One Billion

Last week the jackpot in the Mega-Millions lotto topped one billion dollars.

One billion.

That’s a thousand times a million.

To give you some perspective (and I think we all need to gain some perspective on occasion), at the rate of pay I was earning as a high school teacher, I made a million dollars every twelve years. Roughly, in twenty-seven years of teaching, I made (and spent—trust me) two and a quarter million dollars.

But in order to make a billion dollars, I would have had to work a thousand times that long. Yep. If I’d kept working, I would have made a cool billion dollars after twelve thousand years (give or take a few hundred years).

Makes me tired just thinking about it, though I’m sure I would have enjoyed spending that much time with my students—kids who were kind, smart, funny, compassionate, and always entertaining. Sweet kids. Innocent kids.

It also makes me think, now that I’m living on my pension (and not earning much from my writing—I mean, you’re currently reading my words for freeee!) that perhaps I might have chosen a more lucrative line of employment.

Take gun sales, for example. Know how long it took gun manufacturers in the U.S. to earn a billion dollars? Ten years. Oh wait—they made much, much more than a billion in ten years. That’s just what they made on assault-style weapons. You know, AR-15s and such. Those sales alone earned them a cool billion dollars. In ten years.

Don’t you wonder what they do with all that money? I do. I’d like to think they put a few million aside to pay medical bills and PTSD counseling and grief therapy and renovations of the crime scene whenever there’s a mass shooting. I’d like to think that, all right. But I can’t. Because they don’t.

Ever wonder who pays the medical bills for victims of mass shootings? They do. The victims, I mean. Well, their insurance companies, but as we know, insurance companies only pay for certain things these days. “Out of pocket” expenses can be astronomical. Especially when you’ve been hit by multiple rounds that basically explode inside your body. (CNN has a non-graphic simulation video posted on YouTube of how the round from an AR-15 affects human tissue. You can view that by clicking here.)

Curious, I did a search of “mass shooting” on the Gofundme.com page. There are hundreds and hundreds of accounts set up to help victims. Because, as I said, if you’re hit but don’t die, you’re going to need really good insurance coverage.

Because gun manufacturers are using their billion dollars for other things.

Look, I know I’ve been harping on this issue for months. Is it too much?

Could it ever be “too much” as long as mass shootings are still happening?

Am I “one of those Dems” who want to “take all the guns away”? No. No, I am most decidedly not. I believe the founding fathers had good reason to say everyone who wants to have a gun at home should have the right to do so. I have no issue with the handgun my nearly-ninety-year-old neighbor is ready to bring out should civil unrest rear its ugly head here in our senior community. I have no issue with a single friend who keeps a gun in her nightstand in case her abusive ex-husband decides to come at her again. I certainly have no issue with my brother’s hunting rifles because he hunts deer humanely, and he eats what he kills (and anyway, most of the time he just has fun camping out with his friends and doesn’t bag anything).

But if we have any chance of stopping the type of carnage we have seen in recent months and years, we have to do something.

How about we reinstitute the ban on assault-style weapons? Because you know, they were banned for years. And the percentage of these types of mass shootings dropped dramatically. And in those years that they were banned, my brother continued hunting and neither my friend or my neighbor felt unsafe without their handguns.

I do have one friend who owns an AR-15 and feels threatened by any conversation involving gun control reform. He uses his AR-15 to hunt coyotes. So he can kill an entire pack at one time.

So yeah, I wouldn’t mind if we passed a law saying he can’t do that.

Mostly, though, I’m more focused on no more children dying deaths so violent, their parents have to give samples of their DNA in order to identify their bodies.

Give it some thought. Maybe call or write a senator. Or vote for only those individuals who sincerely support gun control reform. Please.

Because this:

And because this is a reminder of how quickly we forget:

 

Oh, by the way, we know now that someone in Illinois won that billion-plus Mega Millions jackpot. Wouldn’t it be cool if it were someone in Highland Park? Yeah, I think so, too.

Where Home Is

 

Because of my infamous great-grandmother, most people associate me with Missouri. That’s just Mom’s side. Dad’s family hailed from Illinois—well, Wisconsin before that, where the homestead was. Ireland before that.

But my dad mostly grew up in a small town in Illinois. He returned there after his stint in the army in WWII. He drove a taxi for a while, which is how he met my mom, offering her a ride home one night after she’d been pestered by a guy at the club where she’d been singing with the band.

Mom and Dad married in 1947, and Dad got a job on the local police force. A family story we heard repeatedly as kids was the time Dad got a call on his radio to Be On the Look-out for a two-year-old boy who had wandered away from his home on such-and-such street. My dad responded immediately and found him, blocks from home, walking with his dog, headed downtown. He recognized the boy right away—because it was his son, my oldest brother, Danny.

My siblings were born back there, but Mom and Dad moved to California just before I was born. When Dad passed away in 1963, Mom piled us in the station wagon and we drove back there to see all the aunts and uncles, all the cousins we would never have the opportunity to grow up around. And damn, they were good people, even when we were kids, accepting us, playing with us, as if we’d lived there all along. I was only nine years old, but I do remember that. That, and the small-town feel of everyone living within a short distance of each other. One night we’d be at Uncle Chuck and Aunt Betty’s house. The next night we’d be at Uncle Mo and Aunt Lee’s. Lots of Irish people. Lots of Italians. Lots of food. Lots of love. That’s what I remember.

Now, most of my cousins, except for a couple of them, have moved out of that small town, but they still live close enough to gather often. When my sister and I visited in 2018—my first time back there since 1963—there they all were, gathering in my cousin Mary’s home to hang out with us, just as they had 55 years earlier—as if we’d been there among them all along. Lots of food. Lots of love. Lots of stories to share. My cousin Donny drove us around town, pointing out where various people, including our grandparents, had once lived, and Fort Sheridan, where my dad would’ve been inducted into the army. All of it still there, all these decades later. Gotta love that small town life.

Recently I spoke with my cousin (by-marriage-but-who-cares) Stephanie, who told me about how the town still had that small-town feel. “I’m so near-sighted,” she told me, “I wave at everyone. This stems from an incident in my childhood when a neighbor called my mother and accused me of being rude because I hadn’t waved back at her. I just hadn’t seen her. Ever since then, I wave at everyone.” She went on to say there was a particular young man in the neighborhood who used to ride by on an electric scooter, blaring loud music. Stephanie and her husband worried about him being hit by a car. She always waved at him. “One day,” she said, “he actually waved back.”

You know, having been born on July 4^th, I’m a sucker for a Fourth of July parade. We have one here in the park, though it’s a golf cart parade—no marching bands, but if the local fire department isn’t on a call, they show up and roll through the park. It’s always fun. This year I watched with my neighbors, then got in the car to go look at a typewriter I wanted to buy. I had to veer off the road and send out a frantic text message, though, as soon as I turned on the radio and heard there’d been a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois.

Highland Park. That small town where my parents met and married. Where my dad had received commendations for his service with the p.d. Where my siblings were born. Where my cousins, Kathy and Donny still live, and Stephanie just blocks away in Highwood. That boy she always waved to, the one that finally waved back, turned out to be the shooter.

Like me, Stephanie and her husband have always loved a Fourth of July parade, have always gone to the one in Highland Park with friends. “It’s our tradition,” she told me. This year, their friends could not attend, and Stephanie and Joe made a last-minute decision not to go. It may have saved their lives.

I asked her what the atmosphere in the town was like since the shooting, how people were coping. She told me she’d worked with one of the victims who died, that people were raising funds for the survivors, that Highland Park had been big on helping people during the pandemic, so once again the citizens dove in to help out. Lots of food. Lots of love.

This is small town life. Or was. As we’ve seen, small town life may never be the same again. There is—was—that sense of safety and security that everyone talks about when everyone in a town has lived there long enough to know everyone’s parents and grandparents: “That kind of thing doesn’t happen here,” the mayor of Highland Park said. She believed that… up until the day it did happen there. Be mindful. And, I hate to say this part, keep your eyes open and your wits about you. Because if it could happen in Highland Park, Illinois, it could indeed happen anywhere.

 

March

It's been one busy week around here, so I've had little time to assemble my photos from the March For Our Lives in Riverside, California last Saturday. The one above is one of my favorites. The gentleman holding the sign was there with his wife and his German Shepherd, Molly. He was a kind, soft-spoken man who agreed readily when I asked if I could photograph him and post the picture online. A Vietnam war veteran, he felt very strongly about gun control.

In addition to Molly, there were quite a few other dogs there with their people. Seeing them was a comfort to me.

And while the march was organized and directed by teens (who presented all the wonderful, passionate speeches), there were people of all ages there, including people of all abilities:

A lot of teachers showed up, though there were people from all walks of life:

I was especially proud of these folks from my alma mater, UC Riverside:

And I was especially proud of the kids who came with their moms or dads or both to march. They get it:

The young man featured above is Ben, who made his signs himself. I love that he was forward-thinking enough to suggest that blasters should also not be present in schools.

The sense of camaraderie at these events is palpable. Seriously, you want to just hug everyone there. All 4,000 of them. (That number was the Press-Enterprise estimate of attendees.) 

As was the case with the March for Women in January of 2017, I really had to push myself out of my comfort zone to make the drive and find parking and wander alone toward the courthouse and stand alone (until Ben and his crew joined me, which was a special blessing) and then walk. I'm not a shouter or chanter. I'm really not much of a verbal person at all, preferring to select my words and construct my sentences with caution and care, which writing allows me to do. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and so we must all stand with, walk with, the children and adults who have survived mass shootings. Change will come, carried along by the fervency of these young people. I want to say I participated, even if it is in the smallest way. #NeverAgain.

Dick's et al

At some point in the next week, I will buy something from Dick's Sporting Goods. I'm not sure what I'll get... a new yoga mat, perhaps, or some new sneakers. I would hope anyone who feels passionately about the need for gun control reform will do the same.

If you missed it, in my previous post I suggested that making changes to the gun culture in the United States will be a long and arduous process, but we can bring about those changes, just as we changed the societal norm of smoking a few decades ago. Instead of sweeping legislation (that I would love to see but seems improbable since so many politicians are more concerned with saving their seats instead of saving lives), we can turn the ship around by means of small, incremental steps with the goal in mind of not overturning The Sacred Second Amendment but rather limiting accessibility to mass-kill weapons and accessories and doing more thorough background checks (just for starters).

Last weekend, MetLife, a company that offers life insurance and other financial products, was the first to come forward and say, "We will no longer offer discounts to NRA members." Company executives stated that this policy change was made because "We value all our customers" (emphasis mine). Aaaaand BOOM, just like that, within 24 hours, a long list of companies followed, including major airlines, car rental companies, software companies, and so on. When I travel to Missouri in June, I will be reviewing that list of companies to find the airline and car rental agency I will patronize as a way of supporting their courage to do something, however small.

This morning, the CEO of Dick's Sporting Goods made an appearance on Good Morning America to announce that the company will no longer sell assault style rifles or high capacity magazines, nor will they sell a firearm to persons under the age of 21. Bravo. And so to support the company's brave step (because, yep, they know it will--at least temporarily while some folks throw temper tantrums at not being able to purchase all the pretty shiny destructive toys they want--reduce sales and result in a decrease in stock value), I will be buying something—anything—from the Dick's in Upland, California when I head out that way later this week.

Small steps... these are small steps. But they are similar to decisions made by owners of chain and independent restaurants a few decades ago that banned smoking inside the restaurant. Everyone said those businesses would lose business. In fact, studies have shown that restaurants and bars that have banned smoking (in some states, you can still light up inside your local pub) have not seen any decrease in revenue.

I imagine Dick's will see a small blip in sales... maybe... but maybe good-hearted folks around the country will do as I am doing, decide the kids need new sneakers this month or some cleats for Little League coming up in the spring or a really nice hoodie from The North Face or Field and Stream. Spread the word. Maybe we can make that happen, and maybe Dick's will see, in its next quarter financial report, that sales actually increased after this critically important, potentially life-saving decision.

Wouldn't that be cool?