TomFlannery.com

Stay busy. Stay engaged. Keep the mind and body active. Notice the nice things you never noticed before. There’s enough bad stuff, so don’t add to that pile. This means don’t engage stupid people on social media comment sections. Especially when you’ve been drinking. Go for long walks. Get sun on your face. Stop to see the ducks in the river. Take pictures of the sky at sunset. Hug your kids even when they think they are too old to be hugged. Discover new music. Re-discover old music. Netflix in moderation. Try not to binge nightly, as it will put your brain on auto-pilot and take you away with what you should be doing, which is reading a good book. If praying is your thing, ask your deity of choice to heal our nation’s original sin. Racism is like a scythe, and it’s chopping us down. Speak out. Silence is assent. Vote by any means necessary. Put down the damn phone.

Pandemic 101.

There was no brochure on this stuff so I’m creating one now.

It feels like we’re approaching a sharp curve, and nobody knows what up ahead. The virus death toll mounts steadily. It’s a ghastly thing really….but we’ve been sandblasted from all sides by it all, so it barely registers anymore. One thousand lives a day. As long as it’s not us, it gets put away. As we shove our kids onto school buses and into dorm rooms, we hold our collective breath. The longer it goes on, the more normal it seems. And as it begins to feel like business as usual, that’s when the masks start not covering the nose. Then not covering the mouth. Then left in the car. Nobody wants to argue about it anymore. Where we’re at is acceptable. It only becomes unacceptable when the statistic lives in our house.

And even the unrest. Black men being shot by police. There’s a sad inevitability to it. Like how our nation deals with school shootings. Every few months, another one. And we’d rise in collective condemnation and say “do something!” and then 48 hours later all the cameras are gone and it’s just another Wikipedia entry. Even dead children were not enough to spur change. I doubt the roll call of blacks shot dead by police is gonna change hearts and minds. Even with the entire world watching….and with the George Floyd wound still gaping, a cop STILL shot an unarmed black man 7 times in the back. In broad daylight. In front of numerous witnesses and cell phone cameras. While his kids watched. And even this wasn’t enough, as arm-chair warriors rose in collective fury on social media and embraced the immediate death penalty for walking away from a terrified cop who is screaming at you as you want nothing else but to get back to your unattended children.

I watched the video. Many times. The body language of Jacob Blake. He seemed tired. Over it. He’d seen this sort of thing too many times, and wasn’t gonna be splayed on the pavement for all to see….for his 3 sons to see. He was gonna get his kids and get away. Anyplace but here. I don’t know what he’d done, if anything. I still don’t. According to some, he was trying to break up a fight between 2 women. Police arrived and went for him. He resisted for sure. They had him down, and he broke free and started to walk around to the driver’s side. It was chaotic. In seconds, it all exploded. Seven shots. Three of them missed. Any of them could have struck his children.

What then? Is that what this is gonna take?

And then everybody entrenched. Went back to their respective corners. The bell rang.

On one side….”why did he resist?”

On the other….”why was an unarmed man shot 7 times in the back?”

I suspect both sides know the answer to both questions.

It’s a cancer….and there’s no cure yet.

The pandemic has put the pause button on school shootings, but it’s only a matter of time. Currently teacher friends of mine are explaining how active shooter drills now include social distancing protocols. We haven’t just lost our humanity, we’ve apparently lost our minds as well.

If Newtown wasn’t enough, don’t expect Kenosha to be.

If you have empathy, these things can overwhelm you.

Which is why I need to be constantly reminded of my new brochure.

Help me add to it, would you?

In a bit..

–tf