Guns

If you think it's wonderful that kids keep getting massacred in schools, raise your hand.

Didn't raise it, did you? That means we've just agreed there's a problem. 

We haven't agreed on what to do.

It's not purely a gun problem. Some mix of pain, insecurity, lovelessness, hopelessness, anger, feeling left out, and too much TV (or video games) leaves a dangerous minority of our young people itching to shoot up a school and be famous for a day. (Other than Charles Alan Whitman, who shot up a college decades ago, I can't remember the name of a single idiot who's done that.)

But it ain't purely a people problem, either. The ready availability of guns helps make shootings, accidental or otherwise, the third leading cause of death among children. Ready availability of modern weapons of war contributes to school shootings. The NRA (like purveyors of stuff that pollutes our environment, induces cancer, or causes obesity or drug-dependency) muscles up with money and misinformation to avoid meaningful regulation or responsibility. 

Some say it's a mental illness problem – or that it's because we took prayer out of the schools, or don't spank kids any more. Increasing mental health and kids' values would help. But assume putting religion in schools would work. (whose religion? all of them? and which hasn't involved violence?) If it somehow discouraged young folks from massacring fellow students, you'd affect the problem in ten or fifteen years, when 19 year-olds would have experienced religion in schools since kindergarten. What do we do in the meantime?

Watching the anger at Monday's City Council meeting, I wished again that more people who know a lot about guns would help craft steps that could decrease deaths without unduly burdening responsible citizens. Although gun enthusiasts were angry, they seemed less angry and threatening than a similar group two years ago. When Mayor Miyagashima noticed that, and started asking if they thought background checks were a good step, instead of laughing or shouting they quietly said, “Yes. Sure.” I sensed that though they're still loyal to the NRA line, the continued bloodiness of schools is softening more folks' resistance to attempting a few sensible steps.

The NRA has its fans worked up that they'll lose their guns. Ain't gonna happen. Even if, politically, you could ban guns, it wouldn't work. It's too late. And the Second Amendment ain't going anywhere. In fact, the NRA's course – absolute opposition to anything that might decrease the bleeding but impair profits – is the only way imaginable that we'd eliminate the Second Amendment. A vast majority want gun-control. Only more and more shootings, with more and more NRA indifference and bluster, could conceivably make that vast majority so sick of guns it might try to amend the Constitution. 

It's a complex problem. Slogans and simple fixes won't work. Both sides say we should do what some other countries do; but we've a unique mix of ethnic diversity, open spaces and huge cities, and gun-related traditions. And constitutions protecting gun ownership.

The City Council is right to express concern. Those who brought guns to the council meeting shot themselves in the foot: they merely reminded others how easily a demented fool with a gun could kill scores of people. If I were a counselor, intimidation tactics would encourage me to vote against the would-be intimidators.

How about both sides bending a little to seek reasonable steps?

                                          -30-

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 23March 2018, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and on KRWG's website.  During the week, a spoken version will air on KRWG (probably Wednesday morning and evening and again on Saturday) and KTAL, 101.5 FM, on Thursday.]

[By the way, we're going to have a two-hour radio discussion of these issues on KTAL 101.5 FM (which you can also stream at www.lccommunityradio.org) on Wednesday, 11 April, 8-10 a.m. on "Speak Up, Las Cruces!" with a real mix of viewpoints, including several gun owners of various political persuasions -- e.g. Lucas Herndon, a gun enthusiast whose politics are generally Progressive, Harvey Daiho Hilbert, a gun enthusiast who's also a Buddhist roshi, and Bev Courtney (a gun instructor and Tea Party stalwart) and William Webb (also very conservative), plus (briefly) Bill McCamley, Greg Smith, and others.  Haven't figured out just who'll speak when or how it will all work, but we'll have a mix of strong opinions, so it should be interesting.  I hope and believe these are people who won't just toss slogans back and forth at each other like snowballs.]

[I should probably mention that on KTAL, 101.5 FM, the Sunday Show -- this morning at 9 -- will replay our interview with Frank Zamora, former Baptist minister and current professor of philosophy and religion, and that from 8-10 a.m.this Wednesday morning "Speak Up, Las Cruces!", on 101.5 FM,  will feature:

8-9 Algernon D'Amassa, journalist, actor, theatre director, Buddhist teacher, and friend, with a break at 8:30 to talk about Dona Ana County with its PIO, Jess Williams.

9-10:

first 40-45 minutes: Brandon Gass, whose six-minute film will play at the famous Cannes Film Festival this year, along with his leading lady, and then for the last 15-20 minutes, Kevin Bixby concerning the lawsuit against the Border Wall, possible further protests at that site, and other environmental matters.]

You can also stream KTAL, Las Cruces's Community Radio Station, at www.lccommunityradio.org

 

Las Cruces Community Radio

Las Cruces Community Radio's station KTAL-LP

LCCOMMUNITYRADIO.ORG

People, Pickleball, and PTSD

This morning, I'll just reflect on pickleball. And people. And PTSD.

Most mornings I play pickleball. Pickleball looks like tennis, mostly doubles, played on a court about ¼ the size of a tennis court with short-handled rackets and what looks like a wiffleball. If you played basketball daily until 61, then couldn't, then got some new body parts, you might try pickleball. 

Our passionate pickleball community plays mostly at Meersheidt Rec Center and Apodaca Park. About half men, half women. Mostly not real young, although the sport is growing among young people. We play hard, but laugh a lot too. We rarely argue. 

I've wanted to write a column expressing gratitude for that community and the folks working at Meersheidt who have to put up with us. We're mostly pleasant, but when you're addicted to something, even exercise, you can be short-tempered when anything delays your fix. 

One player, CeCe Hunter, often brought her twin son and daughter, Aaron and Kiley. I liked 'em a lot. Played well, but were pleasant and thoughtful. Really sweet. 

On January 8^th, Aaron killed himself. I was shocked. His incredibly friendly and easygoing demeanor completely masked the pain and inner wounds of war. He'd fought in Iraq. 3^rd Artillery, in the first invasion. But he kept all that inside. His only real symptom was inability to sleep, but he claimed he just never needed much sleep, even felt lethargic if he slept four hours or more.

CeCe's grief fueled efforts to help veterans. Including the Aaron Gifford Memorial Pickleball Tournament, April 7-8 at Apodaca Park. All proceeds to Mission 22, founded by three vets (and PTSD sufferers) to help other vets. I urge you to play, if you know the game, or to donate. This problem won't just go away.

CeCe's friends shared her grief and helped. The pickleball community pitched in. 

The tournament is a small step; but it'll raise a little money and raise awareness. 

So I write to applaud CeCe and the others, and to honor Aaron, but also to be one more nagging voice in some veteran's head. Problems? Who wouldn't have 'em after such an experience! It's all too common. It's no shame, and no weakness. And there is help. Meanwhile, each day, 22 vets do as Aaron did. 

Harvey Daiho Hilbert talked with CeCe and me on KTAL radio Wednesday. Daiho enlisted in the Army as soon as he was old enough, was badly wounded in Viet Nam, and suffered PTSD before it was called that. Then he found Zen Buddhism. Then he became a psychotherapist. He still motorcycles with young vets back from Afghanistan. Talking with them, listening, counseling. Hanging out. 

Daiho notes that we depend on a world with some order to it: we don't go to the post office worrying we'll get injured by bombs, strangers don't approach us on the street and shoot us. War can turn that upside down.

He says people often respond to trauma in any of three ways: denial, which may have been Aaron's response; coping, which could mean popping pills or drinking buckets of booze or hiding in a routine, to get you through the night; and, lastly, confronting trauma's effects and trying to deal with them. With help.

I admire CeCe. I appreciate our community. I hope you pass this column on to a veteran, for whatever it's worth. Healing IS possible. With help. And we all should help!

                                                     -30-

[The column above appeared this morning, Sunday, March 18, 2018, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and on KRWG's website.  A spoken version will air during the week on KRWG and on KTAL, 101.5 FM.]

[To be clear on the details for signing up, or for donating:  
to register or donate or just get more information, go to  www.pickeballtournaments.com
and click on upcoming or future tournaments, and since they're listed alphabetically the Aaron Gifford Memorial Tournament on April 7-8 should come up soon.  Men's and women's doubles are on Saturday the 7th and Mixed Doubles on Sunday the 8th. ]

[For further information on Mission 22, you can go to its website .]

This seems like a no-brainer: we live in the southern part of the second sunniest state in the United States; fossil fuels are costly, and grow more so, and have undesirable environmental consequences; why wouldn't the City of Las Cruces, which now uses 6.5% renewable energy, resolve to increase that to at least 25% by 2022?

Albuquerque has resolved to reach at least 25% renewable energy by 2025, and will offer incentive programs for homes and offices to invest in solar panels. 

City Councilor Gill Sorg has introduced an ordinance that would commit the City to the “25% by 2022” goal. (That's three years earlier than Albuquerque because we're starting from a higher percentage; and because we're better than Albuquerque.) By 2050, we should approach 100% renewable energy. With 300 days of sunshine per year, it sounds feasible. U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich has called these “attainable goals,” adding that “Many of New Mexico's communities are leading the nation in solar deployment” and that “the solar industry added 1,000 jobs in 2016 alone.”

More than thirty Las Cruces-owned businesses have signed up to support this, and a petition campaign is garnering plenty of signatures.

The draft resolution notes that producing a kilowatt-hour of energy from solar energy takes about “one-ninth the water it takes to produce that kilowatt-hour from a combined cycle fossil gas plant, and 1/17 as much as from a coal-fired plant.”

Last time I looked, we live in a desert. With no clear end to our current “drought” (actually, normal here) and every likelihood of ongoing water shortages. I've rarely seen the Rio flowing in recent years. Meanwhile, the folks who grow those mammoth waterhogs called pecan trees keep planting, and have announced a humongous national marketing campaign! Too, people keep screaming about “economic development,” which means more people and more businesses lapping up our dwindling water supply.

What part of “WE SHOULD DO ALL WE CAN TO CONSERVE WATER!” does anyone not understand? 

The draft resolution notes that “the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported with 95% certainty that anthropogenic carbon pollution is causing global temperatures to rise, exacerbating extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, and wildfires.” 

I understand that a small minority of us still doubt global warming is occurring and/or doubt human activities are contributing to it; but no one could contend that burning fossil fuels is somehow wonderful for us. (Ever noticed all those warnings on gas pumps about pregnant women?) Unless one had a fistful of stock in a fossil-fuel corporation, who'd argue that using more solar, more wind-power, and less fossil fuel would somehow harm us – even if the tiny minority were right that the signs of global warming are illusory or fake news?

If your doctors agreed that there was a 95% certainty you had cancer, would you say it was just normal growth (or a plot) and go fishing rather than get treatment? What if the treatment was something independently good for you? 

The resolution's non-binding; but it's fair to ask how feasible this really is. One knowledgeable city official says it's “totally doable” but would cost money. (Even tariff issues may complicate things.) City lawyers and legislative analysts are looking at financing options and legal issues. Much depends on what financing arrangements are available – and on the council's political will. 

It's time to act. Particularly with national efforts temporarily stalled, we need to do our part.

                                                  -30-

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 11 March 2018, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG-TV's website.  A spoken version will air during the week on KRWG and on KTAL-LP 101.5 FM.]

 

Split Image

This morning I feel schizophrenic – though only under the secondary definition: “a state characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements.” Life this year inspires intense gratitude and satisfaction; but also frequent daily moments of hopelessness.

It's a beautiful, sunny morning in New Mexico. My wife and our cat and I are healthy. I've had a good morning, writing, and will play pickleball shortly. We live in a vibrant community where the city council cares about improving lives, even making our city walkable and bikeable! Our new community radio station is drawing a tremendous response, the soups at Mountain View Market Co+op are incredibly tasty and healthy, and the near-full moon above our mountains has been stunning. 

But we live in a desert, during a drought, and people keep planting waterhog pecan trees to sell pecans to China. 

Each morning's online Times Digest is full of statements and actions by the national government that are not only unwise and inconsistent but absurd and downright dangerous. Lacking an adult attention span, the Commander-in-Chief makes significant decisions on impulse, having seen something on TV or heard something from his most recent visitor. He childishly insists on a military parade military officials don't want. While staff saying they're still checking on the legalities, he announces he's going to jack up tariffs, sending even his Republican allies scrambling for cover and tanking the stock market. 

Donald Trump is politically schizophrenic: he strongly opposes chain visas, for example – in which folks get to live here because a relative has become a citizen. Like the case of Maria, a Mexican immigrant who worked as a model, married a rich guy, and got citizenship under the “Einstein Visa” program, even though she was a college dropout with no discernible intellectual or artistic accomplishments, then got her parents Guillermo and Hortencia legal residency. Oops! That was Melania, from Slovenia.

He strongly opposes gun control, and rescinds regulations keeping guns away from people officially declared incompetent; then he repeatedly says that mental health is the problem, not guns; then he proclaims we need gun control – until a “come-to-Jesus” meeting with a top NRA lobbyist. He's a fat old guy who ducked the draft when he was young but would rush into a school, unarmed, to defend students against a young man with an automatic weapon. He's so tough he can't stand up to Vladimir Putin. He's a nationalist who won't even instruct officials to confront known Russian interference in our elections. 

Still, we are so fortunate! We don't live in a war zone. Many of us have ample food and medical care, and we're working to extend those to others – along with better mental health care. Our community cares about tolerance, helping the less fortunate, and the arts. We have an international film festival, a farmers' market where committed farmers sell healthy food, and we're small enough to allow for real friendships and even pleasant conversations with people we disagree with. We're slowly housing the homeless. We have local businesses like the Shed, whose owners offer patrons tasty food and also help feed the poor. We have a fine symphony, and great local artists. And a Catholic bishop who washes Dreamers' feet. We have problems, but we're working on them. 

And those mountains!

So I'm grateful. But how deep and permanent are the wounds from experimenting with a clown in the Casa Blanca?

                                             -30-

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 4 March 2018, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website.  A spoken version will air during the week on KRWG and on KTAL 201.5 FM.]

[Perhaps the clearest sign of White House absurdity this week, among many, was that in a week when Putin rattled sabers by announcing a super new weapon that could outsmart our defenses, Trump was up at 6 in the morning Tweeting a response . . . . to Alec Baldwin's Saturday Night Live imitations of him!   Can we really imagine any other U.S. President insecure enough to respond in public at all to someone's imitation of him, other than to appreciate it?  Let alone, to make it such a priority.  Aside from everything else, Trump should have learned enough from his showbiz experience to realize he's enhancing Baldwin's and SNL's audience.  I'm decades removed from the time I watched it regularly, but will start taping it or viewing skits on the Internet now because of Trump's reaction to them, and I doubt I'm the only one.

I hope someone at SNL is crafting a Baldwin skit in which Baldwin-Trump is up at six crafting tweets about Baldwin.  I envision advisors trying to interest him in various other matters, such as Putin's comments and the growing concern about Jared Kushner's incredibly deep conflicts of interest, while Trump (who's so childish that Baldwin ought always to have a teddy bear, or perhaps a Donald Trump doll, in his lap during skits) keeps jabbing ineffectively at Baldwin.]

[Rivaling that for absurdity are the about-face on guns and the apparent fact that Trump's trade war announcement, which even his allies say is the dumbest thing he's done so far, resulted from his frustration over Kushner's problems and other reverses, so he announced the trade wars in a snit fit -- even though the officials who should have been involved in any such decision had no idea he was going to announce such a thing.  It was under consideration -- and subject of great inner conflict in the Administration -- but not vetted as to legalities and implications.  As some staffer said, "Well, he won't be signing anything, because there's nothing to sign.  There's no paperwork."  Another great skit would be a version of Trump's late-night meeting with NRA representatives, after which his brief foray into gun-control advocacy ended quickly.]

[He did show up at the Gridiron event this year; and he or his writers had come up with some good lines.  If the White House and our relationships with allies and our credibility in the world and our security were not all in flames, that could have been fun.]