L.A. Jewish Community Center / Daycare Shooting

Headlines Jor-El - 01:24pm Aug 10, 1999 PDT (# 42 of 373)

...Home schooling is an option. But even that won't be the panacea one might think. The next step for deranged gun-toting wackos will be the mall. Or the movie theater. Or the skating rink. Or the public pool. It goes on and on. Trying to figure out when and where the next attack will occur will make you a basket case. All anyone can do is roll the dice, send your child out into the world as prepared as possible, and say a prayer.

Some have questioned why race was interjected into the discussion. I don't speak for everyone, but when a Black kid is blown away on the grounds of a schoolyard, you won't have a CNN news helicopter flying in circles above the school. MSNBC won't have on-the-scene updates. And SWAT teams won't be combing the neighborhood searching for the shooter. There won't be a psychologist dispatched to help the surviving students cope with their fear and anger. I know this to be true because in Chicago, where I spent 10 years of my adult life, there were shootings in more than one instance at public schools where Black kids were shot. Yeah, it made the local news, but that was it.

So when Black folk see the whole world (seemingly) mobilizing after White kids shoot other White kids, the cynical among us have to take pause and go "What the fuck?!" This takes nothing away from the victims who were shot or the relative who grieve. It makes us wonder about the discrepency of coverage when the victims are Black.

Anybody care to tackle this one?

Incredible Shrinking Actress Syndrome

Mothers Who Think Irene Berry - 12:07pm Aug 12, 1999 PDT (# 17 of 68)

... You're right about this "trend" toward Lollipop people. Strange: especially in an era where a wasting disease continues to fell people right and left, and definately has a frightening, saddening presence in the entertainment industry: my gosh, how can it forward the notion that Underweight-ness, of all things, is a beauty ideal? We talk about this kind of stuff all the time, at home - my 6yo already has the vague notion that "fat" is a Bad Word. Scary. I keep telling her to Look Around You, do the people you see look like television?

Strange Road Stops

Home and Away Serin McDaniel - 10:04am Aug 11, 1999 PDT (# 16 of 21)

Driving back to Illinois from honeymoon in New England. We had failed to make hotel reservations in advance for the trip back, so when we got exhausted, we stopped at the first lodgings we saw: The Stardust Motor Inn in Schenectady, N.Y.

It was about dusk and already the music from the club/restaurant was so loud we could barely hear the desk clerk. She was dressed as a witch, with long black fingernails and green-tinged skin, and it will tell you something about the Stardust Motor Inn that for most of the transaction it didn't even occur to me to wonder why. Then I realized: Oh. We've been out of touch with calendars. It must be Halloween.

Our room had a stale-cigarette funk you could almost see. It was horrifying to touch the pillows with your face.

At 4 a.m. the phone rang. I picked it up and a drunken voice said, "Eric? Is Eric there?" The spouse said, "Judging from the smell, Eric's corpse is under the bed."

I think we still have some of the stationery from that room to remember it by.