I woke up today thinking I would edit my “fashion/non-fashion” post for a GenFab “blog hop.” I came out to the living room, realized my husband had not made coffee after being awakened at 4 a.m by our 5 month old, 75 lb. guard puppy barking out the front window over at the neighbors, wandered over to the coffee grinder and began the routine for morning wake-up. MSNBC was on in the background as it most often is when Hubby is home. The whir of beans being ground as filtered water fills the carafe. Good. I managed to complete the ground coffee, filtered water, and activation sequence without spills. “This is a good day,” I think as I take a seat near Hubby and open up Twitter to see what the buzz from online community might be this fine morning.
Then I look up at the Farenheit 451ish 4th Wall (TV) and see Roxana Green speaking. She is featured in an ad by Mayors Against Gun Violence. I watch a “news” cycle and also see that Gabby Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly have started a PAC (political action committee) to work its influence counter to the GUN lobby and PACs. Then I watch the woman who kept a shooter / mass murderer from reloading two years ago to the day in the town where I live, Tucson.
It is January 8th. Oh crap, of course, I knew it was coming up. I had tried to ignore it. I think of my bloggedy friend Suzi who was shot 3 times that horrible day, and who lost a dear little friend, the 9 year old neighbor girl and pal, she brought with her to meet Gabby that day. I go to her blog. She inspires me all over again with her positive framing of today... the day we live in… the day we always live in, while we live. She is doing great and wonderful things.
Me, I’m just going to be conscious as I do what I can and what I have to do:
- edit that fashion piece
- talk to my therapist about the evolving series of dreams I’ve been having about family and the county where I grew up
- send a few tweets about the PAC and about Roxana Green’s ad, and ask folks to support the efforts
- remember the 20 babies, Veronica Moser Sullivan, and Christina Taylor Green, Briana Flores , and all the innocents who are gone from the world because they were killed with guns, and hold them in the light in my heart. I pray for their rest even though so many speaking their names
- plan what to do for Valentines Day – V Day – this year
- figure out more on the new BoomHer site
- figure out what to say about the role of women in this new effort to create sane gun laws as well as in
- creating supportive, nonviolent infrastructure for our society
What I haven’t decided is whether to place flowers somewhere today, and if so, where to place them. I head a talk at a Semiotic Conference at Indiana University long ago about the semiotics of place in mass tragedy. I want to look more at a book on a similar topic, Shadowed Ground. I’m leaning toward flowers at the site where the vigil was and the memorial grew outside UMC at the University of Arizona.