Pot Shot

Welp, It Happened...

...Somebody took a pot shot at Donald Trump.

It was at a rally yesterday in Butler, PA.  The guy shot at Trump's head and mostly missed;  the bullet nicked his ear.  Another attendee, however, wasn't so lucky - that person was killed.  The Secret Service killed the shooter and hustled Trump off the stage.  Trump himself didn't look too rattled - he raised a victory fist as he was taken away.

So Trump is just fine.

At the time, though...

At the time it happened, I had no clue what was going on, because I was working.  I would have known nothing for a lot longer if a shopper hadn't been talking about it on her cell phone;  when she got off, she was checking updates and saying,  "There's going to be a war if they don't cut it out."  It didn't take too much skull sweat to know which "they" the shopper was talking about.

And damn, was I scared.

I don't like Trump at all.  His policies are senseless and cruel, and his personal character is about the same.  Having him back in the White House would be a disaster for our country.  But as President Biden said, right after the attempt (as opposed to watching it all on TV for three hours),  "Political violence is unacceptable."  I want to beat Trump at the ballot box and send him away to obscurity and prison, not make him a martyr (he's already slated for prison;  one down, one to go).

But if the termite-ridden MAGA branch of the GOP started blaming us Democrats...what then?  Would they start doing drive-by shootings on any house with a Biden-Harris sign in the yard?  Kidnap and kill our pets?  Honestly, I was hoping that my house would be intact when I got there after work.  Because at the time, I had no data to work with other than "Trump got shot."

Now we know...kind of...

The FBI got right to work on the case, and it only took them a few hours to find out that the shooter was Thomas Matthew Crooks, from Bethel Park, PA.  He was 20 years old, a registered Rebublican whose first vote was in the 2022 midterm elections, and an extreme gun enthusiast (he was wearing a Demolition Ranch tee shirt at the rally).  Why he chose to take a shot at Trump, I don't know yet.  Neither does anyone else...but the conspiracies are flying already.

I will write more when I know more.  Stay tuned.

That Facepalm Moment...

People Say the Darndest Things...

Well, it happened again.

I had to counter another round of dis/misinformation.

This time, it was to a customer.  He was browsing, and I asked if I could help him.  He said no, he was just looking around.  He had decided to shop at our store from now on, and would no longer be shopping at our rival because they were putting out Pride merch in honor of LGBTQ+ Month.  He complained that the LGBTQ community were "shoving it in our faces," that doctors were gender-changing little kids who had no idea what was happening, and that drag queens were doing strip shows in libraries.  When I pointed out that the queens were merely reading books to the children, and that the aim was to get them to love reading (as any Story Time reader is trying to do), he backtracked and said that "children were going to drag shows."

I'll pause a moment to allow my readers to slap their palms firmly onto their faces.  Okay, hands down as I continue...

Here is what I told my dis/misinformed customer, in no particular order:

1) Pride Month (the informal name) is primarily about information.  Its intent is to clear up all the stupid stereotypes and show that all the "letter people" are just people, with the same rights and privileges as anyone else.  Also, learning about people who aren't like you removes fears and stigmas that are based on bad info (like the kind my customer was repeating;  he also mentioned a school in a nearby town that had supposedly put a litterbox in a kids' restroom for a child who said she was really a cat.  That internet rumor has been going around for so long, with a different school in every repeat, that I wonder how anyone can still believe it).

Now:  Are there "letter people" who go overboard?  Yes, there are.  The parades can bring out the flame, for sure.  And that can drown out the voices of those who just want to live openly as a valued citizen of our nation, without being subjected to hateful slurs and physical violence.  But the outrageousness doesn't change the need for acceptance, just as the riots during the BLM protests don't change the need for radical improvements in our policing system.

2) Re drag shows - the queens and kings are not strippers!  A drag show is a chance to flaunt inner beauty by dressing up to the nines.  Some of the performers cosplay as their favorite divas (or divos), but many have their own original personae.  It's actually really fun and the people look absolutely fabulous!

And as for children going to the shows, I did some research and found that one of the venues in our nearby city does allow youth 13 and up into the show.  Because of the humor and adult-themed jokes expressed by the performers, attendance by anyone younger than that is not recommended.  However, the proprietors say that it's up to the parent.  (Kind of like a PG-13 movie.)  Another place - the oldest and most famous venue in the city - will not admit anyone younger than 21, since they serve alcohol.  A third is a designated Safe Space for youth in crisis...and I really doubt that an abused teenager seeking help is going to be damaged by seeing a few people in drag, especially if those people are helping him get out of a bad situation.

3) Doctors are not performing gender surgery on little kids!!!!  I have a friend who had gender dysphoria, and it wasn't until he grew up that he was able to get a truckload of counseling and then begin his treatments.  Most of the stress involved came from the way other people reacted to his revelation of who he was inside.

What sympathetic parents are trying to do with their kids is help them identify who they are, then help them live it as best they can before they come to an age when they can safely do something about it.  So a trans girl will dress like a girl if she wishes (clothes have become more unisex) and use a family/unisex restroom.

("But how can they know when they're little?"  asked my customer.  Well, how does anyone know who they are?  They just do.  "But teaching about all that gender stuff just confuses the kids."  But it also helps a kid realize that the way they feel isn't some weird mental illness.  The confusion will shake itself out with the help of those sympathetic parents.)

The customer admitted, after I had told him all this, that he needed to do research before he repeated everything he heard.  But he did say that if we ever started displaying Pride flags, he would shop elsewhere.  Which is his choice.

I Hate Liars. Don't You?

 Truly A New Low...

I get a lot of unsolicited text messages.  Mostly, this is because I put my name on both my state and national "don't-call" list.  Unfortunately, there's a loophole, because there is no such list for texts;  so I usually just glance at strange texts, delete all the organizations I don't recognize, and let it go.

But over the last two days, I have gotten a couple of texts that really disturb me.  The anonymous sender says that "left-wing organizations" are "collecting your data" for nefarious purposes.  After this, s/he instructs me that if these people ask for my name, address, and signature, I should "decline to sign."

A second such text makes it sound even scarier:  "out-of-town strangers" collecting the data for "left-wing extremist" groups.  Again, there is the "decline to sign" instruction, and I am further urged to "protect yourself from fraud and theft!"

Are These People Serious?!

Now, I have signed quite a few petitions in my day.  Most of them have been for ballot initiatives, which are a way for the people of a state to get a law passed when the state legislature won't do it.  Things like Medicaid expansion, the legalization of recreational marijuana, and the reformation of highway funding are several things that have gotten done only because We the People of my state started a ballot initiative.  

The way it works is that canvassers either go door-to-door, set up a table in a public space, or just approach people and ask them to sign their petition.  They have to explain what the petition is for, and they are not allowed to accept any kind of donation or gift from those with whom they speak  (I know this because the last petition I signed was on a chilly day, and I tried to buy the workers a coffee...which they politely refused).  If they can get enough people to sign the petition by a given deadline, it becomes a ballot initiative and will be voted on in the next general election.

And yes, they do need your name and address, because they have to prove that all the signatures they get are from residents of the state.  Only state residents are allowed to determine whether there is enough interest in an issue to put it on the next ballot.

Let me make this absolutely clear:  Your identity cannot be stolen just because someone knows your name and address.  And if your signature were another way for someone to defraud you, then signing your name on those touch screens at the store or at the restaurant would be way more dangerous than signing a piece of paper with lines all down the page.

So, What's Really Going On?

Funny you should ask.

There are two hot-button issues in my state right now:  "school choice" (a.k.a. vouchers) and abortion.  The GOP super-majority in our legislature is really on board with a near-total abortion ban, and they're practically drooling at the idea of defunding public schools and siphoning the money into vouchers that supposedly give parents a choice in the way their kids are educated.  Private schools are supposedly better than public schools, with better curricula, better teachers, and safer environments, so hey!  Instead of that run-down public school where the teachers are paid peanuts and the textbooks still call Myanmar "Burma" and the nerds get swirlied on a regular basis, a parent could use public money to send her little one to that fancy private academy where he will do so much better!

Except, those private schools can accept or reject whomever they want.  A transfer student from a public school would still have to meet the private school's standards for academic performance and good behavior.  Paid tuition or not, any kid who couldn't keep up his grades or stay out of trouble would be expelled.

Moreover, it might be a lot harder to get to and from a private school, especially in a rural area.

And lastly, those vouchers would make it impossible for public schools to improve.  It's like giving someone else a transfusion, but being expected to put in a full day's work while doing so.  It's crazy!

But the GOP love the idea.  To gain support, they have focused on a bunch of non-issues, like "woke" ideology, trans- and homosexual infiltration, critical-race theory, "bad" books in school libraries, etc. 

So, in defense of public schools, some (yes, left-wing) groups have gotten together and are now circulating a petition to keep public schools funded.  If it makes it to the November ballot, the entire state gets to finally decide the issue for themselves.

The same thing is happening with the abortion ban.  The petition is circulating, and if it gets enough signatures, we will decide in November whether to allow a woman to choose to abort if she needs to, or if she is too young, or if her life is at stake, or if it's a rape/incest/abuse case...and also, whether that woman and anyone who helps her is a criminal.

Now, the anti-choice crowd - the Right to Lifers, the conservative religious groups, and so forth - are up in arms about abortion.  The only thing they think about is "saving the unborn."  That would be all fine and good if that were really the case.  But most abortions are done within the first trimester;  the embryo isn't viable--it cannot survive outside the womb.  One of the reasons that the six-week ban is so stupid is that many women wouldn't even know they were pregnant yet!  (A woman can miss a period for several reasons other than pregnancy;  stress, medication, and malnutrition can all affect a woman's cycle.)  

And once a pregnancy reaches the viability stage, the only reason an abortion is done is because of a fatal birth defect, such as a missing vital organ, or because the life of the mother is in danger.  Needless to say, such late-term abortions are very rare, and only a few doctors are trained to perform them.

Besides which, no woman is getting an abortion on a whim.  It's a tough choice, and any woman in that position has already thought seriously about what to do.  It should be her choice, not the government's or that of some misguided religious group.

However...

....The right-wing coalition is perfectly free to oppose these initiatives.  And they might just win.

But they aren't being honest about it in those "decline to sign" messages.  When they, or anyone allied with them, conceal their true position by fear-mongering ("They're stealing your data!") about things that have nothing to do with the real issues (vouchers and abortion), then they have lost the moral high ground.  They are, in fact lying to you.  And I really, really hate liars!

Do You Feel Like I Do?

Then spread the word.  If you get deceptive "decline to sign" texts, or you have friends who have gotten them, then set the record straight.

Because it's not data collection those mystery texters are afraid of;  it's your taking a stand in favor of something they don't like.  So let's go scare the shit out of them, shall we?

The Ones who Never Return

 Another Reason I Hate Modern Country Music...

It's no secret that I can't stand the stuff that passes for country and western music music nowadays.

But it's not for the reasons you might think.

I'm not upset when country artists borrow elements from the rock and soul genres, or even rap and hip-hop, if it helps them tell their stories.  (Full disclosure:  I've never heard a country song using rap that was really effective in getting its message across;  it always sounds like they could have done it better using a more traditional format.  For one thing, their rhymes are weak!)

I don't bat an eye at rockers who "go country" or country artists who cross over to rock or pop.  There have been crossover artists since rock and country first became identifiable genres.  Glen Campbell, Anne Murray, and Kenny Rogers were equally lauded on both country and pop radio;  more recently, Cheryl Crow, Darius Rucker (Hootie and the Blowfish), and Shania Twain have successfully crossed over from rock to country and vice-versa.  The blend of Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus produced a really weird sorta-country, sorta hip-hop hit with "Old Town Road."  (Further disclosure:  I still think Lil Nas X got shafted by Billboard!)

Nope.  What really puts hay down my tank top is the subject matter.

In particular, the whole superiority thing.  As in, the home town or the farm is so wonderful and perfect, and the city sucks.  Jason Aldean's tone-deaf "Try That in a Small Town" is just the most extreme example;  there are plenty of others, like the one about the good ol' boy who went away for a while, but oh, he's back now and he's never, ever gonna leave!  Or how about the guy making fun of his ex's new boyfriend, who doesn't drive a truck, hunt, or fish, and who probably can't even change a flat tire on that hybrid?  (The song doesn't say he's a city slicker, but how many hints do we need?)

But worst of all is the trope about the girl who leaves the small town or farm to go to college or work in the big city, but finds that something's missing, so she comes back...and lo and behold, she finds that the blue-collar boy she left behind is all she really needs to make her life complete!  (These songs are always performed by men.)

I call "bullshit."

I am one of a pretty big group of both men and women who came from small towns or farms, and we could not wait to get free.  And we are never, ever, ever going back.

Why?  Well, when you are different - any kind of different - you aren't really accepted as a member of a small-town community;  there's very much of a herd mentality at work.  That's bad enough if you're an adult, but it's hell when you're a kid.  Smart kids, gay/trans kids, neurodivergent kids...they're going to have problems in a small-town or rural area, because most of the residents don't have the mental tools or experience to know how to accept those kids for who they are.  The good news is that if the kids get a chance to see what life is like in the outside world, they'll become less likely to suffocate in their given toxic environment.  They'll be looking for a chance to escape.  And when they do, they will have their own story to tell about that so-called "paradise" known to modern country as a small town!

Just once, I would like to hear a country song about one of the ones who never returned.

In fact, why don't I write one?

Maybe I'm a Mondegreen

I know, it's true

I just don't fit in

But it's not me, it's my situation

This is a monolinguistic town

And I got lost in translation

Or maybe I'm a mondegreen

A lost lyric that they don't understand

Try to sing it, but it comes out wrong

A faux ami in a foreign language

Sui generis 

A tribe of one

Always at war with all the rest

I just can't help that I'm not their kind--

It's time to leave this cuckoo's nest

Yeah, maybe I'm a mondegreen

A strange phrase they just can't believe they heard

But it's a wider world out there

And somewhere

There's a song that needs my words...

Okay, maybe more Natalie Merchant than Tanya Tucker...but think it over.  And if you are a small-towner yourself, maybe you can look at those "mondegreens" with more compassionate eyes.

A "New Yorker" State of Mind

Chosen...But why?

I had an interesting letter show up in my mailbox last October.  It came from The New Yorker, offering me 26 issues of the magazine for the incredibly-low price of $26 (plus an extra $2 for my state's sales tax.)  After thinking it over, I decided to go for it.  Two weeks after sending off my check, the first issue arrived.

Now, four months later, I have decided not to renew the subscription.  Because really, it just isn't my thing.

Okay, don't get me wrong....

There is nothing wrong with The New Yorker.  The reporting is almost BBC in its calm staidness.  The humor is often provincial (meaning, if you aren't from New York, you may not get it), but the cartoons are cool.  And it always has something to expand my mind about some subject.

It's when it starts talking about the "arts" that it loses me.

There is a way of talking about art, whether it's literature, cinema, theater, dance, music, or visual art, that makes you want to learn more about it.  A way that assumes that some readers may not be familiar with So-and-So, but here's why this person, play, movie or album is worth a listen or look.  A way that uses common language to express those sentiments.

The New Yorker doesn't talk about the arts in that way.

Not a non sequitur, I promise!

I cannot stand Ann Coulter.  She's a mean girl, especially when she's talking about people and situations that she's never met or experienced.  But after reading almost 16 weeks of New Yorker reviews of new plays and profiles of trendy artists of various and sundry kinds,  I found Ann's brand of mean words infesting my thoughts:  Rarified air.  Ivory tower.  Out of touch with the norm.  Liberal elitism.  Bleah!

So what the hell does that mean?

Well, after a great deal of thought, I found that what it means is that The New Yorker (or at least its arts section) isn't written in my native artistic language.  My Language of Art boils down to a single phrase:  "I may not know much about art [of any sort], but I know what I like."  The New Yorker's Language of Art boils down to a different phrase:  "You should like (or hate) this."  The reviewers never seem to really give their own reasons for liking or hating a film or exhibit or whatever;  instead, the reader is made to feel as though they ought to like, or hate, the art or the artist--but the reasons given are so esoteric that only the "in-crowd" of artistically-fluent people will understand them.  I'll be the first to agree that art is in the eye of the beholder, and that this is not only okay but necessary;  but I refuse to let someone else define art for me...no matter how "ironic" or "iconic" it's supposed to be.

So I guess I'm not trendy enough for a magazine like The New Yorker.

Two different cities.

There are two different New York Cities that share space in my head.

The first is the one that N.K. Jemisin and other authors (and filmmakers) made me fall in love with.  That NYC is a mixed bag of folks from all ethnic backgrounds and walks of life, trying to live, love, and make a living;  a whole lot of little communities balled together in one city.  That was what I was hoping to see more of by subscribing to The New Yorker.

The other NYC is the one from The New Yorker, and I don't like it much.  I don't speak the language, and really, I bet that if I actually went to the city, a lot of real New Yorkers wouldn't speak it either.

The Trouble With Jason...

I've Heard This Song Before...

Back in May, a new track by Jason Aldean entered the 10-song rotation on the "Modern Country" channel that we play at our store.  It was called "Try That in a Small Town," and it sounds a lot like several other "country good, city bad" songs that have appeared from time to time...same jingoistic "respect the flag or else"-"the gummint's comin' for my huntin' rifle"-"good ol' boys are the only decent people" straw-man claptrap that I have heard before.  In this case, though, it all appears in one song, sung in heavy-duty aggro mode.

Jason says that the song is about helping your neighbor and having a sense of community.  But there's already a perfectly good song with that theme:  "You Find Out Who Your Friends Are" by Tracy Lawrence.  The best part of that song is that anybody, anywhere who has ever been down and out and been rescued by true friends can relate.  But "Try That" is a definite threat, not only against big-city criminals who might try to bring their mess to Jason's town, but also anyone who might be raising awareness of police brutality, mass shootings, or the evils committed under the aegis of the American flag.

This was my problem with the song as it is, mind.

Then Came the Video!

I owe much to NPR, the Washington Post, and the "Now This News" YouTube channel for filling in the blanks for me on why everyone started calling the video--and by extension, the song--racist.  I already mentioned the implied "country good, city bad" vibe;  I could see that all the crime backgrounds in the video were urban.  The implication was that stuff like that never happens in small towns.  (This is complete bullshit;  I'll get back to this statement a little later.)

But what I did not know was that when it shows Aldean singing, the background is a courthouse where a lynching took place.  In 1927, an 18-year-old Black kid named Henry Choate was accused of attacking a 16-year-old white girl;  allegedly, he confessed, even though the girl never named him as her assailant.  A mob grabbed Henry from his jail cell, dragged him through town behind a car, and finally hung him off the courthouse balcony.  The courthouse in question--the Maury County Courthouse--is located in Columbia, TN, which was the scene of a "race riot" in 1946 (this is the white-supremacist term;  it was way more complicated than that, and it wasn't the Black people that started the trouble).  In the 1990's, it was the venue for a so-called "Good Ol' Boys' Roundup," which featured racial slurs and a pretend lynching.

Yikes.

The company that produced the video says that Aldean did not choose the video's location, and that the Hannah Montana movie was also filmed there (though I bet she never sang any racially tone-deaf lyrics against the background of a courthouse reflecting film of burning American flags).

That may be true, but...seriously.  You can Wiki both the Choate lynching (not the only one to happen there) and the 1946 confrontation.  The idea that the company didn't know Columbia's history rings false somehow.  It seems more like they didn't care.  Aldean obviously didn't;  he has consistently defended the song and said that calling the video racist is going too far.

But CMT pulled the "Try That" vid out of their rotation after the controversy heated up, and it makes me wonder if somebody there did some Wiki research of their own.  It's frighteningly easy to pick up a racist vibe from the video once you know Columbia's racist history;  CMT was doing the bare minimum of the right thing by pulling it.

Oh, and to all the Aldean fanfolk screaming about "cancel culture"...the Dixie Chicks (now just the Chicks) would like a word.  All they did to get cancelled was say they were ashamed to be from the same state as George Dubya.  Nobody I know was defending them when they disappeared from every radio station owned by Clear Channel.  So kwitcherbitchin'.

And Now, Back To My Comment...

Remember Aldean's implication that big-time crime didn't happen in small towns?  Remember, too, how I called "bullshit" on that?  Well, let me tell you a story.

Back in my hometown, there was a bachelor brother and his spinster sister, both middle-aged, who lived together in the same house.  This was in the 1980's, and things were still relaxed enough that hardly anybody locked their door unless they were leaving for a while.  The brother often came to our house of an evening, toting a case of cheap beer in the front of his overalls (he didn't own a car or truck, though he would gladly help you fix yours, or indeed help you with any odd job you needed) as a contribution to the evening's festivities (usually music played on the front porch).  His sister was a science-fiction fan like me, and we traded books and got together with the school librarian for road trips to large cities with book stores.  Neither sibling had a job, so I'm guessing one or both of them was on disability, or perhaps a military pension in the brother's case.  But if that was the case, they weren't getting much--enough for basic needs and a little beer (and book) money.

One day in the late 80's (I was away at college at the time), while the siblings were taking an afternoon nap, several teens from a neighboring small town (not city kids, mind you) walked right into the house looking for drug money.  They killed both of the siblings in their sleep, and got away with just a few dollars...not a hundred, or even twenty.  Less than that, and no jewelry or other saleable loot, since those people had none.

According to my mom, the whole town went up like a firecracker, with all kinds of threats if those punks ever showed up in town again.  The punks got caught by the county cops, they went to jail, and the only lingering effect of the murder was that now everybody locked their doors, even when they were home.

So, sorry, Jason.  Small towns do get their share of heinous crimes.  But you know what doesn't help?  Vigilante mobs.  All you get from those are lynchings.

In Memory of Ajike Owens

 What I Wanted to Do Today

Today, I was going to write another post about Juneteenth.  I was looking forward to it, in fact--I had the day off, the weather was much milder than it had been in a month, and the subject is both worthy and pleasant.

But I can't write about Juneteenth today, because I have to write about Ajike Owens.

She was a Black mother of four, who lived near Ocala, Florida.  She was a manager at McDonald's and worked hard to provide for her kids.  And I'm having to use the past tense here because she's dead.

Not from natural causes, mind.  Ajike--AJ to those who knew her--is dead of a fatal gunshot wound to the chest.  The gun in question was fired by a white woman named Susan Lorincz, who was safe in her own house, but didn't like it when Ms. Owens pounded on her door to confront her about the way Lorincz had treated her kids.  Lorincz shot AJ Owens through the door!

What Happened...

It was Friday evening, and AJ's kids were playing in a field next to a quadruplex.  One unit of that 'plex was rented by Lorincz, and according to neighbors, Lorincz had a long history of harassing not only the Owens kids, but also all the other kids in that neighborhood, who all liked to play in that field.  The field was apparently a sore point with Lorincz;  she called it "her property" (she didn't own any of that complex or its land) and did everything she could to chase the neighborhood kids off of it.  She would shout racial slurs at the kids, rev the motor in her truck or blast the horn in order to intimidate them, and even wave a gun in their direction!

So:  Friday, June 2nd.  Lorincz yelled at the Owens kids to get off the field.  Eventually, they did, but one of the kids had left his iPad there, and Lorincz went out and took it.

The details get a little confused here.  In one account, when the kids went to Lorincz's apartment to get the iPad back, Lorincz threw the iPad at the kids, hitting one of them and cracking the screen.  In another account, Lorincz threw a rollerblade and hit one of the kids in the toe.  Still another account has Lorincz poking an umbrella at the kids.  At any rate, her behavior caused the Owens kids to go and get their mother to handle the situation.

Owens went over to Lorincz's apartment and began to knock, good and loud, on that door and demand that Lorincz come out.  Lorincz, for her part, called 911 and told them that Owens was "pounding" on her door, and that she was "breaking it down."  And then Lorincz fired her gun through the door, hitting Owens in the chest.  One of her sons attempted CPR on his mom, but Ajike Owens died before an ambulance could get her to the hospital.

So, the Cops Arrested the Killer.  Right?

Wrong.

The sheriff on the case hemmed and hawed about how when you get to a crime scene, sometimes you only get "one side of the story."  He emphasized a "long-running feud" between Owens and Lorincz, as if that somehow explained how an armed white woman shoots an unarmed Black mom through a closed door.  He didn't want to interview the Owens kids right away because he thought they might not want to talk to officers; he was waiting for "trained counselors" (or some such bullshit term) to talk to the kids.  Oh, and they were also trying to determine if Florida's "stand your ground" laws were applicable. 

Dear God.  An unarmed Black woman is dead, and the cops are wondering if the armed white woman who did the shooting is protected by a stupid law that wouldn't even fly in the so-called "wild" West, where many towns required you to check your shootin' irons at the local sheriff's office.

But the Owens family were not about to take this in silence.  They hired attorney Ben Crump to represent them, and they got the word out about AJ and how she died.  As awareness grew, pressure on the local law did, too, and they finally arrested Susan Lorincz on Tuesday, June 6th--which also happens to be the anniversary of D-Day.  Rather appropriate.  By Friday, she had been charged with manslaughter, culpable negligence, two counts of simple assault, and battery;  her bond was set at $154,000.

Lorincz has pleaded "not guilty" and claims that the Owens kids--ranging in age from 3 to 12--had threatened to kill her, which I find laughable considering who had the guns (turns out Lorincz had a second gun in the house) and who did the actual killing.

The Thing I'm Really Afraid Of...

...is that Susan Lorincz will walk free.

Florida is a bad state for justice of any kind if you are a Black person.  Trayvon Martin's killer is free to this day, and it's looking like the only judgement he will ever face is when he dies and stands before God.

Lorincz has "outed" herself as a racist;  by her own admission, she called the Black children in her neighborhood the n-word and also "Black slave."  She was "afraid" that Ajike Owens was going to break in her door and kill her.  But her fears were imaginary.  Like so many white people, she looked at the color of her neighbors'--and their children's--skins and assumed them to be troublemakers and killers.  So she became a killer herself.

But will a jury see it that way?  I have my doubts.  Because Lorincz's lawyer will be damned sure to pile on as much victim-blaming as he can, and will dig up any dirt he can on AJ's character, work habits, parenting...anything to smear that good mother's reputation and make poor Susan look like the brave old lady protecting herself from a female Black thug.

Nevertheless, I pray that truth and justice will prevail.  The state of Florida owes that to both the family and the memory of Ajike Owens.