Returning to the Cycle of Violence

Today wasn't a good day. (via Juliette Kayyem at The Atlantic)

The attacks by Hamas against Israel beginning early this morning, some of which are ongoing, will be met by Israel with force. How all of this will unfold, and its impact on domestic and global politics, is not clear, but a simple answer may suffice for now: It will not go well. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already warned his citizens that they are at war; civil reservists have been called up; videos are showing hand battles on the streets. The country is on lockdown, with the potential for future strikes in the south by Hamas and new ones by Hezbollah in the north...

To focus on Israel’s preparedness in no way excuses the Hamas attacks and is not meant to blame the victim. Some on social media are carelessly suggesting that the failures can be explained only as some evil “wag the dog” effort by Netanyahu to unify the country by going to war. Israel has been attacked, and civilians are dead. As in any nation that encounters such a horror, it is essential for the government to determine—without the interference of politics or religion—why. Otherwise, enemies will take advantage of this devastating day for Israel’s counterterrorism strategy...

...Just a few days ago, the Gaza border seemed to have been stabilized after some unrest, and nearly 20,000 workers were able to travel across it again. Today, thousands of rockets, which must have been obtained and hidden, were launched by Hamas. It did not end there. Hamas used drones to strike at Israeli targets. It sent its fighters on foot, by boat, and by air on motorized paragliders. Images have emerged of Hamas attackers on the streets of Israeli towns terrorizing citizens, and worse. This is as much a physical attack as a performative one: Watch us, Hamas seems to be saying. Hamas surely planned for the attack to take place on the Jewish holy day of Simchat Torah and on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War...

How the Hamas group was able to pull this off - and to subvert a lot of the technological advances the Israelis have and to deploy a multi-pronged attack with military precision - points to an even larger effort by other forces opposed to Israel - like Iran - or opposed to Israel's allies - like Russia - in order to escalate instability and violence in the Middle East for their own twisted ends.

Hamas' actions are coming after decades of open conflict between Israelis and Palestinians for control of that tiny corner of the globe, spurred on by political ambitions and policy failures of both the imperial powers of previous centuries and then the failures of post-world war agendas to create equitable and peaceful homelands for both nations. Ever since the end of the Cold War, it's fallen to a dominant Israeli government to govern the region, with what outside observers like the Human Rights Watch compared to an apartheid state. It didn't help that Netanyahu's government refused to stop illegal settlements in areas that should have gone to Palestinian control. And yet Israel needed to maintain that system because nothing had succeeded - not the Oslo Accords, not any attempts to achieve peace with neighboring Arab/Muslim nations, not the underwhelming efforts by western allies to check Hamas' corrupt and violent control of Gaza - to curtail the threats to their own civilians.

This is all coming as Europe (NATO) is trying to refocus their efforts on keeping Ukraine armed and trained to continue fighting against Russia's invasion, with Israel attempting to settle a peace deal with Saudi Arabia that could have undercut the regional extremists, and the United States currently embroiled in a political crisis with the Republican-controlled House - and intentional sabotage by Republican Senators to block needed leadership appointments at State and Defense - that threatens to shut down our funding support - for Ukraine specifically, but it could affect our direct allies like Israel - and military readiness abroad.

For now, the best we know is that hundreds of Israeli civilians are dead and hundreds more held hostage. Further strikes by Hamas are possible, depending on how well-stocked they are (and how the hell did they get so many rockets and drones for their strikes?). The likelihood of Israel's army to go storming into Gaza - and flattening everything including Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages - within the next 48 hours is pretty much a given: This is open war now against Hamas, and Israel has to fight back - in as punishing a method as possible - just to survive.

Whether this escalates into a broader war - bringing in Syria and Iran directly; dragging Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia if they want war or not; depending on whatever benefits Putin sees in the coming fight - depends on wiser diplomacy and any rationality among the regional leaders to avoid their own losses.

Things that have sadly been missing every fucking time we all had a chance to make peace in the Middle East and instead let the crazies blow it all up again. Too many global powers are profiting from all this. Goddamn us all.

Update: I just want to add this Twitter post from friend Emily - a member of the TNC Horde - who's lived in Israel, has written about Israel, and is constantly moved by the violence there that never ends.

I don't even rly know what I feel, a kind of numb horror, the cellular-level awareness that things will only get worse but that I don't even rly know what that means, a shattered, mourning, terrified heart, trying to hold space for my people & the Palestinians. I'm devastated.

— Emily L. Hauser @emilylhauser.bsky.social (@emilylhauser) October 7, 2023

Anniversary: A Tragic Night in a Paris Tunnel

The websites are reminding me of a tragic event from 25 years ago, back in 1997: The car accident that took the life of Princess Diana.

I can remember that night for the odd situation for myself. I just couldn't get to sleep that evening.

I remember I had gone to bed early (I was scheduled to work in the morning the next day), but couldn't sleep well. My mind was abuzz (I can barely remember why). So I got up figuring that watching some reruns on a weekend night TV would drive me to boredom enough to sleep then. In-between switching channels I got to CNN and they were already hours into their coverage of the car accident.

I sat there transfixed for about 10-15 minutes before a BREAKING NEWS chyron flashed and the reporter broke the terrible news that she had died in the operating room.

I kept watching a little longer, and my first thoughts were for William and Harry. Gods. They've had to carry this pain for 25 years now.

The response to her death was on a scale I've barely seen before. The closest I could recall was John Lennon's. Countries and cultures that had no ties to Great Britain demonstrated incredible levels of grief. Some of had to do with the fact that she had involved herself in various charities and causes like AIDS treatments and landmine removal. Even in the United States, Princess Di was this glamour/fashion icon, more a celebrity than a (divorced) member of a still-relevant royal family of international prestige. We were a nation that was supposed to renounce titles of nobility or even honor it outside of diplomacy, but Diana's charm and grace made even hardened republicans call her Princess.

In the years since her passing, Diana has become this enigmatic symbol - of the perils of fame, of the pressures of royal duty, of the evils of modern media (the hated paparazzi that literally hounded her to her death), of the broken dynamics of bad marriages, the unattainable and the unforgettable - to where we do not know her as a person, we know her as a metaphor. Which is tragic in its own way, because she left behind two sons who loved her and are haunted by the damage to this day.

The Tragedy In Surfside (w/ Update)

For all the craziness this weekend, nothing has been more tragic than the collapse of a condominium in South Florida. Via Laurel Wamsley at NPR: 

There are now 159 people unaccounted for in the partial building collapse in Surfside, Fla., Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Friday — a rise from 99 people a day earlier.

Three more bodies were found in the rubble, bringing the number of fatalities so far to four. More than 100 people have already been accounted for...

"We will continue search and rescue because we still have hope that we will find people alive," Levine Cava said. "That is why we are using our dogs and our sonar and our cameras — everything possible to seek places where there may still be people to be found..."

She said that people evacuated from the building are being provided food, shelter, cash to assist with their basic needs and grief counseling at a family reunification center, where families and friends can await any news of their loved ones.

President Biden approved an emergency declaration on Friday morning authorizing the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts.

The cause of the building's sudden collapse early Thursday morning remains unclear...

One pattern emerging is that the 40-year-old building (from 1981) was showing signs of aging out and becoming a risk. Back to NPR, with reporting from Matthew S Schwartz and Brian Mann:

A structural engineering report provided to the Champlain Towers condominium association in 2018 found widespread problems that required extensive repairs "in the near future."

The consulting group that wrote the report noted Saturday that the document "detailed significant cracks and breaks in the concrete, which required repairs to ensure the safety of the residents and the public..."

The engineering report, dated Oct. 8, 2018, includes pictures of cracks in the concrete columns of Champlain Towers South. The report found "major structural damage" to the concrete structural slab below the pool deck, caused by waterproofing that was "beyond its useful life" and needed a complete replacement.

It warned that "failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially."

The nine-page report, authored by Morabito Consultants, listed several areas of concern with the now 40-year-old building. The main issue was that the concrete slab was flat, rather than sloped in order to drain off water. That means any water simply sits on the waterproofing until it evaporates...

Sticking in my mind is the statement from the husband of a woman who called the night of the disaster while he was in DC on business. His wife was panicking about the condo shaking, and that the swimming pool had disappeared into a sinkhole... before the line went dead. She's still among the missing.

Any further reading into the Champlain Towers will point out how it was built atop reclaimed wetlands, which is not the sturdiest ground to build on. That a local Florida International University professor who studies these things had found the building was sinking (although he'll establish that effect wouldn't have been the direct cause of the collapse).

And as someone who's lived in Florida almost all my life - having witnessed the rise of the state population from the 1980s onward and the massive development of condo towers, business complexes, luxury hotels, and other massive buildings up and down the entire peninsular coast between New Port Richey to Jacksonville - let me note that this is likely the beginning of all those big towers falling.

Any decent study of Florida history will tell you that the Sunshine State has been home to massive overdevelopment of coastal lands, as well as propping up suburb after suburb alongside shopping malls atop swampy ecosystems that were needed to handle flooding issues (especially from the annual hurricane seasons). It doesn't help that a lot of that construction over the years of growth - I would argue late 60s as the start date when air conditioning made it more comfortable to live in Florida, as well as the Space Race and tourism making Central Florida a business mecca - was shoddy, questionable, and prone to collapse. Hurricane Andrew's visit in 1992 exposed a lot of those sins... and yet for all the talk about improvements to the building codes, there's still a lot of short-cuts and cost-cutting going on that leaves a lot to be desired.

We're coming up to the 40-year mark of the early rounds of massive development across Florida, all these buildings just as old as Champlain Towers if not older: Many of them likely cracking from years of erosion, or aging out of questionable construction materials lacking in the rebar or other reinforcements to help keep things up.

That warning report was in 2018. There doesn't seem to be any sign that the building management or homeowners' association was acting on that report by the time of this disaster. They were apparently getting another cost evaluation done a few days before this happened. A serious sign of foot-dragging on something that turned out required a lot more urgency.

Ever drive along the Florida coast? Especially South Florida, the exotic jewel of the Caribbean waters? I lived down there for about 9 years, mid-90s, as more construction was going on. Nearly every inch of the Atlantic coast had towers, massive skyscrapers, high-value property overlooking the ocean, some of the most beautiful vistas in the world (if you could see any of it past the towers). A lot of them built right on the edge, crowding out any sandy shores of beachfront... and all of it sinking into that ocean as the sea levels keep rising.

This Sunshine State has been living high on the constant development of land into businesses and residences (and almost all of it high-value, nothing for the low-income families still struggling to find apartment space). All of that construction and yet no care or concern of the long-term impacts we're only now starting to see. The powers-that-be wanted all this development but don't want to spend any money to renovate, upgrade or repair.

What worries me is how this isn't all new: We've been getting warnings for decades that all this overdevelopment was going to bite us, and we've been getting warnings the last five-ten years that we need to start repairing all the places we have before it gets too late.

And now it's getting too late.

I am so sorry so many lives had to disappear like this for our state to get one more warning sign. 

(Update 7/20/22): This article was one of the five I submitted to the Florida Writers' Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards for 2022, and it has impressed the judges enough to pass the Semifinalist stage. Alas, for a tragic story... 

A Sad Story: A Librarian Killed

This is a story that has hit pretty close to home, not just in my county but in my library cooperative where I work. Per WFLA, a sad tale about a librarian taken from us in a brutal act against her family:

...According to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, Elijah Stansell, 18, intentionally ran Suzette Penton over outside her Polk City home last month. She died on Nov. 25 leaving behind her four children and several grandchildren.

“Every kid in town loved Suzette because she’s just that type of person. She was flamboyant. She was just an outgoing, wonderful person,” said Ann Blethen (Suzette's friend).

“Suzette Penton helped make it a wonderful community,” said Sheriff Grady Judd. “She was known and loved by the people of Polk City.”

Penton's place in Polk City was at the community library, where she served the public and helped with children's events and literacy efforts.

What happened to make Stansell kill Penton?

On Nov. 9, Stansell, joined by Raven Sutton, 16, Kimberly Stone, 16 (who was 15 at the time of incident) and Hannah Eubank, 14, drove to Penton’s home.

There was an ongoing romance-related dispute between the group. They were there, officials said, to beat up Penton’s teenage son.

After a physical altercation between the teenage boys, Penton arrived home. She went outside to take photographs of the teens’ getaway vehicle, Stansell’s van. That’s when, authorities believe, Stansell intentionally ran her over, leaving tire tracks on her body.

“He didn’t clip her. He didn’t try to turn away from her and accidentally hit her and fell down. She was squared up and he ran over her,” said Sheriff Judd.

The van belonged to Westwood Missionary Baptist Church where Stansell’s father is a pastor, according to the sheriff...

Stansell may have been a young adult but he was answering to the rage of the Angry Guy mentality. It's that toxic bullshit mindset that pushed him to go out of his way to pick a fight with his girlfriend's ex, and it was in that rising rage that escalated the violence straight into murdering a woman trying to protect her son.

And now an entire community is reeling from the loss of a woman who served the public good, who helped families, who gave children smiles and books to read.

I may have met her, but briefly maybe once or twice, in the years since I've worked at Bartow Public Library. We're part of a county-wide Cooperative of shared library resources, but not a full county system. As such, most libraries are run by their cities and we have little interaction between our libraries. But we've been holding annual training sessions for staffers to try and get as many librarians together, make the cooperative more cohesive and understanding. Penton may have been at one of those Staff Days, I may have shared a table with her, working on team building projects or sharing stories of lurid library lore.

But that's all I can tell you, that's all I can share. Just a brief glimpse into possibility, into a life snuffed out. There are so many others - her children, her friends, the people of Polk City who visited the Library as a safe place almost like a home for them - who can tell more about her and what she meant to their lives.

All of that gone now, all because of an Angry Guy who went out of his way to express that rage without a care to the consequence. Until it was too late, until there was blood in the street.

All those stories lost now.

September 11 2020 So Many Years Ago

Some days you just look at the blue sky and it reminds you of how clear and blue that Tuesday morning was so long ago.

There will be services and memorials throughout the day across New York, DC, and Pennsylvania. With this being an election year, don't be surprised if the partisan spins come out (and someone accusing Biden of being in charge of the Presidency back in 2001 when it was Dubya and his crew who screwed up).

And yes, I am angry and afraid and upset. If trump steals away the 2020 results with his voter suppression and Russian aid (and any other "legal" trickery he'll encourage) we are facing the nightmare of having THAT Shitgibbon in the White House when the 20th anniversary rolls in next year.

For the LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, AMERICA, do NOT let that Shitgibbon be there to twist what should be a solemn memorial into his personal ego-stroking. /headdesk

In Memoriam: Thirty Years Later from Gainesville

I wrote this five years ago, about what happened in Gainesville at University of Florida:

We shouldn't forget the lives taken that didn't need to go.  There are so many of them taken from us every day across the globe, and the sorrow of it is how much waste and loss and pain there is when that happens.

If the killer had never been, right now Sonja or Christina or Christa or Tracy or Manuel would be my age or close to it, in their 40s.  Likely married or with kids of their own.  Kids old enough to be attending UF themselves by now, twenty-five years later.  All five of them could be working somewhere, as doctors or engineers or teachers.  Writing books, or painting, or composing music.  Creating, adding to the world.

We are them and they could have been us.  Maybe doing better, maybe not.  But we'll never know, we'll never see.  

All that loss during a cold week in August 1990.

In memoriam.

The anniversary didn't make a lot of national news and the pandemic forced any public gathering to cancel, but the local paper Gainesville Sun covered the look back in sorrow (by Cindy Swirko):

...At other anniversary points of this pivotal tragedy, the Gainesville community has gathered for vigils or services of commemoration. This time, with the coronavirus pandemic preventing that, the anniversary might seem overlooked.

The University of Florida stopped anniversary recognitions such as tolling the carillon bells of Century Tower five times after the 25th anniversary. There are lasting reminders on campus, however. There are also five palm trees planted in the median near the wall in memory of the students, as well as five trees on campus near Library East...

New students to Gainesville might see the memorial of trees and placards in the median of Southwest 34th Street south of Second Avenue and not realize who it’s for.

Or they might see the center panel on the graffitied wall beside the road and not realize it is a sacred spot...

Photo by Sam Thomas for the Sun

The locals defend that spot. Anybody tries to paint over it, within hours the spot is repainted so the five names - Sonja, Christina, Christa, Manuel, Trudy - and the hearts are put back up.

The sin and sorrow of murder is the void we endure when the lives are gone. They could be doctors, teachers, parents, artists, travelers, thinkers, dreamers... All that potential gone.

And it's just these five lives. There are so many others killed in acts of rage and lust all across the world, all that pain and sorrow to endure more and more.

Just want to live in a stronger loving world, can't we just have that, someday...?

Blood On the Streets of Virginia Beach

A gunman - apparently a long-time employee of the city - attacked the municipal center in Virginia Beach VA this afternoon. Eleven dead so far, more wounded, entire community in shock.

Another goddamn angry guy with another goddamn gun.

And this one hits close to home.

My family lived in that area when I was five, six years old. Dad was still in the Navy then, got assigned to Norfolk until he retired in 1976, and we moved down to Florida after that. I have some fond memories of growing up in the Kempsville area, and those beaches were the first ones I remember going and learning to swim. I remember riding the car past all the beach venues, an amusement park with bright lights, the deep tunnels under the Bay wherever Mom drove us, the sand-filled air and sea-salt scent...

Goddammit, America.

God DAMN YOU, National Rifle Body Count Association.

We are ALL dying one mass shooting at a time.

Our homes, past present and future, all at risk.

All because angry guys have easy access to weapons like this.

I want my childhood homes safe again, America. When? When will this war on our neighborhoods end?

Blood in the Streets of Sri Lanka

This is not good:

At least 207 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in a series of bomb blasts that hit luxury hotels and churches across Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, leaving the entire country in a state of lock-down.

The first wave of attacks struck at the heart of the country's minority Christian community during busy Easter services at churches in the cities of Colombo, Negombo and Batticaloa on Sunday morning.

Additional blasts ripped through three high-end hotels, the Shangri La, Cinnamon Grand and Kingsbury, all in capital city Colombo.

What I hate about ANY extremism - white supremacists, religious nutjobs, etc. - is how they intentionally go out of their way to make everyone else bloodied and miserable and wounded and dead.

The bombers intentionally went after places of worship, to speak against their hatred of God. They went after tourist locations, to make sure they got the world's attention.

And now, they're gonna revel in their violence and taunt the rest of humanity for "our" weakness in the face of their bullying.

Against such violent empty men we should stick to this response.

We Are Stronger Together. We And Our Loved Ones Are Still Better Than You.

Puerto Rico the Forgotten Scandal

June is traditionally the beginning every year of the hurricane season on the Atlantic coast.

And yet, we're still trying to recover from last year's season, especially with the horrific devastation in Puerto Rico. Months after getting shredded by Hurricane Maria, only now are we getting even an estimate on the costs of that disaster:

A new Harvard study estimates that at least 4,600 people in Puerto Rico have died from causes related to Hurricane Maria, a far larger number than the official government death toll of 64.

According to the new study, which was conducted by a group of independent researchers from Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, these deaths could often be attributed to delayed and limited health care in the aftermath of the storm, which shuttered several hospitals, crippled the power grid, knocked out cell service, and made many roads impassable...

It’s been eight months since the hurricane hit Puerto Rico, and the island still suffers from a damaged power grid, a short supply of clean water, and a dearth of other essential services. The stress from and effort to rebuild and recover after the storm also continues to put a strain on those suffering from medical conditions...

I can tell you on an anecdotal level I know someone who had family in Puerto Rico, and that person lost at least one loved one in the aftermath of Maria. Here in Florida, we've received thousands of fleeing Puerto Ricans who couldn't stay in their own homes because their homes were gone and the risks were growing worse by the day.

A lot of this can be placed at the foot of President Loser of the Popular Vote trump. Referring to Jamelle Bouie at Slate.com:

Puerto Ricans were still recovering from Hurricane Irma when Maria made landfall last autumn. The storm devastated the island, destroying homes and crippling vital infrastructure. The crisis that ensued demanded an immediate and robust response from the federal government. But the response was sluggish, even as early reports made clear that this was a serious tragedy in the making. The White House made few preparations in the lead-up to the storm, and it was weeks before the Federal Emergency Management Agency committed its full resources to the island. During that time, clean water was scarce, food was hard to find, and hospitals struggled to care for patients, some with serious injuries and illnesses. Most of Puerto Rico lacked electricity for months, and medical supplies were few and far between. When FEMA did eventually act, it dropped the ball. To deliver 30 million meals, the agency contracted with an Atlanta-based wedding caterer with no experience in emergency management. By the time the company’s contract was terminated, it had delivered just 50,000 of those meals...

Master chef Jose Andres - one opposed to trump on a personal level - did far more serving meals to Puerto Rico than our own government, on his own time and dime. Back to Bouie:

A faster, stronger response would have prevented some of those deaths. Even if the White House was unprepared when the storm initially hit, much of the aftermath could have been averted if President Trump had focused his administration on the disaster and brought the weight of the federal government to bear on the unfolding tragedy. Instead, Trump sent every signal that he simply didn’t care. He downplayed the devastation to Puerto Rico and blamed Puerto Ricans for not doing more to repair the damage. He went after the mayor of San Juan, who had criticized the government’s response. He didn’t use his Twitter account to publicize relief efforts or generally encourage Americans to help...

And as soon as FEMA and other government agencies could get out of Puerto Rico, they did, leaving behind little in the way of repaired cities and working utilities.

As much as this is a sin of the trump administration and a Republican Party unwilling to help anybody who's not in their circle of rich friends, this is a dark stain on our nation as a whole. Nobody else really wants to look at Puerto Rico and do anything about it:

Out of sight and out of mind. It's not really a state (even though it's a Territory our nation is responsible for), it's not really our citizens (despite the fact that YES Puerto Ricans ARE Americans), it's not really our families or children left to suffer (if this were Florida we'd be sending every emergency truck and crew we've got like we did responding to Hurricane Irma).

Of all the places most vulnerable to another hurricane this 2018, Puerto Rico tops the list. Far more likely than Florida or Georgia or South Carolina or Mississippi or Texas or Louisiana or Alabama or North Carolina or Maryland or Virginia or anywhere else along the East Coast.

And yet our government still won't lift a finger. Because we are not yelling at them every minute of the day to do anything about it.

What does that say about us, in the end?

We should be better than this, America.

For the 4,600 dead. For the thousands left alive, we need to do better by Puerto Rico and to our own.

Charity services are still up. Contact and help:

Unitarian Universalist Disaster Relief Fund

MariaFund.org

United For Puerto Rico

Jose Andres's World Central Kitchen

Waking Up To Troubling News In Orlando

There's been another shooting.

A gunman attacked an Orlando nightclub - about a 90-minute drive away - between 2 to 5 am this Saturday night. Called the Pulse, it was a place that was hosting around 230 people, a busy night...

So far, 20 people dead at least. The gunman was killed when the police determined the situation was going to get worse. There are tens more people at the local hospitals with serious injuries.

The gunman had at least one assault rifle, one handgun, and reportedly an explosive device - a bomb vest? - which is making the authorities think it's a terror attack. There's still a lot they don't know, so this is all conjecture until they can find more evidence.

This is horrifying. Hundreds of people gathered for a night of celebrating, sharing with friends, getting out and feeling alive... and some of them aren't alive anymore. Many of them coming back are stunned, scarred...

All because of an angry guy with guns. Regardless his motivation, his politics, his religion... it takes rage to make a person do this, to strike out with an act of violence on this scale.

We just had another tragic shooting in Orlando the day before. A singer, a minor celebrity - a popular contestant from the TV show "The Voice", Christina Grimmie - was shot by a stalker who hunted her across the state (edited for earlier factual errors, I originally listed him as an ex, my bad) while she was giving autographs.

The two shootings are unrelated. It's not like Grimmie's shooter knew the guy who shot up the Pulse. But they're practically the same because they echo each other: Angry Guy + Easy Access to Guns = Shootings.

Doesn't matter if each shooting left one dead or tenscore dead, the result is the same. People who were alive a minute ago are dead now. All because of anger. All because someone had access to firearms and wanted to play Death God to satisfy their rage.

Update: I'm finding out the nightclub is a well-known LGBT hangout, and there's something on Twitter about it being "Latin night", which sounds like a mixture of some of the more inflammatory culture war issues bouncing around our election cycle right now. Dammit.

Update 2:40 PM: The latest is that the number of dead went up - the injured not surviving their wounds - to 50 as of now, which officially makes this the worst mass shooting in American history.

Worse than Columbine. Worse than Virginia Tech. Worse than Sandy Hook. Worse than 100,000 other mass shootings we have in this nation because a small minority of gun owners prefer worshiping death over the safety of millions.

Dear God.

Update 3:05 PM: President Obama's remarks.

I am not about to add a link to anything Donald Trump has to say about it. His Twitter feed has him crowing about this.

Gun Safety Will Not Happen In the US Until There Is a Tragedy Far More Powerful Than The NRA Fearmongering

This week, President Obama is trying to do what he can about reducing the horrifying number of gun deaths we have in this nation. But it won't be enough.

For all of Obama's efforts to use Executive Orders to tighten regulations on gun sales, it won't be enough.

There are still too many ways for angry, frustrated people (mostly men) to purchase firearms at will, too many ways for them to express that rage in the worst ways with guns in hand and souls long gone.

Minor tweaks in how those guns get into people's hands - force all licensed gun sellers to perform background checks on all purchasers (trying to close the "hobbyist" loophole), add more staff to the FBI and ATF to monitor gun sales and traffic (trying to reduce the black market practice of buying guns cheap in a loose-restriction state and shipping them to places like Chicago where sales are tightly restricted), and have states submit mental-health records to the background system (to reduce the risk of angered, unstable people from having guns) - will still carry enough wriggle room for gun nuts to slip through the net and proceed to their targets (families, ex-lovers, those they hate) with the lethal power to end lives.

It's been noted before, by too many others. After the Newtown Massacre, when we had a school devastated and classrooms wiped out by a single gunman, when it seemed most likely the nation was poised to enact stronger regulations like they do in every other First World nation... we did nothing.

The NRA set their Fear Machine in motion and scared Congress into doing nothing. The NRA set their worshipers in motion to buy up even more guns and start strutting in public to intimidate entire communities into silence.

The results have been the increasing awareness that the United States suffers from a wave of mass shootings that happen on a daily basis... and an increasing despair that this is the New Normal, that the body count is The Price We Pay For Our Freedoms The NRA's Profit Margin.

That power of the NRA extends to the gun manufacturers themselves, to the point the two groups are intertwined now. As pointed out by Adam L over on Balloon Juice:

Your idea will not happen. Not because its not a good idea, but because the gun manufacturers have been punished for previous baby steps. Bill Ruger, the eponymous head of Ruger firearms, made some overtures about banning high capacity magazines. Twelve years after his death and there are commenters all over the firearms websites that won’t buy a Ruger - one of the few companies where all of their guns are made in the US - because of this betrayal...

...Smith and Wesson leadership was briefly aligned with the Clinton Administration on gun control and safety measures. The backlash almost put them out of business. They had badly misread what the response would be. Those in support of the Clinton Administration’s efforts and Smith and Wesson’s willingness to go along don’t buy guns. Those that do almost drove the company into bankruptcy by boycotting their products...

No one is going to risk their business. They know they’ll be punished...

As long as the NRA gets their money, they will feed that Fear. That Fear Machine will trump every law, every form of common sense and common decency in our nation. We've allowed that fear to excuse away shooting politicians, and churches, and movie theaters, and shopping malls, and schools. All our schools.

This form of absolutism in the real world is unsustainable. The pressure by the pro-gun crowd to keep buying more, keep exposing more people to the risks of gun violence, is going to build because no one will put the brakes on it lest the NRA throw a conniption. The odds of another Newtown, another Virginia Tech, another San Bernardino (where the threat of Islamic terrorism got trumped by the NRA Fear Machine, for God's sake) keeps going up with the likelihood of ever greater body counts occurring.

Until the undeniable happens, a tragedy so large that the blood spilled from it drowns us in horror. But by then it will be too late for those killed, for those who have been killed the last 10 20 40 years we've let the gun nuts reign over all.

We are not safe at all.

Anniversary: Sadness Follows Thirteen Years Later

September 11 again.

Last year, I was worried about how the world had remained a bloody, violent place since 2001 as the Syrian Civil War was well into its third year.  It's now in its fourth, and due to the extremist group ISIL it's bled over back into neighboring Iraq which still hasn't recovered from the ill-planned Bush/Cheney occupation.

Last night Obama gave a speech outlining how we were committing airstrikes against the Islamist State psychopaths.  We are remaking military commitments to a nation we tried to exit back in 2011, mostly because we as a nation failed to leave Iraq in better shape than when we invaded it in 2003.  Mostly because we dove head-first into a Middle East quagmire out of anger and blind rage.

We had no reason to invade Iraq in response to what Bin Laden did to us on 9/11.  The reasons were fabricated by a Bush/Cheney administration that wanted to invade Iraq for other objectives (finishing off Saddam, placating our allies in the region who didn't like having a dictator for a neighbor, seizing all that oil and natural resources).  We had no plan for what to do with nation-building.  Well, there was a plan: remove Saddam and his ilk, put in pet Chalabi on the throne, sign up all the oil rights, exit Iraq.  When it happened that nobody in Iraq wanted Chalabi and he wasn't the puppy Cheney thought he was, it turned out we had no Plan B.

Because with the Middle East there IS no Plan B.  Just an ongoing, 5000-year cycle of violence and madness that will only end when everybody's dead.

And we are all stuck.  The innocent people in the Middle East trapped between warring factions.  Other nations tied to the region through all that damn oil.  A United States that's morally and politically obligated to keep dropping itself into that quagmire because we've been breaking things there since World War II and we're stuck paying the bills for the next century.

We're bombing away in Iraq today.  Because the Towers fell thirteen years ago.  We have no idea when we can stop bombing.

In the Navy Yard Shooting, These Are the Facts You Need To Know

Today was a bad day all around - even without considering the flooding disaster that is Colorado - when we found our nation handling yet another shooting spree... this time at a well-guarded Washington DC Navy Yard.

These are the facts as can be confirmed (EDIT 9/26/13, I feel the need to add a little more for those Google searchers pulling up this article, SEE BELOW):

1) Early reports of multiple shooters proved wrong, as usual: there's always confusion during these mass shooting incidents, with survivors and eyewitnesses confused about where and when the violence takes place.  There was just one guy.

2) The shooter brought with him just a shotgun, but used the fact he was shooting up a military installation to secure additional firearms - handgun and rifle - to continue the shootout.

3) The shooter had his own access card to the grounds.  Working for a private tech firm supporting the Navy Yard, he would need some form of access to get into work areas as part of his job.

4) The shooter was involved in a previous shooting incident in 2010 when he lived in Texas, when he was charged with shooting a gun he claimed he was cleaning when it accidentally went off.  Those charges were dropped.  He was also charged in 2004 shooting out a car's tires in Seattle.

5) The shooter had a background as a military reservist from 2007 to 2011 when he was discharged.

6) There are reports that the shooter had undergone - and maybe still undergoing - psychological treatment for sleep issues and anger management.

7) The shooter was African-American.
7a) The identities of the victims have not been established yet.  The authorities are most likely talking to victims' families first.
UPDATE: The identities were released to the public, Washington Post created a memorial site.  By the looks of it the shooter did not discriminate, he shot at White, Black, Hindu Indian, male, female.  Most of the victims were middle-aged or near retirement age.

8) There are currently 13 dead, with 8 wounded.

These are the speculations:

1) Would the current needs for universal background checks as supported by a broad majority of Americans stopped the shooter from getting a firearm?  Probably not in this case: since that Texas gun charge was dropped it wouldn't have shown up on the background check.  And I'm not sure if the 2004 charges would have expired otherwise, or if the psychological treatment would have been a red flag under the rules.

2) Would the shooting have been less tragic if there were more people at the workplace with firearms / conceal permits?  You have to be kidding: this was the Navy Yard.  There's supposed to be armed guards, fences, barricades, defensive systems across the place.  And yet I won't be surprised if we're gonna get gun enthusiasts arguing for conceal-carry and more gun permissiveness at a military base (again: they said this crap after the Fort Hood shootings).
UPDATE: This did not stop LaPierre of the NRA from declaring the shooting wouldn't have been as bad if there had been more "Good guys with guns," the blanket NRA excuse against sensible gun safety laws.  Never mind the fact that there were armed guards on the site, the cops responded within 2 minutes, never mind the possibility of a "good guy with a gun" getting confused at who to shoot, and then having the cops shoot at him thinking he might be a second shooter (refer back to the earlier point of the reports of multiple gunmen).

3) What motivated the shooting?  The shooter did not leave behind any obvious clue like a letter or a death threat on a website.  There is no evidence as of yet what triggered the shooting.  (any further speculation based on race would really be in poor taste until we get specifics)
UPDATE: Huff Post has an article that the shooter left a note, indicating the shooting was a twisted case of a mental breakdown.

4) The shooter is someone with a serious track record of gun ownership.  This was not an overnight impulse to buy a gun and shoot up someplace: he's had guns before.  And he's used guns before...

5) The more obvious point about the shooter is the anger management (lack of).  A huge red flag in any shooting spree.  Any kind of terror attack, really.  The patterns still all point to one thing: an angry guy lashing out at a supposed injustice and taking it out on a lot of people who had nothing to do with causing that anger.  Mostly the shooter is an angry white guy, but we've had angry black guys as shooters before, there's been angry Asian guys, there's been angry ethnic guys across the board.

But the common link is there: Anger.  There are a lot of gun owners in the United States, I will grant you that.  Most of them never pull the trigger outside of legal usage such as practice ranges and/or licensed hunting.  But you get the gun owner with the persecution complex, the rage against women/the job/next door neighbor who leaves the flood lights on.  It's the combination of rage and access to firearms that ought to be of concern.

It'd be nice to have a debate on the matter, on the problem of guns and anger.  But David Frum is right: we're never going to get a debate on guns at all anymore, are we...?
UPDATE: Still don't have a serious debate on gun safety.

Presidential Character: Week Twenty, Garfield Died For Our Sins

No, NOT THE CAT.

The election of James Garfield as our twentieth President came during the height of the Spoils system within our government.  A political party winning the Executive office (Presidency) would expect to fill government job vacancies - well-paying and in some positions ripe for kickback abuse - by picking various "friends" and underlings who helped with the elections to fill said jobs.

To say corruption ruled within the Spoils system is an understatement: it was at its worst under the Grant administration (review his sad administration for the basic information), with the subsequent Presidency under Hayes doing its utmost to undo the damage (Hayes personally kicked one patronage figure Chester A. Arthur from the key post of Collector of the Port of New York (basically the tax collector at our busiest richest port)).

By 1880 government corruption was a major issue, and civil service reform a major topic.  Unfortunately, such reform needed a focused Congress to make the legislation, and Congress was - still is - a little too divided against itself to make meaningful legislation when it needs to.  Congress has to be prodded to do what's right from an external - sometimes painful - act.

Even though the Republicans at the time were the dominant party - and the one with roughly 16 straight years of corrupt office as a loadstone - they were large enough to have a reform faction gaining influence this election cycle.  Their candidate was Garfield, a long-standing Congressman with perhaps the most jaw-dropping political resume our nation ever saw: college professor and president, lay preacher, lawyer, practiced orator, Civil War volunteer corps leader promoted to battlefield general, voted into Congress and only taking the job (which meant resigning his battlefield position) by direct order of Lincoln himself, serving 16 straight years (which at the time was practically a record, and a clear testament to how the voters liked him).  Garfield had a blemish, accused of taking part of the corruption in Congress during the Grant years, but the charges were never proved and Garfield's performance before and after suggested he was incorruptible.

Garfield's faction - the Half-Breeds, apparently the 19th Century equivalent of RINO - had another candidate on the ballot (Blaine) but Garfield's name quickly rose as a compromise candidate against the Stalwarts (led by political machine boss Conkling) who were pushing for Grant on a third term (were they really THAT tone-deaf?).  After the fractured convention, Garfield was forced to take on Arthur as his Vice-President to balance the ticket.

It was one of the closest popular votes ever - Garfield had roughly 7,700 more votes than Democratic candidate (and fellow Civil War hero) Winfield Hancock - but the Electoral counts wasn't even close (214 to 155).  Garfield also won his Congressional seat again (some states still alow candidates to run for both offices) and was named as Senator-elect by his state of Ohio (making him the only man to ever be Congressman-elect, Senator-elect and President-elect at the same time).

It'd be nice to think that Garfield's reform efforts would begin in earnest and he would act as President with statements and deeds to demonstrate what Character he had.

Within the fourth month of his term of office, Garfield was shot in the back by a disgruntled job-seeker who was convinced he was owed an office under the Spoils system, and was equally convinced that by killing Garfield it would make Arthur President he would get a pardon and a cushy job out of it (I refuse to name the assassin here: most of these jokers do it for the fame and notoriety.  You don't even wanna know what this jerkass wrote as his legal defense during the trial).

The public and political response to such a shooting was, of course, total outrage against the Spoils system itself.  That such a minor nobody would think he "earned" a government job for campaigning for a guy - the best evidence we got that the assassin did anything for the Republicans during the election year was that he handed out some flyers and showed up for a rally or two - became a horrific concept.  Arthur himself, once a symbol of the Spoils system, would champion civil service reform and become its successful advocate (although to say more would cover what should go into next week's Character review).

Garfield's death so early within his tenure tends to make him an "incomplete" figure in Presidential reviews.  Which does a disservice to the man when one looks at what he actually did in those four months:

• He ignored Senatorial courtesy by nominating his Cabinet with people he wanted rather than take suggestions from the Senate first.  This went a long way to breaking the patronage power of Senators like Conkling (who resigned his office and hoped to get re-appointed to the Senate to spite Garfield's obstruction: instead Conkling lost to a party rival, and a victorious Garfield nominated some of Conkling's allies back to their old jobs, now under his patronage and not Conkling).
• Garfield on his own initiative (he was a skilled mathematician and economist) paid back $200 million in maturing bonds earlier than scheduled, which saved the government millions from national debt.
• Garfield pushed for criminal charges and investigations into his own party's involvement in corruption in the postal service.
• Garfield pushed for federally-funded universal education, an effort to break the illiteracy and lack of education for 70 percent of Blacks across the nation.
• His foreign policy focus was on South America and improving relations with neighboring nations.
• He nominated a handful of federal judges and one Supreme Court Justice, always a key legacy of any administration.

Even with this much evidence of what Garfield did and intended to do, it's tricky to nail down his character.  Arguably Garfield was Active (he was to the forefront of a lot of actions his White House undertook), but was he Negative or Positive?  His refusal to compromise on certain issues lean towards the Stubborn traits of an Active-Negative (and his micro-managing of things, he meddled in nearly every Cabinet's department by the sound of it).  However, his proactive efforts - paying off the bonds early, pushing for reform issues - made him a forward-thinking leader.  That most of his actions were not to his own self-interest but to the benefit of others makes Garfield a likely candidate for an Active-Positive President.

The big "what-if" of "what if Garfield hadn't been shot?"  He'd have been a little bit like Hayes, a fellow reform-minded A-P, and Lincoln.  And considering how he wiped out the likes of Conkling, he might have succeeded where Hayes couldn't in terms of getting civil service reform passed.  But it might have taken two terms to do it against a recalcitrant Congress.  It had to take the tragedy of Garfield's assassination to make reform a reality.

Next Week: Can the Office of President Change A Man's Character?  Yes, It Could...

Meanwhile In Other News From the Crazy Week: This Is What We Get When We Deregulate, People

That other bad tragic event from last week - the massive explosion of a fertilizer factory in West, TX - has this not-so-shocking revelation:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security requires fertilizer plants and depots to disclose amounts of ammonium nitrate, which can be used to make a bomb, above 400 lbs. The West, Texas plant, West Fertilizer, reportedly held 270 tons of the substance, 1,350 times that limit.
"This facility was known to have chemicals well above the threshold amount to be regulated under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act (CFATS), yet we understand that DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew up,"  Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said in a statement, according to Reuters.

Considering that the factory caught on fire when we were told there weren't supposed to be any flammable chemicals there... Considering that the factory EXPLODED with a force knocking out the surrounding schools and nursing home and apartments... This isn't shocking.  There were clearly flammable stuff there: there were clearly too much nitrate/explosive compounds there.

The reason this all happened was very simple: our nation's system of safety and regulation protocols surrounding dangerous chemicals has fallen apart.  Due to a combination of relaxed laws and serious budget cuts and failure to fully staff our agencies to ensure regulations are upheld, this disaster and other fatal accidents elsewhere have happened.

THERE IS A VERY GOOD REASON WE HAVE LAWS: TO PROTECT PEOPLE.

There is a very good reason why we have regulations: to make sure those laws are enforced.  To make sure the people we are trying to protect - workers, emergency responders, neighbors, entire communities - stay safe.

The arguments for deregulation - they're too expensive, they punish free enterprise, businesses can self-regulate - fall apart after each coal mine disaster, each crashed airplane, each exploding factory, each worker killed.  Every excuse or alternative can't explain away the facts that if we had stricter enforcement of factory safety with chemicals, if that company truly played by the rules, if our regulators like OSHA or the Chemical Safety Board had more budget and more staff, we wouldn't have had that explosion killing people.

And our Republican overlords want to cut even further into our government budgets, weakening our ability to regulate and ensure public safety even further as well.  All because they hate government regulations, and all because they hate raising taxes on the uber-rich to pay for sh-t our nation desperately needs.

I'm Calling It: Third Craziest Week In American History

UPDATE: The second bomber reportedly captured alive.  This is important.  Alive means we get answers.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE (9:35 pm EDT): Andrew Sullivan at his Dish site linked an Onion article that is 5000 times funnier than what I wrote here but yeah, the sentiment's about the same.  Oh man, the Onion got that article out yesterday... Lord knows what Friday's crazy would have made that article...

As a student of history, moments like these stir the need to look back at other times to compare and contrast.  To be fair, there's been a lot of crazy days, and there's been weeks and months of bad/good/violent/weird things happening, but narrowing it down to the Craziest of the Crazy takes some doing.

For this week of April 15 - April 20 2013, this is the evidence at hand.

Monday April 15: the tragedy of the Boston Marathon Bombings.  The media and social media - Twitter and Reddit especially - go into overdrive covering this all week long.  It builds up in the background until late Thursday night.

Tuesday April 16: A Senator gets mailed a letter laced with ricin, a lethal poison that's favored by low-grade extremists, usually militia types.  Other letters - especially one to President Obama - get intercepted with ricin as well.  Authorities are quick to point out this has nothing to do with the bombings in Boston.

Wednesday April 17: A fertilizer plant in West, Texas (the comma is not a misprint) catches on fire and explodes, killing at least 14 (most of them volunteer firefighters).  Rumors of arrests or imminent arrest buzz about Boston.  An attempt to get a gun control measure setting near-universal background checks fails to clear a Cloture vote.  An arrest is made on the ricin letters: the suspect is a third-rate Elvis Impersonator with a conspiracy obsession.  (What does it tell you when a Elvis Impersonator attempting ricin terror attacks is the THIRD-most talked about story of the week?!)

Thursday April 18: Boston remains on edge as reports get louder that enough pictures and video have been found of the suspected bomber(s).  Obama comes to town to join in memorial services for the three killed on Monday.  That afternoon law enforcement releases official photos of the two men they suspect planting the bombs.  By 10:30 pm there's a shooting at the MIT campus, the bombers rob a 7-11, they carjack somebody, get chased out to Watertown - a suburban town west of Boston - where a prolonged shoot-out ends with one of the bombers dead and the other fleeing into the night.

Friday April 19: The entire nation is abuzz.  Boston goes into lockdown mode - people advised to "stay in shelter" - as a massive man-hunt for the second bomber gets underway.  News about the bombers get out: they're brothers, immigrated nationals from Kyrgyzstan but with Chechnya parentage, the oldest (the one shot) a wanna-be Golden Glove/Olympic boxer the other (19) a college student.  They'd been in the United States legally since 2002 when they moved here with their parents, having gained permanent resident/naturalized status.  As of 7:45 pm EDT, the 19-year old is still on the loose.  EDIT: Just as I post this, there's a shoot-out at a boat on the river in Watertown which may involve the second bomber.  May.  News is breaking constantly right about now...

So there you have it for this being the Third Craziest Week in U.S. History.  There's still Saturday to go...

My Number Two candidate is the week of October 14 to 19th in 1987: although it starts Wednesday and goes into Monday, it's long enough to count.  During which we had the Baby Jessica "down a well" saga, an increase in hostile action between the United States and Iran where the US Navy blows up two Iranian oil platforms, and the stock market crashes on one of its worst Black Mondays ever.

For the Number One... I have to go with the craziness that started on Tuesday September 11 2001, but in some respects that was one huge day and everything else that came after - invading Afghanistan, occupying Iraq, the use of torture and prolonged detention - one big ongoing thing.

I've had a fellow Horder on Anibundel's site - efgoldman - suggest the week of March 31 to April 6 1968, during which LBJ announced he will not seek a second elected term as President, Reverend King is assassinated which stirred nationwide riots, and a sporting goods gunpowder explosion killed 51 in Indiana.  Got to admit, that's a lot of stuff.  It might be Number One.

There's also the time period between July 1 to July 4th in 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, when Vicksburg fell and the Union army stood at Gettysburg.  But as part of a massive event like the Civil War itself it might not count: and such events are intense, but not truly crazy (albeit war itself a crazy and messy deal on its own).

I'd put it to all seven of my readers here: which week truly deserves the Craziest Week in US History title?  Is there another contender?  Please comment.  Seriously.  I live for commentary... :whimper:

In Boston

Tragedy on the streets of Boston today, echoing across the nation and the globe.

Why this happens, we've already figured out: there's a small group of assh-les on the planet either working in unison or individually who want to make themselves feel powerful by killing innocent people who have nothing to do with why said assh-les are truly powerless.

The trick is figuring out the How we can stop this madness from happening again.  Welcome to the sad truth of the eternal struggle of good people to stop evil from flourishing.

Take care of you and yours tonight, all.

Tragedy July 20 2012

To the families and friends who lost people last night in Aurora, Colorado, my prayers and sympathies are with you.  These are weak words, they always are, compared to the suffering you all are going through right now.

These people went to the movie theater to be entertained.  Instead, they received pain and sorrow because of a sicko with a gun and with hate and fear in his heart.

Yes, This Is A Remembrance of 9/11

I was at the main library in downtown Ft. Lauderdale meeting with other librarians in the tech lab (computers) departments. The library was switching to a new email system (groupwise) and they wanted us to perform the in-house training. Meeting started at 9 am. One of my coworkers was late, coming in and saying there was news a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers.

It was sad to hear, but we all knew the story about the Empire State building getting hit with a plane back in the 1940s, so we assumed it was a tragic pilot’s error or bad weather or something (it was a clear day that morning in Florida. I think it turned out the whole Atlantic seaboard had clear skies… it was going to be such a beautiful day…) So we settled in, going over the email system, what we should teach, what the handout materials should look like, etc. It took about an hour, just sitting there in the classroom lab unaware of what was happening outside.

When we finished the meeting, we left the classroom and walked out into the foyer area and up the escalator to the library’s main floor. They had dragged out a TV on a cart and was trying to get a signal. For some reason, TV reception was lousy in that building, and they didn’t have cable connection. I saw an old boss of mine who was also at the library for a meeting and approached her, asking what was going on.

“Oh my God,” she told me. “There was another plane hitting the other World Trade Center tower.”

It took a few seconds. It took a few seconds to realize that one plane was an accident. Two planes, one right after the other… hitting each tower…

I knew then it meant war.

The lobby TV was terrible, snow and static, and I went up the 8th floor to see if reception for a TV in the staff lounge was better up there. It wasn’t. They tried moving it into a meeting room closer to the windows to see if that could help. And barely. There was still a lot of static and snow, and some of the guys I was with didn’t agree with me when I swore one of the towers had collapsed.

By that time, reports of the Pentagon strike were all over the place, rumors about other buildings getting hit with car bombs, more planes in the air… The call went out from the county government: everyone close down and go home.

Every skyscraper in Ft. Lauderdale was closing (the odds of terrorists striking South Florida seemed ridiculous, but by then panic was unshakable). The parking lot for the library was actually a few blocks to the other side of the government center across the street. I walked across and met a young couple who were trying to enter the government building. The county center had already locked their doors. The couple didn’t know. I told them. “Terrorists are flying planes into buildings. They hit the Twin Towers. One of them’s gone, just flat out gone.”

By the time I got to my car and got the radio on – the first time I could clearly get news about what was happening – the second Tower fell.

I couldn’t go straight home: while the downtown buildings were closed, other library branches were still open and I had to report back to the NW Regional branch in Coral Springs. When I got there, the whole staff knew. I met with my tech lab workers and we all talked about what was happening in low hushed tones. There were probably 7 patrons in the whole building, just one in that lab. Just before lunch time, the word came down that all libraries were closed until further notice from the county.

That whole day ended up with me in a daze. I went home first, sitting with my two cats and watching CNN for hours. Reports on the last plane – Flight 93 – started coming in. By the afternoon, I felt restless, despairing. I decided to go donate blood. I had never done it before: I hate needles, was terrified of doing it, but that day… well I wasn’t the only one. The only blood bank anywhere in North Broward was crowded well out into the parking lot. I ended up standing there for three hours before it had gotten so dark that you couldn’t see the persons you were talking with (few parking lot lights). So I went home and went back to donate blood that Saturday.

They ended up not taking my blood. I tested positive for Hepatitis C and spent the whole month of October getting re-tested before they confirmed it was a false positive. They never told me what I did test positive for, though. But I digress.