qimissung
All are at the crossroads

I live in the United States of America, and we had another school shooting today. With horror I listened to the news reports that a gunman had gone into an elementary school and killed 27 people, 20 of them “children between the ages of 5 and 10.” And I listened tiredly and wearily to the usual rhetoric of the newscast without end as they recounted the “worst school shooting in an elementary school.”
I guess they are doing the best they can, but you simply can’t put a qualifier or adjective

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One of my former students-he graduated last year-was shot and killed last night around 10 o'clock.

He had just finished playing a game of basketball and was sitting in a car on a dark street, with his cousin. They were waiting for his cousin's ride when another car drove up. It was someone they knew and they argued over a girl his cousin had been seeing. The young man in the car pulled out a gun and shot them. Victor was shot two times in the back. He was treated at a nearby hospital,

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I read several good books in 2011. I read "Candide," "The Crying of Lot 49", "Housekeeping," "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," and "The Dubliners." I read others, but these I read last fall and today it is of "The Dubliners" I speak.

I've been wanting to read something by Joyce. Eventually I hope to read "Ulysses." I think that might be akin to saying that someday I'd like to climb Mount Everest, for

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looking at it I knew it was different
a bird's nest
full of hope and fear
and the cavalier fulsomeness of life
the blind ability to get up each day under the weight of it all
to go out every day believing you were one of the masses
dressed in the same uniform
believing the same things
that god is good
that love will find a way
believing or hoping to believe that
the others would not notice your vampiric differences

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I got up yesterday morning, a Saturday, around 5:45. I washed my face and dressed and walked to my car in the dark. I stopped by my local Starbucks and treated myself to a tall mocha.

I then made my way down Midway to 635; from there to Central Expressway from which I exited at Northwest Highway. My destination was the Half-Price Books located there, or rather the warehouse that I knew was located near it.

Once I arrived I noticed, somewhat to my chagrin, that there

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