Je Suis Dick and Jane

Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting Victims

A reminder that a problem continues to exist here in the United States, Je Suis Dick and Jane, every year 10,000 children are injured or killed by gun shots. Most of these shootings are not attributable to a religious ideology or to quench an exercise of freedom of expression.

Just looking back over the last fifteen years and noting only cases where ten or more individuals have died in a single school shooting incident here is the short list:

• April 20, 1999 - Columbine High School - 15 Dead, 21 Injured

• March 21, 2005 - Red Lake Indian Reservation - 10 Dead, 7 Injured

• April 16, 2007 - Virginia Tech - 33 Dead, 25 Injured

• December 14, 2012 - Sandy Hook Elementary School - 28 Dead, 2 Injured

Where is the indignation, where is the protest? N'êtes-vous pas Dick et Jane?

The Dowager Speaks

I had the grand idea tonight that I wanted to be the Dowager of our little family… upon further investigation I found that I am disqualified on so many fronts. What a pity!

The Dowager Speaks:

“One can't go to pieces at the death of every foreigner. We'd all be in a constant state of collapse whenever we opened a newspaper.”

“Nothing succeeds like excess”.

“What is a weekend?”

“It's the job of grandmothers to interfere!”

And finally….

[after all Robert's evening-dress shirts have gone missing, he is forced to come down to dinner in a black tie and white shirt, much to the horror of the ladies]

Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham: [glancing at Robert, while flustered] Do you think I might have a drink?

Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham: [looking more closely at Robert] Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought you were a waiter.

"Never such innocence again."

MCMXIV  ~  By Philip Larkin

I think that every year since mankind began has had its own challenges. Some of those challenges were ignored, some were acted upon. Yet every year old challenges spawn with new ones creating even larger challenges.

Time moves forward but man sometimes stays in the dark ages. Some can't be prodded or bullied or even paid into action. Their hearts and minds remain unmoving and closed.

There will never be the perfect society only the quest for one. Yes, there will always be those who despite the hardness of the task before them will take it up and hoist it to their shoulders.

The price for this honorable act is always paid for with the loss of innocence.