How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?

This is from the Slate website by Chris Kirk and Dan Kois: 

Using the most recent CDC estimates for yearly deaths by guns in the United States, it is likely that as of today, 7/30/2013, roughly 19,684 people have died from guns in the United States since the Newtown shootings. Compare that number to the number of deaths reported in the news [6,666, see site] and you can see how undertold the story of gun violence in America actually is.

The Color of His Skin

Here’s an interesting opinion about the character assignation of Trayvon Martin.

Four Bads

Criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling—these are the four things that “kill a relationship stone dead” says the author of PsyBlog.  We all know how much we dislike these qualities in others, but if you’re like me, it’s good to have a reminder that they are hurtful, not helpful strategies. I can be sneaky too, with “innocent” questions that contain a grain of criticism.  Ouch.

A Song for Sunday

This song is in celebration of the family reunion I’m enjoying right now.  We tried singing this song on our road trip yesterday, but we couldn't do it.  The tune was in our heads, but it wouldn’t come out our mouths.  Sisters in this song of course includes brothers.

"Words" for Today

Astronaut Suni Williams talks about spending months in space:  "When you're flying in space some of the things down on Earth seem trivial....I didn't feel like I was a person from the United States, I felt like I was lucky enough to be a person from Earth….If you are having a bad day, you can go to the cupola window and see a part of the Earth. It makes you smile."

 " 

Lucky Me

On Thursday night I went out to eat with my three sisters and one brother.  I really can’t remember if the five of us, without other relatives, have ever done such a thing.  It was low-key, comfortable, and fun.  Today, eleven family members are riding a rented van to Chicago to pick up my brother’s daughter and tour the places where she has worked this summer.  This week is hectic but nice.  And I believe that all the genealogy research I’ve done this past year makes my family even more special to me.

"Words" for Today

The Republican attempt to nullify the last election and engage in unprecedented sabotage of a law for universal healthcare intensified today. It seems we effectively have no politics in this country right now – just political warfare, in which one party refuses to accept the legitimacy of election results. (Andrew Sullivan)

Head, I Win; Tails You Lose

I’ve written before about a certain proclivity to under assign the role of luck in human successes.  Here’s an interesting article with more on that topic: 

Jordi Brandts and colleagues got a group of students to predict a sequence of five coin tosses, and then selected the best and the worst predictor. They then asked other subjects to bet on whether the best and worst predictor could predict another five coin tosses. The subjects were told that they would bet on the worst predictor from the first round, unless they paid to switch to the best predictor.  82% of subjects paid to make the switch.  But of course, there is no such thing as an ability to predict the toss of a coin. Most subjects, then, saw skill where there was only luck. And, what's more, they were willing to spend good money to back this daft opinion.

 (Thanks to The Dish)

"Words"

"...much in modern America depends on where you draw boundaries, and who's inside and who's outside. Who is included in the social contract? If "Detroit" is defined as the larger metropolitan area that includes its suburbs, "Detroit" has enough money to provide all its residents with adequate if not good public services, without falling into bankruptcy. Politically, it would come down to a question of whether the more affluent areas of this "Detroit" were willing to subsidize the poor inner-city through their tax dollars, and help it rebound. That's an awkward question that the more affluent areas would probably rather not have to face." (Robert Reich)

A Few Weeks of Beauty

About ten days ago I visited the butterfly house at the Sarett Nature Center, a bit outside Benton Harbor Michigan.  When I first looked at my pictures, I was disappointed as they of course aren't as good as the real thing.  But now, with the visit in the past, I'm rather moved by the pictures.  They capture only a moment, but each moment seems so beautiful.


Their lifespan is odd:  The butterfly lives first in an egg, then as a caterpillar, then a pupa, and finally, as a butterfly.  The butterfly's main job is to mate and reproduce.  It's lifespan is only a few

weeks.  Somehow these facts don't mesh with the butterfly's beauty.  It looks so perfect.  The caterpillar and pupa, not so much.

Song for Sunday, Bonus

I’ve posted this song before, but I need to listen to it from time to time:  “This is my Song.”

"Small Town," Sunday Song: Seymour

I grew up about 75 miles southwest of Seymour, Indiana, and this video makes me miss my small town and love where I live now.

"Words"

That’s one of the reasons I decided to be happy—out of compassion for all the people who have to put up with me.  (Ajahn Brahm)

How do you evaluate a charity?

According to Dan Pallotta, we're doing it all wrong.  He says, “Business will move the great masses of humanity forward with advancements in pharmaceuticals, materials, process, and technology — but it will almost always leave 10% behind. It will almost always leave unaddressed humanity's most disadvantaged and unlucky.”  I talked before about the role of luck in achievement, so I’m happy to hear Pallotta acknowledge this too.  Yes, the market works well for the lucky. However, “Philanthropy is the market for love,” he says. 

Pallotta is frustrated because society forces charities to operate using different and less effective rules than capitalism.  I’ve done it myself, looked at the evaluations for charities, looked to see which charities use the largest percentage of their money for “good work,” and the smallest amount for overhead.  However, here is Pallotta’s take on the subject: 

More on Trayvon

This is from Devlin Barrett this morning on The Diane RehmShow:  

This situation [shooting of Trayvon Martin], to me, looks like a life or death jump ball where whoever wins that struggle and kills the other person is the winner legally as well…as long as there are no witnesses to counter what the survivor says. 

However, I wonder, if Trayvon has been the winner of the struggle, would he have been found innocent?  As usual, for me, Ta-Nehisi Coates says it all.  Here is the introduction to his column today. 

Not Guilty

I was disappointed this morning when I read the results of George Zimmerman’s trail.  I’ve collected below a few interesting opinions—I’m sure there will be a mass of them today.  I’m impressed that these people can write so much and so coherently in such a short time.  And maybe my opinion is merely this:  Zimmerman’s decision to get out of his car that night was too heartbreaking.  Nothing will change that.  We have only our grief for comfort.

The most damning element here is not that George Zimmerman was found innocent: it’s the bitter knowledge that Trayvon Martin was found guilty.  

We can take from this verdict the understanding that it means validation for the idea that the actions George Zimmerman took that night are those of a reasonable man, that the conclusions he drew are sound, and that a black teenager can be considered armed any time he is walking down a paved street.  

There’s fear that the verdict will embolden vigilantes but that need not be the concern: History has already done that. (Jelani Cobb)

Sunday Song: Scalia v. Ginsburg

Derrick Wang, so inspired by the words of two justices, sets them to music and an opera is born.  Many NPR fans heard this on Wednesday.  

Call the Vet

This is one of the pictures that Andrew Sullivan uses (The Dish) when he writes about a self-destructive behavior of the Republican Party.  Here's his latest complaint:

This is what so many on the right just don’t understand. Their very arguments against universal healthcare and gay marriage and immigration reform are all made as if the working poor, gays, and illegal Latino immigrants were not in the room. You think we don’t hear that in the tone and content of what they are saying? It’s the way in which people who desperately need healthcare are dismissed as abstractions, or in which gays are never offered any actual policy but avoidance and disdain, or in which hard-working immigrants – living in a kind of radical insecurity no white native-born Republican has ever fully experienced or imagined – are simply told to hang around for a few more years, or “self-deport”. That bespeaks a disconnect that obscures any capacity to govern this country as it actually is – rather than as they would like it to be.

Using empathy as one of the tools for making policy is a complicated balance.  It’s interesting that two prominent Republicans who support gay marriage have gay children.  Using empathy is complicated; not using empathy at all is often inhumane.

"Words"

“The big issue here…are we going to have to redefine the very concept of privacy?  Is privacy any longer technically possible in the kind of world we’re in?”  (Martin Walker)

"Words" for Today

“Should “not guilty” as charged (if that were to be the verdict) be read the same as “without guilt” in general? Is there some moral space in which [Trayvon] Martin can, as the defense contends, be solely responsible for his own death?”  (Charles M. Blow)

Yeah, Stand Your Ground

Here, Jelani Cobb raises the issue that isn't talked about enough.  Wasn’t Trayvon Martin "standing his ground”? 

What remains frustratingly marginal in this discussion is the point Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel raised in her testimony—that Martin himself was afraid, that a black person might assess a man following him in a car and on foot as a threat, never mind that he might have seen Zimmerman’s weapon and suspected his life was in danger. The defense paid a great deal of attention to the implications of Martin referring to Zimmerman as a “creepy-ass cracker,” but, to the extent that we think about the epithet, we’re concerned with the wrong C-word. Imagine George Zimmerman being followed at night, in the rain, by an armed, unknown black man and you have an encounter that far exceeds the minimal definition of “creepy.” Indeed, you have a circumstance in which anyone would reasonably fear for his life. Add a twist in which that black man fires a shot that ends a person’s life, and it’s hard to imagine him going home after a brief police interview, as Zimmerman did.

"Words" for Today

"...democratization is more of a process than an end game."  (Ta-Nehisi Coates)

A 1000 Mile Walk on the Beach by Loreen Niewenhuis

I’ve often wondered about the entire lakeshore of Lake Michigan.  How much of it is walkable?  If I started walking from my favorite beach, how far could I go before I was stopped by a barrier of human or natural construction?

Loreen Niewenhuis wondered this too.  Also, she had just turned 45.  She says, "I felt something pull at me, goading me to take on something bigger than myself.”  She decided she would “take on the lake.”  She began with the question, “Why not walk its shoreline day after day until I had walked all of it, captured it in my muscles, recorded it in my body?”

She begins her walk at Navy Pier in Chicago and heads toward Indiana.  She describes the beauty of the lake and its beaches and the ways that factories and power plants have marred that beauty and dumped toxic waste into its water.

Sum, sum, summertime..

The video is a bit fuzzy, but it includes some nice, nostalgic memories of American Bandstand.

The Fruits of Zen

Last week I announced that I was getting ready to attend a four-day silent meditation retreat.  I’ve tried to write a few thoughts about those days, and they just came out boring and inadequate.  So, as follow-up, I post this video, which does describe the fruits tasted in that experience.

The speaker, Ruben Habito is one of the teachers in the linage I am following now.  His wife, Maria Habito was the teacher at last week’s retreat.

IF YOU KNEW

What if you knew you’d be the last 

to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

(For the rest of this poem by Ellen Bass, read here.)

Hi!

This morning Andrew Sullivan quoted Henry Fairlie's reflections on coming to the United States from Britain. It is a perfect reading for the Fourth of July.

Other memories come to mind. One spring day, shortly after my arrival, I was walking down the long, broad street of a suburb, with its sweeping front lawns (all that space), its tall trees (all that sky), and its clumps of azaleas (all that color). The only other person on the street was a small boy on a tricycle. As I passed him, he said "Hi!"—just like that. No four-year-old boy had ever addressed me without an introduction before. Yet here was this one, with his cheerful "Hi!" Recovering from the culture shock, I tried to look down stonily at his flaxen head, but instead, involuntarily, I found myself saying in return: "Well—hi!" He pedaled off, apparently satisfied. He had begun my Americanization.

Oh Yes!

[S]cience shares much with religion. Gods and monsters are wondrous things, recruited to explain life’s unknowns. Also, like science, religion has a striking capacity to make us feel simultaneously insignificant and elevated. (Jesse Prinz at aeon)

Anniversary of 8,000 Deaths

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought from July 1-3, 1863—150 years ago.  On the 100^th anniversary of the Gettysburg battle Vice-President Lyndon Johnson spoke these words:

One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin. The Negro today asks justice. 

We do not answer him—we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil—when we reply to the Negro by asking, ‘Patience.’ 

It is empty to plead that the solution to the dilemmas of the present rests on the hands of the clock. The solution is in our hands. Unless we are willing to yield up our destiny of greatness among the civilizations of history, Americans—white and Negro together—must be about the business of resolving the challenge which confronts us now. 

Our nation found its soul in honor on these fields of Gettysburg 100 years ago. We must not lose that soul in dishonor now on the fields of hate.  

Will there be speeches this week?  What will it take to complete the journey?

(The painting above is Father William Corby C.S.C. offering general absolution to an Irish brigade before the battle at Gettysburg.)

An Eviction

Can writing be beautiful when it describes a scene that breaks your heart?

Today, TA-NEHISICOATES describes accompanying a Chicago sheriff as the sheriff evicts a family from their home.  Here’s one paragraph: 

The adult male in the family, who was at home…agued with the officers and bucked in a way that was very familiar to me. He was in the living room with his spouse and their two kids. He was being emasculated in front of all of them. He had no power. His family was about to be sat out and there was nothing he could do. The officers escorted him outside. They told him to leave the immediate premises or be arrested. Outside there were men hired to haul the family's stuff into the streets. 

Read the rest, maybe--nothing else to say.