Today is Valentine's Day, a day that has an interesting history. It's the holiday of love, but today, I'm here for a grimmer reason.
It's also the fifth anniversary of the school shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland Florida. So many shootings before. So many shootings after, including one I woke up to this morning, in Michigan.
Each has its unique hurt.
It is only recently that I learned that the Parkland murderer (I will not name that person), during his spree, shot into a classroom where a lesson on the Holocaust was being taught. The symbolism is not lost on me.
The shooting as a whole took a little less than four minutes, left 17 dead, and a school full of traumatized students, parents, and staff who will remember this day for the rest for their lives.
More and more, I think we are in an endless loop, not knowing if this national nightmare will ever end.
But who knows when and how the cycle of gun violence will ever end.
Maybe this male bright red Northern cardinal knows. Back on February 4, it was feeding in our snow filled yard. Cardinals, many believe, are spiritual messengers.
On Sunday, a Northern Cardinal male sat on our fence, looking like it was deep in thought. Perhaps he was thinking of Douglas - the person, and the high school.
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, the woman this school was named after, was an American journalist, suffragette (she was born 30 years before women got the vote in our country) and conservationist, who was known as the "Defender of the Everglades". She lived to the age of 108.
I'm sure she would have been heartbroken to know what happened in her namesake high school, but proud of the advocates some of the survivors have become.
There's nothing more to say that hasn't already been said. Except, perhaps, to note that an end to gun violence would be the best memorial ever to those who have suffered in some way.
...Rochester has the Anna Murray-Douglass Academy School, named after the first wife of American social reformer and statesman Frederick Douglass, from 1838 to her death.
ReplyDeleteScott Beigel, the teacher who died at Parkland, grew up in the same town as I did, the same town where I raised my children. I didn’t know him, but I feel like I did. So this one feels personal.
ReplyDeleteWe need to do better.
It would be so easy to do, to get rid of the guns. Other countries have done it. But there are a handful of people who make a profit off of them, so they will fight tooth and nail to keep them being sold. And they pay off way too many people.
ReplyDeleteI am so very, very tired of all the killing. Very, very tired.
The pain never quite goes away. It is renewed every time someone else takes up a firearm against innocents. Truly heartbreaking.
ReplyDeleteIt's up to congress to enact gun safety laws, but it's up to all of us to vote for people who will.
ReplyDeleteRed cardinal stands out among the white snow
ReplyDeleteIt'll get worse if we keep focus on the weapon, because when these people choose other weapons they can either kill more people or kill in more ghoulish ways (the kids in the car shoved into the lake, the stomping on the highway, the cars ploughing through city sidewalks). Even the pathological hate some of these killers have been living with is not a common factor--some choose victims from groups they've hated (ethnic groups, political opponents, close associates) while others kill strangers. If we look at the real common factor, the drugs, then there's hope.
ReplyDelete