The War at home
From American Digest:
War at Some Remove
I SIT BEHIND a shaded window in a small bungalow on top of Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. It's a smooth summer day. It began chill but warmed. In front of my porch, the lawn sprinkler makes slow sweeps. Across the street, the school playground plays host to a pick-up game of half-court basketball and a passel of kids on bikes and skateboards, all protected by the helmets and pads modern American parents feel compelled to encumber their children with; that no fall should result in a bruise or a scrape or a moment's discomfort to otherwise mar their standard "perfect" childhood in our standard broken home. It is as if we knew that, not being able to protect our children from our own selfish self-absorption, we have compensated by protecting them from falls.
Pulling back closer to the room in which I work long days, my porch has three large hanging ferns framing a flag and a porch swing....
That was as far as I got in writing about how strange it is to be Editor-in-Chief working with my colleagues to cover the MidEast War for Pajamas Media at this distant idyllic remove when this came through:
This is so tragic and sad, yet it only feeds my terrible resolve. People, we will be living with this daily if we do not kill the cancer- the cancer we refuse to name.