guns

Panic in Nonni World

/ momshieb / 6 Comments

This is not a funny story, but if my words are chosen carefully and cleverly enough, I hope that you’ll at least chuckle a bit.

This is how it all unfolded.

I was at home this morning, as usual, with my two grandkids and our four year old friend. We had our breakfasts and cleaned up. We played a few rounds of Elsa and Anna and then we made some ridiculously goofy and adorable paper plate turkeys. 

It was just your average day in the life of Nonni and the gang.

But suddenly, I heard something truly unexpected. 

I heard my garage door opening.

“What the absolute FUCK?” is what went through my mind, while, “Oh, my goodness” came out of my careful Nonni mouth.

Nobody was due here in the middle of the day. Not my husband, my son-in-law or my daughter. Not the guy who is going to be renovating the bathrooms, not my neighbors, nobody.

But the garage door had definitely opened. 

In the first ten seconds, I watched the reactions of the dogs. If a car that they know pulls into the driveway, they yip and dance and jump around like a couple of happy drunks. If it’s a stranger, they bark like they mean it and they both get a ridge of hackles down their normally smooth backbones.

Today, as the garage door opened? Deep barks and semi-hackles as they looked out the window into the drive. I peeked over their heads. 

And saw nothing.

No car. 

No people.

Now our garage has one of those openers with the little push button devices that sit on the cars’ visors. You can’t manually open the door. So, if there’s no car in the drive, there’s no device on a visor. Nobody should have been able to open the garage door. 

But I am not quite insane. The door had definitely opened. The dogs and I had heard it. And there was no car anywhere in sight.

Ergo: Nonni panicked. I looked to make sure that all three kids were safe in the living room. They were. I didn’t hear anyone in the garage, so my assumption was that a bad guy was standing there, listening to the sounds of Olaf chasing Anna around the ice castle.

I can’t retell the next 30 seconds with any clarity, but this is a rough estimation of what went careening through my addled old panic stricken brain:                                                                                                                           “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod…there’s a bad guy in the garage….he must have some wide band thingymadgigy that can open garage doors ….he knows we’re in here….whadooIdo? I’ll stay here with the kids and keep them safe! Whaddayamean safe? SAFE? From a crazy assed KILLER BAD GUY? I can’t keep them safe.”ˆ

By now my heart rate was approaching 200 and my head was absolutely splitting with adrenaline pain. I had a split second of complete indecision, and then for some reason, my brain said this, “I can’t hide up here with the kids…I have to go see who it is…if I hear any sound at all, I’ll just dial 911.  where’smyphonewhere’smyphonewhere’smyphone? I got it, don’t drop it, hold it tight, tell the kids to stay here, tell them to sit on the sofa, they won’t sit on the sofa! Why would they sit on the sofa? Tell them to go hide in the bedroom! No, I’ll scare them…tell them you’re doing laundry….NO! They love laundry, they’ll wanna come! Just open the frickin’ baby gate and go face the deadly threat!”

At this point my whole body was shaking. It had been roughly two minutes since we’d heard the door open. The kids were still blissfully playing, making so much noise that I knew the bad guy must have heard them. I didn’t have a real plan in my head, but it seemed to make sense that I should try to scare off the threat. I could dial for help if it got dicey. No matter that chunky old Nonni couldn’t fight off more than chipmunk at this point, it still seemed like a good idea. So I went.

Our house is a split level, so the front door opens onto a set of stairs that go down toward the basement and garage, as well as a set that go up to the living room. I crept down the upper stairs, cell phone in hand, and glanced out through the glass pane of the front door.

There was movement out there on what should have been my empty lawn!!!

I took one more slow step. I got closer to the glass. 

And there was my husband’s car, parked in the middle of the lawn. Behind it stood the man himself, pulling a bale of straw out of his trunk.

“It’s Papa!!!!” I yelled to the oblivious kids. Then I flew through the door and let the poor guy have it.

“OhSo,     The daySo

So. The day is over. Papa made it safely back to work, and I made it back into the house. All three kids made it safely back into the arms of their parents. 

After all that drama, there was no bad guy. No killer. No menacing stranger. I tried to tell myself that I had over reacted, but what else could I have thought? I couldn’t think of any other explanation for no car, no door opener but a wide open door. I started to chuckle at my foolishness, but a sudden thought stopped me:

What if I had owned a gun?

THESE are the terrorists

/ momshieb / 5 Comments

I am enraged. I am fuming. I am disgusted, upset, angry, irate, weeping, frustrated, demoralized and fired up.

The National Rifle Association, those money grubbing gangsters, have put out an ad on Facebook and YouTube that is so appalling I can’t believe that it isn’t the top story on the news.

The ad calls for violent action on the part of gun owners toward an unnamed “Them.”

It is urging NRA members to use guns against “them.”

“They” are people who opposed Donald Trump.

“They” include Barack Obama.

“They” are me, and my sons, and my friends who attended the ENTIRELY PEACEFUL woman’s march. “They” are all who have used the word “resist.”

The ad is a blatant call to arms. It is fanning the flames of division in this country. It is full of lies, full of hate, full of anger.

Just listen to the voice of the woman who narrates. She couldn’t be more bitter, dismissive, hateful or vicious.

Uzi_of_the_israeli_armed_forces

How is this legal? How is this not considered to be hate speech?

How is that our national news tonight is full of Donald Trump’s latest nasty boy tweet toward a media person (Ho fucking hum) instead of looking at THIS.

I don’t even know what to do with the fear and rage that this piece brings out in me.

I hate the NRA. I hate them. I hold them personally responsible for ALL of the young people in this country who despair and kill themselves with guns. I hold them responsible for every baby and child who is killed because a gullible parent bought into the lie that owning a gun would keep the family safe.

I hate them.

If I had to list who I fear the most, Islamic terrorists would rate way below NRA leadership.  They’d fall below my anxious neighbors who decide to carry guns into Walmart.

Please watch the ad. Please share it with thoughtful people. Please contact your representatives and your local media and tell them to label this what it is: a criminal act of hate.

 

Why Do They Call This “Political”?

/ momshieb / 13 Comments

I spent today, like so many others, listening and watching as the news outlets covered the shooting in Virginia. Congressmen were shot, so the coverage was intense and constant.

I have to write down some what I’m feeling. Otherwise, you know, I’d probably explode in a shower of tear soaked sparks.

It was terrible. It’s a terrible, horrible, awful thing for innocent people to become targets for angry, sick, armed lunatics. When I heard the news breaking this morning I cried. I held my hand over my mouth. I shook my head.

It’s so awful. It should NOT be happening.

Now its a few hours later. I’ve been listening to the men who went through the ordeal.

These middle aged men, some of them military veterans, were on TV, fighting tears. They were talking about how surreal it was. How much they feared for each other, and for themselves. How they thought about their families, wanting to see them again.

These men, one after the other, are shaken, upset, angry and filled with the natural need to process all of this.

My heart goes out to them.

But.

This happens every day.

Every. Day.

Multiple times every day, someone in this country is faced with the surreal situation of being in the presence of an angry shooter.

I think about the children living in America’s cities who have been in their very own bedrooms when shots go off right outside their windows. I think about how horrified those little ones must be, every single damn day.

I wonder if those Congressmen are thinking about these kids?

This morning I heard one of the shaken Congressman saying that he felt like he was a “sitting duck” in the first base dugout. His voice was trembling, he was taking deep breaths as he told his story. I heard the sympathetic voice of the reporter, clearly feeling empathy for the Representative.

That’s when I really stared to cry. To sob, with the back of my hand against my lips. “Sitting ducks”, just waiting to be shot and waiting to die. My mind filled with the image of trembling, terrified victims, suddenly faced with a madman and his gun. Knowing that they were about to die.

But I didn’t see middle aged Congressmen. I didn’t.

I saw first graders. I saw kindergarten students. I saw babies, huddling in terror on the floor of their classroom, crying to their terrified young teacher. Asking her to save them.

I saw my students, looking to me for an explanation after Newtown.

I thought about all the guns, the tens of millions of guns that have flooded this country. I thought about all the times a gun has been used to massacre the innocent.

And I thought about those security officers. How they have to go to work every day knowing that there could be a shooter on any corner. In any building, at any event, on any day. They are surrounded by guns. I thought about how they must feel going to work. How their parents and their spouses and their children must feel.

So I am once again thinking, and praying, and hoping that at last we might see our lawmakers address the need to control our guns.

But if I bring it up, or if anyone does, we are told “this is not the time to politicize” this tragedy.

So here’s my question.

What’s political about wanting to be safe in my own neighborhood?

How is it partisan to think people should be safe at baseball practice? Or to want my grandchildren safe at the park?

See, I don’t think that controlling how many guns are out there is political. I don’t think passing laws about what kinds of weapons can be carried around our cities is partisan.

I think its time to question our obsession with outshooting the bad guys.

It’s not political. It’s logical.

 

Lies Told By Lying Liars

/ momshieb / 7 Comments

Sometimes I have to step away from the news. Even the news I write over on Liberal America.

Sometimes things happen that make me so mad I scare myself.

Today was one of those days. I watched news coverage and read a whole lot of online news. I was nauseated by all the reporting on the Orange Menace. The Cowardly Liar. The Dump.

He Who Shall Not Be Named.

I was disgusted, but I didn’t explode.

Not until I started to write about a new ad that the damned, accursed, loathsome NRA has taken out to run in key swing states.

It is an ad that is calculated to create unreasonable fear in citizens so that they will behave in a particular way.

It’s terrorism. It’s all lies. I was shaking and in tears by the time I finished it.

It’s a damn good thing I’m a pacifist……

Please read this. Please share it with your friends who live in those key swing states.

“NRA’s Dramatic New Ad Targets Women”Uzi_of_the_israeli_armed_forces

 

Nonni in Germany: “What’s that noise?”

/ momshieb / 4 Comments

One of the best things about traveling is how much it teaches you about yourself, and about your home place.

We had a few observations about our time in Germany that lead Paul and I to question a lot of what we look at as normal life in the United States.

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

Let me give you three examples.

The first event happened while we were walking through the streets of Berlin with our friends. It was a cool, cloudy day and we had taken a beautiful boat tour of the city along the River Spree. Now we were walking toward the Reichstag, winding through the crowds of people on the busy streets.

Berlin is very quiet. In spite of all of the traffic, we rarely heard a horn beep or a siren wail. But now a police car went by with its siren on. Paul and I both stopped, but our German friends kept walking. My heart rate had picked up and I wondered how the others were feeling.

We found out that when a police car stops in the city with its siren running, the Americans think “Is it a terrorist attack? Is it a shooter?”  Our German hosts think, “Somebody parked in the wrong place.”

Interesting.

The second event was late one night. We were going to sleep at our hosts’ beautiful little house on the outskirts of the old East Berlin. The neighborhood is quiet and serene, even though it lies within the city borders.

Our window was open to let in the breeze, and we suddenly heard a series of loud, percussive booms. We looked at each other, both of us slightly alarmed.

“That’s not thunder.”

Paul went to the window, looked out. Everything looked peaceful, but the sounds continued. We both thought next about guns. Was there a shoot out happening somewhere? Was it a terrorist attack?

The house was silent. Whatever the noises were, our German friends were sleeping through it.

The next morning we asked about the noise, and found out that it was most likely fireworks being displayed as part of a concert somewhere in the city.

The last event is the one that stays with me and bothers me the most. We had just had coffee and dessert at an old, typically German restaurant on the shore of small lake in Berlin. It was a beautiful morning, and the area was filled with families boating, kids chatting, and people enjoying tea or coffee on the deck.

As we walked across the parking lot to our car, we saw two men getting out of another vehicle. One of the men, probably in his late 20s or early 30s, was wearing a baggy pair of camo pants, heavy black boots, and a black vest with many deep pockets. His forearms were heavily tattooed and his ears were decorated with large gauged earrings.

I whispered to Paul, “Yikes.” Katja looked at me with slight surprise. “Are you looking at his arms?”

“No,” I said. “But that vest……”   She looked puzzled.  I explained, “He looks like he is armed.”

Katja and Lucas were both surprised. “No!” she said. “He is a worker. He has tools in the pockets.”

Lucas summed it up. “Karen, nobody here has a gun.”

So that makes me think about life in the U.S. In the country that loves to call itself “free”, I am unable to walk past an innocent young man in a vest because I am so afraid of being shot. I don’t have the freedom to enjoy a lovely morning, because my assumption is that most of the people around me are carrying guns. I’m afraid of my fellow citizens, and I’m right to be so vigilant.

I live in fear of terrorism in a country where very little has happened. Meanwhile, in a European country that is filled with refugees from the Middle East, our friends go about their lives with no fear.

Makes you think.

 

And another thing….

/ momshieb / 19 Comments

RPG7-(replica)_0

I’ve been talking to some very smart, very thoughtful people lately who just happen to be gun owners.  And I have had to adjust some of my thinking a bit.

That’s good, though, right?   I complain so often about those who are closed minded.  I don’t want to think of myself as one of them.

Here is one thought, from my very reasonable, thoughtful nephew Jon.  He grew up with guns, and is totally comfortable with them. He’s a hunter. He comes from a rural setting and he pointed out that some of my anti-gun thinking stems from a lack of knowledge. I’m afraid of guns. He says that some of my fear comes from lack of education.  He’s right.

He also says that a big part of our issue in this country is attitude. We need to learn that guns must be respected. They have to be treated with great care.

I’m with him on that!

But the conversation also covered the desire of so many people to own guns in order to protect themselves.  As I said in my last post, I understand the impulse.  But there are facts that get in the way of that thinking.

I’ve already talked about the statistics, all of which show that owning a gun makes you less safe, not more safe.  That’s just a fact, but people who are afraid are moved more by feelings than by logic.

So I turn to these two questions for those who keep a gun by the bedside in case of an intruder:

  1. If we didn’t have so many guns in this country, would you still feel the need to own one? If you didn’t feel that every one out there was armed and dangerous, would you still need to protect yourself with a gun?
  2. What do you own that is worth more than a human life?  I mean, if it was me, and someone came in to rob me, I would hand them the laptop and the wallet and say “good luck.”  I don’t own anything that valuable.  I am also not above running like hell right out the back door.  I can’t imagine how it would feel to shoot at another human being, even one who was trying to find oxycontin in my house.  If I somehow managed to kill a human, I don’t think I’d ever be the same again.

I think that Americans watch way too many episodes of NCIS and Bluebloods and Homeland.  We have an image of inner city gang members and terrorists storming into our suburban neighborhoods.  The truth is, where I live at least, the most likely intruder would be a young man with a huge drug problem, looking for medicine or money.  If one of them came in my front door, I’d be scared out of my mind, and traumatized for sure.

But not as traumatized as I would be if I fired a gun and had to watch that man bleed to death on my kitchen floor.

I understand the desire to protect ourselves. I do.  But for me, the most compelling desire is to protect myself from become just another killer in a land where there are already too many.

 

Guns Must GO

/ momshieb / 14 Comments

Uzi_of_the_israeli_armed_forces

OK, I am ready to cry “Uncle”.  I give up.  I submit.  I throw myself on the mercy of the American electorate.

 

I’ve been trying for an hour to write a meaningful post about gun violence. I can’t do it.  I can’t find the words.   I am too angry.

No, I am not “angry”.

I am so fucking furious that I can’t even speak.

We have watched as more and more Americans have armed themselves to the teeth. We’ve seen toddlers shoot their siblings.  We’ve seen angry high school students murder their classmates and teachers.

We’ve watched our most innocent children being slaughtered in their classrooms.

When faced with these horrors, what did we do?

We, as a nation, did NOTHING.

We. Did. NOTHING.

And now, here we are, once again, dozens of shootings later, facing the fact that we have let our most vulnerable and innocent citizens, our developmentally challenged adults, be the victims of yet another couple of crazies with guns.

I have HAD it.

Where the hell is the outcry?  Where is the rage?  Where are the marches in the streets?

Goddamn it.

WE did nothing. WE let this happen.  And it absolutely will happen again tomorrow. And the next day. And the one after that.

What’s next, fellow Americans?  When a guy in a bad mood comes rushing into the neonatal unit with guns blazing, are we going to let some asshole get away with saying, “Well, if only the premie babies had been armed…..”    When some guy with a chip on his shoulder walks into a nursing home and murders everyone as they sit in their wheelchairs, are we really going to let some creep tell us that “its the price we pay for freedom”?

What are you going to say when its YOUR church that gets shot up next? Or your school? Or your Senior Center?

The Republican Party wants to keep us all scared to death. Scared of refugees, scared of immigrants, scared of each other.  They want us all huddled under our beds with our guns in our hands.

Well, here’s the truth.  I AM in fact scared to death right now. I’m scared of the Republican party, the NRA and every single American who believes that more guns is the answer to the gun slaughter that goes on every day in this country.

“UNCLE”.  Don’t shoot.  Just let me take some time to apply for asylum in a country that hasn’t lost its mind.

 

 

Shots and Shots

/ momshieb / 9 Comments

Wow.

The entire country is up in arms about the recent measles outbreak.  And for good reason, too!  This disease is a threat to the children of our country, and it can be easily prevented.

We are all absolutely (and justifiably) horrified to think that our fellow Americans would put their own perceived individual rights ahead of the safety of our children.  I mean, really! Who do these people think they are, insisting that they have the right to put our children at risk just because they choose to engage in dangerous behavior! ?

The vast majority of the politicians speaking out about this issue are adamant that a parent does NOT have the right to endanger their own children, much less the right to endanger the rest of society.  I’ve been watching CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS.  I’ve read the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Washington Post.  Everyone out there is shaking their head in dismissive agreement: if you want to take an action or engage in a behavior that puts people at risk, you should be isolated from the rest of us.  No public school for you!  No daycare!

Hillary Clinton spoke out loudly and clearly on this whole thing, did you see it? “The Earth is round, the sky is blue and vaccines work”

Wow.

I get it.  Even though I actually had measles when I was little.  As well as rubella, chicken pox and mumps. I had ’em all.  They were not fun.  I didn’t die, but I know that I was lucky to walk away from all of those diseases unscathed.  And I know that these illnesses should no longer be a threat to our children.

So I say, “You go, media! You go, Hillary!  You go, politicians!”  Way to protect the average American from the threats of those who believe that their individual rights trump our rights to live our lives in relative safety.

Obviously the vast majority of Americans, the media and the political elite are ready to stand up and declare: “Your right to act like a selfish, self serving idiot, your right to behave in a way that is dangerous to the rest of us, is limited by the fact that you are a member of a society!  You have to help keep us ALL safe!”

I can’t wait to see them take on the NRA.

Time Travel

/ momshieb / 5 Comments

Wormhole_travel_as_envisioned_by_Les_Bossinas_for_NASAFor as long as I can remember, I have wished that I could travel through time.   I fell in love with “A Wrinkle in Time” when I was in the fifth grade, and the whole time travel idea has consumed me ever since.

Of course, I don’t have any real desire to travel into the future.  I mean, I’ll be dead by then. Why would I go there?

But I love history.  I would so love to go back in time! I’d love to see what my little town looked like 100 years ago.  I would love to visit my little New England town in the days of horse drawn carriages and small farms.

Sometimes, on lovely spring days, I drive to Concord and walk along the Battle Road, wishing that I could see it on the morning of April 19th, 1775.   Wouldn’t that be something?

So I guess I should be happy that so many of our political leaders are trying to do their best to bring us back into those days of yore.

If we go back in time, to where these politicians want to take us, we can once again enjoy the days where religion trumped science.

We can once again enjoy those happy, simple times, where children are born whether or not there is someone there to take care of them and whether or not they are wanted. We can enjoy the lovely days when children came down with measles and mothers were able to nurse them back to health, if they didn’t die.  If we are lucky, and the current trend continues, we may be able to once again delight in the pleasures of diphtheria.  Maybe we’ll even meet “dropsy” once again.

And I guess I’m going to be able to enjoy the days of the Old West, too, since it looks like pretty soon every American will own a gun. And will be able to carry that gun under his jacket and walk with it into the local school and library and office and state house.

What a thrill.

I don’t know how my children and grandchildren will feel about all this, but at least this history buff is going to get her time travel thrill!

In Memory of Sandy Hook

/ momshieb / 8 Comments

Last week our school practiced the “Lockdown” drill.  Kids were scared. I was scared. Everyone in the building hated that we had to do it.

But everyone pretended that knowing how to lock the door and turn off the lights might magically keep us safe if the worst ever happened.

It wouldn’t it.  Nothing we could do could keep us safe if the worst happened. And we all know that.

I wrote this post two years ago today, when I got home from school after learning about Sandy Hook. I’m reposting it today because every single word of it is still true, and still what I feel.

We can’t lock our children in classrooms to keep them safe.  We can’t legislate sanity or cure mental illness. We can’t eliminate anger and bitterness and obsessive hatred.  There is really only one logical answer, and no one wants to admit it.

Please read the words of a sad, angry, very frightened teacher, written through tears on the night of the Newtown massacre.

“They Trust Me”