Thursday, April 20, 2023
In bed at 10:15, awake at 3:35, up at 4:05, unable to sleep, CPP spasms. 42℉ in a thunderstorm, one of many expected all day, high of 66℉, wind ESE at 11 mph, gusts up to 32 mph during the day, humidity at 88%, averaging 80% today. Sunrise at 6:01, sunset at 7:40, 13+38.
America and guns, mass shootings, solo shootings, shootings, shootings, endless shootings. Ezekiel 5:14: Moreover I will make thee a desolation and a reproach among the nations that are round about thee, in the sight of all that pass by. So it shall be a reproach and a taunt, an instruction and an astonishment, unto the nations that are round about thee, when I shall execute judgments on thee in anger and in wrath, and in wrathful rebukes. In mass shootings, the shooter is usually White. In most 'ordinary' urban shootings, the shooter(s) is Black. In the Dadeville, Alabama shooting at a 'sweet 16' birthday party in which 4 people were killed and 32 wounded, the news stories as usual didn't expressly provide the race of the partygoers, but the given names of the deceased victims made it clear: Marsiah, Philstavious, Dahmontrey, and Shaunkivia. WaPo: "The weekend’s gun violence in Dadeville is the latest among a staggering number of mass killings this year that has ravaged the nation. Less than four months into 2023, there have been 163 mass shootings that have killed 228 people and injured 638, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. The group defines mass shootings as those in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are injured or killed."
EveryStat website analyses gun violence data from CDC and reports: Black people are 12 times more likely than White people to die by gun homicide. 78% of all homicides in the U.S. involve a gun. Nationally, 17,730 people die by gun violence (homicides/suicides) every year; in Wisconsin, the number is 223. Black people in Wisconsin are 32 times more likely than white people to die by gun homicide. 1.1 White person per 100,000 vs. Black persons per 100,000. In an average year, 641 people die and 1.028 are wounded by guns in Wisconsin. 68% are suicides, 28% are homicides. Suicides are overwhelmingly White, and homicides are overwhelmingly Black. In Wisconsin, an average of 51 children and teens die by guns every year; 43% of these deaths are suicides and 51% are homicides. Intimate partner homicides in Wisconsin per 1M people: Black = 20.1, Hispanic = 5.9, White = 2.5.
Lila. "A child is just a child. It can’t help what happens to it, or doesn’t happen. The woman’s voice calling after them from the cabin, Lila probably made that up. She could never ask. Doll said, Nobody going to come looking for her. And for a while nobody did. There must have been someone Lila hoped would call after them, someone a little sorry she’d be gone."
The Stolen Child by W. B. Yeats
Where dips the rocky highland / Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island / Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats; / There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys / And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child! / To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand, /For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
You Wanna Be Loved, Jane Oliver
Every night you sit and watch the TV screen, / And the life you lead in only in your dreams, / But I think I know / What it is on your mind, / yes I think I know / What you're thinking 'bout all the time, / You wanna be loved, / You wanna know somebody somewhere cares, / You wanna be loved / Somehow, some way, somewhere / Hold me, hold me, you dream of someone saying that to you, / Love me, love me, / You only wish you had someone to say it to. / You wanna be loved, / You wanna know somebody somewhere cares, / You wanna be loved, / Somehow, some way, somewhere . . .
. . . . . . . .
Lila has a recurring dream. It is a dream of Doll's dead body lying in a field, perhaps a cornfield, flattened out and matter after a winter's weathering. Doll's body all alone, Doll having died all alone, hiding in a cornfield. A heartbreaking, heart-aching dream. Reminds me of my recurring dream from Hartmann's crime. Was I replicating what I did that night, loud moaning, fear?
LTMW at the wire suet cake holder I enlisted to hold lint and to which Geri added Lilly hair for nesting material for the birds and, sure enough, a red-bellied nuthatch is vigorously pulling out material for nest-building somewhere. I told Geri about the nuthatch when she returned from MetroMarket, and she searched for and found some very fine twigs that seemed ideal for nesting and added them to the suet holder. Also, I filled the sunflower tube which was almost empty, and also half-filled the long-neglected squirrel-proof feeder which I'm sure is a way station for our white-tailed neighbors. I expect to find it empty tomorrow morning, which will confirm my suspicion about the white-tails.
Random Thought: I'm an old man living with my old wife and our old dog in our old house.
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