One of my earliest memories is from World War II. It must have been in 1945 -- I would have been two, if this is a true memory. My father was away, fighting in the War and I remember being in my grandparents' back yard, sittting on the grass, gazing across the green expanses then looking up at the sky and wondering, if I listened very hard, if I could hear the guns.
This old memory resurfaced today as I was looking through my pictures, trying to decide what to post. There are so many terrible things going on just now -- not a worldwide war, thank goodness --but it's almost as if I listened hard enough, I should be able to hear, not just the guns but the crying.
Iraq -- mission very much NOT accomplished . . . how many died, how many suffered . . . and for what?
Gun violence/school shootings. . . and we have become a nation where a public figure can defiantly say," Your dead kids don't trump my constitutional rights" . . . where others deny some of the shootings ever took place or even worse, claim that they were part of a plot instigated by this Administration to take everyone's guns.
The tightening grip of religion -- the appalling brutality of Sharia law in some Muslim countries is echoed in the pronouncement of a Republican/Tea Party candidate from Oklahoma who says it would be 'Biblical' to stone gays . . .
And closer to home, North Carolina's leaders appear poised to endanger our very air and water through lowering standards, encouraging fracking, stifling dissent, and prohibiting lawsuits -- all for the sake of the corporations that have bought them.
I could continue . . . but I won't. Time to go back outside. Time to listen for the guns . . . and the crying.
