If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Less than 24 hours later, Jaime, Dan and I sat in the control room and listened back to what we had done. It sounded amazing. The fact that we wrote, recorded, arranged and mixed "Boston Strong," top to bottom, in a day was pretty incredible to each of us sitting there.
The thing that struck me was the number of spectators who returned to the scene, and I keep hearing about more. That man in the cowboy hat, pinching off someone's exposed artery with his bare hands. The woman who ran back to the site to cradle a child.
The recent tragedy in Boston reminds us why we do what we do. The disease that we fight every day is not one of the body; it is one of the mind.
Premeditated killing is not a circumstance to which we can be sensitized. To get used to death and terror would be to walk down a path that leads only to paranoia and mutually-assured destruction.
The more our religion, Islam, is hijacked by extremists, the more some Muslim communities feel as though Islam is under attack from both the East and the West -- from both Muslim and non-Muslim.
I don't have sons. I have two daughters. I've never had to say "no" to violent movies and video games. I've never had to explain that hands are not for hitting. Neither of my two girls ever picked up a stick and pretended it was a gun.
At the age of 19, you are an adult. When we call Dzhokhar a kid, we are expressing a value we have already internalized as a society: that youth is an excuse.
Grief can do funny things in your body. Depending on our personal makeup, grief is often interpreted as a stressful event.
Getting back to this "Tough Week," now nearly 14 days ago, as the news raged on, I found myself turning to social media sites like Twitter and Reddit for the latest updates about the situation in Boston.
We've heard it everywhere, on every station, every major news outlet, and every talk radio show: Islamophobia is alive and well in the United States.
We are standing together, shaken but resolute, and I for one feel buoyed by an even stronger sense of community.
From the moment I first turned the television on, I couldn't get comfortable with the heroism narrative. The Boston Marathon bombings didn't speak to me of the goodness of humanity in the face of evil, but the corruption of our species and the ways we try our best to control it.
A heavyhearted community is best cared for by a heavyhearted leader. This takes energy, attention, and compassion. Sometimes we feel that we cannot bear the great weight this task places upon us.Even as we embody this heavy emotional weight, we too are sustained by the community we strive to support.
Did law enforcement believe that a wounded 19-year-old was sufficiently dangerous and that a reasonable threat existed to demand entry in what can only be considered a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment?
As a parent, I trickle out news to my kids in dribs and drabs, trying to include context and explanation and humanity. These are what a story needs if it is going to be told.
Fear is not something we can turn off, something we can consciously control.
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