Can We Do It? Part 2

On the last day of 2012, I made a commitment in this post to do what I could about the violence in our country. I ended the blog with a wish list for the year.

Number one on the list was "a sense of safety for everyone."  

It's clear that we still don't have a sense of safety. But I did a few things to enlighten people, through the very well attended Town Meeting on Violence at Quail Ridge Books, and a blog post here and there.

Mostly, though, when I sat down to write at Can I Do It? I ended up writing about something else. I felt overwhelmed and under-equipped to address the issue. 

At the end of 2013: 

Our state has gone backward in addressing gun issues, women's issues, mental health issues, and education issues.  We in North Carolina have got a mountain to climb to get back to zero.

The news is still full of gun violence.  Children are still rescued from untenable situations (if they make it out alive). Health care is still expensive and the "non-profit" Blue Cross and Blue Shield is still hiding profit in the salaries of its executives. People are turned away as they desperately seek help for taking care of their mentally ill family members, some of whom kill themselves or commit crimes shortly thereafter. Video games and television and movies are more violent than ever.

Maybe there's a little something we can still do this year to make a difference.

Today, on Facebook, someone posted an article from the Huffington Post. It said that each of the twenty-six victims of the Newtown tragedy has left behind a legacy in the form of either a new non-profit or support for a favorite non-profit of the victim.  So I'm going to do the only thing I know to do right now: make a donation to one of them.  I'm choosing the Catherine Violet Hubbard Foundation because Catherine was the niece of someone I know.

I hope that each of you will choose one also. If you do, please post here or on Facebook which one. If you choose it for a special reason, tell us that too. I hope you will share this post on your Facebook page or in emails or by word of mouth and that your friends and family will donate too.

Click here to access the Huffington Post article with links to all the websites.

Thank you in advance. 

Thoughts on an Anniversary

The sun has come up on another September 11.

The despair I felt on that day and the months that followed has faded, but I still carry with me the knowledge that we're vulnerable, we Americans who have assigned ourselves the task of ruling the world, taking care of everybody else at the expense of our own children, who put money before everything else, push our dogmatic opinions about how people should believe on those perfectly happy with their own beliefs. We who look the other way at some atrocities but shine the spotlight on the ones that we will benefit from preventing. We who have a few leaders who are in some ways as corrupt and unresponsive as the mightiest dictator.

And yet, and yet, I still believe that America has the power to be important in the world in all the right ways. A belief that is based on looking around at my friends and my churches and my children, and seeing an idealism that can't be suppressed.  A belief that is reinforced when one church prays solidly for twenty-four hours for peace, another sends a group to do work for the impoverished, when I hug my daughters good-bye, when I kiss the cheek of a friend or hear another say I must write my Congressman because she believes the system still works. A belief that becomes more imperative as the old generation in my family dies away and we bring new life into a world that must be supported by hope and compassion.

This morning I stood in my kitchen thinking about this day twelve years ago.  This song came on my IPod and cornily enough a hummingbird flew through the honeysuckle on my deck. Signs of sorrow and hope to a person who constantly looks for signs.

Once when I was a child spending the night with my grandmother, I was very homesick.  I started crying, and didn't want her to see me.  She came into the room and asked me what was the matter.  I remembered hearing that people cried sometimes when they were happy, so I blurted out, "Oh Granny, I'm just so happy to be here!"

That story has become part of my legend, but it also expresses in a way how I feel today.  Homesick for the days when we hadn't experienced September 11, 2001, but at the same time happy that I have my family and friends and the belief that on a small scale--person to person--we're doing it right.

A Sense of Safety

I remember calling my dad one day and in the middle of the conversation he got quiet.  I heard him take in a breath and realized he was crying.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's that child, Jessica.  The thought of her buried alive," he said between sobs.

Since the December shootings at Sandy Hook, I've shed a few tears for children I didn't know too. The tornado this week, which killed nine school children, brings back the same image of children huddling in their classrooms and hallways in fear. Also in the recent news is the child who along with her mother and two other women lived a "Room"-like existence.  And the man on trial for the rape and murder of the five-year-old child whose mother sold her to him.

Except for the times I worried about my dad's temper (and snakes and Cuban missiles), I felt safe as a child. I cannot imagine, unless they are completely sheltered from the news, how children today can feel such a sense of things being okay. And as much as I'd like it to be different, events and circumstances that are scary for children aren't going away.

So what can we do?

We can't change the weather, but we can be grateful for compassionate, quick-thinking teachers who saved many children during both the Sandy Hook shooting and the Moore tornado.  We can't be aware of every abusive situation a child finds him- or herself in but we can, as a community, provide and financially support mental health services for families in crisis.  We can thank school counselors, who talk to children and find ways to get them outside assistance and help them help themselves.  We can if at all possible shelter children from the news and violence that is in the media.  When we can't shelter them, we can educate ourselves about how to talk with them about their fears.

Several months of work are coming to fruition this Tuesday, May 28, at Quail Ridge Books and Music.  We have assembled a panel of experts - David Crabtree from WRAL-TV representing the media, Representative David Price, and Dr. Assad Meymandi who will speak for the mental health community, to address some of the causes of violence and how we the public can bring about change. I hope you will join us. Clay Stalnaker and I will moderate.

The impetus for putting this program together was the Sandy Hook incident. But I also want to help re-create a time and place when children felt safe in their schools, in their communities, in their homes.  They deserve this, and those of us with power - the adults - owe it to them to find ways to provide it.

Casting About, Eyes Open

When I looked through my camera lens and took the picture above, I failed to see what looks like an elf's face on the far right of the wood.  I had to open my eyes to the details of the print before it came alive.

This is what has happened to me since my last post of 2012.  Well, that and the flu, which gave me a lot of television/newspaper/magazine time.  I've opened my eyes to anything that will shed light on the reason that we are having more crimes like the one in Newtown.

Today I'm going to briefly list some of the things that I saw, without comment; detailed conversations (please talk back) will come in later posts.

First there was this comic in my Google Reader:

There were articles in the newspaper.

1. One event from Columbus, Ohio, has made quite a splash in the press and on Facebook, about two high school football players who are charged with raping a 16-year-old girl. Last week, an unverified video was released showing one young man laughing about the accuser.

2. In an article discussing the biggest problems our new governor faces, mental illness was #6. "North Carolina's decadelong mental health reform effort has, by most assessments, failed with mentally ill people crowded into adult care centers, local hospitals, and county jails, or put on the streets because there are not enough community facilities." - Rob Christensen,  The News and Observer, January 6, 2013.

3. In the entertainment section, there was a note that "Texas Chainsaw 3-D had overtaken "The Hobbit" (see my earlier comments about The Hobbit here).

There was a conversation I had with a friend about how he and his children went to the movies over the holidays.  The violence in the movie was offensive to him, but not to his children.

There was the mother sitting across the table from her young son at Whole Foods.  He chatted animatedly to her while she checked her phone.

There was a conversation I had with an African-American woman about the culture of the angry white male.  She pointed out something I hadn't thought about: White males are now a minority in this country.

There was talk and more talk about guns.  Our guns, the guns or lack thereof in other countries, the hoarding of guns and ammunition, our right to bear arms and what it means.  There was the idea of building a strong anti-gun coalition to face down the gun lobby, the idea of barring politicians from taking gun money, the discovery of gun legislation buried in the Obamacare bill.

On Sunday morning, I happened on Oprah's Sunday morning show.  Marianne Williamson was her guest, and she said three things that struck me. I want to end with them (I paraphrase):

1.  We must have a shift from ordering things along economic principles to humanitarian principles.

2.  We can't wait for the majority; a small group with a radical idea can make change.

And most important in my mind:

3.  When an adult female feels threatened, or when "her children" are threatened, she will not stop until she has remedied the situation.

Can WE Do It?

Final thoughts as the year ends:

Last night I went to see The Hobbit.  It was not The Hobbit of my teenage imagination. It was violent and gory and to the young children in the next row, I imagined, the stuff of nightmares.

"How did you like the movie?" my husband asked as we exited the theater.

"I couldn't stop thinking about those small kids behind us," I said.  It was totally distracting.  Every fang, every scream, everything flying from the screen in 3D seemed too much for them. And if it wasn't too much for them, if they weren't sensitive to the horror, that was even more distressing.

I talked for a few minutes about the way the motion picture association and movie makers manipulate movies and ratings to gain the most profit from them.  How parents don't preview movies, ignorantly send their children to see things they shouldn't see. I would have probably sent mine to The Hobbit with a babysitter or gone with them from reading it years ago.

I don't do war movies, but I love war novels.  When I read, I am limited by my imagination whether innately or deliberately.  In movies it isn't like that.

I came back to those children in Newtown and the boy that killed them.  What can I do? I keep asking myself, feeling small and helpless in the face of the media and their lust for money, the gun people with their powerful lobbies and big money, the decreasing funding for mental healthcare.  What can I do? I asked my husband.

"You have a blog," he said.

Yes, I do have a blog.  I've posted every week in 2012 and fifteen hundred people have read my posts.  Not a huge amount - I know bloggers who have that many visitors in a day - but that's fifteen hundred people I think are thoughtful and concerned.

I go back to the title of this blog: Can I Do It?

In 2013, I'm going to ask CAN WE DO IT?  I'm going to do research about the big issues that surround tragedies like Newtown and find ways to make small changes that will have a big impact. I'm going to put together town meetings at my local bookstore. I may ask people to guest write; my daughter who was a schoolteacher has strong opinions.  I'll post at least twice a month about what I've learned.

In the theater, I found myself thinking, "In my day...." and it made me feel old.  But the truth is, in my day, nobody came into the schools and shot classrooms of young children.  The worst you faced in the theater was people spitting on you from the balcony.  There weren't any malls, but I could ride the bus downtown and spend the day window shopping with my friend and come home with nothing worse than clothing lust. I want some of that back.

I hope you'll be an active participant in this undertaking. There's real power in the WE of CAN WE DO IT?

A sense of safety for everyone.  Prosperous in the ways that count. Working to change what's not working. Lucky in '13.  My wishes for us in the coming year.

RSVP

Next week I want to get back to my last post about the doctor and the soldier, but not tonight.

I've thought all day about what to write here.  It seemed ridiculous that I would post about anything except what happened in Newtown last Friday.  And yet I couldn't think of a single pithy thing to say.  I've looked in the faces of those children and adults who were murdered that day, I've cried like all the rest of us. I've felt helpless, blamed guns and video games and lack of funding for mental health just like everyone else.

I decided to turn to you. I wonder if you would comment here about how you feel changed by what happened and if you feel called to take any action on a personal, local, or national level.

I'll go first: I'm going to see if our local bookstore will help me put together a town meeting to discuss how we can work on the local level to make some changes.  I'm going to educate myself about the issues.  I'm going to keep looking at the faces of the brave people who died trying to prevent deaths and the children who could not be saved.

And now you....RSVP.

One little girl's determination

Today I was in a craft store, and there was a mother with four children around the age of four or five. They were following her; all of them had their backs to me. In the midst of them, was a little girl with pink crocs, straight blond hair swinging side to side as she walked with her crutches. Maybe muscular dystrophy or cerebral palsy, but something had rendered her legs weak and unable to support her. I never saw her face, but in her movements there was determination and pride; she was keeping up with the crowd.

Something about that little girl has touched me deeply. I know that children are cruel, and worry that she will be ridiculed and hurt because of her disability.

I thought that maybe a part of every child's education should include monthly "disability days" where one-half of the class becomes blind or deaf or disabled for a day and the other half helps them make it through. Where parents of children who have committed suicide because they couldn't live with the jaunts and judgment of other children another day come and speak of their pain and loss. Where young people who have succeeded in spite of their setbacks and disabilities come and speak.

We need to use every tool at our disposal to develop compassionate children who will become accepting and caring and nurturing and non-judgmental. Who will reach out to those who are different instead of tease them. Who will seek out children who have been hurt and abused instead of shunning them.

My heart aches for the children, like that little girl, who are trying to keep up in spite of what life handed them. I hope and pray that the world will be kind to them.