Winter \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Moon of the Winter Solstice<\/p>\n
2012 has begun to fade into the past, most of its days now tailing off behind, most lost from memory, all passed into history. \u00a0It was, as all years are, a bad year. \u00a0The death of Regina Schmidt in September marked the first incursion of this finality into the immediate life of the Woolly Mammoths, that is, our spouses and ourselves. \u00a0While no death can be said to be bad, since death is a part and a necessary part of life, still it contains the pain of loss, the unsettling reminder that our life, too, will end and opens a hole in the social structure of family and friends. \u00a0We will miss her.<\/p>\n
Warren and Sheryl lost, in relatively quick succession, three parents, having lost the fourth not long before these. \u00a0Sheryl’s father died first, then her mother, then Warren’s mother, then his father. \u00a0In the case of the Fairbank’s and Wolfe’s families this left both with sudden needs to reassess, reconfigure and learn how to live without their oldest generation.<\/p>\n
Yin lost her mother, Moon, this year, too. \u00a0Moon emigrated from China with the young Yin, so they had not been apart for all those years. \u00a0The last several years Moon lived with Scott and Yin.<\/p>\n
My cousin Leisa continues to mend from a stroke last year and Ikey, the oldest of the Keaton cousins, died this year.<\/p>\n
Then, too, there were the guns. \u00a0The shootings. \u00a0More of the continuing madness, our embrace of the things which kill us in such senseless, brutal, unnecessary ways. \u00a0I happened to be in Colorado, staying only three miles from the Aurora theatre where movie attendees at a screening of the Dark Knight Rises were shot. \u00a0And, like you I imagine, the shootings in Newton left me weak in the knees. \u00a0Children. \u00a0Young children.<\/p>\n
And the NRA solution? \u00a0A cruel satire, armed policemen in every school or, another alternative offered by gun rights advocates, arm teachers and principals and school psychologists. \u00a0Yes, we need more guns to prevent more gun deaths. \u00a0Can none of these guys see the serious flaw in this argument?<\/p>\n
The country stumbled through the sort of end of the Great Recession, re-elected a middling President and saddled him with a congress unable to act. \u00a0These are not good things.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Winter \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Moon of the Winter Solstice 2012 has begun to fade into the past, most of its days now tailing off … Continue reading It Was A Very Bad Year<\/span>