LAST NIGHT I THOUGHT ABOUT the fireworks going off like crazy in my neighborhood and I wondered how the birds and the outdoor cats were coping with it. I wondered about the owls that live in my neighborhood and I hoped they wouldn’t leave permanently and go elsewhere. (I confess I hoped the squirrels would.)
LAST NIGHT I THOUGHT ABOUT the fireworks going off and I wondered about all the soldiers with PTSD who served in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere who were listening to the same sounds. Were they ok, or were they suffering through flashbacks from graphic memories of urban combat and remembering the deaths of fellow soldiers?
LAST NIGHT I THOUGHT ABOUT the fireworks going off and I thought about all the miserable and violent places on earth – jungles, small towns, huge cities – where those sounds aren’t celebratory fireworks; they’re the sounds of bombs going off, dropped from planes or detonated by guerrillas, terrorists, and suicide bombers to inflict damage, injury, death and terror upon people who may be doing nothing more threatening than grocery shopping. They’re the sounds of hatred, malice, bigotry and prejudice; the sounds of gunfire, of real bullets fired at real humans with the intention of killing them because they are from another country, they belong to another race or religion, or because they have something the shooter wants.
LAST NIGHT I THOUGHT ABOUT the fireworks going off and I thought about all the shootings right here in Augusta over the past year. Sometimes they rate only the briefest mention on the news, even if a death results. Sometimes we barely pay attention, they have become so commonplace. In that light, I hope you’ll watch the video below, even though it’s truly horrible. I hope you’ll force yourself to watch it. I hope you’ll never forget it. And I hope because of it you’ll never again shrug off a news report of a shooting. Violence is something we should never accept as routine.