WordSisters

Author: Ellen Shriner

  • We Have To Do Better

    Although I don’t want to carry a handgun for protection, I understand that other people might need or want one.

    Similarly, I am not a hunter, but I recognize rifles or shotguns are part of the sport.

    But what I cannot understand is why anyone except a military person on active duty in a war zone needs to own an assault rifle. By design, it’s meant to kill a lot of people very fast. Why would that ever be appropriate in civilian life?

    Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Red Lake, Milwaukee, Seattle, and now, Newtown. No one thinks these mass shootings are acceptable. Yet, we are destined to see more tragedies like these, unless we as a country change our approach to gun control and to mentally ill people.

    The problem is complicated and a solution won’t be easy, but we cannot continue to sit idly by while more innocent people get murdered. We have to do better.

    Banning assault rifles is a good place to start.

    I have heard the statistics saying that when assault rifles were banned during the Clinton era, gun violence did not go down significantly. I recognize that handguns and rifles are often semi-automatic, and therefore they too are capable of quickly killing a number of people.

    But we still can still do a better job of regulating their sale and use.

    Charli James, a Huffington Post blogger, points out eight things that require more time, information, or effort than owning a gun. Being licensed to drive a car (a potentially lethal weapon) and being allowed to drink alcohol (a potentially lethal activity) are two examples of activities that are more difficult than purchasing a gun.

    Nonetheless, the prospect of changes in gun control laws prompted a surge in demand for permits among Twin Cities gun buyers, according to Paul Levy of the Star Tribune. The photo accompanying his article shows a gun store owner holding a huge assault rifle. What can a person even do with such a gun (besides the sickening obvious)? It won’t fit in a purse or pocket for protection. An animal killed with it would be in shreds.

    What compounds the problem of gun violence is that, as a country, we do not care for mentally ill people effectively. There is a chronic shortage of mental health providers and facilities. Often families are well aware that their loved one is dangerously disturbed, but until the deranged person acts, there is no appropriate way to intervene. And then it’s too late.

    I believe that even the staunchest NRA member would agree that mentally disturbed people shouldn’t be allowed to have guns; but obviously, insane people do own and use guns. Surely, we can do a better job of screening potential gun owners.

    Considering all the assault weapons that are already in the hands of Americans – both law-abiding and criminals—a ban on assault weapons now won’t do much in the short term, but we have to start somewhere for a long-term effect.

    Assault weapons turn the whole idea of “personal protection” on its head. Lots of innocent people are put at risk so one individual gun owner can feel “protected.” Instead, we need to protect our children and families from assault weapons.

    As a country, we can do better—we have to.

  • Anonymous Donor

    Screen shot 2012-12-04 at 9.32.58 PM Here’s what I imagined: happy kids on Christmas morning, delighted to find some of the gifts they wanted. That vision helped me decide we’d sponsor a family for Christmas. As I got further into the process, it began to feel a lot less simple.

    My husband and I are comfortably middle class. We have worked hard, but we have also been lucky—an accident of birth placed us in loving, hardworking families who taught us their work ethic and helped us get college degrees. We’re also healthy, again the luck of the draw, not something we can take credit for. So as I consider the single mother and three children we are sponsoring, I think: “It could have been me.” It seems only right to help them.

    But I wonder about her. Was it hard for her to sign up to be sponsored? Did it hurt her pride? If it did, I suspect she set aside her feelings so her kids could have a Christmas more like other people do. Parents do that. I would.

    I also wonder how Christmas celebrations in the U.S. got to be so excessive. Now, because we make such a big deal out of Christmas, the absence of gifts is conspicuous. Children who don’t get any gifts feel left out, and maybe, unloved. After all, kids just want to have fun and fit in with their friends and classmates. The mother who can’t provide a bunch of stuff has to feel bad, too—ashamed or alienated. Or maybe she gets tired of everyone else having nice things except her. I can only speculate about her life and guess at her feelings.

    But I do hope that she will feel a little less alone, knowing someone else cares about her and her family, even if it is in an awkward and necessarily flawed way.

  • Gratitude

    I was surprised when my friend Lisa told me she kept a gratitude journal. On the face of it, she had little to be grateful for—stomach cancer had returned and spread to her esophagus, chemo was nauseating and exhausting, and worry was ever-present. Lisa acknowledged that sometimes it was hard to find something to be grateful for. Some days all she could write was that she was grateful she didn’t snap at her son or grateful for a sunny autumn day.

    At the time, my freelance writing business was on its last legs, and I had been looking for work unsuccessfully for months. But I figured if she could focus on what was right and good in her life, so could I.

    A few entries from December 2009—
    I’m grateful for my writers’ group—women who believe in my story and my ability to write it.

    I’m grateful for cozy flannel sheets. I’m grateful for my Bunco friends who help share the burden of Kathy Duffy’s illness (another friend with cancer). I’m grateful for my first writing coach client.

    I’m grateful for my youngest son Greg’s silliness—he crammed his 17-year-old body into a tiny Pokeman t-shirt he’s had since 4th grade and walked around the house singing, “I’m too sexy for my shirt!”

    Written on a day when my oldest son Mike had returned from college for Christmas break and my husband John was preoccupied and frantic about work when Mike arrived—
    I’m grateful for Mike’s maturity and wisdom. When I asked if he minded that John couldn’t spend much time with him tonight, Mike said, “He’s working his ass off to make my life and all of our lives better and nicer, and nobody really asked him if he wanted to do that, so No, I’m not hurt he didn’t have much time.”

    From February 2010—
    I’m grateful for John. He brought me flowers and said he appreciated that I didn’t complain about his lack of availability while he was under deadline for a grant proposal. I never thought to complain—I felt guilty for not pulling my weight financially—but I enjoyed being appreciated.

    I’m grateful for Greg who nudged me to put together a celebratory dinner for John to mark the end of proposal hell. I’m grateful to have such an easygoing cooking partner. He stirred the polenta endlessly while I finished the sauce for the beef short ribs.

    Cranky, mostly cranky. I’m not grateful for my hives or my migraine or my touchy tooth or my dog who vomits when she gets too hungry or my carpet cleaner that leaks and makes cleaning up after the dog even worse. But in the grand scheme of things, these are temporary annoyances (except for the dog—I’ve got to figure that out).

    Although I no longer keep a gratitude journal, I am grateful for idea of it, and I’m even more grateful for Lisa’s friendship—she gave me so much during the 10 years I knew her.

    If I were still keeping the journal this Thanksgiving eve, I’d say—
    I’m grateful for my family and that we all can get together for this holiday. I’m grateful for my wise, fun-loving, generous Dad whose birthday is tomorrow. If he were here, he’d love having the family in one place, all the jokes and stories, the good food, and Pete’s excellent wine. He’d sit at the counter and “supervise” while I carve the turkey, and he’d enjoy the piece I’d hand him—a juicy hunk from close to the bone.