Saturday coffee.

Dawn Hochsprung. Principal at Sandy Hook. The Sandy Hook Book Fairy reads to first graders.

We woke to a gloomy Chicago morning.

Ulysses and I took our morning walk in the dampness of a light drizzle that promises to turn to real rain and possible thunder later in the day.

Uly doesn’t like thunder. What dog does?

After the events of yesterday it would be a gloomy morning anyway.

Yet some sunshine would have  helped.

I tried to stay off the news yesterday. But in this world of social networking it is awfully hard. My daughter smartly said she was keeping my grandkids away from news reports of the Connecticut murders of kindergarten children. Yet I wonder how a parent is able to do that.

My Facebook status page was filled with the full range of reactions, from  angry calls for gun control to the question of what kind of society are we?

Others claimed this was not the time to talk about guns. Why not?

I try not to blame all of us – “society” – the world, for tragedies. Particularly the horrible actions of a guy whose motives are not yet clear.

Although what motive could possibly explain what he did?

I worry about premature conclusions. I worry about the suggestions that he had Aspergers, as if that was an explanation.

Although, like in any tragedy, people try to find ways to cope with it – explain it – make sense of it.

I have little patience for the Mike Huckabees, Pat Robertsons and others who suggest it is God’s will or God’s punishment. What utter bullshit. Who could believe in such a God?

I am annoyed at some in the gun lobby who claim that this could have been prevented if the teachers at Sandy Hook were armed.

Are they kidding?

Horribly, no they are not.

I weeped at the words of  the Sandy Hook teacher who told of huddling her students in a closet. She told reporters that she kept telling them how she loved them. She was thinking that they would all be killed and wanted those words to be the last thing, not gunfire, that they heard.

Teachers. God love ’em. 

I don’t know. We went through the motions of lock-down drills every year at my school. But nobody I know believe that they meant anything. That they represented anything other than public relations.

A guy comes into our school with a semi-automatic rifle with the intent on hurting folks?

Well, at least we’re doing something.

Hey. How about not having people owning semi-automatic rifles.

What is that thing they say at AA meetings? About knowing the difference between things we can change and things we can’t.

Thousands of kids die in this country and around the world each year.

So many die in ways we can prevent.

I try to stay focused on the things we can change.