2025 Life Logs, Day 347: When is Enough, Enough
Date: Saturday, December 13, 2025
Weather: Mostly Cloudy; Snow Expected Overnight; High Temp 40, Low 29 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
At 4:30 pm this afternoon, I got a text letting me know a Christmas gift that I ordered was supposed to be delivered by FedX today, requiring a signature, is now going to be delivered tomorrow. I had planned to go to Costco and IKEA tomorrow morning, but with that notification, I knew that I would now need to be home tomorrow to accept the FedX package. So, I made a last minute decision to head north to do the shopping tonight. I needed some food items from Costco and was picking up a Christmas gift at IKEA. Once I got there, I texted Heather to ask if she needed anything from Costco. The answer was no. Then when I got to IKEA, I tested her again, and her response was, “Meat balls, cinnamon buns, chocolate bars, elderflower syrup … really, just grab anything in the grocery section.” I chuckled but did as directed.
I left IKEA with a huge bag of “everything from the grocery section.” I got in the car and listened to Christmas music all the way home. When I delivered the huge bag from IKEA to the Goldstones, you would have thought I was Santa Claus. Ollie and Jonah were elated with the bag of goodies. I came home on a real high. Playing Santa Claus was really fun!
Once I got home, I checked my phone to see if there were any important messages since I had left home 4 hours earlier. I had my phone with me but had not checked emails. When I checked my email, I saw the breaking news about the shooting on the Brown University campus leaving two people dead and others injured. Reading that was like a gut punch. Probably because I was in such a good mood, the news hit especially hard. I turned on the TV to see what I could find out, but the whole time I was saying to myself that this has got to stop. When is enough, enough? We’ve had Columbine, Sandy Hook, Margory Stoneman, and so many, many, many more school shootings in between. It is heartbreaking, yet we don’t have the will to do anything to stop this madness. We have a lot of madness going on these days, but the protection of our children, whether in pre-school or graduate school, should be sacred pledge. Things have gone very wrong in this country, and we who have stood by and let this happen right in front of our eyes need to dedicate our lives to stopping it.
What can we do to stop this attack on the future? I don’t have the answer, but I am certainly going to do what I can. Our children deserve better, so let’s figure out a plan of action and do something about it. Okay. Deep breath. Rant over … but not forgotten.
Today was Saturday, so I was on the Green for the weekly Standout for Democracy. Every week I meet new people in our community. Today, as soon as I arrived, I stopped to talk to good friends. Then this man walked up to our little group. He knew one person in the group and then somehow he and I got deep into a conversation about why coming out every week to protest on the Green is important. That led to what each of us is doing to try and save our democracy. He was particularly interested in the Nonviolence in Action film series we just wrapped up. Then he revealed that he is a filmmaker, and he shared a recommendation for a future workshop. We shared email contacts as he wants to be contacted if we do more with the film series. At that point, his wife and/or significant other came up, introduced herself, and said she had just been talking with another Indivisible Falmouth Steering Committee member about the film series focusing on nonviolence. One of the true gifts of the Saturday rally is this meeting of new people and sharing of ideas. The couple left and I went to talk to the person she had been talking with to find out more about them. She is Woods Hole native, now a neuroscientist teaching at MIT, and the man I was talking to is a filmmaker of significant acclaim. Wow! And the great thing is that he would like to keep in touch and possibly be involved in future film-based workshops. I introduced him to Pramila Jayapal’s Resistance Labs, and he is interested in those. The talent in this community constantly amazes me. Every single Saturday, I meet new people, all amazing. How lucky I am to live here
