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.
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