Now let me see, a man is caught carrying an assault rifle at an appearance by the President of the United States and he is still walking around freely? A news organization has films of other civilians carrying guns at an appearance by the President of the United States? They are all walking around freely? THERE IS SOMETHING GRAVELY WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE!
In 1963, there was a man in Texas carrying a rifle during an appearance by the President of the United States. That rifle carrier shot and killed the President of the United States. Why? Because he could? That infamous day in history still sticks in my mind and it always will. I was alone in the newspaper office that day. Because of my college class schedule, I reported to the newspaper office at shortly after 11:30. Officially, the office was closed but in order to get my scheduled work hours completed, I went in that day during the lunch break. The office and print shop were quiet...everyone else had gone to lunch. I had story notes to work on and in the quiet of the office, I could stare at the typewriter, get my thoughts together and write. I remember the phone ringing and I thinking it may have been my editor, W. Foster "Pap" Adams, I answered the phone. The voice on the other end of the line asked what I had heard about Dallas...that some one had said the President had been shot, All I could say was that I didn't know for sure and since I was the only person in the office, I could check but as soon as the next person came in, I would call back and let them know.
I remember thinkinbg that this couuldn't be true...shooting a President didn't happen in a civilized world..after all this was 1963...not 1865...people didn't do such crazy stuff...did they? I called my roommate and asked her to bring the portable radio when she left our dormitory room on her way to class. I remember Marguerite arguing with me...she was listening to the news. I remember telling her that it was my damn radio and it had batteries in it...to just bring it when she came by the newspaper office since she had to pass that building on her way to class.
By the time I actually had the radio..it was obviously true,,,not only had someone shot the President of the United States...someone had killed the President of the United States. The news was confirmed and I like many young people (and some not so young people) across the nation was in a state of shock. How could this be? If "they" could shoot and kill John Fitzgerald Kennedy in broad, open, daylight in Dallas, Texas, in front of a crowd.....were any of us safe...anywhere...anyhow? Students banded together in small groups...we desperately needed the proximity of one another...that proximity gave us the illusion of safety,,,maybe we could protect one another,,,more reasonably..we felt an illusory safety in numbers.
That day and every day until John Kennedy was laid to rest in Arlington Cemetery...we clung to each other and to our mentors..our teachers,,,our elder friends. None of us wanted to be alone...we stayed in our small groups..we grieved the loss of innocence,,,the anguish of reality hit hard. Little did we realize that this was only the first of three asassinations that would disrupt our illusion of safety over the next five years.
The governmental powers assured us that our president would be safe..that he would be protected and that we would not experience such a calamity again. I think I actually believed that until it was announced that Lyndon B. Johnson would speak the the University of Kentucky in the spring. Since I had never seen a sitting president, I wanted to attend this speech. Our newspaper went through all the pre scribed steps to get appropriate credentials for me (according to a two page letter from the U.S. Secret Service). The day arrived and I dressed (professionally) to catch the bus from Berea to Lexington. Since I would be catching the last bus in that evening, I grabbed my jeans and a sweat shirt, rolled them up military style (like my brother had taught me) and placed them in my handtooled leather shoulder bag that my father had given me. My camera (that precious Argus C-3 that I had purchased from a photographer friend) was put atop my clothes and locked in my bag. Off I went to the UK field house...to the appropriate press entrance...where I pulled out my credentials...expecting to be searched or at least checked in by the Secret Service. NOBODY checked me in...nobody searched my purse...all I did was walk in. (That's right - I walked in unchallenged, unverified, unchecked and I walked out steaming mad!) I don't remember what President Johnson said that day but I remember telling "Pap" Addams that there was no way I would write a story on the speech but I had plenty to say. That was my first editorial and he gave be my precious by-line....focused pointedly on what I considered a total lack of security surrounding the President of the United States!
Here we are today in the 21st Century. Lunatics are irresponsibly carrying guns and assault weapons near where our PRESIDENT is speaking and they are not arrested...not stopped...allowed to go on about their lunatic way! The 44th President of the United States is a black man and whether a threat is real or merely implied doesn't make a damn bit of difference, Don't hand me that garbage about the Constitutional right to carry a weapon. My father was a gun collector, my brother was a gun collector, I was taught to handle a gun when I was quite young. I don't need to brag about my competence with a weapon and I don't need to carry a weapon in a public place (Of course, I am a black woman...I would have been thrown under the jail house if I had been caught publicly with a weapon.... permit or no permit!) What happened to responsibility,rational thought, and common sense? Why buy the excuse..."because I can!" Many individuals in black communities have had guns stripped from them but these other people can carry guns around our PRESIDENT and nothing is done? There is obviously a disconnect here.
Lets get my position clearly defined. For years I was the gun owner in my house. My father gave me my first gun when I was single and lived in a northern Ohio city. One night some would be thief tried to break in my house. This person was not successful for two reasons. The strong, solid wood door was double bolted and there was a set of sharp teeth barking loudly on the other side of the door.....which imjediately resulted in all the lights in the house being turned on. Immediately...breaking in that house was too risky. The next day I drove home and picked up a shotgun and shells loaded with buckshot. If ever I was forced to load and shoot that gun, the intruder would probably still be alive but in a great deal of pain as the shot was picked out of his torso in the emergency room! There are other factors here that must be considered. Did I know how to use the gun? Yes, and that was a lesson learned from the respnsible adults in my childhood. REMEMBER...THAT GUN IS NOT A TOY! Later in life, when my children were small and I was on the highway between the East Coast and home in the mountains, there was a weapon in my vehicle...a loaded one that I could get to if necessary. Did I know how to use that weapon? NEVER POINT A GUN AT ANOTHER HUMAN BEING UNLESS YOU INTEND TO USE IT! The last gun I owned, I kept for sentimental reasons...it was my father's and since I am now old...he no longeer lives except in memory. The key to gun ownership is RESPONSIBILITY.
I do not think carrying an assault weapon in a crowd, in an urban area is responsible ownership. Personally unless one is a weapons dealer (or an assassin), why own a weapon that is designed to kill other human beings? Why would any sane individual carry a weapon to a political rally? The implied threat is so obvious that a child would run screaming and given the history of the last sixty years in this country, I would be leaving promptly. If I have to carry a weapon to a political rally to feel safe....I don't need to be there and neither does any other rational person. GUNS ARE NOT TOYS nor are they justification for bragging rights. There is a huge difference between sportsmen who own hunting weapons or folk who keep a secured gun to protect the safety of their home and these lamebrains who play "dare me" with their "because I can" excuses. "Methinks something is rotten in Denmark" oh,oh....I mean Arizona!
Monday, August 17, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The Family of Man
Our family is of mixed blood and I choose not to get into a discussion of just how “mixed” we are. That ultimately does not matter, We are who we are. The defining word is FAMILY and if you are murky of thought enough to step on the toes of one of my family members, I just may have to step back on yours (on your foot, not on your family members)! That is the essence of family .... we all hang together for survival purposes or we hang separately and do not survive. It seems to me that this credo is also a significant part of the foundation that underscores the United States of America. There is a viciousness of spirit afoot in these political times that frankly exemplifies a callousness of spirit …an inability to be in the least sensitive to the feelings of others, an inability to exhibit anything other than the ultimate selfishness, a totally ego driven monologue!
Homeless people ( and that could easily be you or me or almost anyone we know) are being arrested for being on the streets of many cities and yet, they have no place to go, One of my sons watched a police car (from a nearby small town) pull into the city and immediately pull over to the curb. From the bar separated back seat, a thin man with his pitiful belongings contained in a (what was once) an olive green military rucksack was put out of the car. The policeman executed an illegal u-turn and returned in the direction of his community of origin. His former passenger stood for a moment on the city sidewalk and then finally picked up his rucksack and trudged off in the general direction of one of the local homeless shelters. If he was hungry, he dare not be caught asking for food..if so…he would be arrested for illegal vagrancy in that particular urban jurisdiction. If he had no verifiable address, he could not even ask for food stamps or even a survival welfare payment…what could he do? This old fellow with the rucksack was not as lucky as the elderly man who stopped me one day as I came out of Arby’s in the down town area (of the same city) and asked, oh so quietly, if I had enough money to get him something to eat. Luckily on that day, I had a twenty in my jeans pocket which I handed to my son with the request that whatever the elder man wanted, would be purchased. To my surprise, the elder asked for only a child’s meal. Quietly I told him that he would have anything he wanted that he did not have to take the cheapest meal on the menu. Very gently he replied that this was all he needed…that he really couldn’t eat any more. He got his food, my son and I went our way as the elder man went his way. I have never seen him since that day but I often find myself wondering about him and wondering if I could have done more. He could so easily have been a member of my family or anyone else’s family. He belonged to someone...somewhere.
During the Great Depression ... a lone man came down the holler (hollow to you non Appalachians) to my grandparents house. He walked along the creek through the pasture and crossed the bridge between the hen house and the smoke house , then knocked on the kitchen door. My grandparents opened the door, invited him in and asked if he was hungry. They fed him from the family’s food that day and seated him at the kitchen table. He had only one other request. He’d noticed that the family had a barn and a hayloft. He had been sick for several days as he rode the freight train and he was tired. Could he sleep in the hay loft that night? It would be warm and safe and spring nights in the mountains can be cold. The grandparents agreed that this would be no problem and did he need a blanket or two. He stayed several days and nights but ... just never seemed to get any better. Finally, one fateful morning when Grampa went to carry him food, he found that the stranger had died during the night. The family elders gathered together and decided that they would treat him as a member of the family and if this being so…if ever a family member was lost and broke and far from home…maybe someone else would take them in. The old ones went to the top of the mountain to the family cemetery and dug his grave. They gathered everyone together to speak Words over the stranger and laid him in the ground near the great-grandparents. As a child, I often asked Granny who this stranger was. Her only reply was that they had never asked his name…they only knew that he needed help and they were willing to help. Every Decoration Day of my childhood Granny made sure that flowers were put on the stranger’s grave just like on the graves of the rest of the family.
The wealth of our family has always been in one another…not in dollars and coins. Granny was a giant at 4 feet 11 inches and her teachings have come down through the generations. Probably the most important lesson she taught us was to be civil with one another, to never deliberately try to inflict hurt (physical or emotional) on each other or on any other human being. That lady had no tolerance for bigotry (and she had very good reasons) or for intolerance. We didn’t have to agree with one another but we did have to think, to reason, to be civil with one another because after all, “God Doesn’t like UGLY!”
Arguments are not won by distorting the truth or by lying. You don’t spread rumor or innuendo and you don’t threaten bodily harm on one another. Another statement Granny used to say was “You are your brother’s keeper!” I never realized how unique her perceptions were and as a child I probably never valued her teachings as much as I do now. I am tired of these people who will not reach out a hand to help others, who think they are too good to help the homeless, or people without health insurance, or the poverty stricken mother with small children, or even the immigrant family who came to this country seeking a better life. Seems like I want to remind these folk that unless you are a person descended from the Native American standing on the shore watching the ships arrive…we are all immigrants illegal or legal! Did anyone’s ancestors ask the Native American for permission to settle here? I thought not!
Homeless people ( and that could easily be you or me or almost anyone we know) are being arrested for being on the streets of many cities and yet, they have no place to go, One of my sons watched a police car (from a nearby small town) pull into the city and immediately pull over to the curb. From the bar separated back seat, a thin man with his pitiful belongings contained in a (what was once) an olive green military rucksack was put out of the car. The policeman executed an illegal u-turn and returned in the direction of his community of origin. His former passenger stood for a moment on the city sidewalk and then finally picked up his rucksack and trudged off in the general direction of one of the local homeless shelters. If he was hungry, he dare not be caught asking for food..if so…he would be arrested for illegal vagrancy in that particular urban jurisdiction. If he had no verifiable address, he could not even ask for food stamps or even a survival welfare payment…what could he do? This old fellow with the rucksack was not as lucky as the elderly man who stopped me one day as I came out of Arby’s in the down town area (of the same city) and asked, oh so quietly, if I had enough money to get him something to eat. Luckily on that day, I had a twenty in my jeans pocket which I handed to my son with the request that whatever the elder man wanted, would be purchased. To my surprise, the elder asked for only a child’s meal. Quietly I told him that he would have anything he wanted that he did not have to take the cheapest meal on the menu. Very gently he replied that this was all he needed…that he really couldn’t eat any more. He got his food, my son and I went our way as the elder man went his way. I have never seen him since that day but I often find myself wondering about him and wondering if I could have done more. He could so easily have been a member of my family or anyone else’s family. He belonged to someone...somewhere.
During the Great Depression ... a lone man came down the holler (hollow to you non Appalachians) to my grandparents house. He walked along the creek through the pasture and crossed the bridge between the hen house and the smoke house , then knocked on the kitchen door. My grandparents opened the door, invited him in and asked if he was hungry. They fed him from the family’s food that day and seated him at the kitchen table. He had only one other request. He’d noticed that the family had a barn and a hayloft. He had been sick for several days as he rode the freight train and he was tired. Could he sleep in the hay loft that night? It would be warm and safe and spring nights in the mountains can be cold. The grandparents agreed that this would be no problem and did he need a blanket or two. He stayed several days and nights but ... just never seemed to get any better. Finally, one fateful morning when Grampa went to carry him food, he found that the stranger had died during the night. The family elders gathered together and decided that they would treat him as a member of the family and if this being so…if ever a family member was lost and broke and far from home…maybe someone else would take them in. The old ones went to the top of the mountain to the family cemetery and dug his grave. They gathered everyone together to speak Words over the stranger and laid him in the ground near the great-grandparents. As a child, I often asked Granny who this stranger was. Her only reply was that they had never asked his name…they only knew that he needed help and they were willing to help. Every Decoration Day of my childhood Granny made sure that flowers were put on the stranger’s grave just like on the graves of the rest of the family.
The wealth of our family has always been in one another…not in dollars and coins. Granny was a giant at 4 feet 11 inches and her teachings have come down through the generations. Probably the most important lesson she taught us was to be civil with one another, to never deliberately try to inflict hurt (physical or emotional) on each other or on any other human being. That lady had no tolerance for bigotry (and she had very good reasons) or for intolerance. We didn’t have to agree with one another but we did have to think, to reason, to be civil with one another because after all, “God Doesn’t like UGLY!”
Arguments are not won by distorting the truth or by lying. You don’t spread rumor or innuendo and you don’t threaten bodily harm on one another. Another statement Granny used to say was “You are your brother’s keeper!” I never realized how unique her perceptions were and as a child I probably never valued her teachings as much as I do now. I am tired of these people who will not reach out a hand to help others, who think they are too good to help the homeless, or people without health insurance, or the poverty stricken mother with small children, or even the immigrant family who came to this country seeking a better life. Seems like I want to remind these folk that unless you are a person descended from the Native American standing on the shore watching the ships arrive…we are all immigrants illegal or legal! Did anyone’s ancestors ask the Native American for permission to settle here? I thought not!
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