I have not posted anything in a long time. There are a few reasons for this. One is that I figure no one cares what I have to say. I was just saying it to get it off my mind. Another was having more of a focus on things transpiring within our immediate family. A third thing was a matter of just wondering why I should bother.

Well, here I am. Some of the questions and concerns remain unanswered and will probably stay that way.

I just want to say that I realize there are some good people in this world even though there are some who are not so good. Unfortunately the people who are not so good get all the attention. That's because they do some really bad things. In the mean time there are good people who do small good things every year, month, week and even daily and get no attention at all.

These are the people who pay somone else's grocery bill without being asked. They pick up litter dropped by other uncaring people. They wait at the stop sign to let someone else go ahead. They get their work done every day without complaining. They do something to let another person know they are cared about.

To all the good people out there who don't get any recognition. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your efforts have been noticed and appreciated.

Oh, and Merry Christmas!

Tragedy in Tucson

Christina Green was buried yesterday. She was born 9/11/2001. She and five others died at the hands of Jarred Loughner on 1/8/2011. It has been a tragedy.

Could it have been avoided? Perhaps. Can such tragedies always be avoided or prevented? No.

The only way to be perfectly safe in this world is to live in a box, do nothing, say nothing, experience nothing and interact with no one. Sounds like being dead, doesn’t it?

We are not in this world to be safe. We are in this world to live our lives to whatever extent we can. There is no such thing as complete safety or security and anyone who promises you these is really just trying to put you in that box before your time. In the mean time, there are those who will claim to be trying to make you safe and secure by keeping you from communicating your real feelings. They will try to keep you from hearing the real feelings of others. They will also try to take away the defenses that the government is not supposed to prevent you from having.

Someone who tries to kill twenty people will not be hindered by laws. There are laws against murder, after all, and we see how effective that was on the 8th of January. More laws and more restrictions on the good citizens of this country will not prevent something like this from happening again.

Consider this, all the law abiding citizens that were present had no intention of killing anyone that day. They could have been armed but they chose not to be. Why? There were probably a lot of reasons. Did any of them consider that they might someday find themselves as the only sane armed person in a position to save the life of a 9 year old child? Probably not. Did it ever occur to any of them that when seconds count the police would be minutes away? Probably not. Did it ever occur to them that someone capable of perpetrating such a heinous criminal act is not going to obey the law? No. Did it ever occur to them that some people really are psychopaths, are completely disconnected from the feelings of others, and don’t live in the same world they live in? Highly unlikely.

Ultimately, the shooter is to blame for his actions. At the same time every sane person in that crowd that day are to blame for their own ignorance, selfishness and cowardice in regard to being prepared, if necessary, to save the life of an innocent person. Of course they might say that they have a moral objection to killing someone. Well, standing there and doing nothing while 6 people were killed has the same effect as pulling the trigger. In Nazi Germany, those who stood by and did nothing made it possible for millions to be put to death.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. – Edmund Burke