Monday January 10th ~ 2011

We Must Choose Peace and NOT the Crosshairs of a Gunsight.

I have not spent a great deal of time on my blog last year, which I am sure is obvious. My thoughts have been focused inwards and my life has been shifted onto such a crazy busy track that even when I feel I do have something to share, I run out of time in my day to write it down in a coherent form to share these thoughts. It is my desire to get back to writing, I have missed it!

This weekends horrific events in my former town of Tucson have rekindled my desire to write and to express myself and I feel the need to share some very real observations that I have taken in over the last decade.

There were real heros in Tucson this past weekend. Daniel Hernandez, a 20 year old intern who is credited with saving Congresswoman Giffords because he chose to stay in the line of fire and not run and Patricia Maisch, 61, who wrestled the clip of bullets away from the gunman.

We honor those who acted bravely and our thoughts and prayers are with those family members and friends who lost loved ones while they were living and practicing our democratic freedoms. 
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Just in the first ten of the 21st century their have been witness to some very amazing events that have caused our national consciousness to be united as one and it is my fervent hope that this weekends tragedy rises to that status and causes a real revue of how we speak and what we speak. The rhetoric and hate speech must end and we must restore our civility.

There is no excuse for a member of congress to call our President a LIAR during the State of the Union Address nor is there any reason for a citizen to yell out from the gallery in the House of Representatives during the order of business.

It has to end and we must remember that we are a civilized nation.

Right after 9/11 I remember the feeling that this country was totally united in being a nation bonded together more strongly and we would turn a corner towards a more compassionate and caring nation. I watched as people went out of their way to be kind and considerate and we were just aware of the fact that we live in a world full of other humans and that these people were aware of you in the world.

Those moments of our collective unity deserted our conscious all to quickly as we dulled our senses with the mind numbing tasks of day to day life and we did fail on a solemn promised. "Never Forget".

Then in 2008, this nation came together as I had never seen in my adult life and we chose to elect an optimistic and charismatic African American to the office of President of the United Sates. We elected a man who dared to bring out those qualities in us again and for a short while we as a nation basked in that light once again.

We existed in that glow of awareness and the aura of a conscious knowledge that we must act together as a unified nation and that if we do work together we will be able to solve any problem. But that time passed away too quickly as well, it was over shadowed by hate speech, out and out lies and a right wing TV and Radio media that made a choice to destroy that hope and that light. We chose to let lies and hate take away what we had fought so hard to bring to out of the darkness.

We need to take the events in Tucson, focus the collective nation, demand an end to hate speech and incendiary rhetoric and require that those that say they speak the truth actually do just that! Speak the Truth!
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Here is your hero test for the day!

Our nation loves it's heros and yet we forget them all too quickly.

How many of you can tell me what Chesley B. (Sully) Sullenberger was responsible for in 2009 without Googling the name? This is a real test of how much you choose to actually pay attention and to place in your minds Rolodex happenings that we should actually remember.