Halloween is the season for spookiness. People turn their front yards into fake graveyards, hang plastic skeletons in trees, and carve grotesque faces into pumpkins.
In a recent scarecrow contents in a local park, a dog walker walked skeleton dogs.
This horror decorating can be a way to channel our fears. We live in times fraught with true terror, be it events in the Middle East or in our own country.
On October 25, that terror, true terror, not made up fake terror, hit the small city of Lewiston, Maine. That evening there was a horrendous double mass shooting (18 innocents died in two locations) at the hands (and gun) of a 40 year old man. It was followed by nearly 48 hours of lockdown for residents until it was established that the shooter had taken his own life.
As someone who worked in a community that experienced a mass shooting in 2009 I feel a connection of sorts with each of these communities. I also know that when the national news networks leave the scene, the community is left to deal with its grief.
Back in 2011, my spouse and I vacationed in Brunswick, Maine, which is about 20 miles from Lewiston. It was a beautiful, peaceful area.
The horror I felt on October 25 and the following days was mixed with the good memories I had of that area, including our walk across a bridge with a history tied to the city where I grew up.
I also think of Tampa and the Ybor City shooting of this weekend, a terrible end to a Halloween gathering. Thinking of Tampa also brings back memories of the two years I lived there years ago. Ybor City was where I discovered my beloved strawberry onions.
Gun violence. A national nightmare we aren't waking up from.
This Halloween we ask: Will this be our fate forevermore?
To answer your question, I think it will be your fate forever more, and only get worse. The gun violence in your country is disturbing and unfathomable, not just the mass shootings with their sickening frequency, but the daily carnage too. It has caused many of us to stop visiting. We used to cross the border two or three times a year but we haven’t visited the USA in eleven years. Sandy Hook was the tipping point for us.
ReplyDelete...the world is full of real horrors!
ReplyDeleteOn Halloween we’re supposed to escape into fake horror fantasies encause the real horrors are too overwhelming
ReplyDeleteI fear the answer is "yes." If more than 6,000 children can be killed or injured by gunfire (in the US) in a single year (2022) and nothing changes, nothing will ever change. I can't remember who said it, or find the quote right now (I think it was from an English man), but the gist of it was that once America accepted the mass deaths of school children and did nothing about gun control, what possibly more would it take?
ReplyDeleteI have a theory. The reason they don't get rid of the guns is because the ones who have the power to do that are so insulated (and paid off), that they don't *get it*. So, until one of those mass shootings touches them directly, they will continue to offer platitudes and do nothing for us.
ReplyDeleteSo much fun looking at these scarecrows
ReplyDeleteI have a post coming up about something very similar, also written because of all of these mass shootings. I think the answer to your question lies in the make up of Congress.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand the blindness so many have around this issue in our country.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Liz. The ones in power has stakes in the manufactering too.
ReplyDelete