Skip to main content

Bravery

Described as courageous behavior or character.  It was on full display when our child decided to go to school.  Let me explain.

In America violence using firearms has always been business as usual.  When that starts happening where the perpetrator is a minor it becomes alarming.  When it is omnipresent as part of school culture you know there is something fundamentally wrong with the morality of the nation.

So it happened that a threat to kill people at our local school was posted on a child's locker.  Police came in and did their thing.  The principal sent out communications to all parents indicating that the situation while disturbing was under control.

In the age of social media the boards lit up.  For a 3,000 person campus the high school was gripped by fear.  More I think the parents of the kids than the kids themselves who seem to have acquired an unusual immunity to this type of social aberration.

The parents blamed the principal for not enforcing discipline while some took to moaning about the status quo.  There was lot of back and forth the culmination of which was a large scale herd decision to not send their respective wards to school on the day of the promised apocalypse.

Totally understandable if the family in question did not feel adequately protected.

We asked our child what was to be done.  The response - without batting an eyelid - I have things to get done and some stuff to bring back and I am going.

We wholeheartedly supported the decision.  The student's job is to study, the teacher's to teach and the local law enforcement's to serve and protect.  A third of the 3,000 students attended while around 50% of the teaching population did.  The police did their job with presence on campus on full display to assure anyone that we did not tolerate nonsense and that such cowardly and dastardly acts will not deter the primary mission of this school - to continue teaching.

I applaud those that did not bow to bullies while completely empathize with folk that felt they did not want to take the chance esp where their most precious ones were involved.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

New England is gleaming in the fall

 This autumn the weather gods cooperated as we took a family trip in the northeast to see six states that qualify or makeup what is known colloquially in America as New England. Mass, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island (tiniest state in the union). The outing helped tally up the states we either lived in, visited or have worked in to 47. Guess which three have eluded this intrepid traveling family. Any rate the drive was all in about 1,800 miles and included some memorable geographic wonders or points of interest.  Easternmost part of state of Massachusetts being one.  Furthest drivable road east in Mass being another. Visit to all Ivy League schools (term harkens to a collegiate athletics conference and generally regarded as elite academic institutes of some repute worldwide) is another random bucket list item of which this trip afforded the chance to knock two more of the list.  Dartmouth in Hanover, NH and Brown (and its sister institute the RISD  - school f

Searching for a lavish 'fill in the blank with other adjectives and gender' in bed

 Many of the readers of this blog have experienced this. Strange sounding messages popping up in your text or WA or emails all day long from some exotic sounding locale with an out of this world individual looking for love, sex, money or other paraphernalia to get a high. I mean granted that electronic spamming is a low cost enterprise and all but the sheer volumes and the variety in these exhortations is beyond imagination. Having a desire to engage you in some sort of sexual payola or invest in some arcane crypto scheme must be a profound algorithm that someone from Oklahoma to Odessa is cranking on through the night and watching one in a few million fall for. Otherwise this nonsense would not exist I suspect. It would be funny to watch the lifecycle of some such persona that creates said content and that of a prospect for this invite becoming an unwilling or willing participant. Then that whole thing could go on some social channel and earn likes and subscriptions for someone else a

Lakeside frivolities

 We moved to the Charlotte area not knowing where exactly our new home would be. Turns out it was by a popular lake formed by the damming of the Catawba river which flows north to south in the Carolinas. Local electricity generation utility built a series of dams along the waterway for hydro and couple nuclear plants as well to supply the state grid.  The lake our house butts into is Lake Wylie. While tract home build has picked up in the Carolinas the developer often carves out parcels that they can get their hands on leaving behind privately owned lots that the individual owner may not want to sell. Our house is part of a subdivision but backs into actual lake front yardage that has always been part of legacy family owned properties who chose to build a cabin or getaway and did not sell to a corporation wanting to build in the hundreds. As such we can see the water through the year but it does not afford actual water access.  That privilege is to our neighbors who still maintain thei