First, we had some issues at the Post Office (as we have to
mail everything back east…of course, everything is east of us, as we’re about 500
feet from the Pacific Ocean). And there
were a few other personal issues, and then there was a shooting at the
Clackamas Mall in nearby Portland which put folks on edge and distracted from
my writing mission, in that I found myself online checking for information and
posting condolences to some friends who knew people who knew people who lived
near people who worked at the mall and wasn’t that tragic and horrible and I
also spent time arguing (not successfully, or course) with some people who
certainly did NOT see this as the time to discuss gun control as everyone knows
that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, etc. The shooting, obviously, is more important as
a discussion point, but the Post Office issue took more of my personal
time. Still, there was no blogging.
And so, on Friday, as most of Oregon learned the details of
the mall shooting and the mall planned to reopen with extra security, I made
revised plans to get back to the blog and write what I had planned to write…and
then, some kids in Connecticut were cut down by another shooter, and here we
are.
Yes, life goes on, provided you’re still alive, and if you’re
reading this, we are. We can thank our
lucky stars, our deity, whomever we wish to thank, but here we are. We’ll talk poker another day, but for now, we
just might want to focus our attention on (a) the state of mental health care
in this country, and, (b) we might finally have that discussion on guns that we
always never get around to having. This
isn’t a call for control, or regulation, or new laws. It’s a call for a discussion. There is a reason some don’t want the discussion,
let along control, regulation, or laws.
That can’t be allowed to continue.
We need to tal, and we need to talk now.
To borrow a popular phrase from the sixties – if not now,
when?
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