Sandy Hook Promise. This change signals a brave shift of direction from (understandably) down-in-the-dumps to a forward thrust that hopes to reshape a culture that has insipidly glorified violence, forsaken the mentally ill, and refused to take responsibility for reoccurring tragedies resulting from the combination of these two faux pas.

By forging common ground and common sense, Sandy Hook Promise not only sets a new direction, but explains itself in words as apolitical as the promise that commits so many young girls to be responsible for what they say and do, so many boys to keep themselves, mentally awake and morally upright, and so many couples to have and to hold each other, for better, for worse,  'till death do they part.

Help ingrain the Sandy Hook Promise as deeply as these other promises into our culture.

Start by repeating along with the Newtowners:

Our hearts are broken;

 Our spirit is not.

And it is with this knowledge

 that we are able to move forward

 with purpose… and strength…

 This is a Promise

 To support our own

 our families, our neighbors, our teachers, our community

 with dedication and love

 as well as the material and financial needs they will require

 in the days ahead.

This is a Promise

To truly honor the lives lost

 by turning our tragedy into a moment of transformation.

 This is a Promise

To be open to all possibilities.

 There is no agenda other than to make

our community and our nation a safer, better place.

 This is a Promise

To have the conversations on ALL the issues

 Conversations where listening is as important as speaking.

 Conversations where even those with the most opposing views

can debate in good will.

 This is a Promise

 To turn the conversation into actions.

 Things must change.

 This is the time.

This is a Promise

 We make to our precious children.

 Because each child, every human life is filled with promise,

 and though we continue to be filled with unbearable pain

 we choose love, belief, and hope

 instead of anger.

This is a Promise

 To do everything in our power to be remembered

 not as the town filled with grief and victims;

 but as the place where

real change began.

 Our hearts are broken;

 Our spirit is not.

This is our promise.

Continue by sharing this, so that others along with you can officially make the pledge at http://www.sandyhookpromise.org/

White Out

Weekend snow slows the holiday pace . Hartford Courant map

The non-stop holiday pace was upon us. Christmas had replayed itself over and over again at my sister-in-law’s house (two weeks ago), my daughter’s house Christmas Eve, and my brother’s Christmas Day, all back and forth over about 250 miles. When I settled in back home, the day after Christmas, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law from California flew in just an hour or so before an ice storm. The family re-gathered then and again yesterday.

Whole lot of visiting going on. So much so, it almost turns into a blur. A merry blur, yes, but a blur nevertheless.

A snowstorm broke up yesterday’s afternoon gathering. After a week or two of driving here to there, and back again, in the fast lane, there was no choice but to slow up on the road. With inches of snow steadily accumulating, we said our goodbyes and crawled home. Took me twenty minutes, twice as long as usual. Would have taken my daughter and her family a couple of hours, but the storm was so intense, they stopped halfway – at her mother-in-law’s house – for a spontaneous overnighter. They had passed just too many spin outs and abandoned cars on the highway.

The snowstorm slowed the season down a bit , whited-out the evening obligations. Will get me to stay put a day or so. Take in the purity of the snow and the season.

Give the Gift of Comfort

I bet you haven’t completed your holiday shopping yet. There probably are a few names on your list especially difficult to shop for. They are the ones who aren’t into the merriment of the season as much as the memories of past seasons; the seasons before they suffered the loss of a loved one whose absence has made every holiday season since incomplete. Or maybe it’s a number of losses of family and friends. I think that as we get older, we get filled with our losses.

These special names on your list might do well with a gift of comfort that comes from reading a memoir of loss and recovery. I suggest my memoir of loss and recovery Staying Alive: A Love Story, nominated for the 2012 Christian Small Publishers Book of the Year.  Called, "a beautiful reminder of what really matters," the book also received a Readers Views 2012 Award and the recommendation of the American Association of Health Care Professionals.

You can read an excerpt and readers' comments on Staying Alive: A Love Story, available in print and ebook formats, on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the iBooks Store. For even more information on the book, go to my website.

Staying Alive: A Love Story might be the right read for a special person on your holiday list. The one seeking comfort as much as joy.

When Will We Ever Learn?

wWill we ever look at a six-year-old the same way again? Will we ever feast our eyes on the child’s spontaneity and spunk without thinking of 20 kindred spirits? Twenty children caught up in their morning lessons: sounding out storybooks, counting beyond their fingers and toes, arts-and-crafting, singing seasonal songs.

Will we ever be able to keep ourselves from then snapping our mind’s eyes shut, contorting our faces into countenances of disgust and sorrow, as we recall the horror that invaded the world of of twenty first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School?

Will we remember to keep in our hearts the other children and teachers of Sandy Hook? Hundreds, besides the twenty children and five educators who lost their lives, who - every day, as survivors-  will relive the terror they felt as they crouched in hiding or ran to the firehouse for sanctuary.

Will we finally come to our senses about the lethal mix of guns and mental illness ?  In the last few days President Obama and former senator Joe Scarborough have  eloquently voiced the tipping point Sandy Hook has tragically brought the nation to, the President during the memorial service in Newtown Sunday night and the senator at the start of his morning show, Monday.

Will the rest of us then reopen our eyes to the statistics that have been mounting for far too long,? The numbers linking kids with guns ( listed below). Newtown's  gunman was only 20 years old.-a  troubled young person still living with his mother, whose life he took using her gun, before moving on to Sandy Hook Elementary School with her arsenal in hand.

KIDS AND GUNS: THE FACTS

Each year, there are 34,000 gun-related deaths in the U.S. How many of those deaths are children, and has that number increased in the last few years? Here are the facts.

Safety Expert Gavin de Becker has found in researching his books, The Gift of Fear and Protecting the Gift that:

• Everyday, about 75 American children are shot. Most recover –- 15 do not.
• The majority of fatal accidents involving a firearm occur in the home.
• Gunshot wounds are the single most common cause of death for women in the home, accounting for nearly half of all homicides and 42 percent of suicides.
• An adolescent is twice as likely to commit suicide if a gun is kept in the home.
• More teenage boys in America die from gunfire than from car accidents.
• Gunshot wounds are now the leading cause of death for teenage boys in America (white, African-American, urban, suburban).

Researchers at familyeducation.com have collected the following statistics on kids and guns:

• Twenty-nine percent of high-school boys have at least one firearm; most are intended for hunting and sporting purposes.
  Six percent say they carry a gun outside the home.
  The National Institute of Justice, 1998
• From 1980 to 1997, gun killings by young people 18 to 24 increased from about 5,000 to more than 7,500.
  During the same period, gun killings by people 25 and older fell by almost half, to about 5,000.
  The US Department of Justice
• There are about 60 million handguns in the United States.
  About 2 to 3 million new and used handguns are sold each year.
  US Senate Statistics
• Nearly 500 children and teenagers each year are killed in gun-related accidents.
  About 1,500 commit suicide.
  Nearly 7,000 violent crimes are committed each year by juveniles using guns they found in their own homes.
  Senator Herb Kohl, sponsor of the safety lock measure.
• In 1994, every day, 16 children age 19 and under were killed with guns and 64 were wounded in this country.
  National Center for Health and Statistics, 1996

Will we ever learn?

As Senseless as it Gets



Hartford Courant photo of Sandy Hook service

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting is about as senseless as senseless can get. After killing his mother at home the murderer travels to the school to deliberately target the kindergarten students.There is still a question as to his mother's connection to the school.

The more we hear about this horrific crime, the more incomprehensible it gets.  

Four trauma units were readied at Danbury hospital. Over 80 staff members waited for an expected influx of injured. Only a handful arrived. Most of the 28 fatalities (mostly children) had died at the scene.  

This all happened at a time when the parents of most early elementary school children worry more about challenges to their sons and daughters belief in Santa Claus, than their safety at school. Yet, less than two weeks before a Christian holiday that celebrates the birth of a Child, twenty Sandy Hook five-year-olds have been robbed of their lives. Their surviving schoolmates, stripped of their innocence.

The hurt will sting even more as the shock factor wears off and even as it begins to heal. As the feeling comes back we must start to try to make some sense of the senseless. Look deep into the most obvious causes of the tragic effects: troubled individuals, troubled families, troubled times and the too accessible means to act out one’s inner demons: guns. Ask ourselves how we can prevent mass killings of innocent lives, a crime that occurs more and more often.   

But for now, for this weekend, and through the weeks of this holy season that has turned to a mourning season for our nation, let us pray for the peaceful repose of the children and adults who lost their lives and for the comfort of those who loved them.