MESSAGE

Count on it.

Images viewed again and again will morph from Powerful to Permanent.

Skeptical? Close your eyes.

See the plane bursting into flames as it crashes into the top floors of The Tower? See the Twin Towers pancake to the ground in an ungodly puff of smoke, paper, and ash?

Images viewed again and again will morph from Powerful to Permanent. 

Quickly. 

See smoke burst from building into crowd as security guards cover their ears and  marathon runners flinch or fall to the ground? 

See baseball-capped brothers carrying back-packs through an unsuspecting crowd, or heavily armed FBI and police SWAT teams conducting door to door searches of an American city on lockdown? 

I sure do.

It's difficult to believe that this Week of Terror began with more than 20,000 dedicated runners from ninety-six countries competing in the Boston Marathon.

Surely none of them imagined the horror that would keep thousands of fellow participants from crossing the finish line.

Surely none of us who tuned into the race imagined we'd awaken on yet another morning, struggling to explain to our children why some people choose to kill. 

And yet, on every TV, tablet, and home computer, a barrage of images featuring horror, anguish and atrocity played and replayed, nipping at our innocence and challenging our humanity.

What kind of human being maims and kills with abandon?

It's surprising, Dear Reader, how a dozen years of experience and perspective can change one's view of images that sicken a soul and break a heart.

REWIND to Monday afternoon. I am watching the first images of the marathon bombings as Youngest Child returns from middle school and glances over my shoulder. He stands for a moment, silently observing the photographs. He asks a few questions then disappears into another room. 

I continue to stare at the TV - tears falling for the fallen. Then I do what I do whenever I am stressed. Or sad. Or breathing. I begin talking to myself.

"Turn off the TV. Now. DO NOT get sucked into the loop of terrifying images that will leave you obsessing about the horrible-rotten-no good state of the world. Turn off the tube. And stay away from the computer!

I finally shut up when I hear singing. Music travels from the corner of the kitchen to the family room, up the stairs and into the bedroom. 

A simple song in a sweet tenor. Who-like, it starts low and slow, building in volume, strength, and silliness. This song - with familiar tune and nonsensical lyrics - suddenly speaks to me of resilience, innocence, joy. Youngest Child is singing with abandon - just minutes after viewing images of violence and death! He is affirming that Innocence is never truly lost - so long as it takes root and blossoms in the hearts and minds of the young, and young at heart.

From that moment on, as I read or watched the news this week, I tried to look beyond the blood and chaos on Boylston Street, seeking Images that could morph from Powerful to Permanent to Message.

IMAGES: Adult cradling child. Friend comforting friend. Stranger lifting stranger. She hugging him. He carrying her.  

MESSAGE. Every new day brings grief to someone. Tragedy, illness, accident or death will strike, just as surely as friend, neighbor or stranger will answer the critical call for aid, love, and compassion; shining a brilliant light on our common humanity.

IMAGES: Bystanders and first responders pull flags of countless countries to the ground, leaping over them and the heavy, twisted barricades beneath them to reach victims so suddenly burned and broken.

MESSAGE: In times of need differences disappear. Walls built from prejudice and disagreement ultimately crumble beneath goodness. When it most matters we are brothers and sisters all, offering assistance based on one's need rather than citizenship, race, creed, political affiliation, sexual orientation, appearance. Or loyalty to a particular city or team. 

Go Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics!  (I     m   u   s   t      t ype       i t:         P.a.t.r.i.o.t.s.)

This Week of Terror. Networks continuously recycled the same horrific images, just as they did a dozen years ago when Manhattan darkened beneath a blazing sun. But this time I felt no fear. No instinct to retreat, withdraw, protect, retaliate. Because in those very same images I searched for gifts of assistance, comfort, love - and found them replaying again and again. 

You see what you seek.

Tonight, it was stunning to watch the citizens of Watertown line their streets and applaud the police, law enforcement, and emergency services who worked tirelessly throughout an excruciatingly dangerous and difficult day to apprehend a suspect and return a neighborhood from war zone to home. 

IMAGES:  Neighbors hugging. Chatting. High-fiving. Saluting. Cheering. Expressions of relief, disbelief, joy. And throughout the vast crowds not a single person was glancing at a cell phone or texting.

MESSAGE: Technology may continue to distance us from each other. But Life will smack us back together, demanding that we engage and look out for one another.

A decade plus of terrors and tragedies from 911 to the Boston Marathon Massacre have no doubt shaken the collective soul of this country.  

But they've also confirmed the same, simple message: we need each other. 

Powerfully and Permanently. 

I may not know you, dear Reader, but I know I need you. 

And someday you'll be there for me, just as I shall be there for you.

Count on it. 



QUING HEREBY DECREES: You see what you seek. Look for light.

WEAPON

The Reenactor.

Tells a brilliant story.

Of militiamen shoulder to shoulder on a battlefield.

Row after row after row.

Preparing to fire at enemy soldiers - shoulder to shoulder on a battlefield - row after row after row.

IMAGINE.  Hundreds of militiamen gripping their muskets, anxiously awaiting their commander's order: "Ready? Fire!"

You may be thinking: "The correct phrase is, 'Ready, AIM, Fire!'"

Not in this instance, Dear Reader.

Because few militiamen ever aimed a musket.

The Reenactor tells the tale of two centuries ago, when a musket was a soldier's weapon of choice.

Quicker and less messy to load and reload than a rifle, a musket could be fired most rapidly in battle, though its shot rarely hit a distant target. Indeed, scarcely one of every ten soldiers shooting at the very same target would actually wound or kill an enemy,

Consider a British officer's words from 1814: ... as for firing at a man at 200 yards with a common musket, you might just as well fire at the moon and have the same hope of hitting your object. I do maintain and will prove, whenever called on, that no man was ever killed at 200 yards by a common soldier's musket by the person who aimed at him."

Ready? Fire!

"Why not use a rifle?" The Reenactor is asked. He admits it is a much more precise shot, but a rifle took longer to load, and after repeated combat firings, the heavy fouling left by burnt gunpowder made the weapon difficult, if not impossible, to reload.

His story- history - carries on as The Reenactor tells tales of militiamen shooting and reloading every fifteen seconds during battle.  He speaks of riflemen - protected behind stone fort walls - aiming, shooting, then pausing a full minute to reload.

Pistols way back then?  One or two shot, not yet automatic.

Bayonets?  The most feared weapon of all. Enemy soldiers need only see the flash of a bayonet's blade and they'd flee, avoiding any possibility of hand-to-hand bludgeonry.

So civilized, the battles of centuries ago. Drink and dine with your enemy, then retreat to your fort and hope that days of lousy weather will delay the moment you meet again to fight to the death on the battlefield. Wind, rain, snow, or any kind of blustery day would postpone loss, victory, or bloodshed.

Gunpowder is useless without a spark.

The Reenactor recreates warfare in 1813 - more than two decades after the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted as part of our Bill of Rights.

In 1791, American leaders feared the tyranny of kings and government, and made certain all citizens had the right to keep and bear arms.

Nowadays, American citizens fear the right of the people to keep and bear arms. 

Because the arms that we have the right to keep and bear have changed.

REWIND: December 14, 2012.  A 20-year-old shoots his way into an elementary school with a Bushmaster rifle that is loaded with a 30-round capacity magazine. He also carries a loaded 9mm handgun, three magazines for the rifle - each containing 30 rounds, and additional ammo for his two handguns and shotgun.

In less than five minutes, the shooter moves from school entryway through two classrooms, killing 20 children and six adults before unloading a single shot from his handgun into his brain.

Police find the shooter's rifle loaded with 14 bullets in its 30-round capacity magazine, plus one round in a chamber. Ten 30-round capacity magazines are discovered at the scene. Three of the magazines still contain 30 rounds. Three are empty, while the others have 10, 11 or 13 live rounds in them. More ammunition for handguns is also found.

154 spent bullet casings are found in the school. In the five minute killing spree, a bullet is shot every two seconds or less.

The Chief Medical Examiner reports that the body of each dead child has three to eleven bullet wounds.  FACT: Assault type bullets don't travel in a straight line through a victim. They open in the body and explode, causing maximum damage.

In the parking lot the shooter’s car harbors a loaded 12-gauge shotgun. At his home, investigators find six handguns and rifles, more than 1,600 rounds of unspent ammunition, a BB gun, a starter pistol, higher and lower capacity magazines, three Samurai swords with blades 13 inches, 21 inches and 28 inches long, a bayonet, and smaller knives in sheaths.

Bullets are stored in a Planters nut canister and plastic baggies, in a bedroom gun safe, on closet shelves, in a shoe box, a duffel bag, and a filing cabinet drawer.

IMAGINE:  The shooter had the right to own all of that stuff. And more. Even as he amassed weapons of warfare, he planned and prepared for battle, compiling a 7-foot-long, 4-foot-wide spreadsheet with details of other massacres. He learned classic police training from video games like Call of Duty, and once inside his former elementary school, he moved quickly from classroom to classroom reloading before he was out of ammunition. Better to waste a few rounds than stop killing.

In this particular case, no background check or mental health report would have stopped the shooter's murderous spree. Even his mother - who shared his home and purchased his guns - failed to see how profoundly disturbed he was.

Which brings us back to the weapons.

IMAGINE:  Five minutes.  

The time it takes a rifleman on a battlefield in 1813 to shoot and reload a rifle, firing five times.  

The time it takes a militiaman on a battlefield in 1813 to shoot and reload a musket, firing 20 times - with little hope that any of his shots will make contact with an enemy.

The time it takes a citizen in an elementary school in 2012 to shoot and reload a Bushmaster rifle, firing 154 bullets, and murdering twenty-six people.

Elementary School. Movie Theatre. Grocery Store. Bus Stop. Heavily armed men in recent months have turned these everyday places of learning, amusement, and business into killing fields where innocents are gunned down with powerful weapons meant for warfare.

And while polls show that 60% of Americans surveyed desire stricter laws governing the sale of firearms, and 87% of respondents - Democrats, independents and Republicans - support expanded background checks, the NRA, fearing that "What we face right now is the most dire threat to the association and to our freedom," calls instead for training and arming adults in schools to reduce the response time in the event of an attack.

Will we ever collectively speak - and listen to - the Language of Reason?

FACT: The Second Amendment was ratified in 1791 when bayonets were a feared weapon of warfare, and soldiers armed with muskets, rifles, and gunpowder wouldn't bother to battle on windy, rainy, or snowy days.

Centuries later, America's elected officials won't bother to include a ban on certain styles of semiautomatic weapons and large capacity magazines in their soon-to-be-voted-on gun law package.   

Five senators have signed a pledge to filibuster “any additional gun restrictions".

But as we consider the victims, their families and friends, the first responders, teachers, children, moviegoers, students, and all other citizens traumatized by the random mass killings in towns like Newtown, Aurora, and Tucson, we must recognize how all have been deprived either of life or personal liberties: the right and freedom to go to school, to the movies, to a pharmacy or grocery store without the real - or feared - threat of gun violence or death.

And even as we argue against surrendering our right to keep and bear arms that include assault weapons and large capacity magazines unimaginable to soldiers (or legislators) in 1791, so too must we consider the heroes who were willing to surrender their lives to protect loved ones - or students - from death by blazing bullets.

Dear Reader, 'tis time we become Reactors.

Responsible Gun Owners, Gun Control Advocates, and Citizens committed to protecting the rights, lives, and simple freedoms of fellow citizens must stand shoulder to shoulder.  

State after state after state.

We must demand that our elected officials legislate to protect our children, our families, our friends and neighbors from the destruction and death too easily facilitated by citizens armed with semiautomatic weapons and large capacity magazines meant for warfare.

Awaiting a commander's order? 

Well, then, "Ready, Aim, Fire!"

Call or email your elected officials (contact info at www.usa.gov), and relay this simple message:  

"Ready,  Congressperson? 

 My Aim is simple.

Vote for reasonable and responsible gun laws or you will be Fired!"

Two hundred years from now, Reenactors will tell the tale of how - in 2013 - Reactors spoke out for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Reason, and thereby eliminated a whole lot of heartache and bloodshed from our American story.

Brilliant.

QUING HEREBY DECREES:  "Fear" is not a word in the Language of Reason. "Sensible" combined with "Action" replaced it.