There Was No Outrage

There was no outrage.  No candlelight vigils were reported.  There was no Presidential visit to comfort the community.  I hadn't yet received any emails from Gabby Giffords or Mark Kelly.  After all, the body count was only one dead, two wounded.  It was just one more school shooting.  I had only half read the article before folding the newspaper and tossing it into the recycle bin.  Two days later I woke up earlier than usual.  For some reason, this school shooting incident was on my mind.  I showered, ate breakfast and looked at today’s paper.  The headline, “Boy charged in teacher’s killing,” caught my eye.  A 14-year old boy had been charged with killing his 24-year old math teacher with a box cutter.  The article also mentioned the school shooting in Nevada:

On Monday, a 12-year old opened fire at a school in Nevada, killing a math teacher and wounding two students before killing himself.

I walked over to the recycle bin and looked for Tuesday’s paper.  It was the first one I pulled out of the pile.  There it was on page A-5.  The headline read, “Nev. school shooting leaves teacher dead.”  The article described what had happened:

According to police and witnesses, a student at the school – wearing khakis, part of the Sparks Middle School uniform – opened fire shortly after 7 a.m., leaving Mr. Landsberry [the 8^th grade math teacher] dead and two students wounded.  The shooter, who has not been identified, apparently then took his own life, police said. 

The story made no mention of the type of gun used.  Was it a handgun, a hunting rifle, a semi-automatic assault rifle?  How did the student get the gun?  Did it belong to his parents?  What was his motive?  Were there mental health issues?  Was he the object of bullying, or was he just having a bad day?  Perhaps some of these details will be provided in the coming days.

The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut took place over 10 months ago.  According to the Slate.com website, nearly 10,000 people have died from gun violence since the Newtown tragedy.  

After the Sandy Hook incident, President Obama called for Congress to enact legislation that included universal background checks for all firearm sales, reinstatement and strengthening of the ban on assault weapons, limiting ammunition magazines to 10 rounds and banning the possession of armor-piercing ammunition by anyone other than the police or military.  The Obama Administration’s proposals were universally denounced by the NRA and by those politicians in its pocket.  For a short time it appeared that expanded background checks had a slim chance of passage in the U.S. Senate, receiving bipartisan support from co-sponsors, Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV).  However, even that limited restriction couldn't meet the Senate’s 60-vote hurdle.  It was killed by the gun lobby; it only received 54 votes which somehow isn't enough these days.  After that defeat, the politicians in Washington seemed to lose their stomach for a fight over any kind of restrictions, particularly after seeing how the gun lobby went after state politicians that supported tighter gun restrictions in Colorado in the aftermath of the tragedies of Aurora and Newtown, not to mention Columbine.

So who really cares about the shootings in Nevada?  There were only two dead if you count the shooter, and only two wounded.  The dead man, Michael Landsberry, tried to stop the attack.  That’s what he gets for interfering with the shooter’s right to bear arms. 

Or could this latest school tragedy just be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back? 

Naah!  Not a f#@%ing chance!

If I Were a Carpenter

Over the course of my working career, I earned my living sitting behind a desk.  I worked for a few years as a county bureaucrat, spent three years in law school, and then 31 years reading, writing and advising clients on various aspects of environmental and commercial law.  Now, having just turned 60, it seems that I am spending less time as a desk jockey and more time doing hard labor.  How did this happen?  I got married and we decided to have kids.  Those kids grew up, got homes or apartments of their own, and decided “Hey, Dad’s retired now.  Let’s invite him to visit us and then work his butt off!”

 

Yes, a few weeks ago, my beautiful daughter and brand new son-in-law invited us out to see the home they had just moved into.  It’s one half of a duplex, but much larger than the townhouse where they had been living.  In contrast to the townhouse, however, this “new” place is about 100 years old.  Not that old is bad.  My own house is approaching the century mark.  I've found that older homes are usually built more solidly with much better craftsmanship and have much more character than many of today’s modern homes.  But my daughter had an agenda in asking us out to see her new digs.  There were some “minor things” that she wanted us to look at and help to repair.

 

Well, I had learned some home repair skills in my youth by helping my dear old father work around the house.  In return, he helped to expand my vocabulary, particularly when helping him with plumbing repairs.  So I was eager to ride into town on my white horse to show off my home repair skills.  Besides, my youngest son had worked last summer as a carpenter for a summer theater company, and he would be bringing his skills (and tools) along for the ride.  We also brought my classic copy of The Reader’s Digest Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual – the do-it-yourselfer’s bible for repairing virtually anything inside or outside the home.

My wife, son and I spent the first day just assessing what we needed to do and what materials we needed.  As promised, there were a number of small repair jobs that needed to be done.  These included patching some holes in her plaster walls, installing a new lock on the front door, and replacing shelf paper in the kitchen cabinets.  And then there was the front porch.  “Some of the floor boards look a little rotten,” my daughter told us.  “And some spots seem a little bouncy, which we hadn't noticed when we inspected the house.”  On further inspection, we found that a lot of the floor boards were weathered and rotten.  And after tearing away a few floorboards, we discovered that some of the supporting joists were rotten or severely cracked. 

So the real fun started on our second day of work.  With hammers and a crowbar we tore up all the flooring to get a clear picture of the structure underneath.  This was no easy task.  Those boards had been nailed down to stay.  We struggled to get the boards up, and then had hundreds of nails to pull out of the joists.  We tossed the old boards in the front yard until we could decide what to do with them. As we were evaluating what we needed to do to rebuild the porch, a neighbor stopped by.  He happened to be a contractor and offered us some great advice on how we should strengthen the structure of the porch before putting on new floorboards.  “And oh by the way,” he said, “did you happen to get a building permit?”  OOPS!  We forgot about that little detail.  Well, do you think a pile of old lumber in the front yard might attract an inspector’s attention?  And then there was the optic yellow caution tape my wife put around the porch so unsuspecting visitors wouldn't step onto a porch that has no floor.  We decided to get rid of the lumber by tossing it into a couple of nearby dumpsters. But the caution tape would have to stay.  A fine for having no permit is not nearly as bad as a personal injury lawsuit.

Since it was the weekend and municipal offices were closed, we decided we would just work fast to get it done before an inspector came snooping around.  So on day 3, we bought our materials and got to work.  My son cut lumber to replace the rotten joists and patch the cracked ones.  I mixed concrete to set a support post to add stability to the structure.  My wife and daughter primed the new floorboards so they would be ready to put down as soon as we repaired the underlying framework.  My son-in-law pitched in wherever he was needed.  At the end of the day, the neighbor stopped by again, looked over our work, and opined that it looked like we knew what we were doing.

 

On day 4 I mixed mortar to re-point brick that made up some of the support posts and my son continued to patch cracked joists and make sure the joists were all at the proper level to lay the floorboards.  Around 5:00 p.m., my wife and I had to leave to return home.  She had to be at work the following day.  We left it to my son and son-in-law to finish.  My son stayed for another 4 days to finish the porch and several of the “minor repair jobs” that still remained to be done. 

My body ached for days afterward.  But I looked forward to a relaxing visit with my oldest son in New York.  I had bought tickets so the two of us could attend a concert featuring Rodriguez, who was the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary, Searching for Sugarman.  A few days before my trip, he called to tell me that he hoped I could help him move some furniture to his new third floor walk-up apartment.  After we finished carrying desks, tables and bureaus up those steep, narrow stairs, he complimented me on being a pretty good mover – for an old guy.  Oh my achin’ back!  I’m currently looking for another desk job.