The opening scenes were puzzling. Baz Luhrmann, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Craig Pearce, added what seemed to me implausible scenes at both the beginning and the end of the film, involving the narrator of

Scrivener’s 1925 book jacket of The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby and a psychiatrist (who doesn’t exist in the novel).  Creative license, you say? Sure, but why was it even necessary? It’s as if Scott Fitzgerald’s story wasn’t enough. It’s as if the director didn’t trust the story for today’s young generation. Grant it, I’m two generations beyond, but story is story is story. And if something works, why mess with it?

Once we got to the shot of Daisy’s house with its green light, on the other side of the water from Gatsby’s mansion, I thought, okay, now we’re getting into Fitzgerald’s story. That scene alone promised me a film that wouldn’t disappoint. And yet it did, despite the beautiful art direction and dream casting.

The story centers on Jay Gatsby, a self-made rich guy (by dubious means), who still pines for Daisy, the girl he fell in love with when he was young and poor. She’s also the girl he left behind when he went to war. When he returns from battle and discovers she’s married to wealthy Tom Buchanan, he buys a house across the water from her and plots to woo her away from her husband. We hear much of the story through the narrator, Daisy’s cousin, Nick Carrington, (played by Toby McGuire) who’s moved in next door to Gatsby for the summer.

Warner Bros. Film Poster on http://www.imdb.com

Still, there were a number of scenes where Leonardo DiCaprio (Jay Gatsby), Carrie Mulligan (Daisy Buchanan) and Joel Edgerton (Tom Buchanan) managed to soar above the distraction of 3D cinematography, dizzy camera work of motoring cars,  and other special effects to give us some substance. It was only towards the end of the film,  around the climax, that the director allowed the camera to focus more on the players than on visual tricks. At that point, it was as if I was watching a different movie, one that had been spliced to an earlier music video-like version of the classic story.

I think today’s young people are smarter than what the producers and director give them credit for.  The problem of relying on special effects to wow the audience rather than trusting the original literary content to hold an audience’s attention reminded me of a recent American Idol program.

On this year’s American Idol, the four final contestants had to sing songs from the Great American Songbook, like Stormy Weather and My Funny Valentine.  Their coach was Harry Connick Jr.  He noticed they hadn’t taken the time to understand the lyrics nor appreciate the melody that made the songs so great. By trusting the lyrics and the melody to be enough, they didn’t need to add runs or other vocal tricks. Their need to belt it out as if that would convince the audience they could really sing was missing the point. My husband, once an American Idol fan, gave up early in the season because of all this unnecessary belting. Like Baz Luhrmann messing with a classic, the contestants messed with a great song and came up short.

I’m not alone in my perceptions about The Great Gatsby 3D. For similar sentiments, see Philip French’s review in The Guardian.

As I was wowed by the acting and the art direction, I’m hoping to see The Great Gatsby in 2D, maybe then I’ll be pleasantly surprised. On the other hand, there are still those weird scenes with the psychiatrist.

Though I’m wistful, I’m not unhappy. But I do miss some things, and this past Sunday’s celebration of Ukrainian Easter—which follows the old Julian calendar—brought on my nostalgia full bore.

When I grew up in Winnipeg in a family

Ukrainian Easter service at St. Mary’s the Protectress, Winnipeg, Manitoba

of immigrants, we had boisterous Ukrainian Easter celebrations on my uncle and aunt’s farm and sometimes in our own home. Those were good times. There was a gang of us: my grandmother and her three sons and one daughter along with their spouses and children and a few more relatives and friends.

We’d gather at the farm after the lengthy mass at church, at which we’d bless our baskets filled with traditional foods. One year, the church even had their picnic on the farm. A wooden dance floor was built and laid down on the road leading to the chicken coop.

Blessing of the Baskets

The bountiful lunch (including Paska and other food from the blessed baskets) took place in my uncle and aunt’s living room. Tables were put end to end and loaded with enough food to feed three times as many. Yes, plenty to eat and plenty to drink.

Once the meal was done, we cracked dyed eggs to see who had the strongest one. That tradition was followed by the singing of old folk songs. My uncles had rich tenor voices, ones that should’ve been recorded. Too bad today’s easy technology was missing back then. Some of the songs were the kind you’d want to kick your heels or twirl around to, others were sad stories of their homeland. Later, my cousins and I would run outside to play on the long swing in the nearby forest or play baseball with the whole family on the uneven field, that served as a cow pasture.

Passions ran deep with this lot as they’d been through so much together immigrating to Canada from an occupied Ukraine in the 1920s (the subject of my next book, an excerpt of which has already been published in Escape, an anthology published by Peregrin).

Though too much rye whiskey at these celebrations often led to unguarded words and heated exchanges, their love for one another carried them through to yet another day and another family get-together.

I’ve tried to carry on my mother’s traditions

Our family’s attempts at making pysanky (Some tv series, movie, and Jackson Pollock imitations)

in a small way. Our wee family on Vancouver Island even attempted to add more pysanky to our growing collection. For dinner, we had some of the traditional foods: paska (Easter bread), ham, kielbassa, holupchis (cabbage rolls), varenykys (perogis) and various vegetables. I made a lemon meringue pie, one of my mother’s favorites. It was a good meal but didn’t come close to the bounty I remember.

But nice as it was to carry on the tradition, my mother is no longer here, nor my father, nor my baba. My uncles and aunts are also gone, as are a few of my cousins, one of whom lived on the farm. They may be gone, but I still see their faces and smiles.

My mother’s traditions have been

From Wikepedia: Pysanky from Volyn, Ukraine, where my mother was born.

watered down and they will no doubt disappear with the next generation, who will have their own ways of dealing with their past. Such is life and change.

We live in a rich land of many immigrants, many cultures, many traditions. For me, nostalgia, though wistful, is one way to celebrate those memories, even if they bring on the tears.

Are there things you do to celebrate the past? Are you at all nostalgic like me?

There was one young teen that I remember in

Photo of Camelias by Diana Stevan

particular, because she wrote me a poem about our relationship. She called it The Seed of Hope. At the time, her family life was very troubled as her mother was mentally ill. Though exceptionally bright, my client had trouble coping and was suffering with depression. Through our work together, she found hope.  In her poem, she referred to me as the gardener who had planted that seed of hope. I was honored by this gift and it reinforced in me, the idea that even the smallest offering of love and support can make a difference.

I was reminded of that again when I thought of what my cousin Nina had given during her life, and then just recently, how the the people of Boston reached out and gave their time and love to those in need.

Photo of Nelly Moser Clematis by Diana Stevan

Life is a garden. As we venture through it, we can prick ourselves on the thorns of anger and stumble on the weeds of despair. When that happens, any buds of beauty are choked in this untended garden.

Sometimes, these weeds are difficult to see.  They may be rooted in our psyche, reinforced by not only others’ critical judgments but also our own.  The expression, we are our own worst enemies,  comes from this basic human flaw in all of us.

In our home gardens, we understand we have to take the time to clear them of plants that obstruct the growth of more desirable organisms. A garden of roses looks less beautiful when that first weed comes up.

Photo of Irises by Diana Stevan

Similarly, in life, we need to watch out for those thoughts and feelings that stand in our way of growth and harmony.

Spring is a great time to weed out all that stands in our way of living well.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how gardens inspire you.

What happened in Boston is an age-old battle between good and evil, between love and hate. It’s been going on since the dawn of man. What we saw in Boston was unbridled anger. Hatred.  At what, we still don’t know. But it’s hatred nonetheless. Sigmund Freud, the eminent psychoanalyst defined hate as an ego state that wishes to destroy the source of its unhappiness.

Recently, I saw a remarkable film, I AM,  that demonstrated how each one of us can make this world a better place. It spoke of the power of love. It also spoke of anger, and its power to divide.  It was directed and written by Tom Shadyac, known for his blockbuster comedies starring Jim Carrey–Pet Detective; Liar, Liar; and Bruce Almighty. After a horrible cycling accident that shook him and his world, Tom Shadyac re-evaluated his purpose in life. This film speaks to that process, and his search for deeper meaning.

He’d been living the high life and coming to the conclusion that no matter how much bigger and more extravagant his homes became, he wasn’t any happier. It took an accident that nearly cost him his life to step back and see what changes he needed to make.

In his film I AM, he asks the big questions: What is wrong with our world? What can be done about it? Through conversations with his father–CEO of St. Jude’s Hospital in L.A., the one that treats children with cancer–and  other luminaries, like David Suzuki, Desmond Tutu, and Noam Chomsky, he discovers some answers.

Tom Shadyac’s film also illustrates what we can learn from nature. How cooperative animals and plants are, how they only take what they need to survive. Drawing from science and wisdom passed down through the ages, the film shows how we are guided by our hearts more than our minds. We are interconnected through our energy, good or bad.

He also mentions the Butterfly effect. I’d heard before how the flutter of butterflies’ wings in one hemisphere can affect weather in another hemisphere. The  truth of that is still being debated, but what isn’t is the fact that even the smallest energy has power. Ask anyone who is in a room with an angry person whether they feel the tension or not. Anger travels. So does love.

Every act, no matter how small, has a ripple effect. He gives an example of helping one homeless person. Though we can’t eradicate poverty,  one act of kindness can make a difference. I’ m sure the people in Boston would agree.

Love or Hate, which one would you choose?

My earliest memories of my cousin, Nina, are of a girl with brown pigtails, herding the cows on a farm near Stonewall, Manitoba. Her two dogs dancing around her slim legs; me, a city kid, struggling to keep up.

She grew up, moved to the city, and got a job at Manitoba Telephone, where she was a constant and loyal worker. We continued to see one another over the years, at family dinners, but since there were so many of us, we didn’t get a chance to really get to know one another.

Sunset on Lake Winnipeg

But in the last decade or so, we became much closer. Nina was like an angel to me, visiting my mother over the years, because I ended up living too far away. Sure, I went to see my mother four times a year, and there were daily phone calls, but if it wasn’t for my cousin’s generosity of spirit and time, I don’t know what I would’ve done. She was my eyes and ears, and believe me, when you have a parent in a personal care home, you need and want someone to keep an eye on their care.

And it wasn’t just my mother she looked in on, she was the kind of person who volunteered her time and love to help make this world a better place. She was a Big Sister for a time and she helped in other ways through her volunteering, much I didn’t know about, as she wasn’t one to talk about the gifts of time she gave or to look for compliments.

Hers was a generous life. She kept things simple, but her values centered on family (her nephews and nieces), my daughter (whose godmother she was) and community. She worked hard, and played the same way; an inspiration to us all. She never asked for much; she gave instead.

The sun may have set on her life, but she left a lot of warmth, love, and beautiful memories behind. What more could one ask for at the end of the road?

Ten years ago, March 20, 2003, America invaded Iraq—the invasion was dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom. When I first heard about it, I was trying on clothes in a dressing room of a small shop in Vancouver. From the curtain that separated me from the main showroom, I overheard the sales clerk mention the shock and awe bombing that had begun. I started crying. The tears flowed uncontrollably. I wasn’t American. I didn’t know anyone who was involved. But I was thinking of all those young innocent men who would die in service, all those whose lives would shattered, all those families, forever changed. Based on what I’d heard, I believed at the time it was a crime for the old men in Washington to send innocent boys to a country that didn’t look like the enemy.

Perhaps many of you, like my husband, believed Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, when they said Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction. I’d watched the news—prior to the invasion—and what I’d seen were UN weapons inspectors searching the country and finding nothing. They found no proof that Saddam was a danger to the western world, at least not enough to warrant an all-out war.

My husband, Rob, thought differently. He believed the American government rhetoric, and I have to admit it was pretty convincing. If you say something enough times, people start to believe it. Rob and I ended up arguing at great lengths about the wisdom of an invasion. There was even yelling; we were that passionate about our beliefs.

commons.wikimdedia.org

We soon learned there were no weapons of mass destruction. The only weapons of mass destruction were the ones the Americans and their allies had brought in. Since America couldn’t find Osama Bin Laden, the instigator behind 9/11, it seemed America had successfully painted Saddam as the scapegoat. At the time, at least half of all Americans believed he was responsible for the 9/11 tragedy.

Over 3 Trillion was spent on this needless war.

But the lives lost and the lives maimed cannot be measured in dollars. In all, from 2003-2011, 4,802 US. and coalition military died and over 32,000 were wounded.

What’s surprising to me now, is the fact I was only thinking of the Americans. I wasn’t thinking about those poor Iraqis, who would suffer losses far greater than the Americans. Iraqi civilian deaths: over 114,000 (known); an indeterminate number of injured souls, and estimates of 400,000 to 870,000 orphans. Operation Iraqi Freedom indeed!

Those American and British ,who were wounded, came back as amputees, or they came back suffering from traumatic brain injury. Post traumatic stress was the other killer; 30% of those who’d served returned with mental illness. Back home, there were unexpected suicides, homicidal impulses and chronic nightmares. And then the report of an unusually high percentage of females in the field who were raped and/or sexually assaulted.

When these warriors returned home, they returned as ghosts, carrying the horrors of war with them. They went away whole and came home broken. Broken men ended up breaking families and breaking hearts. Many are still wandering the streets wondering what happened.

One of these valiant soldier talks today of his pain in an open letter to Bush and Cheney. It’s well worth reading A Dying Iraq War Veteran’s Letter. Who better to speak of the war than someone who was there?

I hope and pray that those who served can get the love and support they deserve. It wasn’t their fault they were sent to fight a war that shouldn’t have been fought in the first place. We had hoped the good guys would win. In the end, there were no good guys, only dead guys. The ones to blame are the ones who sent them in the first place.

Lest we forget.

Inside Random House, New York

Now that I’ve immersed myself in all manner of writerly pursuits, I’m discovering wonderful writers who have no fame. They’re a mixture of talents—some who’ve been at the game for decades, others who are just starting. And yet, they all have something to say and they say it well.  Their talents may vary but their common denominator is their readership. It’s small in comparison to those who favor the blockbuster novelists, the ones on the best seller lists, the ones whose names are as well-known as the names of Hollywood celebrities.

The writing business is like that. Not everyone who is any good gets the acclaim they deserve. You work and work and work, and hope and hope and hope that your words will register with more than a few.

Passport photo of Hemingway when he was married to Hadley, 1923
From Wikipedia

This came to mind the other night when I was reading another chapter of The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. It’s the story of  author, Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley. It’s also about Hemingway’s early years as an unsung writer. What set him apart from many other struggling writers was his passion for his craft. He dreamt large. And when his wife accidentally left three years of work on a train, he naturally sank into the doldrums, but after a short while, he picked himself up and started anew. Gertrude Stein, a friend of his at the time, thought the incident was a lucky one. It forced him to reconsider what he’d written. Some other writer might’ve given up, but he didn’t and now we sing his praises.

With self publishing today, there are even more countless unsung writers than in Hemingway’s time. I admire their gumption even though some should’ve left their work on their computers or in their desk drawers. Finding good stories to read is like mining in that murky stream; there are gems, if only we look.

Click on Escape to go to Peregrin Publishing to purchase

One book I highly recommend is one I was a part of ( ha ha).  An excerpt from my grandmother’s story (the one I’m still writing) is in this lovely book.  I know it’s a bit of self-promotion but ESCAPE, an anthology, is full of many unsung writers with talent—short story writers, essayists, poets, and even graphic storytellers. It’s also a book that’s illustrated by artists, also unsung.

Some of the writers in Escape have been published many times, like Kristin Butcher and Jocelyn Reekie. Kristin’s story, Waltzing Annie Home, is about an old woman’s waltz back in time—full of heart and heartache.  Jocelyn Reekie’s Of Whales And Men takes the reader on a journey under the sea to witness an encounter with a whale, so vivid you know she’s  plunged those depths herself. Others like Sheena Lynn Gros are newbies, but nonetheless their talent is huge. Sheena’s story, The Doorway, will make you shudder and wonder what it means to be a family and how so many get it wrong. D Ross Fisher’s The Float Pilot speaks of getting away from it all and how fate plays an unexpected role. Murvey Farewell by Margaret Nyland speaks of youth and dreams and young love and how one plays off the other not always with the desired results.  Jim Creighton’s Escape is a jewel of a story about a man with dementia who keeps trying for a solution to his problem, with startling results. Peter Davies’ Campbell Joe is a graphic short story beautifully drawn; the ache and pain of a man down on his luck leap out of the pages.

There is so much more: every story, every poem, every illustration in this anthology is worth a visit.

ESCAPE is just one example of work done by unsung writers. I plan to keep looking and finding gems like this one, too often hidden behind the bestsellers.

Have you found a gem worth sharing? I’d love to hear about the treasures you found.

Part of the problem, as you can tell from my bio, is I’m a Jill of all trades. I am a curious individual and so it’s easy for me to get distracted by all the social media. So much so, that I’ve taken a break from Twitter and Facebook. Not a complete break ( I visit occasionally) but a break nonetheless.

So you think I’d have more time, huh? Yes and no. It’s not as if I’m not doing anything about the writing. In fact, I hired an editor and am now waiting to hear what she has to say about my novel. That’s exciting and I welcome what will come. Then I hope to put it out there and get an agent (I’ve had them before, but that was for my screenplays) and go the traditional route. If it takes too long, and it almost feels that way already, as I’m not that young (at heart, yes; body, no), I’ll self-publish. Yay! Join the others and hope mine rises to the surface, rather than ends up in a forgotten bin on the internet.

Quinsam River, Campbell River

I’m feeling the need to let go of expectations and flow like the river.  As I ride the current, I’m continuing to write my grandmother’s story. Not as fast as I’d like, but progress isn’t always fast. And it’s never a straight line up. Sometimes you go backwards for awhile or take a side trip. I think every writer knows that journey.

And I’m about to throw my long short story out there, a coming of age story about a young girl in the 1950s. Maybe I’ll enter it in the odd contest, and see what happens. Plus there’s all that poetry lying around and oh yes, another novel that needs attention, my first one, the one that was originally a screenplay and got me two agents.

No, I get distracted because it’s almost spring, and I have stuff to go through. I’m not a hoarder, but I do have stuff, like old VHS tapes of family. Seven bins in all. Though they’ve  been carefully copied on to DVDs, I feel a need to double check before we trash all those VHS memories.

I’ve also been spending huge chunks of time with my grandson, Michael Stevantoni,  filmmaker, who did the Brother, that I acted in last year. Now, I’m helping him produce his next short film, and that’s a time gobbler—casting actors, getting costumes, props, schedules, location scouting, equipment purchase, rentals, borrowing lights, getting behind the scenes footage. Huge!!! But it’s all worth it.

And of course, my piano lessons and the garden. We are gardening already on the west coast, in between storms. The crocuses are up. So, I think you can see why I’m feeling somewhat fragmented.

While I’m sorting out my priorities, I’ll keep meandering down the writing trail. I’ll keep climbing those steps to getting that novel published. And I’ll enjoy the view along the way.

What about you? Are you at all like me? Lots of interests fighting for your time? If so, how do you manage?

But what makes a story intimate and therefore compelling? It’s not necessarily sex, though the runaway hit, Fifty Shades of Grey, certainly had lots of that. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the adjective, intimate as “of a very personal or private nature”. When a book reveals the inner life of a character, his or her private thoughts and behaviors, I hang on for the journey. A human struggle is always compelling, and because of its humanness, familiar and relatable.

The following recent reads hit a nerve. Each one made me care about its characters. As they struggled to make sense of their lives, I reflected on my own and became richer for it.

The Cure For Death By Lightning is a coming of age story, set on a farm in the interior of British Columbia during World War II. Weaving in characters from a neighboring First Nations reserve, the author, Gail Anderson-Dargatz, takes us on a young girl’s intimate journey. We watch her struggle in a family on the edge of insanity. We see how her imagination fuels her fears of living in a place with coyotes at every turn. And we feel for her as she grapples with sexual matters both inside and outside her family.

The Senator’s Wife by Sue Miller intrigued me as it’s a story of two women who end up living next door to one another and thereby get entangled in one another’s business. One is young and newly married, the other old and wedded for decades. Their intimate stories resonate with us long after the book’s been closed. By focusing on only a few characters, the author plumbs the depths of human emotion and makes us care. She engages us in the characters’ conflicts and in so doing, our own intimate stories are triggered in the reading.

Truths I Learned From Sam by Kristin Butcher is a Y/A book that should have a wider audience. It’s a book about a family secret—and what is more intimate than that? Dani, 17 yrs., on the threshold of womanhood has an unexpected adventure that leads her to discover not only more of her own history but also that of her mother’s. This novel is funny, heartwarming and sad, like life itself.  As Dani learns truths from Sam, an uncle she didn’t know existed, she discovers the many facets of love.

All of the above are intimate stories, and therefore good books. I’d love to hear what stories still resonated with you long after you’d finished reading them.

He started off his presentation by telling us how funny people are. He said, “On my way here today, I saw a lot of motorists stuck in the snow. Each one tried to get out by pressing their foot on the accelerator. And what do you think happened?” He didn’t wait for us to answer. “They just got in deeper. Their wheels got caught in ruts. And what did they do then?  They pressed their foot harder on the gas. Did they get out? No, they just kept spinning their wheels. And they made the ruts deeper. Now, had they stopped and said, this isn’t working, I should try something different, maybe they would’ve had solved their problem. Instead, they kept doing more of the same.”

William Glasser gave the “spinning the wheels” story to illustrate how we all tend to resort to the same old when we’re trying to solve problems. We are creatures of habit. Even if something no longer works, we keep doing it. Even after the Aurora tragedy and the Newtown massacre, half of America wants to maintain the status quo. They want to ignore the insurmountable evidence that every year, with more and more guns sold, more and more innocent people are getting killed or injured. Rather than connect the dots, their answer is more guns. Just like pressing harder on the accelerator gets you nowhere, only deeper in the rut, the same can be said for buying more and bigger guns.

The NRA (National Rifle Association) and other gun enthusiasts don’t want a cross the board ban on semi-automatic weapons, like the AR-15 that was used in Aurora tragedy or the Bushmaster semi-automatic used in the Newtown school massacre. They also don’t want restrictions on magazine size. Instead they deflect the discussion by bringing up deficiencies in mental health programs or violent video games and movies. The gun advocates are not for universal background checks either, which is surprising as right now, any criminal or nutcase can buy a gun privately or online or at a gun show without a background check. There are more guns in America than people. Many own eight guns and more.

Having worked as a psychiatric social worker both on a psychiatric ward and in a community mental health center, I am well aware of the need to have good mental health services. But improving mental health services will not solve the gun problem. In Aurora, the shooter had accessed mental health services. Even though there was a psychiatrist involved, it’s not always obvious that someone has reached the point where he will do harm to others or himself. If it was, he would’ve been hospitalized for his own safety and/ or for the safety of others.

In the case of the Newtown killer, he had a mother and lived in a small community, and yet his mental illness  escaped detection. Granted, he was an odd character, but our society is full of odd characters and most of them do no harm. And what about the recent murders in New Mexico, where a 15 year old shot his own family with guns his father had taught him to use for protection when he was away. Apparently, no one saw that coming. It’s only in hindsight, that we can see the clues. Now authorities are pointing to the 15 year old’s love of video games. But in each of these cases, the common denominator was easy access to big guns, to semi-automatic weapons, guns so powerful that no one could escape their damage.

Today’s gun culture has grown out of the second amendment, passed in 1791, which gives each American under their constitution the right to keep and bear arms. When this right was passed over 200 years ago, it seemed reasonable at the time. The Americans had just overthrown the British and were worried about a government taking them over again. The arms they wanted to bear was a musket, a single shot gun that took some time to load. Not like the semi-assault weapons of today—the ones that the NRA and other second amendment clingers want to have in their homes. How does that even make sense? The American military is the biggest fighting machine in the world. Does the American gun owner believe he can—maybe with the help of others—take down his own government with the arsenal in his home?

Even in Aurora, against one shooter, a gun wielding audience—as some have suggested—could not have prevented the disaster. The shooter was wearing a bulletproof vest. There was bedlam. People were panicking. Anyone trying to bring down the shooter would’ve certainly killed more innocent victims in the process.

This whole gun debate reminds me of another story, one I heard when I recently saw the play Medicine. It’s a one man show, and during it, the playwright and actor, T J Dawe told us about how the keyboard we use today was originally invented for the typewriter. Perhaps you’ve noticed that  the keys we use the most on computer keyboards are accessed with our more awkward digits. Why? This configuration of letters was set up to slow down typing in typewriter days, because typing too quickly caused the keys to jam. That meant the typist would have to stop and untangle them before continuing. Back then, setting up the keyboard that way made sense. It no longer does. But will it get changed? No, because we are creatures of habit. No harm done, as keyboards don’t kill, they just make typing awkward. But keeping something that harms us because we are creatures of habit is not only a bad choice, but a dangerous one. Shouldn’t the second amendment’s intent be re-examined in light of the growing carnage from guns today?

The growth of the American gun culture is like the growth of a bacterial culture left untended. It has grown to extraordinary proportions and is out of control. No other civilized democracy is as armed to the teeth as Americans are. Why are they so afraid? Who wins with all this fear mongering? Watching Piers Morgan debate gun control on CNN, you quickly see this is an extremely emotional issue on both sides. Seems to me Americans have to let reason rule, and not emotions. Americans have to decide, guns or kids. Guns or Kids. Guns or Kids. I know what I’d choose. What would you?