Letter from the Vineyard

I am sitting at Gate A6 at Indianapolis’ airport, waiting for a flight to Minneapolis. And I am in a somber mood.

The annual Lilly Website Consultation was here and this was the fourth time I have attended. It’s a small conference, held by the Lilly Endowment for their grantees, to help them keep up with the latest technological trends.

It was a good conference and I was delighted to be there. It gave me time to be with my client/friend, Nick Stuart, and to catch up with many people I have met here over the last four years.

That’s not what has me feeling somber.

When I woke this morning, I, as I always do, had a morning cup of coffee while perusing the news on both the NY Times app and the BBC app. On the BBC app was a story about an eleven year old killing an eight year old.

It was too early in the morning for me to read it.

When I went down to breakfast, people were talking about it and so I looked at it.

It was too true. In Tennessee, an eleven-year-old boy shot to death an eight-year-old neighbor girl because she wouldn’t show him her puppies. Previously, he had been accused of bullying her.

A young life ended. Another young life probably ruined forever. The young girl’s friend, who witnessed the shooting, may well be traumatized forever.

As were waiting at the airport for our flights, Nick and I had a glass of wine. His flight was earlier and he left and I stayed to settle up. Our waitress was leaving work early to attend the wake of her best friend’s mother, murdered by her boyfriend.

On the heels of the Roseburg shootings, all of this seemed too much for me and I grew somber and depressed.

In the years post 2001, 311 people have been killed by terrorist attacks. North of 350,000 have been killed in gun violence in this country.

It makes me somber. It depresses me. I feel at sea in my own country.

How has it come to this? How?

Tags: gun violence, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Roseburg shootings, Tennessee shootings

This entry was posted on October 6, 2015 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Gun Violence, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Social Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.