Thoughts.

[curiouswombat]

It's not been a good week, outside the small island, has it?

Israel now officially twinning itself with Somalia.

The oil-spill in the Gulf of Mexico now apparently in the top 40 of all time and approaching being as big a spill as the Torrey Canyon - although it probably won't get to be as bad as the Amoco Cadiz - which, along with the Braer, are the three I remember best.

But, here, overshadowing both of those, are the terrible events in Cumbria. Whitehaven, Egremont, Seascale - these are places that, until the end of Border television news a year or so ago, were as familiar to us, as we ate our evening meal, as Onchan or Ramsey.

One of D-d's friends at college knew the solicitor that was killed - he had done quite a lot of work experience with him. Another young man from college comes from the area and left college at lunchtime on Wednesday, after getting a text message, 'looking pale and upset' to quote D-d. She doesn't know whether he is linked to any of the dead or injured.

We spent some time on the phone discussing it - it is so hard to understand why a normal, friendly, guy could just turn on family, colleagues, and people at random like that.

I suppose the only good thing about it is that it is such an incredibly rare occurrence in Britain thanks to the low level of gun ownership (they actually gave the figures on the news last night). But it would be better if it was the sort of thing that had not happened, nor would ever happen again.

My heart goes out to everyone touched by this awful tragedy.

And in the middle of all this, we get on with life as usual - which in my case has meant producing industrial quantities of carrot cake to sell at church over T.T. It is very hard to equate what is happening both near and far with the ordinariness of baking...

Comments

[hilleviw.livejournal.com]

My godmother lives in Workington and knew several of the people who were shot. She's reeling, and it seems to be equal parts shock and grief. In a smallish community like Cumbria, there really are no strangers and everything is very personal.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

The communities there will recover - the very sense of community will help them do so, but it is going to leave deep scars I think.

[nutmeg3.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it's hard not to despair, but I have to try. And even here, where guns sometimes seem as common as dirt, such events are rare. But every time a new one occurs, I'm stunned and devastated as if it were the first time.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

There is, in the human psyche, an urge to 'make sense of things' - somehow this helps us not to despair, I think. So now there are people desperately trying to come up with some reason why he shot the people he did.

There is logic to some of them, certainly, but in the others it really does seem to be 'wrong place, wrong time' - and it is difficult to say whether this is easier or harder to accept for the families.

[calizen.livejournal.com]

I feel like you. Every time it happens, I feel ripped open and devastated. Then I heal -- and boom! Somewhere it happens again.

[empresspatti.livejournal.com]

This week has broken my heart on so many levels.

Israel now officially twinning itself with Somalia.

Very astute remark - I will be quoting you!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Feel free. They are now threatening to do the same thing to the Irish registered 'Rachel Corrie' - full of such terrible Moslem activists as an Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner (Maraid Maguire) and an ex-assistant secretary of the UN (Denis Halliday)...

[just-ann-now.livejournal.com]

My heart aches for you all - we went through the same thing with the Virginia Tech shootings a few years back. Just a horrible, painful experience.

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

Not just Virginia Tech, but at a local uni by me called Northern Illinois University. My uncle (a SWAT member) was involved in making sure nothing else happened at the memorial service.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

We are fortunate that such things are rarer per head of population, by a big factor, than in the USA (probably because the UK has only 5% of the number of guns per head of population of the USA) because I am sure no-one can ever come to regard them as commonplace. Every time, they are heart-breaking.

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it takes a common, everyday thing like baking to keep your mind from getting too distraught over the problems with the world.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may not be the worst yet, but we're hearing a lot of news that BP isn't entirely innocent in the affair... Not only that, but the US Supreme Court (the federal court) just ruled you need to speak up and say you're remaining silent about police interrogation questions, which goes against the Miranda Rights.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

BP isn't entirely innocent in the affair.

Of course not - they are a big international company and, like so many others, they will cut corners because, by law, they have to maximise profits for their shareholders.

And if they do as President Obama says, and don't quibble about claims for compensation, they will be breaking US and UK law by not doing their best to maximise profit and minimise loss...

I don't know about the Miranda Rights - but it sounds as if a bit more personal freedom is being chipped away there - although, of course, such insistence on making it clear when you are refusing to answer questions should also apply to the big companies. But they'll have the cleverest lawyers, of course...

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you can look up more of the specifics about the Miranda rights on Wikipedia or somewhere similar, but it basically comes down to your rights as a private citizen to be treated with respect by the police force when stopped for suspected illegal activity. They guarantee (or should) that you have the right to be treated civilly rather than tortured, to refuse to answer questions that could incriminate you (since anything said to the police in the negative or what sounds suspicious can be used by the police against you in a court room), and to be able to speak with a lawyer before going to trial--even if you can't afford one on your own. It's also in the lawbooks that the police must read you your rights before arresting you.

Hopefully, most police officers will continue to treat citizens with respect as to their Miranda rights rather than take advantage of the new ruling in order to torture people into confessing. If this goes any further, we may be back to the days of the witchhunts and the Inquisition, and not the Monty Python versions either...

[desdemonaspace]

I am so sorry this is happening in your country. We in the States are sort of jaded to violence by gunfire (though you never really get used to it) but this must be so shocking and upsetting to you.

I hate guns.

**shudder**

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It is so difficult for the communities involved - that he drove around for miles, apparently shooting at random, people in small towns and villages, is somehow even worse than if he had tried to shoot all his fellow taxi drivers or something.

People are just having difficulties getting their head around it all. Whitehaven has a population of about 25,000 - but Egremont has just 7,000 and Seascale about 1,500 - and I think there were three deaths in each of them.

The police and emergency services were shocked as well - it was outside the experience of all of them as they desperately tried to get to all the different shootings.

A man who found one of the dying women said at first he just couldn't understand why he could hear the sirens and yet they didn't arrive - only later did he realise that they were still heading to the incident before the one he was a witness to. He was interviewed the next day on TV and you could see he could hardly stop shaking.

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

One does wonder why someone would suddenly "crack" like that and murder so many people... even his own twin brother, if I read the news article correctly.

And sometimes you do have to simply turn to the ordinary things in life, like baking, lest the bad things happening in the wider world, out of your control, become too overwhelming.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

He seems to have started with his own twin brother and the family lawyer, then gone to the taxi rank where he worked, and shot colleagues, then seemingly driven around the area shooting at people at random. In villages like Seascale (population of about 1,500 people) where 3 of the deaths were, this is going to take a long time to recover from.

And yet, I would guess that the 'ladies who bake' there will already be doing so, to cope with all the times people will need to sit and talk to aid the recovery.

[calizen.livejournal.com]

I think that's why I'm spending inordinate amounts of time in my garden. it's a little patch I have control over when the world seems to be determined to go mad.

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

Pulling weeds can be very therapeutic!

[calizen.livejournal.com]

Spoken like a true gardener.

[jerusha]

*hugs* The news seems terrible recently, doesn't it? It's been painful to watch.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I know that you will understand, personally, how the members of those communities in Cumbria must be feeling right now.

Actually, how the members of the communities of the people shot during the Israeli pirate raid must feel too - we tend to 'feel' the emotions of those closest to home, and then realise it is no less horrifying for those other families either.

[evilawyer.livejournal.com]

I sympathize with you and your country-people.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It is the sense that, in this case, it is too close to home, that makes it hard to come to terms with, I think.

[evilawyer.livejournal.com]

Yes. That you don't know the people and victims doesn't matter. Terrible things happen everywhere, but when they happen so near to you (my own primary example is the disgruntled ex-client who went into his ex-lawyer's office in San Francisco with a rifle and shot a bunch of lawyers and support staff about twenty years --- and I didn't know anybody with that firm, but I knew people who worked in the building and it was freaky just knowing they were in the building with a man gone wild) it brings a sense of helplessness as well as shock and grief. You come to terms, eventually, but it makes a lasting impression if you have any sense and sensitivity at all.

[appomattoxco.livejournal.com]

{{Hugs}}

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[melegyrn.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. I hadn't had a chance to read about it until tonight. So, that, and images of an oil-soaked pelican in my head.

The heavy rain here tonight fits the mood. I do hope it remains a rare occurrence in Britain.

[calizen.livejournal.com]

It does seem to be a rather gloomy world out there, doesn't it? And yes, I too cannot get the image of that oil-soaked, dying pelican out of my mind.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

The death of so many sea-birds in oil spills like this is always heart-breaking.

Somehow there is a feeling that gun crime belongs in cities - not Cumbria... it is a community too like our own, and also the nearest bit, physically, of the mainland to us.

[pfeifferpack.livejournal.com]

Being informed is such a double edged sword isn't it? I sometimes despair for the human race then remind myself that the bad things get in the news because they are the exception, the odd-thing-out. There just seems so much of it though.

There is a real sickness running throughout the world lately with the killings like the one you still experience rarely and we (in the USA) all too often. Even China has had a couple of them involving the shooting of children. Madness! Madness and weapons. I can't remember who said it but it is so true, "Yes guns don't kill people. People kill people. BUT No one ever died when someone yelled, 'bang' at them did they?" Guns are a problem and makes killing at a distance or wounding multiple times more likely and therefore lethal.

Carrot cake sounds lovely!

Ahhhh.... look at all the decent (not perfect mind) people and taste the wonderful things we have concocted and hope for better days.

*hugs*
Kathleen

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

"Yes guns don't kill people. People kill people. BUT No one ever died when someone yelled, 'bang' at them did they?"

Absolutely.

I think you are right, that we now know more of things that happen a long way from us - bad things always happened, but we didn't know about them. But the shootings in Cumbria are all too close to home for us, this time.

The carrot cake is good - but I sometimes get fed up making it... I had a wee rebellion the other day and made two dozen cup cakes for a change!

[pfeifferpack.livejournal.com]

bwahahaha a TRUE rebel!

*hugs*
Kathleen

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It's hard to get the head around, isn't it? All of it.

[bojojoti.livejournal.com]

There have been so many terrible things happen lately. It seems to go in streaks. Let's hope this streak is at an end.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I really do hope so.

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

Nods. Some weeks are just hard to get through for many people.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I suppose sometimes we just have to glad that we are amongst those who got to the end of this week.

[gamiila.livejournal.com]

Of course we go on with life as usual. We'd go nuts if we didn't. But it doesn't mean we don't care, or can't endeavour, by focusing on the mundane, to make the world a better, safer and above all, saner place for those around us.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

You are absolutely right - the everyday things keep us going - and keep us sane, even carrot cake...

[spikereader.livejournal.com]

The ordinariness of baking is exactly what helps us get through, I think. Watching the tragedy in Cumbria unfold on the day and then through the rest of the week has been heartbreaking - but I can see the communities pulling together and helping each other to cope.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

We do need the everyday, and the sense of being busy, to stop something so enormous overwhelming us. I have a feeling that, even in Cumbria, the ladies who bake are baking now; to keep cake in front of those who need to talk together.

[calizen.livejournal.com]

I'm in my garden all the time now between my working on the computer. Growing thing makes life easier because there's so little I can control. While someone said we in The States are inured to gun violence, still it rips something in all of us to have something so senseless happen.

Matthew Arnold was right over 100 years ago:

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned"

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Those are the right words for the week - thank you.

Growing things, or baking things, does help us to stay grounded, doesn't it?

[framefolly.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry...

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

This time it is just too close to home, a community just too similar to our own.

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

What happened in Cumbria is still beyond beieve really, even though we've had Hungerford and Dunbane. I can't imagine how it must feel to lose someone in such tragic circumstances.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It seems local to us, almost, because of all the years of watching Border News - but no matter where someone does something like that is is impossible to have any idea of people must feel.

I hope we never know.