Cameo nightclub. My kids used to play soccer games in the fields next to it.
The typical NRA response to a mass shooting is “make sure more people have guns.” Shootings in a movie theater (see: Aurora, CO)? Arm the movie-goers. Shootings in a community center (see: San Bernadino)? Arm the workers. Shootings in a school (see: a school in almost every state in the country)? Arm the teachers.
Map of school shootings since 2013. Source: https://everytownresearch.org/school-shootings/
But isn’t the Cameo nightclub a prime example of what happens when more folks have guns? Here are a couple of quotes worth pondering, from Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac and Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley:
That’s the challenge, isn’t it? If you have a dispute, and you have guns, you might wind up with a Wild West gun battle inside a crowded nightclub that leaves 2 dead and 15 wounded. And these sort of shots-fired altercations are much more prevalent than terrorist attacks. Just ask Chicago. Or look at this tracker of the last 72 hours.
I grew up in rural Arkansas with friends who went deer hunting, duck hunting, rabbit hunting, squirrel hunting, and gun racks were pretty much standard equipment on pickup trucks. I’m not a “take all the guns away” person. But I also feel very strongly that it should not be easier for someone to get a gun than it is for them to vote, or drive a car… or even buy Sudafed.
If you are a responsible gun owner, this nightclub incident (and all the other ones like it) should sicken you. You should want to work to prevent atrocities like this in the future. There has to be some rational middle ground between “all sorts of guns for any sort of person” and “no guns for anyone.” Between “no regulations” and “outright ban.” Can we have a respectful, responsible adult discussion, please? Lives are at stake.
The coal museum’s electric bill typically costs about $2,100 per month, but this initiative is expected to save between $8,000 and $10,000 a year.
Trump can talk all he wants about a “war on coal” and “job-killing regulations” but really it’s a war of attrition. Coal’s contribution to climate change (it’s real) and environmental and health issues, along with increasing competition from both natural gas and renewable energy sources, are digging coal’s grave.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWCiCtKGKgU
If DT really wants to create more jobs (with less pollution, btw), he should consider the following facty-facts (not alternative facts) from this article:
In 2016 alone, the US solar industry created more new jobs (51,000) than there are coal miners still working in the US (50,200). There are now 260,000 solar workers in the US — five times the number of coal miners.
Yesterday was the warmest winter day ever in Cincinnati. 78 degrees.
Most of last week was unseasonably warm, with highs in the 60s. And here’s today’s temp:
These sort of rapid swings are happening far too often to be called flukes. Not just in Ohio, but all over (e.g. California going from drought to flooding). It’s global climate change, plain and simple. And it’s not going away if we ignore it.
Instead of building yet another oil pipeline, we should be hanging solar panels. Instead of watering the lawn, we should be installing rain barrels. Heck, for $5 you can install a shower interrupter valve – push a button and the shower flow slows to a trickle while you lather up, saving a lot of water from being wasted every day.
It’s a small price to pay today… to help avoid paying a much steeper price in the future:
The Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper carries Peanuts reruns in their Sunday comics section, because Peanuts is a timeless classic. Of course, they also run Marmaduke, which is a single-joke strip (giant dog acts like a human) that was never really funny and should’ve been cut about 30 years ago… but we’ll save my love/hate relationship with comic strips for another blog post.
Yugoslavia is long gone, but Snoopy also mentions the city of Ljubljana, which is very near and dear to my heart. Many moons ago (1990 to be exact), I quit my job working as the overnight DJ at a country music station in Gettysburg, PA (for obvious reasons – I don’t like country music, had no friends there and struggled to make new connections with my vampire schedule) to visit my younger sister in Ireland for a month, then travel with her through Europe for another month. I cashed in a 401K from a previous job to fund my junket, and while any financial consultant worth his/her fee will tell you that’s foolish, I’d do it again in a heartbeat, because the experiences I had on that trip were priceless.
My younger sister was living in Dublin, but I made a few solo forays to different parts of the Emerald Isle. When I was staying at a youth hostel in Kinsale, I met two wonderful young ladies from Ljubljana (which the capital and largest city in Slovenia, in case you stink at geography like I do). Mija and Damjana. I mentioned that my younger sister and I would be traveling through Europe shortly, and they said we should come visit them in Ljubljana. Which we did, a month later. Mija and Damjana and their families were so kind to us. You’d think we were relatives, not some Yankee strangers. They showed us around the wonderful city of Ljubljana, opened up their homes to us, and offered us great meals and comfy beds, which were sorely needed after three weeks of youth hostel roulette (room full of partiers? room full of snorers? yes and yes).
I remained “pen pals” with both Mija and Damjana (back when “pen pals” was a thing). 27 years later, we still stay in touch via occasional emails and annual Christmas cards. Both are married, both have two kids, both are still the same kind and gracious people they were back in 1990. (And they like to point out that they are even more beautiful than Slovenia’s own Melania Trump… and have better husbands.) Mija still lives in Slovenia, and teaches English to kids. Damjana lives in France and is a crafter/designer/artist (you can see/buy her unique designs on Etsy, read her blog here and check out her photography on Instagram).
Obviously reading the Peanuts comic strip made me think of my dear old (but not old-old) friends. Ever the promoters of their home country, they suggested that everyone should get a glimpse of all its majesty and natural beauty on the official Slovenia Instagram.
So if you’re keeping score at home, a comic strip from 1970 made me think of 1990, and a city 4,716 miles away. Because friends far away are still close to my heart.
Marketing guru Seth Godin really nailed it in his recent post about the growth of commercial media. And “growth” in this case means it’s spreading like a cancer. You should read the entire thing, and subscribe to Seth’s daily blog because he always offers some tasty food for thought.
But here (in italics) are a few excerpts I found particularly insightful:
They sow dissatisfaction—advertising increases our feeling of missing out, and purchasing offers a momentary respite from that dissatisfaction.
Much of that dissatisfaction is about more vs. enough, about moving up a commercial ladder that’s primarily defined by things that can be purchased. It’s possible to have far more than your grandparents did but still be deeply unhappy believing that you don’t have enough.
Hence a new iPhone release every year.
The media likes events and circuses and bowl games, because they have a beginning and an ending, and because they can be programmed and promoted. They invite us into the situation room, alarm us with breaking news and then effortlessly move onto the next crisis.
Hence the stories about shark attacks every summer, even though you have a 1 in 63 chance of dying from the flu and a 1 in 3,700,000 chance of being killed by a shark during your lifetime.
And now they’re being gamed at their own game, because the artificial scarcity that was created by the FCC has been replaced by a surplus and a race to the bottom, with no gatekeepers and with plenty of advertisers willing to pay for any shred of attention.
Intellectual pursuits don’t align with the options that media would rather have us care about.
A walk in the woods with a friend or your kids does the media-industrial complex no good at all. It’s sort of the opposite of pro wrestling.
Books are the lowest form of media (too slow, too long-lasting, no sponsors, low profit) while instant-on, always-on social networks are about as good as it gets. For the media.
If you’re not the customer, you’re the product.
Hence “click bait” headlines, fake news and trolling. In the 60’s Timothy Leary encouraged us to “turn on, tune in, drop out” but now it should be “turn off, tune out, drop back into the real world.”
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
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