An Open Letter to our Candidates

Dear Men and Women Who Seek to Become Our President,

Together with millions of people here in America and around the globe, I watched Wednesday night's debate.  When the Democratic candidates go at it, we will be watching you as well.  We are listening and listening hard, hoping to hear true leadership and reasonable objectivity in the midst of all the posturing and hyperbole.

I am writing to you, while you are stumping around the country in this crazy carnival we have come to know as the campaign trail, to give you a tiny little incomplete and imperfect picture of a few of the many varied lives I came into contact with the day after the debate--all of which you will impact as our President.

Before 8:00 am a smart, hardworking plumber who started and runs his own business was at our door, part in hand, ready to fix one of those things we take for granted that suddenly become an emergency.

In preparation for traveling out of town, I went to get my low riding tires aired up.  The young man who helped me bore a tattoo on the inside of his forearm: "Blessed are the peacekeepers..."  We talked briefly and I found that he had been in the Army--deployed to Baghdad.

By 10:00 I had visited with someone who had watched her high-achieving, white collar first husband succumb to drug addiction.  She had managed to escape what finally became a dangerous situation, and had raised his nephews because no one else was capable of doing so.  She, too, had built a small business, as a single mom, and it is thriving today.

Spoon Tracker - Etsy

I ate lunch with a couple, married for 63 years, who had also watched the debate.  They had listened closely and spoke carefully, thoughtfully, about their concerns, about their hopes for this country they have worked in and loved for 80 years.

Our waitress at lunch was excited to tell us about an upcoming trip to California.  She is working double shifts to save her money for this long-planned journey, as well as to pay her regular bills.  When I congratulated her on saving up before she left, she was proud to say all her bills would be paid and that she wouldn't be dinging up a big credit card balance, thanks to all the extra hours she is so wisely putting in.

We visited with a small shop owner on the square, an artist and entrepreneur who also has a deep love of history.  She expressed her concern for what seems to be the looming obsolescence of history, her worry that young generations of students have little historical context for their lives.  And, of course, we spoke about the debate and each of you.

Others joined in the conversation--a 59-year old employee of the shop and a sales rep, making his rounds across the state in pursuit of business. They, too, had watched you and your colleagues debate.  They, too, had interesting insight and prespectives to share.

Later I heard stories about an upcoming funeral visitation for a 28-year old young man who had been killed in a mining accident and of an area farmer who is deeply grateful for the men who come from Mexico to work on his farm every year--men he has come to know well and to respect.

That evening I went to a movie--the first I had been to in my town since the recent theatre shootings, a fact which never occurred to me until a young girl with huge eyes said, "I'm sorry but I have to look in your bag.  Can you move that stuff around?  I'm not allowed to touch anything."  My first thought was darn, no more sneaking in dollar store candy; when the real reason finally dawned on me I was saddened, not because of contraband candy, but because of the insanity of gunfire at the movies.

My post-debate day ended with gratitude for the police and for the midnight voice on the end of the line when someone I knew needed 911 because, for the third time in a week, an unwanted and unknown person was on the front porch, about to come in.


Here you have an incomplete sampling of some of my encounters with the citizens of this country, all in one day--the day after the debate.  Average,  fairly normal interactions with people many of you might think of as average.  In some ways, we are.

Most of you are working hard, out on the campaign trail--raising money, talking until you can talk no more, eating bad food and probably not sleeping enough.  Missing your families and worrying about what your own future, either in the White House or outside of it, will hold.

Just remember, please, while you're at it: there's a lot of living going on out here.  Good people doing their jobs and paying their bills and taking care of each other.  What you do and who you are matters to each and every one of them.

Sincerely,

Portia

Bright Shining as the Sun

Wednesday night in the south is church night--the most casually unscientific observer would know this fact by simple osmosis.  Church parking lots are full, church windows ablaze, perhaps church doors are propped open.  Wednesday night is church night--I've heard and said it so often it sounds like the chorus of an old familiar hymn. 

In Charleston, S.C., church night became the night for slaughter.

We raised our kids in an old, downtown Methodist church, known for its faithful respect of Wesleyan ritual, for its heritage, for its beautiful building, all of which I, too, enjoyed.  One of the high points of my personal liturgical year during my time in this congregation was Ash Wednesday.  Every year, on this one special day, we gathered together with the congregation and choir of Taylor Chapel AME Church to usher in the season of Lent.

We shared our supper with our crosstown friends and then we all trooped into the sanctuary, groups of two or three or four trickling in from the Fellowship Hall, talking and laughing, perhaps hugging when we saw a familiar face.  Then the beautiful and talented voices of Taylor Chapel shared their gift of music with us, and what a gift it was.  Their pastor blessed us with his gift of words.  Then we all lined up, together, and received the mark of an ashen cross on our foreheads.

I will always remember those Ash Wednesday services--no matter how delinquent my Sunday attendance might have been, I tried to show up on that special night, and I left better for it.

Today Taylor Chapel AME sent out a crosstown call for all who mourn Charleston to join them in prayer.  I went, and, once again, I left better for it.

We sat shoulder to shoulder on church pews and listened as three men of God tried to find words for our ears and for our hearts.  Pastor John Lee of Mt. Zion Baptist prayed a prayer that rippled through every single listener as he lifted up the lost, their families, their church, as he prayed there would be no more copycats driven to mimic evil, and then a sudden stillness fell across us all as he prayed for the shooter.  I felt every mind and heart in that congregation turn inward as we challenged ourselves to that tallest and most difficult of Christian tenets.

Pastor Jay Smith of State Street Methodist prayed with a voice thick with emotion, beginning in the painfully still relevant words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and moving seamlessly into his own supplication--for hope, for peace, for us to help one another.

Pastor Joshua Hale of Taylor Chapel looked out upon us and said, "Isn't this the church that Christ intended--brothers and sisters of all races together?"  His question was answered with a chorus of amens.  

Pastor Hale called the names of the murdered.  He gave their ages and a few brief details about them, and as he lit a candle for each, they and their lives, their loss, became real to each of us.  The room was heavy with the grief of nine families, of a church, of a town, we could only begin to imagine.

We joined hands, pew to pew, around the entire room, and we raised our voices together in a shared prayer we all knew by heart, the Lord's own prayer, and those words "thy will be done" were perhaps more difficult to utter on this night.  

Before we left Pastor Hale let us know that the good people of Emanuel AME would receive copies of the register each of us had signed, so they would know that on this night 100+ souls were with them.

Tonight we lit a candle.  Our candle says to evil you will not win.  We will not speak your name because you deserve no name.  We will speak the names of the lost and we will remember them.  

And let it be known that on Thursday, June 18, 2015, in Bowling Green, Kentucky, hope lit up the stained glass windows at Taylor Chapel AME.  It's a hope that can light up the world.

Sequestered

At this moment, on this planet, there are only twelve people who know exactly how the decision not to indict a Missouri police officer in the death of a Missouri teenager was made.  Twelve.

On a planet of billions, twelve souls is barely a Thanksgiving dinner.  And we will not hear from them.  We won't know their faces, their background data, their socioeconomic status, their politics, their religion.  We will know nothing.  They were selected months before the shooting even occurred, with no possible way to know a case of this magnitude would be placed before them to decide.

Today my mind is on these twelve.

A few months ago I was one of the twelve.  A grand jury (like the one in Missouri) had already rendered a case worthy of trial. I realize that this is the point of contention in Missouri.  I know the allegations of manipulation of the system, of prejudice on the part of the prosecution, the history of no indictments of police officers.  An argument is also often made that grand juries are manipulated to get an indictment.  For this moment I am not thinking of the possible flaws in our system.  Today my mind is on the twelve.

I showed up for Warren Circuit Court jury selection smug in my ignorance--jury duty, how hard can it be?  Surely I would be dismissed.  I've lived here too long, know too many people, to possibly be eligible as a neutral juror.  Spring break was coming--we had a trip planned--maybe there wouldn't even be a trial.

They told us it was a murder trial.  They told us it could possibly last several days.  They (and by "They" I mean the prosecuting attorney and the defense attorney) asked questions.  I answered the questions honestly--I didn't make up excuses for why I could not serve.  I was picked.

And suddenly I was nervous.  Really nervous.  A man had died from a knife wound on a street in my own town.  His mother and family was in the court room.  The mother and family of the defendant were in the court room.  They could see us and I could see them.  This wasn't TV.  This was real.

We were given a round, red button to wear, thereby identifying us to all the world as the twelve who would decide the fate of the accused.  We didn't need the button.  Everyone knew who we were.

A few facts of this case.  The deceased was black.  The defendant was black.  The unrelated individual who would seem to be the actual cause of the melee was black.  He was also alive and very present.  I am white.  Ten of my fellow jurors were white.  One lone juror was black.  I only mention these skin-deep observations because we are, increasingly, a nation that is seeing more color, not less--a fact I find depressing, at best, dehumanizing at worst.

We twelve were a fairly good cross section of life here in Warren County, Kentucky.  Pretty fairly split between male and female, white and blue collar, employed and not.  Immediately after we were selected and plunked down in the jury box, red buttons blazing on our lapels, the brother of the deceased leapt to his feet and bolted, screaming profanity, toward the defendant.  He was restrained by gun-wearing bailiffs even as we were being ushered rapidly from the courtroom to back hallway privacy by other gun-toting bailiffs.

At that moment I would wager that every one of the twelve was wishing they were anywhere but here.  I certainly was.  We barely made eye contact with each other.  We huddled in our individual chairs in the back room and did not speak.  Perhaps someone opened a stick of gum or checked their phone, but other than the collective rapidly beating pulse of twelve folks who before today had never seen each other, the room was silent.

And then the trial began.  Not fifteen minutes after being selected we were back in that jury box, a court-provided steno pad and number 2 wooden pencil in hand, hearing opening remarks.

On any given day across our country such proceedings may be found.  Twelve people, leaning forward, listening with every inch of their brains, trying to make sense of testimony that conflicts itself at the moment it is being delivered (a euphemism for lying under oath), of physical evidence so detailed it is easy to get lost in the science of it all, of he said/she said/they said they saw stories, of police vs citizen dynamics that belie the fact that we ALL are citizens of this town.

We leaned forward.  We listened.  We followed the rules (I was actually surprised by this), and NO ONE discussed that case in that jury room until after closing remarks were heard.  We took page after page of notes.

We asked questions, handed to the bailiff in writing, seeking clarification, trying to understand, how these people ended up on that street corner on a hot June night engaged in battle.  A gun was on the scene.  A bruise was sustained by the defendant.  Blood was tested.  Autopsy reports were given.  State lab analysis of the gun was performed.  On and on and on.

It was some of the most difficult work I have ever done.  The listening.  At night I saw those mothers' faces.  I saw the faces of the defendant and of the deceased.  I heard the voices, the mumbling, the cursing, the repeated admonitions from the judge to respect the court.  I saw a gun that had been on the scene, brought by a compatriot of the deceased--held it in my hand and felt its deadly weight.  I saw blood splatters and a knife blade.  I looked at maps, listened to 911 calls, saw my fellow jurors weep.  I got a very small, very imperfect glimpse into what our police department and court system does every single day.  Of what life behind the headline is really like for the people who live the lives that make up those headlines.

After several days, many hours, of listening and notetaking, we were sequestered, with our notes, with a seventeen-page document of instructions meant only for us, and with the evidence.  We were given a sandwich and told not to come out until we had reached a decision.

And suddenly, so suddenly it took my breath away, I was in dire need of those eleven other people.

As we began to talk, falteringly at first, about what we had heard over those long days, it became increasingly clear that every single person there had listened, and listened hard.  They, too, had been engaged in nocturnal wrestling.  They, too, understood the gravity of what we were about.  These things had absolutely nothing to do with their education, their religion, their politics, their socioeconomic status, or their race.  They had everything to do with the fact that they were human beings engaged in living here, in Bowling Green.

It took us about five hours to decide; in full disclosure, I was the lone vote who held the decision up for that long.  With shaking hands I kept going back to those seventeen pages of instructions.  With a quavering voice, I turned to my fellow jurors and asked, "Will you help me?  For some reason, I don't think I can read."

And they did.  As did the twelve Missourians help one another through what have been, with certainty, long and difficult days.

After it was all over, after the verdict was rendered, after the mothers on both sides of that courtroom had wept, after the judge had thanked us for our service and we were ushered, one last time, into the jury room, I sat down, breathless and overcome.  It was done.  A decision had been made and I was one-twelfth of that decision.

No one knows what we heard and saw during all those many days of testimony and arguments unless they, too, were there for every single second of it.  No one other than we twelve knows what took place in that room and how that decision was made.  And the same holds true for Missouri.  We don't know.  We never will know.  CNN and Fox can blather on for months on end, but they will never know.  Even if one, lone juror breaks code, goes rogue, and blurts out his or her experience, it is still an incomplete and flawed image of that process.

Later I talked to another judge, someone I saw on a walking trail in a local park.  I shared with him my experience, my conflicts with the system and with myself.  I asked him what he thought about the imperfections of the jury system and he said in his experience and from where he sits, you get twelve people in a room together, they will almost always, somehow, get it right.

I think we did.  I hope we did.  It took all twelve of us to do it, that I know for sure.  And it took all twelve Missourians to come to the decision not to indict.  Let us respect them. And let us respect a system, flawed as it is, flawed as we all may be, that brings twelve random people into a room where they wrestle with information, with facts, with difficult decisions, on behalf of us all.

Just Hitting our Stride

Oh, so many years ago when I naively toed the line and bolted in response to the gun blast that ushered in the frenetic race of my reproductive years, who could have guessed I had finally found an athletic event at which I could perform?  No one.

Having babies was a marathon I was apparently built to run.  So I did.  Every time Baby X hit twelve months and the first fluff of fuzz began to fill in the top o' the pate, I frantically rushed to put the old, barely cool oven back to good use.

Fine. Good.  Don't take the high chair or the baby bed down for ten years.  That's okay.  Keep the diaper dudes rolling in big bucks and the formula franchises fat and happy.  Done.  Sleep about five hours a week, and that with at least three uninvited bodies squished in the middle of the bed.  Got it.

I was young.  I could handle five birthday parties a year.  No problem.  Put my head down, keep my eyes blearily focused on the eighteen inches of road right in front of me and just go.  Never mind what the future might have in store.  I had five kids in eight years--how bad could it be?

Three weddings in eighteen months.  That's how bad.

Wedding Number 1 was duly documented in a relatively timely blog post less than forty-eight hours following the blessed event.  Given that Wedding Number 3 was celebrated a few short weeks ago, I thought it high time to turn my attention to the poor middle child of all these nuptials.

These two kids practically grew up at my kitchen table.  They had so much in common and seemed to fit so well together, I once opined it was a shame they had met too early in life.  So much for my maternal wisdom.

High school graduation.  Check.

College memories made.  Check.

Suddenly, lo and behold, the time was nigh.  The football warrior was ready to take a knee, and thus he bravely approached the not-so-unsuspecting seat of paternal power, who uttered, without a hint of irony even after five years of growing-up togetherness, "This is a bit more accelerated than I had anticipated."

And just like that we found ourselves deep in the bowels of Lost River Cave setting up for the party of a lifetime, as rapid waters were rising and dire warnings that we might have to evacuate lock, stock and barrel, at the exact moment our soiree was getting underway, were being flung about like confetti.

I grabbed the groom by his shirt sleeve and said, "Groom, call the bride.  You guys have a decision to make."

They did what they always do--put their heads together, hunkered down and said, "Let's do it."  So we did.

A little Motown and a red towel-waving preacher

Lots of pretty girls and good looking fellas

A dance with dear old dad

And a Big Red fox trot

Followed by a toast from the sibs

And this new little household was ready to rock and roll.  A few short weeks later they were packing up and heading on down the road to start their next great chapter together--trading in Big Red for some Big Blue and setting up camp with the helpful hands of lots of folks who were awfully sad to see them go and awfully proud of all they had done and all they most certainly were going to do.

Young?  Maybe.  Accelerated?  Depends on who's keeping track of time.  Ready for life?

After watching these two at my kitchen table, at their own kitchen table, on bright sunny days and on not-so-hot days when the going might not be as easy as they always make it look, you bet.

Don't You Bother My Chickens

If there's one thing I never thought I would do it is this:  write a seven-minute suspense/thriller movie script starring a homicidal serial killer who boasts a distinctly odd predilection to poultry.  And yet, a few days ago, I did exactly that.

A team of energetic, talented young folk who wanted to try their hand at the 48-Hour Film Project in Nashville asked if I would be their writer--the only answer to that question is, "Heck, yeah!"  

Does that sound like fun or what?  Stay up all night.  Live on junk food and Diet Coke.  Run around the streets of Nashville with folks who have lights, camera, a boom mike, and aren't afraid to use them.  I was all in.

I am old and creaky.  I am uncool and a techno-dud.  But I was gonna make a flippin' movie!

On a Friday night in July we showed up at the uber-hip NuMynd Studios with thirty-nine other teams, where we got a packet bursting with information and paperwork.  Eric Irvin, our trusty leader and the brains behind the whole deal, stuck his hand into an Indiana Jones hat and out came the genre for our film. 

Next: the pesky rules.  Every team entered in the competition had to include the following three elements in their film, no matter the genre:

1. Pliers

2. A line of dialogue: "Just leave me alone."

3. A character: Detective Andrew or Andrea Loper

Forty-eight hours later all teams were to return with a finished product, written, shot, edited, scored, and rendered into the appropriate format, no later than 7:30 pm.  One second after and your film was not eligible to be judged.  Let the games begin!

First order of business:  burritos.  Second order of business:  a story.  A few hours later Christina Morris was composing original music and I was texting my husband about the possible use of firearms.  His response when told about our genre and shooting location:  "Why would the chicken coop be suspenseful?"  If he only knew.

With way more Warren County, Kentucky connections for shooting potential, our little band of filmmakers was on the road headed north at 7:00 am the next morning, tummies full of McDonald's, happy in the knowledge that a real live actor would meet us on location.  

Nope.

A frantic search through cell phones full of contacts ensued.  Finally, when it appeared all would be lost, we roused a sleepy, baseball-playing, non-acting, unsuspecting fellow who, before he was awake enough to know what he was getting into, agreed.  Next: the rounding up of props and of course, the making of bloody rags (a staple in every suspense/thriller movie!).

Director Eric and Sound Engineer Alex Loft doublechecked equipment,

our stars immersed themselves in the psyches of their deeply riveting characters,

and, after a symbolic lunch of Zaxby's, we were finally ready to roll.

Ten hours later we were wrapping up final shots at a local grocery--

then we threw the equipment in the car and headed back to Nashville to begin editing the final product.

At 6:59 pm on Sunday, our four-member team clatters out the door, a still un-finished product rendering on the laptop.  We jump into the first available car--on E.  We plug the laptop into the cigarette lighter and take off.  Still on E.

No worries.  We can get there.  Siri is on the phone, talking us through.  We are almost there.  It is 7:10.  Train tracks.  A train is coming.  The crossing guards are down.  Mary Cullen calmly careens (is it possible to calmly careen?) up to the crossing, looks down the track, and bolts around the guards to the other side.  I am screaming that we could have run out of gas (while on the tracks) and Eric is predicting jail time for us all.

We pull in to the parking lot at 7:21.  By now rendering is complete...BUT we have minutes to go to get it uploaded onto the flashdrive.  Other teams are doing the same.  Frantic people in black T-shirts are running in and out.  Laptops are everywhere.

Fastforward:  we race in, past the woman with the way cool accent who is barring the doorway, an oversized electronic stopwatch in hand, at exactly 7:29 pm.  Done!

Moral of this story:  if somebody asks you to be a part of the 48 Hour Film Project, do it!  It's a race against the clock, against Mother Nature, against unforeseen shooting woes and location glitches, computer conundrums and empty gas tanks.  And it's the most fun you will have for a very long time!

Free Range - A 48 Hour Film Project from Eric Irvin on Vimeo.

May Sweeps

It starts like this:

a kid is born.

Well, if we are really going for accuracy, a kid is conceived.  Preferably in private.  Hopefully in love.

Some nine months later, give or take, said fifth, and final, kid is born.

And two previously young, vibrant, moderately toned young people become parents.

Years go by.  Often unobserved, generally unnoted, aging occurs.

Then one fine May morning the mother of said kid wakes up (if she's been to sleep at all), and realizes said infant is about to leave the nest.  Fly the coop.  Head for the open road.  Age up.  Hightail it out of here.  Or, in generally accepted American terms:  graduate.

OMG.  All caps are required.  OMG.

It's May.  There's a graduate in the house.  There are pictures to sort.  Parties to plan.  Dresses to buy.

There are banquets, and celebrations, and soirees, and gatherings, and the-last-time-we'll-ever-do-this ad infinitum.

The month of May is a watershed month.  A mere thirty-one days filled with prom dresses and, in our house, tennis outfits.  Driving and driving and more driving.  Trips to Sam's Club and Kroger.  More trips to Sam's Club and Kroger.  Multiple visits to Hobby Lobby.

There's the ever familiar backache from hunching over the kitchen table into the wee hours working on homemade projects you knew some eighteen years ago you would be creating, yet somehow those eighteen years slipped by and here you are, smack dab in the middle of the month of May, with aging eyes and fumble fingers, at 1:30 am.

There's the surprise attack of a heretofore unseen Google commercial.  Good old Google.  What say we Google "how to let go?"

There are ferns to water and flowers to plant.  Party food to buy and graduation cards to sign.  There are necks to hug and farewells to fling.

The elder children return, with dear significant others in tow.  Dogs run in and out, duffle bags and shoes are piled by the door.  Food is bought, cooked and consumed in vast quantities, at an astonishing rate.  Towels pile up.  The television runs late into the night ("play the movie...yah").  Music blares.  Jokes are shared.  And then, all-too-soon, the crowd shoulders up, all hands in the middle, and breaks with a loud cheer before taillights head out and the old folks are left with this:

Empty.  Silent.  Gone.

This time there is no other nestling to hold down the fort.  The last little peeper has flown.  The days of May have done their bittersweet job, and therefore so have we.

Miley Mania, Steinem Style

                                      

According to Huffington Post (ever the arbiter of all things considered intelligent and urbane, or at least easily digested in a five-second e-mail check), when Gloria Steinem speaks a mere seven or eight sentences on a topic, we, the passive, mind-numbingly stupid public must consider said subject hereafter closed.

Screw that.

Gloria Steinem does not think for me or for any woman or man I know.  

We think for ourselves.  And yes, while we do in some good measure owe our ability to publicly proclaim our thoughts to her diligent and focused efforts a number of years ago, women (and men) have been thinking for centuries.  And just because one former Playboy bunny (a still very sexy 79-year old--a feat which in and of itself deserves an ovation) has dedicated her life to feminist causes does not entitle her to become the final and, apparently only, arbiter for us all.

The subject at hand is, fittingly, Miley Cyrus' very accomplished use of her childlike body, her tongue, her lipstick, and her tiny little buttocks to gain worldwide attention, thereby establishing her place atop the Olympian mountain of our collectively wee brains' pop culture knowledge.

Kudos to Miley, I suppose, if worldwide pop culture attention is one's aim.

But I disagree with Ms. Steinem's assessment that Miley's performance (and Robin Thicke's) and a legion of other performers, writers and filmmakers currently working are not setting women (and men) back.

They are.  All of us.  And the harm being done is gender-blind.  Gender-blind, Ms. Steinem.  For where one suffers, we all suffer.  

Sex is good.  The desire for sex was given to earthly creatures for the very practical purpose of procreation.  Fortunately for human beings a little extra gray matter and what some of us call a four-letter word--the soul--can endow the act with significant emotional and spiritual resonance.

What Miley, Thicke, and thousands of others like them (trace it back as far as you would like--Madonna, Hugh Hefner, blah, blah, blah) have done is remove that very intricate, exquisitely delicate, almost unspeakable element that makes us human.

They have bestialized us all.

And if that isn't setting us all back to when we first clawed our way up out of the mud, I don't know what does.

This life isn't a game.  Sex isn't a game.  

The decisions we make about how we live, both publicly and privately, are not mere flicks of the wrist over the chessboard of our days.  For Steinem to equate what Miley and thousands like her do to "playing the game" is to belittle all our lives.  And, oddly enough, to belittle her own efforts because, last time I checked, there are lots of other games in town for women, in large part due to her own work!

I hope this debate isn't over, because if it is, we all have lost.  Rutting in a field with whatever rump passes by is, in my mind, a waste of so much--a waste of what makes us human, a waste of what makes it possible for us to even contemplate, much less create, art, a waste of the poetic, lyric, quintessential loveliness of so many human souls I know and admire.

So thanks, Ms. Steinem, for the hard work all those years ago.  But if it's all right with you, I will decide for myself whether and how to play "the game".  And when I am disappointed in my fellow citizens about the way they choose to play it, and the rules they choose to follow or to flout, I will exercise my human and singularly private right to be so.

And to the nameless, faceless hand that posted this HuffPost piece:  you have a brain.  Use it.

He Could Have Been My Son

And he was shot in the back.

He could have been one of my son's teammates, most of whom also hail from foreign lands.  Canada, Colombia, France, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Taiwan...each one of them beautiful in his own, unique way.

On any given afternoon each one likely to be running or walking down an ordinary American road, and on his mind...what?

If I know young men, probably his next meal.  Maybe the team practice he just worked through, or the workout to come.  Matches to be played or shots he missed.  A quiz to be taken, homework and lectures made up.  The cute blonde who just drove by in a little red car, music blasting from her open window.

The last thing on their minds, or on the mind of Chris Lane, is that he will be shot in the back.  Dead on the side of the road while the sun blazes overhead and three other young boys speed off in a car, having sated their monstrous "boredom" with the entertainment of this particular boy's death.  There would be the shock of not knowing, the wonder as his knees crumple beneath him, as his breath comes hard and his eyes begin to glaze.

He could have been my son.

They all could be my sons, even the ones with the guns.  They all are somebody's son and they all were little boys.  Some mother somewhere held each of these boys the night he was born and thought about the future that stretched out before him.

Surely not a single one of those women dreamt it would end up like this--one boy dead, three others' lives as good as over, the realization of what they have done heavy in their eyes, on their souls.

I wish our President got it--that they all are somebody's son.

Trayvon and George, Chris and the deadly bored trio, each one of my son's teammates.  Every single blessed boy borne by a woman, fathered by a man, sent out into this world with the hope that he will have a good life.

They all are our sons.  The good and the bad.  We hold their hands.  We wipe their noses.  We wash their feet.  We cheer their games.  We feed their hunger.

And we mourn.  Mr. President, we mourn them all.