If you read this, know this journal is a personal space that helps me work out my own thoughts and feelings. I use it to create some sense of order in my brain or to facilitate conversations with people I trust and respect, even if our opinions differ. I have no intention of engaging in arguments with irrational people. I'm not a pundit or columnist. I'm not perfect, but I'm trying to find out how to be better, or at least more articulate. But in my earlier thoughts about the violence in Charleston, I didn't articulate a very important aspect of this event. Actions and issues are complicated; they can be about more than one thing at a time.

Discussion today at my house: Do you remember when Columbine happened and it was so horrifying and nothing like that had happened in our society in our time - not on that scale - and we were obsessed with finding out the whys and the whos and the details? We spoke the names of the individual dead, because their stories were everywhere. We were full of sorrow because it was just SO HORRIBLE. We wanted to know and understand every morsel of information, tease out every possible motive or meaning. Flash forward to today - when the radio reporter is discussing past shootings and I think: Oh yeah, that guy in the Colorado movie theatre - he shot like 80 people. That one actually slipped my mind.