Happy 10th AnniversaryIt's been 10 years since schools began to lock their doors and make visitors sign in. The best commentary I can make is to direct you to this site by Ed Stein, of the late Rocky Mountain News. Ed is one of the few editorial cartoonists not to be fired by his paper. Instead, his paper simple ceased to exist.
And so Denver lost this voice. Unless they look on line.
I don't know if he'll ever be as eloquent as he was in probing the disturbing implications of that horrible day, 10 years ago Monday. I hope he never gets another chance.
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In Slate, Dahlia Lithwick muses on, among other things, why so many acts of violence occur in April, citing a surprising number of recent examples. (She goes on to muse about a lot of other things, including the dangerous stirring-up of the disafffected far right that is currently going on among certain leading Right-Wingnuts.)
In comments in response to the story, a poster self-identifying as a psychologist claims that "as the daylight increases it is common that people suffering from bipolar illness are inclined to move from depression to mania. It is often in this state, one that may include agitated and psychotic symptoms, that some people become energized to act." Is she right? No idea, but it is a very interesting theory as to why these incidents cluster in April in North America (Canada as well as the US).
Of course, she also says that tighter gun regulation wouldn't help the situation, which is, regardless of your theory of why it happens, just wrong.
Those are some powerful cartoons. I admire Stein for tackling it head on while it was so, so raw.
ronnie
Monday is also the tenth anniversary of my mother's death.
I was teaching a very early morning class (7:30) that quarter, and arrived at my office at 5am, as usual, that day, to find a somber message on my voice mail: mom had died two hours earlier.
I left messages for my classes to be cancelled, and drove back home,up into the mountains, to start making travel arrangements to Florida to hang onto my Dad (who himself was on the quick slide to death)... and the horrid events in Colorado accompanied me on the car radio throughout the trip, and throughout the day.
Ten years later, I still haven't completely sorted out how I feel about that day, or what lessons I should take from that day, or how I should deal with that day.
I never will. I hate April 20th.
Short addendum: I had to find out about Mom's death at work because we had to take our home 'phone off the hook the night before. Dad, in the latter downward slide of dementia, had been calling at all hours with rambling, unreal streams of horrid verbiage for several weeks, keeping us from any approximation of a restful night. We finally cut the cord, so to speak, at just the wrong time.
Sherwood, I find it very healthy that you have blogged so often about your parents without going into this aspect, or at least dwelling upon it. Whenever, however or even whether you process the final act, the fact that you don't let it overwhelm the larger story is encouraging.
...you have blogged so often about your parents without going into this aspect... And so I went and did it in comments on your blog, which seems sort of cowardly in retrospect, doesn't it?
More seriously, that last chapter in their lives was a very short one, really more of a scene fragment than an entire act, and it's easy for me to keep it separate from all the rest.
Sorry, Mike. I've been biting my tongue as long as I can.
Sorry, Ronnie. The problem isn't a lack of gun control laws. It is a lack of enforcement of the many, many laws that we already have on the books. They both violated many state and federal laws in acquiring and modifying those weapons.
Regards,
Dann
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