critical thinking

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Avery turned 7 months old (seven months!), which we figure makes her old enough for the zoo, if not old enough for a safari, where she would frequently be mistaken for lunch. No, the Bronx Zoo is about the right speed for us at the moment, sans gangland cache.

We started with birds. Lots of birds. Have you noticed how many birds there are in zoos? Lots. I think it might be because of how relatively easy they are to display. In a nice big cage they can stretch their wings a bit, but you can still get close enough to get a good look. They’ll let you, because a lumbering flightless giant like you is pretty far down the list of stuff to worry about today.

Lots of birds. Avery wasn’t terribly interested, though at some point a classmate will probably come across the word aviary and try to say she’s full of birds or something. This is a thing parents think about when they name kids. This parent, anyway. Currently, however, birds are not a big priority in her world. Even that bald eagle who looks like he’s laughing his head off.

So we looked for more interesting fare. The sea lions were happy to oblige us, happy being a relative term. When we found them they were enduring the shrieking of a kid demanding that they wake up. I wonder if that happens often? At any rate, they swam a few laps for us. And even though Avery was still dozy from yet another nap, she was intrigued enough by the giant swimming Thomases to want to hang out for a bit. That was fun. Then we got serious:

Rhinos are frickin big. If one decided he wanted your seat on the bus, you would give it to him. Like, without even hesitating. No stealthy comparing of chest size or anything. Just, here you go, sir. And may I say your horn is looking especially pointy today. Avery didn’t notice. The flowers on the shrub next to her were way more interesting. The baboons stood a good chance of making the grade, but by then she was seriously hungry, and while I took pictures, they took a pitstop. She didn’t miss much – the wind was pretty cold at that point, and the baboons moseyed for cover.

Although, I just assumed it was the wind. They might have been intimidated out by those shifty looking teen giraffe hoodlums. Look at them. Just lurking. Looking all shifty. And hoodlumish. After the tank was topped up, we moved on. Did not need any of that.

And somehow we found ourselves back on the west coast. With totem poles and bears!

Oh you didn’t believe me. Yeah, the bears. Now we had Avery’s attention. Well, the bears had her attention. Giant Thomas! Want to pet! It will love me as I love it! Yes, you could say the bears were definitely the highlight of the excursion for this little girl. And just around the corner was one of the low points for daddy. That polar bear was just about the sorriest sack of bear you ever saw. Look up mope in the dictionary, and there he is. All droopy and sad. He hauled himself up and dragged himself over to the door through which they must feed him, and he just paced around it endlessly. Such is his life, I think. Nice metaphor for the Incredible Melting World (hoorah!) of his wild northern brethren.

I needed a bit of an uptick, so we thought we’d check out the snow leopard and the lion.

Sad snow leopard. Sad lion. The problem with zoos has always been their necessary evil. Animals belong in their native habitat, free to range and be wild. But if they’re out there, we don’t see them. And if we don’t see them, we shoulder into their world and build houses and streets and gas stations and utterly destroy any chance they have to survive. So zoos serve as the very best way to keep animals on our collective mind. Children get to see them, and they think about them with an entirely appropriate sense of wonder. Some of those kids grow up and take action to protect them. And the human encroachment is maybe not quite so murderous as it was a generation ago. So I remind myself to be positive, to share in Avery’s wonder. We got to see lions and bears and rhinos and a whole lot of birds. And with our help she will grow up knowing where her food comes from, the ecosystem we all depend on, and how she can do her part to protect and preserve the planet. So maybe one day we can travel (gently) into the wild and see some of these animals out there where they’re still happy. Thank you, zoo critters. For taking a really big one for the team.

Despite the heavy tone at the end there, we had a terrific last day with Gramma before she headed back to Vancouver. It was a much appreciated contrast to the news about the bombing at the Boston Marathon. As of this writing, the FBI has released an assembled video clip of their two suspects. Someone is going to ID these people, and maybe we will get some answers. That in itself is good news against the Senate’s abysmal failure to pass common sense gun law. These are trying times. You have to remind yourself that the times have always been trying. Remember the so-called Tylenol murders in 1982, or the October Crisis in 1970. There has always been a fringe element that violently resists the status quo. There probably always will be. It falls to each generation to renew its commitment to peace, to take us one step further from a culture of violence and toward a culture of understanding. Guns kill people. So far as I know, ears never have.

Wow.  Today was hard.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m a new dad, or if it’s the sheer horror, but I have not been this stunned since 9/11.

This morning in the beatific little town of Newtown, Connecticut, 20yr old Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother, then drove her car to the elementary school where she taught kindergarten, and killed 7 more adults and 20 children before taking his own life.  Twenty children.  Reports conflict, but indicate he used a .22 rifle and had two semi-automatic handguns in the car.  All were legally purchased, the two handguns by his mother.

Where do you start with that?  How do you wrap your brain around what might possibly motivate someone to enter a classroom, point a rifle at 5 year olds and start shooting?  We feel we understood Columbine – disgruntled teens acting out against their peers.  We imagine the same must be true of the Colorado theater shooting.  But this defies understanding.  This young man was clearly down a very deep, dark, lonely hole.  Some sources say he had Asperger’s.

As soon as the details started coming out of Newtown, the cry went up for gun control.  If only it were that simple.  Don’t get me wrong – I firmly believe fewer guns means fewer shootings.  But the guns are here.  It doesn’t matter how strict you make the law, there is almost one gun for every man, woman and child in America.  Most of those guns are legally owned and not likely to exit just because you’ve suddenly changed the rules.  So while I think it does need to happen, and right now, I don’t think it’s going to fix anything in the next twenty years or so.  What then can we do?  The answer is so painfully obvious that you know conservatives (read Republicans) won’t stand for it.

I don’t say that to ruffle feathers.  This deserves to be way bigger than party lines.  But very simply, economic conservatives don’t want to pay for universal health care.  That means there is no public money to treat those who most need it.  Those who most pose a threat to the rest of us.  Until that fatally short-sighted perspective changes, there will still be 185 times as many gunshot fatalities in the States as the next closest country.  Like gun rights proponents are fond of saying, guns don’t kill people (which is asinine), people kill people.  Perhaps unintentionally, they do have a point.  Treat the problem, not the symptom.  This poses a real quandary for conservatives.  They want their guns, but are unwilling to pay into a system that would all but prevent getting shot by them.

As food for thought, 22 children were stabbed by a knife-wielding adult in China today.  No fatalities.

So it’s been a long day.  We’ve had some tears (mine came in tandem with the President’s) and a lot of hugs.  I’m fighting a cold but couldn’t help holding on to Avery longer than is prudent.  Hope she doesn’t pay for my emotion.

We’ve been trying to take a good family photo for Christmas, and we thought we’d do that today to see if that could help us get some perspective.  It at least provided a distraction for a while.

Then it pops into your head that all those parents probably had all their Christmas shopping done, and returning those gifts is going to be hell.

I will probably avoid the news for a week or so.

If you are interested in having (or maintaining) an open mind the next time gun control comes up in conversation, here are some thought provoking and unbiased stats about mass shootings in the US.

Man, we were having such a great week, weren’t we?  I’m going to save all that until tomorrow.  It doesn’t belong in this post.

Hug your kids.  Talk about it, but keep it at their level.  Hug your neighbours and their kids.  Look them all in the eye and reassure them that we’re all in this together.

Now is a terrific time to reach out.  Not just in solidarity, but because somewhere out there are people that desperately need our help.