THANKFUL FRIDAY

I spent most of Saturday in our basement framing prints that I will hang on the walls at Westside Local in March. When I ran out of frames, I took a break for lunch and discovered that the rest of the frames that I had ordered were sitting on my front porch. So after lunch, I went back down to finish framing. Once that was done, I looked around at the cluttered mess of the basement and set to work breaking down boxes and reorganizing shelves. I filled a box with kitchen items that hasn’t been touched in more than year and filled a bag with garbage. Then I moved over to the camp gear and pulled items from the old camp kitchen that I could use in my car camp kitchen. I organized all of my car camping equipment into one spot so that it’s easy for me to grab and throw into my car.

It was a very productive day and I started to get excited about the possibility of throwing my camp gear into my car and spending a weekend in the woods. Recently I posed a question to a group of friends about how far I might need to drive in order to see a moose. Several agreed that straight north into the Minnesota/Canada border area was probably my best bet. That’s about an eight to ten mile drive. Totally doable. I could easily take a long weekend and go for a moose hunt. I got so excited about the idea that I started looking at maps and moose sighting forums. Moose sighting forums. They exist, probably because there are people like me that do not believe that moose are real. I’ve settled on a visit to a place just north of Duluth, MN. I’d really like to make that happen this summer.

Any way, I fell for the trap that is Fake Spring. I allowed myself to settle into the warmer temps and start to dream of outdoor adventures. Of course, the weather has flipped back to cold. There’s even an 87% for snow today. It’s snowing right now! Which seems just about right since I’m driving to meet up with Amy and Deborah for our annual gals weekend. When I look at the crystal ball that is the weather predictions, I see more flip flopping temps in the following week and it makes everything feel a bit manic. I am practicing patience and preparing for the day Fake Spring becomes Real Spring. And you know what? I feel like I didn’t eat enough soup this winter. So this gives me more soup days to enjoy.

Now to address the elephant in the room that centers around the events of this week.

I started writing this entry on Wednesday, before the Super Bowl Parade and the mass shooting that occurred at the end of the celebration. The Super Bowl Parade has and is a celebration that involves day drinking. The state of Missouri is also a Right To Carry state, with no permit requirements for handguns. It is a miracle we have not had this tragedy happen before. When looking back through archives, the last mass shooting in Kansas City occurred in 1933 during the Kansas City Massacre, which ironically was also at Union Station. Comprehensive gun control is on my list of wants and needs that I vomit out to my senators and representatives every week, which is starting to feel about as productive as a thought and a prayer. And that’s about all I will say here.

I will say that I am grateful for the texts from loved ones checking in to make sure we were and are safe.

I am grateful that my Kansas City friends who went or almost went, are also safe.

I am grateful to be spending the weekend away from the city.

I am grateful to be spending the weekend talking and laughing with Amy and Deborah.

I am thankful for the promise of outdoor adventures.

I am thankful for soup days.

I am thankful for you.

I GOT NOTHING

I started to write something about how this week is turning out to resemble my work life before the pandemic. Scheduling snafus and spring break quartines has me holding down the fort this week, which means going into the office EVERY DAY. It’s a little bit of a shock to the system and I thought “hey! let’s write about it!” Then I opened my New York Times for Tuesday morning and read about the latest mass shooting that killed ten people in a Boulder Co grocery store. After a mass shooting targeting our Asian Americans LAST WEEK, the fact that I was at work this week didn’t really seem to matter any more.

One evening sometime last year, Michael and I were sitting on the couch enjoying some wine and TV when we heard gunfire outside. It is not unusual to hear gunfire in our neighborhood, particularly east of us. There were two hundred and sixty nine recorded homicides in Kansas City last year. The weapon of choice for those homicides was some sort of firearm. The Daily Homicide Analysis statistics page lists “argument” as a contributing factor to many of those homicides. I made up the game Gunshots or Fireworks to make light of a serious reality. Guns are routinely shot off in my neighborhood. What was different about that evening last year is that the gunfire sounded so close that I ducked my body down over the dog to lay us both out flat on the couch. The gunfire was coming from the street right in front of our house. We heard squealing tires and then silence. After a few breaths, Michael opened the front door and stepped out. Our neighbor to our right came out. We all checked on each other and then tried to figure out what had just happened in our street.

I don’t tell you this story so that you will think that I live in a ‘bad’ neighborhood or that I should move because it is dangerous. It is not a dangerous neighborhood. My street and my neighborhood are both very safe. My neighbors on all sides look out for each other. Josephine and I regularly walk our neighborhood, waving hello to the people we see. I have given cartons of eggs to half the people on my block. At least two of my neighbors have called me to let me know that they had Josephine when she was going through her Houdini phase. I have returned the favor with other neighborhood dogs. My neighborhood is safe, but not immune to violence.

No one lives in a place immune to violence.

Now there’s a truth bomb no one wanted to read, but for a number of us who grew up in rural white America and the land of suburban picket fences it is a truth bomb we need to read and take notice. We are disillusioned and trained to believe in a vision of what is safe, but that vision is crumbling because the places that we thought were supposed to be safe, places like schools, our churches, our grocery stores, are not immune to violence. Owning a gun does not make you immune to violence. You’re just more likely to be the one to cause the violence, killing a loved one and or yourself. Yet it is a shock and horror to all of us when gun violence happens in the places where we thought we were safe. The problem for me is that it is no longer a shock or horror. It is becoming a way of life. The new American Dream is to survive a day in school, to worship safely and to survive going to the grocery store. This isn’t our ‘new normal’. This is our normal.

When we wouldn’t do anything after the first mass shooting in a school where children were murdered, why would we do anything now?