There are fireworks going off in my neighborhood right now. They are very large and very close. I turned the sound down on the television as soon as I heard them, and I probably shouldn't have. It alerted the fraidy cats in my house to what was going on outside. I had black and white cats scattering, two diving under chairs and one climbing to her tree perch where she feels safest. The little red-headed dog put his ears back and looked at me with that nervous, whites-of-his-eyes-visible expression. I never imagined when we chose this neighborhood that we would be dealing with shell-shocked animals as often as we do. It comes from multiple directions. I think there is a mega church and possibly a country club nearby to blame for the booming noises that give my animals the thousand yard stare.
The skies darkened and opened up again today. I made the mistake of letting the darkness and steady rain soothe me too much, and I fell asleep when I should have been preparing for my trip to the art show. I woke with a cloudy mind, and the only thing I could remember that needed doing was racing across town to Petsmart before it closed, so I had enough cat food to last until I came home. I went to two more stores, picking up supplies I knew I needed, and somewhere around six thirty, as I made it back to the car after the last errand, I reached to start the car, and stopped. I realized what I had done, and yelled, "DOGS!" The kennel is only open from four to five thirty on Sundays for pick ups and drop offs, and I missed it by a full hour, and forty minutes worth of driving even if they had still been open that late. I am a bad pet mommy. I reset tomorrow's alarm, and put a calendar notification to remind me to race out there at the crack of dawn, waiting for the kennel techs to open the door.
I promised myself I would not inject politics into this blog, and I am going to stick to that as much as possible. But just now, I find myself needing to say something, even if I must stay neutral and vague to remain in my self-imposed boundaries. I watched the Tony awards tonight, and let it run into the local news afterwards. I am aware that there was yet another random and shocking shooting spree today, this time in Las Vegas. How is it possible that not only is something like this not the top story on the late news, but so far, twelve minutes in, it hasn't been mentioned at all? Is this where we are now? That it is so common that it is barely worth a blink? I don't know all the details of this latest act of violence, but so far I've heard mention of a "revolution" spoken by one of the shooters. Just a couple days ago, I was expressing how far outside of my understanding are the sociopaths who can view groups of their fellow humans as "other" enough to want to eliminate them. This feels like an extension of that to me. Do people like this feed on that steady stream of hate and misinformation that is so abundant in a mass media world? There are plenty of sociopaths with microphones and websites, playing on the fears of vulnerable, gullible people. They lie so charmingly, get groups of people completely churned up, and damn the consequences of their poisonous words. Not only do I fail to understand the mind of a shooter like the ones today, I do not comprehend how anyone can use their position of power and influence to foment the ill will to which people like this fall prey. I realize I am making a huge assumption here, of the motivations of the kind of people who would open fire on two policemen who were sitting down at lunch, but there is an awful lot of anti-authority crazy talk out there, far more than I remember hearing in the days when our media choices were more limited.
I am at a loss. Again. I think I will hide under a chair next to my scared cats. I hate hate.
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