replying to violence.

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

-Leonard Bernstein

i woke up with a barrage of messages asking me if i was okay.

my mother's text was simple: call me when you wake up!
needless to say, by now, most of you will understand 

firstly, let me make explicitly clear: my heart is breaking for colorado. i teach kids who go to columbine. i teach people who's parents or aunts and uncles were at columbine when the shootings happen. i have seen how directly this impacts a community. columbine happened in 1999 and still people remember it like it happened yesterday you never forget that trauma...never.

secondly, let me make clear how much i hate the media. speculation with no actual facts. at one point the local denver abc affiliate started talking about the weather at the apartment building of the suspected shooter.
they also just showed a southwest plane for a good four minutes...granted, it was the shooter's father getting off the plane but, until more facts are collected and until the fbi figures out how to get into the apartment building the reporting seems like an exercise in futility.

perhaps nothing has infuriated me more than this:

the argument that we can lessen violence with more violence and more guns is so unbelievably ludicrous.
louie gohmert represents tyler, texas and just for shits and giggles i decided to look up their city data...wouldn't you know it, all of their crime related data is above average. now, i'm not naive, i know many factors go into it but, i mean...really, there has to be some congruence.   


i also came across this which i think has some really interesting data to look at about the usage of guns in different states in different types of assaults...colorado ranks far lower than texas. 


i would just like to say that in events like this we tend far more to remember the name of the shooter and forget the names of the victims. twelve are confirmed dead, one of their names has been released. let's take a moment to remember jessica.


i leave you with the music of bernstein: