Catching Up On My Reading

Yesterday we drove to the beautiful Hamilton Station in New Jersey to catch a NJ Transit train into Manhattan. This is a most convienent way to travel between Philadelphia and New York.

The train ride gave me an opportunity to read a few magazines and other items of mail that I had stacked on my desk. The most recent issue of The New Yorker has a few great articles in it including one on Barbara Stanwyk and another on what happens to us physically as we grow old (it is not pretty.) Adam Gopnik's commentary on the VA Tech shootings and the need in the U.S. for handgun control hit the mark:

"Rural America is hunting country, and hunters need rifles and shotguns-with proper licensing, we'll live with the risk. There is no reason that any private citizen in a democracy should own a handgun. At some point, that simple truth will register. Until it does, phones will ring for dead children, and parents will be told not to ask why."

When the medical professionals and police were removing the bodies of the dead kids from Norris Hall, cell phones were ringing in the victim's pockets. It was their parents frantically calling to check on them. What a horror, but no, we don't need gun control laws and strict enforcement to prevent mentally unstable kids from purchasing 9 mm Glocks, do we?

Jim