Still Caught on Newtown

• On the Pictures of each and every victim ... child and adult.
• On the compassion and/or anger that it has generated in colleagues.
• On the questions that I go to sleep with (hypnagogic thoughts) and those I rise with (hypnopompic ones)
• Why are we so angry at each other ... colleagues, Senators, school kids to each other, ....

          and maybe most pressing on my mind lately

• What grows in each of us that bodes poorly for taking on Louis' attitude ... "apres moi la deluge" ... after I'm gone what do I care about those kids ... , I ask myself since this catastrophe that visited, chances are, thousands directly and 100's of millions indirectly. How is it that many, maybe even most of us, develop a sense of caring for the living and for the yet-to-come? Global warming will contribute to rising oceans so that when tsunamis, even little ones, hit the shores of Bangladesh, the Mediterranean, New York, Boston and Philadelphia where I live, they'll wipe out population centers! Why should I care about any time after the Fourth Quarter ends.

In my work, I come to know people who do and people who don't care ... even folk who came to visit my office with a very clear: "What the &%^$ do I care about 20 little rich kids! Angry folk ... well ... too hurt to feel for others, anyway.

How do we come to deal with the truism that for me, for most of us, 70 years from now we become an inscription on a marker in a graveyard that someday, itself, will fall into history.

I wonder a lot about this when I hear the talking heads and Pols ask about why the youngster killed.

We're going away on vacation, soon ... hope to meet up with my 6 grandkids and their three sets of parents, my kids. They're flying and we're driving in ... past Millions of homes on the side of highways, each home with a complex drama going on inside ... Do I pay attention to what I cannot know? or do I "drive-by" ... there's a word with ambiguity attached to it. Do I drive by as if each is little more than bricks and mortar ... frames and windowshades?

Happy Holiday to anyone out there listening. Chistmas celebrates the birth of one child ... by celebrating one morning in the life of our own child, for those among the faithful in Christendom. We shall not ever reach a time when every child is celebrated. That's sad.