It’s hard for me to know what to write today. Last night, after my son and I finished watching a late movie at our local theater, our phones buzzed into “notification” action (we are both political and news junkies). The first reports of a mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas popped onto our screens. By the time I went to bed at 1:30 a.m. the death toll had climbed to more than 20. When I awoke at 5:30 the number had grown to more than 40. By the end of today, the number was over 50. The sheer size and magnitude of this mass shooting leave me sitting this evening in a state of shock in so many ways. So this post is not a post of outrage aimed at our government that continues to hollow out gun regulations. This is a post trying to put together a few words to describe the sense of loss.
Living in the greater Los Angeles area, Las Vegas is a short distance away–300 miles of good road (even if congested). My friends, family, and I travel there a number of times each year for a quick getaway. When I saw the venue across from Mandalay Bay and Luxor Casinos splashed on the news, I just couldn’t believe that my favorite places to stay and play are now a giant crime scene. I even have rooms booked at Mandalay Bay in the coming months. To add to the shock of the location, I have a number of former students and friends who were at the festival and/or live in Las Vegas. I spent the time between the end of the movie and finally passing out in bed trying to locate those I love. Luckily, my friends made it out–they were separated in the melée but reunited safely.
That was not the case for many in my community. When I settled in to read my email at the beginning of my school day, I heard crying in the hallway. One of my colleagues lost a friend and had just learned of it. By the end of the day today, we knew that we lost four people from our small beach communities area, and a number more were in critical condition or suffering non-life threatening bullet wounds. One of my sister-in-law’s friends (also a teacher) clings to life in ICU while her husband nurses his bullet wound to his wrist. Our fire chief was shot in the leg and came home to seek treatment because the trauma centers were so full in Clark County, Nevada. I’ve spent the evening sharing GoFundMe pages to help these folks out. I’ll reshare them again tomorrow. And maybe even the day after that. You can find the crowdfunding efforts publicized in most major news outlets too.
While I felt unsettled in just about every way today, the students eerily did not. They seemed oblivious to the world around them. I hope it to be a defense mechanism; it saddens me to think these kinds of mass shootings have been so normalized in their world it was barely a blip on their radar, especially when students a few miles away who lost teachers, school support employees, parents, and siblings. Mass casualty events like this are always hard to approach in a school setting, but it is even more difficult when the adults are in crisis working to cope with the mixed bag of emotions of losing loved ones or finding them traumatized yet safe. But we find our way forward by putting our heads down and plowing forward. And providing help to those that need it.
On a day so devastating, we at least have the healing power of music to pull us all together.
“I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty (live on 9/25/17 @ The Hollywood Bowl) RIP, Heartbreaker.
RIP, Heartbreaker.
“They Don’t Know” by Jason Aldean, from his 2016 album of the same title (he was closing out the Route 91 Harvest Festival when shots started raining on concert-goers)
ohyesjulesdid 