politics – Page 7 – beckycochrane.com

they wanted to go to school

Here are the names and details of those who died in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24 at the Robb Elementary School shooting.

Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, 10
Alithia Ramirez, 10
Amerie Jo Garza, 10
Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10
Eliahana Cruz Torres, 10
Eliana “Ellie” Garcia, 9
Jackie Cazares, 10
Jailah Nicole Silguero, 10
Jayce Luevanos, 10
Jose Flores, 10
Layla Salazar, 10
Makenna Lee Elrod, 10
Maite Rodriguez, 10
Miranda Mathis, 11
Nevaeh Bravo, 10
Rojelio Torres, 10
Tess Marie Mata, 10
Uziyah Garcia, 8
Xavier Lopez, 10
Eva Mireles, 44, teacher
Irma Garcia, teacher, 46

I follow Annie Lennox on Instagram and she posted observations from Gloria Steinem dating back to 1999 which address gun culture in the U.S. While other countries might share some of these characteristics, they don’t have the abundance of and ease of access to guns that we have in this country.

Jotting some thoughts of my own here:

“Mental illness” is a simplistic answer and ignores the truth that many, many people live with mental and emotional illnesses and never massacre people or inflict bodily harm on others. Please do not stigmatize people who struggle with mental illness.

Automatic weapons of the type that can kill so many so quickly are not hunting weapons. They are not for protection. They are meant to kill humans efficiently in mass numbers. I grew up with hunters and soldiers all around me. None that I ever knew had these kinds of weapons in their homes. They are battlefield weapons. They, and large capacity magazines, began increasing in sales to non-military and non-law enforcement personnel in the mid to late 1990s.

School shootings ONLY (death totals do not include the shooters, and the injured are not listed here):

COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL, April 1999, 13 dead
RED LAKE HIGH SCHOOL, March 2005, 9 dead
WEST NICKEL MINES AMISH SCHOOL, October 2006, 5 dead
VIRGINIA TECH, April 2007, 32 dead
NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY, February 2008, 5 dead
OIKOS UNIVERSITY, April 2012, 7 dead
SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, December 2012, 27 dead
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA, May 2014, 6 dead (includes both gun and stabbing victims)
MARYSVILLE-PILCHUCK HIGH SCHOOL, October 2014, 4 dead
MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL, February 2018, 17 dead
UMPQUA COMMUNITY COLLEGE, October 2015, 9 dead
SANTA FE HIGH SCHOOL, May 2018, 10 dead
OXFORD HIGH SCHOOL, November 2021, 4 dead
ROBB ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, May 2022, 21 dead

they wanted to buy groceries

I just don’t have it in me anymore. Nineteen children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas. We don’t yet know their names.

So here are the names and details of the ten people killed in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York on May 14:

Roberta A. Drury of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 32
Margus D. Morrison of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 52
Andre Mackneil of Auburn, N.Y. – age 53
Aaron Salter of Lockport, N.Y. – age 55
Geraldine Talley of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 62
Celestine Chaney of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 65
Heyward Patterson of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 67
Katherine Massey of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 72
Pearl Young of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 77
Ruth Whitfield of Buffalo, N.Y. – age 86

Saturday Scraps

It’s been a strange week, one of those filled with good things and not-okay things. It’s as good a time as any to clean out things I’ve saved on my phone. For whoever needs them, in whatever way, some Saturday scraps for your consideration.

Like this one that I can use to console myself during insomnia.

Maybe I could count whales?

This is so true:

Continue reading “Saturday Scraps”

Just Jack

Me and Jack just want to stare into space and are not feeling the posting vibe today. ALTHOUGH, let me note, today is Rhonda’s birthday, and we hope to be celebrating it this weekend. It’s also Star Wars day, which is always fun on social media, especially animals dressed as characters from the films. Those are fun and good things.

On the flip side, the date is a somber one for me. We lost a friend to AIDS on May 4 in 1995, and for most of my life, the date has meant the shootings at Kent State in 1970. There’s a 1981 made-for-TV-movie about the incident based on the book by James Michener which I read back then. It was depressing and maddening. The movie was filmed near the town(s) where I lived in Alabama, and someone we knew was in it. I’ve seen it only once before, so I watched a copy on YouTube tonight that’s poor quality for some of the sound and some of the night scenes.

That incident was a perfect storm, and I feel like over the decades, we’ve seen too many of those. It makes me sad when I read people on social media from around the world who say they’re afraid to visit the U.S. anymore. Some countries issue travel advisories to their citizens about coming here because of gun violence, and travelers are warned:

The small-town girl who tried to process Kent State in 1970 could never have predicted this is where we’d be now.

Tiny Tuesday!

I was purging some things from a footlocker and consolidating some things from my parents to put in there, when I found these tiny gifts tucked inside. I’d long wondered where they were! They’re beautiful, beaded bookmarks made by Tom’s mother for each of us, and I photographed them next to some novels you may remember.

This book turned twenty in October of last year. HOW IS THAT TRUE?

Meanwhile, this denim-clad dude turns twenty in January of next year. My gosh, TJB would be paying some steep tuition to put both Daniel and Adam through college.

As for April reading, I sure didn’t meet the number I read in March. I spent a lot of time working on the fifth book in the Neverending Saga, plus we spent more time with friends in April than in previous months, so I’m not mad.

Here’s the April book report.

One of the few books I read in 2020 was Barbara Neely’s Blanche on the Lam, the first in a series of four that I bought and downloaded as ebooks. Though I hadn’t previously heard of her, when Neely died in March 2020, many writers and booksellers whose accounts I follow on social media mentioned her and piqued my interest in her work. I enjoyed that first book, but like so many others in the TBR pile, the series fell victim to my pandemic non-reading issue.

I decided to make the rest of the Blanche books part of my April reading. Blanche White is a middle-aged, dark-skinned Black woman who juggles her job as a domestic worker with raising her late sister’s children, maintaining a network of friends, being wary of but not hopeless about romance, and doing a bit of amateur sleuthing. The books are somewhat light on the mysteries but rich in commentary about social and political issues such as violence against women, racism, class boundaries, and sexism.

I love Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti series’ characters and their relationships. I feel like Venice is another character. I’m always happy to visit it all again in her mysteries. She never disappoints.

I think I have two more to read in Leon’s series; I’m trying to make them last a bit longer.

I read the tenth (most recent, from 2019) in Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce series. Flavia is always a delight, and the new private investigation firm opened by her ‘tween self with her father’s loyal friend and servant Arthur Dogger will hopefully keep this series going, though Bradley has made no promises.

I also read some nonfiction.

Published in 2017, reading it post-2020 election was a bit surreal. A mix of memoir and optimism about our potential as a nation and as citizens.

Metamorphosis

In its metamorphosis from the common, colorless caterpillar to the exquisite winged creature of delicate beauty, the butterfly has become a metaphor for transformation and hope; across cultures, it has become a symbol for rebirth and resurrection, for the triumph of the spirit and the soul over the physical prison, the material world. Among the ancients, [it] is an emblem of the soul and of unconscious attraction towards light. It is the soul as the opposite of the worm. In Western culture, the butterfly represents lightness and fickleness.*

Next door to Houndstooth Hall this morning, roofers are working on our neighbor’s house. Roofing is loud: the hammering, banging, dropping of shingles; the calls of the workers to one another. Inside, the dogs’ reaction is also loud, and while I can modify how much they can see and are aware of, there are frequent, outraged outbursts that all of this should be disturbing their peace.

The dogs don’t have my appreciation, despite the noise, for the job next door. It means something is being repaired. My neighbor has the means to afford it. Work is being given to people with a hard job. They’ll be paid for it, and that money allows them to pay for their own roofs and the needs of the families who live under those roofs. This is the noise of something that is working, something that has value beyond its immediate reward to my neighbor.

It does mean I don’t have quite the best environment for writing, even though I got a great night’s sleep, which I always hope for because it means I’ll have a sharp mind when I awaken, but I see that as an opportunity to adapt.

On my birthday, my mother-in-law sent the butterfly she drew that you see colored above. She based the butterfly’s pattern on that on the Stone of Turoe, Lochgrea, Galway, Ireland, which has particular significance to her, her family, and their origins.

Later…

It was a pleasure to color Mary’s butterfly this morning while I finished listening, on Apple Podcasts, to the Renegades: Born in the USA Spotify podcasts featuring conversations between Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen. It was a riveting journey, to hear these two discuss so many parts of their lives, both with commonalities and differences, as related to childhood and definitions of masculinity; race, war, family and fatherhood with strong partners; country, careers, and the larger picture of America. Some of the conversations were painful. Some gave me insights into the hearts and consciences of the characters I write. I compared my own American story to theirs. I got other perspectives of the power of determination, the frailties we share as humans, the personal and cultural reasons we have to always look forward and feel hopeful. The need to recognize the better natures in ourselves and in others.

All is metamorphosis.

The podcasts were worth hearing on many levels. Now, the roofers are still working but are not as noisy, the dogs have been out and seen Pixie and Pollock, and all is mostly quiet inside. Time for me to get back to the Neverending Saga. Hope you’re all having a good hump day.

*Description of Metamorphosis from The Dictionary of Symbolism, originally constructed by Allison Protas, augmented and refined by Geoff Brown and Jamie Smith in 1997 and by Eric Jaffe in 2001.

More inspirations

I’m starting with a thank-you to Mark, who after I posted about one of my birthday gifts wondered if the Barack Obama/Bruce Springsteen Renegade podcasts were still available. I checked, and they are. I intended to listen to only the first one before I began writing yesterday, but then I pulled out one of the coloring pages I’d been hoping to do so I could color while listening. Without even thinking about the Neverending Saga, I suddenly got clarity on the set of chapters I’m currently writing.

I ended up listening to the first three podcasts, and sometimes I couldn’t color because tears kept me from seeing the page. The things they talked about, their own stories beginning in their childhoods… The way they made me reflect on the beliefs and principles that underlie who I am as a human… The way my thoughts went to the things I hope to convey about artists as a writer… The fact that I’ve lost people from my life not because they died, but because I died to them by being honest… The knowledge that there are still people in my life who I know dismiss my beliefs or disagree with what I write, which means there will always be a barrier of silence between us on certain subjects, because I’m not ready to be dead to them, too, and that’s a strange path to navigate.

Anyway, I’d already decided on this coloring page a couple of weeks ago, and I knew when I got around to coloring it, I’d think about the Police song “Message In A Bottle” the entire time, since it’s always been a meaningful song to me. As I listened to the podcasts, I decided to add this lyric to the coloring page, collage style, because everything in the above paragraph made me consider how lonely it can be hoping someone will understand my voice and support my need to use it, and instead of telling me that I’m wrong, will at last least celebrate me for being who I am and be glad that I still want to use my voice and that I still think, or at least hope, there’s a reason to use it.

Only hope can keep me together
Love can mend your life
Or love can break your heart

Boss(es)

It’s been a somewhat somber week, so days without a “theme” are tougher for me to choose anything to post.

Tom gave me this for my birthday last month. I wasn’t able to listen to any of the podcasts of conversations between Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama, so I’m hoping that when I have time to delve into this, I’ll get to learn some of the things they talked about.

I’ve never hero-worshipped. I’ve always known the people I admire have flaws, and I’ve never expected perfection. They’re human. Through the decades, my instincts have been validated by people’s actions and their character–in both directions, but I choose to amplify men, not monsters.

Tiny Tuesday!

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2022 at 1:6 scale, here is another of the dolls from Mattel’s Inspiring Women Series.

I found this doll I think last October when I was in Barnes & Noble. The associate who checked me out was surprised and said he hadn’t been aware the store had the doll and he thought it was great. I got the sense that he might be going upstairs to put one on hold for himself–not because he collects Barbies, but because of his admiration for Eleanor Roosevelt.

Roosevelt was the longest-serving First Lady in the U.S. White House as wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but there is so much more to know about her. I recommend a crash course via her Wikipedia entry to get a sense of the complex woman she was and the human rights advocate she became.

My mother, having been a child during the Depression, was a huge supporter of both FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. On one of our vacation trips to Callaway Gardens in Georgia, my parents took Lynne and me to visit The Little White House, the Roosevelts’ home in Warm Springs, Georgia.

I’m sure that trip contributed to my interest in the Roosevelts, as well as being folded into my own early passion for women’s rights and civil rights. As always, for me, knowing about the more human qualities of a trailblazer actually makes a person more inspirational. We are not saints; none of us are without flaws. Roosevelt made changes in herself and in the world that remind me that we can all be better, do better.

I can’t let this date pass without expressing my desire to pick up the phone and wish one of my more personal life’s inspirations a happy birthday. I miss you and love you always, MVP.

Photo Friday, No. 796

Current Photo Friday theme: Identity

I had so many questions as a child. How did he get away with it? The booth was GLASS. No one saw? No one noticed a man wearing glasses and a suit going into the booth and exiting a caped hero? Where did his clothes go?

Maybe I understand it better now. Heroes walk unseen among us every day; nonetheless, they change the world.

Today was Take Your Action Figure To Work Day. This guy kept me company while I wrote.