Fun Parties, Ugly Parties and Taking Personal Responsibility

This weekend I went to a surprise retirement party for my niece-in-law’s husband. It was hard to count how many people were in attendance because his family had rented a small town bowling alley with a sports bar and people seemed to be in constant motion either filling bags with candy or popcorn at the ‘50s theme candy bar or filling plates with hot dogs, salads and cake or getting drinks and bowling for free, of course. I’m guessing there were a hundred guests and all sixteen lanes were filled with bowlers for the entire four hours I was there. I met my husband at a bowling alley. He had set pins at that very place back in high school when humans actually set pins instead of the automated machines we know today. And while my heart wanted to try bowling at the party my head told me I could undo the shoulder surgery that I had a few years ago. My great-niece who had the same labrum tear surgery I had, on the same day as mine, is scheduled back in the surgical room soon.

The retiree’s daughters had asked people to come dressed in ‘50s theme clothing and a prize was given to a girl wearing a poodle skirt, a pink silk jacket, a small neck scarf and a hat made out of an old vinyl record---the skirt was not as nicely made as the skirt I had back in the day but it was fun to see it. (What does that say about my age when the fashions we wore in my youth are now available for Halloween costumes?) On the tables, they had vinyl records, boxes of Cracker Jack, fake sodas, candy cigarettes and, since he retired from the post office, reproduction postal stamps from the ‘50s were everywhere plus ‘50s music was playing nonstop. The lights were kept low and one of those projectors that makes it look like colored bubbles are crawling all over the place was keeping time with the music. What a noisy and busy place! But it was fun and I’ve never seen the guest of honor as happy as he was at the party. That was Sunday afternoon and if not for the party one of my niece-in-laws would have still been in Los Vegas and at the concert where the carnage happened. The posts on her Facebook page the next day were full of glad-you’re-safe kinds of posts.

Monday morning I had a date to go to an art show and lunch with the Gathering Girls. Actually, an art exhibit, a chrysanthemum show and lunch all under the same roof. The sculpture garden was hosting a Rodin show mixed in with Rodin inspired figurative entries into a yearly competition we have in the area that draws artists from all over the world. The garden was just one of 175 venues exhibiting both juried and unjuried art. Five hundred thousand dollars in cash prizes will be awarded this year and the public gets to vote on who gets half of that cash, art experts get to decide who gets the other half. By the end of the three weeks show, 400,000 votes will be cast. Registration to vote must take place in person at one of the venues.

At lunch the seven of us laughed a lot as we always do, but we also talked about the massacre in Los Vegas. I was grateful for the opportunity to express disbelief with others in person but at the same time it felt hollow to be talking about yet another mass shooting after the way our country’s leaders in Washington have sold their balls off to RNA. For example, the only reason the House didn’t vote on the NRA’s wish-list bill regarding striking down an 80 old law that limits the sale of gun silencers is because it was quickly taken off the schedule because of the Los Vegas massacre. It will get rescheduled when things settle down and the Republicans will pass it because Citizens United allows the gun lobby to pour millions into their coffers. (Citizens United was the single worst, country-changing decision ever made by the Supreme Court.) Can you imagine how many more people would have died in Los Vegas if the shooter had had silencers, how much harder it would have been for the police to find the guy and for people to run when he stopped shooting to reload or one of his weapons jammed?

When one of these mass shootings happens we wring our hands, offer prayers and look for someone or something to blame. We might turn off the media and criticize them, too, for “sensationalizing the story.” But where was the outrage when one of Trump’s first acts in office was to undo an Obama era law that made it harder for people with severe mental illness to buy guns legally? Where is the outrage at ourselves for not being outraged enough to get involved in a concrete way? It might be a myth that ostriches bury their heads in the sand but it’s not a myth that we Americans do it when we don’t want to face our own culpability. At the very least, we all should be signed up for MegaVote to get a weekly report on what our own house and senate representatives will be voting on and did vote on. We can’t hold our lawmakers accountable if we don’t know their voting records. And before someone says, “But you don’t understand…blah, blah, blah." I acknowledge that passing sensible gun control laws is just one element in the box of solutions we need to work on if we’re going to turn this ugly trend around. Pick an element---any one of them---and make a pledge to take personal responsibility to help bring about the needed changes!  ©