martinimade

Lots of things on my mind this week, from Trump to Florida real estate* and from recent trips and running and around and around. But this is truly what's on my mind right now:

At around this time 27 years ago, the now-husband and I moved from Northwestern PA to Austin TX, which was a lot like moving from Earth to Venus and not just in terms of climate. The now-husband was about to start grad school; I was drifting, mostly. But that's another story for another day.

I honestly can't even remember how the topic came up. We hadn't been in town long. I know I was on the Drag. I know someone we were with pointed to the Tower and said, "that's where the shooting was." I had no idea what they were talking about, that such a thing could happen in a place that I would happen upon in my lifetime, that wasn't marked as a memorial in any way, that actual people were shot and died in a place where I could stand and look up at the Tower and realize that that was a great place to shoot from, if killing lots of innocent people was your goal. Which, apparently, it was.

On the 50th anniversary of the shooting, which just happens to be today, a campus carry ordinance goes into effect. And, no. It's not a law that will prohibit guns on campus; rather, it's one that says, "hey! Go for it! Carry what you want!" 

What could possibly go wrong? 

For more, please, please read Pam Colloff's amazing piece on the shootings as well as this piece from NPR at how much has changed since then, in terms of mental health care. Related: I can't wait to see this when it is released in the fall.

* (not Trump-related, unless he'd like to turn some farmland in super-rural North Florida into a resort, which seems less than likely (and inadvisable on a number of levels))