Newtown, Connecticut

Early this afternoon I volunteered at the Jimmie B. Keel Library, then I did some grocery shopping, fussing about Tampa traffic as usual. When I got home, I watched a Netflix foreign film, "The Flowers of War," about an American who saved 12 Chinese schoolgirls during the Japanese attack on Nanking, China, in 1937. It was a heartbreaking movie. Trying to bring myself back to the here and now, I turned on the TV news, looking to find out what the overnight weather was going to be. Instead, what I saw stunned me. While I was going about my little life today, 20 children and 7 adults were murdered by a gunman in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, a quaint town of 27,000 residents. This just a few days after two people were killed in a suburban Portland, Oregon, mall by another crazed gunman. The Newtown killer also killed his mother, a teacher at the elementary school; he shot her directly in the face, rendering her unrecognizable. She died in the home she shared with the 20-year-old murderer, her son Adam. Both the Newton and Portland gunmen committed suicide after their killing sprees. 

And let's not forget the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater killing zone. Just five months ago, another 12 people lost their lives and 58 were injured by yet another crazy young man with a loaded weapon. It's becoming apparent that you can't go anywhere in the United States without the threat of being killed . . . and not by AK-47-toting criminals. We've been so up in arms over Islamic terrorists and the underhanded death threat they epitomize, and now I think we're beginning to understand that the one of the greatest threats to life comes from some of our own law-abiding neighbors who suddenly go berserk without warning, so it seems.

I'm wordless. I'm shaken. I'm nauseated. The older I get, the less I understand this world I live in. What is going on?

All I can do is send prayers and peaceful thoughts to all the families in Newtown, Connecticut, who lost loved ones today, 11 days before Christmas. I can't even imagine the gut-wrenching pain everyone in Newtown is experiencing today . . . and for a long time to come.