I’m all about distraction and happiness today, despite yesterday’s awfulness. It is the holiday season and as much as my heart breaks and tears well up at the thought of those classrooms, my reality is that my two children were not there…they are here, and they are demanding that we finish the annual cookie-baking-palooza. I am so thankful for that.
This morning, I purposely spent a little time on pinterest….(the one social media outlet that didn’t make me cry) and discovered the botanical portraits of what I see when I run.
I love them all, but picked these few to share with you because they started to restore some of the holiday spirit that I have sort of lost. The top one is called Red M&M (Saga seeds) then just below that is called Twinkle (Lygodium Microphyllum) and just above here is Reindeer (Selanginella Plana). As you scroll down you will see Snowy (Syzygium Zeylanicum) and then Sleigh Bells below that.
I hope you have a nice weekend.
I can’t help but to to also say, as publicly as I can, here….that I hope that a classroom full of dead kindergartners is the last straw (it is for me)…I am not quite sure yet what to do with all of my emotion and anger, but I want to make sure it is channeled toward rational change….change in how we deal with and help mentally ill people and change in how we regulate gun ownership and change in whatever other ways we need to change to make mass shootings and horrific violence like this happen far less. I have no idea what that means so am wondering if you have some thoughts? Where do we go from here?
images from what I see when I run.
The problem is not gun ownership, it’s the the educational system. Kids get taught all this feel good b.s. now. Nobody wins or loses. Nobody does better than anybody else. It’s created generations of people who don’t know how to handle themselves when they don’t get their way. That in turn means everyone has to suffer when they do.
Connecticut already has tough gun control laws. All this does is prove that control is not the problem.
Bob Costas created an uproar among gun advocates two weeks ago after a Kansas City Chief player killed himself and his girlfriend with a gun when he said on-air that there was something wrong with the gun culture that has enveloped this country and that it has led to far more tragic endings than happy.
The Kansas City incident was followed by a shooting at an Oregon mall, and then the horrifying massacre at Sandy Hook. Yet gun advocates still deny there is a problem. Arm the teachers they shout, and a picture of an armed Israeli school teacher makes the rounds of Facebook.
It is time to demand something be done to stop the madness. Forty percent of the guns in this country are sold without any background checks. We must call. We must write. We must shout it from the highest mountain. We must be louder than them. More importantly though we need to smile more, laugh more, say more kind words, give more hugs….That’s the only way things will truly change.