Source: Google images

Have you ever noticed that the United States population as a whole seems to suffer from some sort of societal forgetfulness?  Something bad happens, we’re saddened and then life goes on. Too often life goes on without us doing something to prevent that bad thing from happening again.  It’s a rather perverted way of national living but that does seem to be our mode of operation: a desired, collective amnesia.  

Perhaps we do it as a form of mental health preservation or perhaps we do it because to do anything else would go against our belief in ourselves as the best, the brightest, the grand, great hope for the planet.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not denigrating the US, I’m simply saying that we need to yank our heads out of the sand and realize that in the case of gun violence we are not the hope, we are the problem.  We are our own worst enemy.  We are killing ourselves; we are killing each other in horrific ways and numbers.

We have to change the thinking, change the laws, and change the lawmakers who refuse to pass laws that can assist in halting the carnage.  Sometimes politicians have to finally step in (or we elect new ones who will). We must find the ways, the means, and the backbone to stop people from killing each other and killing the most innocent among us in our schools.  If politicians are too selfish, too ignorant, or too afraid to grasp that concept, it’s time to vote them out.  Period.

The list…updated

Wikipedia has a list of school shootings. The list changes often, being constantly updated.  Here are a few of the school shootings in the US since 1966:

1. University of Texas at Austin Tower Massacre – August 1, 1966
2. Kent State shootings – May 4, 1970
3. Jackson State killings – Jackson, Mississippi, May 14-15, 1970
4. California State University, Fullerton Library Massacre – Fullerton, California, July 12, 1976
5. Parkway South Junior High School shooting – Saint Louis, Missouri, 1983
6. Stockton Massacre – Stockton, California, 1989
7. University of Iowa shooting – Iowa City, Iowa, 1991
8. Simon’s Rock College of Bard shooting – Great Barrington, Massachusetts, December 14, 1992
9. Richland High School shooting – Lynnville, Tennessee, November 15, 1995
10. Frontier Junior High shooting – Moses Lake, Washington, February 2, 1996
11. Pearl High School shooting, Pearl, Mississippi, October 1, 1997
12. Heath High School shooting, West Paducah, Kentucky, December 1, 1997
13. Jonesboro massacre – Jonesboro, Arkansas, March 24, 1998
14. Thurston High School shooting – Springfield, Oregon, May 21, 1998
15. Columbine High School massacre – Littleton, Colorado, April 20, 1999
16. Heritage High School shooting – Conyers, Georgia, May 20, 1999
17. Santana High School – Santee, California, (near San Diego, California)
18. Appalachian School of Law shooting – Grundy, Virginia, January 16, 2002
19. Rocori High School shootings – Cold Spring, Minnesota, 2003
20. Southwood Middle School tragedy, Miami, Florida; February 3, 2004
21. Red Lake High School massacre – Red Lake, Minnesota, 2005
22. Amish school shooting – Nickel Mines, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 2006
23. Platte Canyon High School shooting – Bailey, Colorado, 2006
24. Henry Foss High School – Tacoma, Washington, January 3, 2007
25. University of Washington- Seattle, Washington, April 2, 2007
26. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, April 16, 2007
27. Delaware State University, Dover, Delaware September 21, 2007
28. Success tech Academy, Cleveland, Ohio, October 10, 2007
29. Notre Dame Elementary, Portsmouth, OH, February 7, 2008
30. Louisiana Tech, Baton Rouge, LA February 8, 2008
31. Mitchell High School, Memphis TN, February 11, 2008
32. E.O. Green Junior High School, Oxnard, CA February 12, 2008
33. Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL February 14, 2008
34. Kelly Elementary School, Carlsbad, CA October 8^th, 2010
35. Louisiana Schnell Elementary School, Placerville, California, February 2, 2011
36. Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut, December 14, 2012
37. Taft Union High School, Taft, California, January 10, 2013
38. Osborn High School, Detroit, Michigan, January 12, 2013
39. Stevens Institute of Business and Arts, St. Louis, Missouri, January 15, 2013
40. Hazard Community and Technical College, Hazard, Kentucky, January 15, 2013
41. Chicago State University, Chicago, Illinois, January 16, 2013
42. Price Middle School, Atlanta, Georgia, January 31, 2013
43. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 19, 2013
44. La Salle High School, Cincinnati, Ohio, April 29, 2013
45. Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy, Decatur, Georgia, August 20, 2013
46. Carver High School, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, August 30, 2013
47. Sparks Middle School, Washoe County Nevada, October 21, 2013
48. North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, North Carolina, November 2, 2013
49. Stephenson High School, Lithonia, Georgia, November 3, 2013
50. Brashear High School, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, November 13, 2013
51. South Dakota School of Mines & Technology Rapid City, South Dakota, November 26, 2013
52. West Orange High School, Winter Garden, Florida, December 4, 2013
53. Arapahoe High School, Centennial, Colorado, December 13, 2013
54. Edison High School, Fresno, California, December 19, 2013
55. Liberty Technology Magnet High School, Jackson, Tennessee, January 9, 2014
56. Hillhouse High School, New Haven, Connecticut, January 13, 2014
57. Berrendo Middle School, Roswell, New Mexico, January 14, 2014
58. Delaware Valley Charter School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 17, 2014
59. Widener University, Chester, Pennsylvania, January 20, 2014
60. Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, January 21, 2014
61. South Carolina State University, Orangeburg, South Carolina, January 24, 2014
62. Angeles Valley College, Los Angeles, California, January 25, 2014
63. Rebound High School, Carbondale, Illinois, January 27, 2014
64. President Theodore Roosevelt High School, Honolulu, Hawai’i, January 28, 2014
65. Tennessee State University, Nashville, Tennessee, January 28, 2014
66. Eastern Florida State College, Palm Bay, Florida, January 30, 2014
67. North High School, Des Moines, Iowa, January 31, 2014
68. Bend High School, Bend, Oregon, February 8, 2014
69. Salisbury High School Salisbury, North Carolina, February 10, 2014
70. Charles F. Brush High School, Lyndhurst, Ohio, February 10, 2014
71. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, February 12, 2014
72. San Jose State University, San Jose, California, February 21, 2014
73. Georgia Regents University, Augusta, Georgia, February 22, 2014
74. The Academy of Knowledge Preschool, Miami, Florida, March 12, 2014
75. Benjamin Banneker High School, College Park, Georgia, March 25, 2014
76. D. H. Conley High School, Greenville, North Carolina, April 9, 2014
77. East English Village Preparatory Academy, Detroit, Michigan, April 11, 2014
78. Saint Mary School, Griffith, Indiana, April 21, 2014
79. Paine College, Augusta, Georgia, May 4, 2014
80. Paine College, Augusta, Georgia, May 5, 2014
81. Georgia Gwinnett College, Lawrenceville, Georgia, May 8, 2014
82. John F. Kennedy High School, Richmond, California, May 14, 2014
83. University of California, Santa Barbara, Isla Vista, California, May 23, 2014
84. Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington, June 5, 2014
85. Reynolds High School, Troutdale, Oregon, June 10, 2014
86. Greenwood Lakes Middle School, Lake Mary, Florida, September 10, 2014
87. Pewaukee High School, Pewaukee, Wisconsin, September 18, 2014
88. Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana, September 27, 2014
89. Albemarle High School, Albemarle, North Carolina, September 30, 2014
90. Fern Creek Traditional High School, Louisville, Kentucky, September 30, 2014
91. Langston Hughes High School, Fairburn, Georgia, October 3, 2014
92. Marysville Pilchuck High School, Marysville, Washington, October 24, 2014

That’s a partial list of US school shootings.  School shootings.  Ninety-two – and the list keeps growing.  A list of shootings – killings – in places that should be – must be – free from violence and murder.

There should be only one enemy in a school, college, or university and that is ignorance.  A school must be a neutral zone as far as hate, fear, jealousy, and violence are concerned.  Certainly, and more than anything else, students are not the enemy.  Regardless of hair, clothes, race, ethnicity, disability, music, piercing, cars, political leanings or anything else that someone will use to set themselves apart (or use to fit in), a student is not the enemy. And neither are the teachers, the staff, or the administrators.

Here’s an interesting question: what will teachers think when going to work this morning?  Will they wonder, “Who has a gun?” Each of those women and men will have a number of thoughts and feelings known only to them.  But do you want to know the great thing?  Today they’re in that classroom still optimistic about the future.  In classrooms around the world, they are still teaching.  And they will be again tomorrow. And we will be there with them.  Our job is to make it safer for all of them.  And we have to do it now.

The entire list from 1764 to now is at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States 

The above uses information and quotes from Wikipedia, Associated Press, ABC News, Baltimore Sun, previous columns, and additional news sources   

Don’t be any weirder than you need to be

Grigori Rasputin (Wikimedia commons; public domain)

Karen Carpenter, back in the early seventies, sang a song which had the line “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.”  It always struck me as rather sad, that line, because neither rainy days nor Mondays ever particularly bothered me.  I like rainy days.

Now I suppose that had I been raised in a place that rained a great deal I would feel differently.  Then again, maybe not.  I lived in South Florida during my middle and high school years and it rained there a lot.  During the rainy season, from about the beginning of June until mid-September, Florida could be swimming in the rain (excuse the pun).  The days were hot and muggy and then, most every afternoon, came the downpours.

The car windows would steam up with condensation, the roads would get deep with water, and, if you weren’t careful, you could drown the engine and find yourself stuck in a busy corner.  This would especially happen if you tended to drive old clunkers as I did when first learning how to drive.

The Renault

Looking back over my life so far, I have noticed that I tend to remember things based on the car I had at the time.  The very first car that I called my own was a 1964 Renault with rather large patches of rust. The car was cream-colored with a red interior.  It was a horrible car, but it was mine!  Friends and I would load it up with radios, blankets, food, and Cokes and head for the beach.  Unfortunately, it leaked water around the windshield, had a push-button transmission that sometimes worked, and the poor Renault didn’t last very long at all.

The Hillman

My next car was a Hillman.  These odd cars were made in England and my father found this particular one from an old gentleman who lived down the street.  It was a four-speed, with gear shifter on the steering column.  You moved the shifter in the opposite way you learned. Why? England, of course.  One of the rear doors had to be wired shut, and water made the car break down constantly.  You would think that an automobile manufacturer in a country as wet as Great Britain would see to it that the engine compartment would stay dry.  But not Hillman, any puddle at all and the engine conked out.  This car lasted about as long as the Renault, which is to say not long at all.  But I liked it and my friends and I drove it everywhere.  I don’t remember who I sold the Hillman to, but I hope that by now they have forgiven me.

As a teenager I always wondered why my father would suggest old cars for me, his favorite (okay, only) son.  Now, of course, I know why.  I was a car destroyer.  If there was a sand dune to drive over, a swamp to drive through, a street to slide down in the rain, I would be there.  I have always had a love affair with cars; I didn’t want to shine them, I wanted to play with them.

The Pontiac Catalina

I was into my third car before I reached seventeen.  This was a four-door Pontiac Catalina; a red monstrosity that at one time had air conditioning that worked and an automatic transmission that didn’t leak.  By the time I got my hands on it, however, the tranny leaked like a sieve, and the air hadn’t worked in years.  One good thing this car did have was one heck of an engine.  This multi-hundred cubic inch V8 engine would roar and take off down the road like a race car from your wildest dreams.

The Pontiac didn’t last long, either.  It sucked down the gas, the transmission needed too much work, and the end came soon.

The Volkswagen Bug

By now I was ready to graduate from high school and would need a more reliable car.  So Pop and I went looking and found a sky-blue Volkswagen.  This car was almost new, in great condition, and would be, or so we thought, perfect.

In that Volkswagen I had four accidents, put in a new engine and replaced the front end more times than I care to count.  That car was repainted so often that, well, let’s just say that the body shop never had to order that color. They kept it on hand for me.   It took four cars to get me through high school.  I’m not proud of that fact, but there you go.

What does this have to do with social media? Simply this: the time I used to spend calling, driving, searching and scrounging for a part can now be accomplished (usually but not always of course) in a matter of minutes texting and scrolling through websites on my phone. Need a funky old part for a funky old car? Even the car dismantlers are online. How cool is that?

Photo: CARS Image Encyclopedia