personal identity

The Land in Love with Guns

/ Juliana Lightle / 4 Comments

In the United States firearms kill approximately 15,000 individuals per year.  In Britain, Australia, and Canada, the average is 350 per year.  Spain’s rate is even lower.  In Germany, it is less than 800.  A young person here dies about every 4 ½ hours, shot dead.  The US murder rate is 19.5, nearly 20 times higher that the next 22 richest countries.  In the 23 richest countries combined, 80 percent of all gun related deaths are in the US; 87 percent of children killed are shot by guns here.  In the last 45 years, bullets killed more than one million people in the US.

Gun sales are big money.  More than a dozen hand guns are sold per minute.  One survey indicates that one out of every four US homes possess a gun; another survey says 39 percent.  However, most guns are owned by only a small proportion of the population, gun “collectors” who own an average of seven weapons per person.  Guns are cheap here and bullets even cheaper, about 50 cents each.  The Mexican government contends that our cheap guns help fuel the dreadful violence there which then overflows to here.

In spite of all this, the US murder rate is the lowest in more than 45 years.  The NRA claims more guns equal less violent crime.  The NRA contends that the lower crime rate is the result of less strict gun laws and more people owning guns.  Nevertheless, mass murder occurs on a regular basis.  We mourn, we lament, but nothing changes.

Eventually, another mass murder occurs and the cycle repeats itself.  Why?  Who or what is responsible?  What can be done?  Will more restrictive gun laws help or hinder?  Debates continue; opposing views and answers abound, but the cycle continues.  Will it ever change?

I wrote the above after the last mass murder event.  Nothing changed.  Now the conversation appears more strident, more active.  Apparently, the mass killing of children is more heinous, more scary than the mass murder of adults even if the adults are young.  The NRA advocates armed guards at schools.  How will that prevent mass killings at movie theaters, at malls, at churches, on the street, e.g. the three murders this week in Pennsylvania?

Australia was another country in love with guns, but after a mass killing there, they changed their collective mind.  They enacted strict gun control laws for assault weapons and ammunition.  Could that work here?  I think not.  This is a country in love with guns because the right to own a gun symbolizes  what is perceived as individual rights.  This is a country where personal liberty remains far more important than community safety and social justice.  Until that changes, mass murders will continue.

Costa Rica: 4, Flora

/ Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

For a person who loves flowers (and I do), Costa Rica exemplifies a lush, green heaven.  This intense green makes the flowers show up more than they would in a duller landscape.  Whether in the high mountains near Monteverde or down in the coastal lowland jungles, flowers abound.  So many flowers everywhere made me want to photograph them all, but there are too many; I photographed a few.

My friend, Anabel McMillen, the professional photographer, just about went nuts there were so many spectacular things to photograph.  Last count I think she hit over 1000 photographs.

While wild flowers grow everywhere, the people also take great pride in both their personal and public gardens.  Even at the simplest country house, flowers and other plants could be found growing in profusion.  Almost all towns, like La Fortuna in the photo above and the one below near Arenal Volcano, create a public square with a church and gardens.

Hydrangeas like this one above grow along the roads everywhere near Monteverde.

Not only are the flowers frequently much larger than the same flowers grown here, but in the lowlands, in particular, many of the trees seem huge.  Costa Rica also cultivates flowers for export.  Net covered fields of ferns grow all over the steep mountain slopes.

In the highlands near Monteverde more than one hundred species of plants can be found growing on the surface of one tree as shown in the photos below.

Twice we stopped at a place called El Jardin, once on the way to Monteverde and another on the way back to San Jose from the Pacific Coast town of Jaco.  In addition to their beautifully landscaped outdoor gardens, they possessed a small greenhouse filled with butterflies and a sculpture water fountain in an indigenous style seen throughout the country.

As I looked at the following bouquet where we ate lunch near the Sarapiqui River on the Caribbean side, I touched it because I remained unsure as to whether it could be real.  It was.

PURA VIDA!!

DEATH

/ Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

I was afraid of revealing me, the essence of me.  Who even, indeed, was I?  My mother told me, when I started dating, to hide the essence of me, boys wouldn’t like it.  Too smart; too aggressive; too full of myself; too intense; too serious; too burning inside strong; too adventuresome; too nasty a temper; too full of desire to feel, taste, see, learn; too much in love with a world of possibility.  I took her advice, married a genius scientist, safe, timid, disadventurous.  He liked me because I could shoot a bird off a wire hundreds of feet away.  I time, we all died, him, me, the bird.

 

 

 

This piece was a finalist in a flash memoir contest.

Marriage

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

The following poem was chosen to be published in the Story Circle Network’s annual Anthology this past autumn.   I submitted two flash memoir pieces, including the Spiders story on a previous post,  as well as this poem.  I was very surprised that this was the one chosen.

Marriage

                                               I remember the time he touched my face, melting me.

                                               I married him; my face slowly, inexorably froze.

Horses in Heaven

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

Heaven for horses seems a bit far fetched, especially for someone who lacks certainty about heaven  even for people.  Nevertheless, it remains a comforting concept.  Yesterday, I buried Starry Miracle, less than two, an orphan I bottle fed every 3-4 hours day and night when his  mother, Miracle, died.  He not only survived, he thrived.

Around 4:30 Wednesday, friends went to my place to ride Rosie, a chunky, red roan mare.  They found Star dead.  It appeared he had been playing, jumping, and rearing, and freakily caught his ankle in a space between the pipe gate and fence, broke it and ruptured his femoral artery, then bled to death.  When they called to tell me, disbelief set in.  As a horse owner for many years, I know the common causes of horse deaths, colic mainly, from which Miracle died three days after his birth.  I have inspected fences and corrals for safety many times.  The possibility of such an accident never even entered my mind.

His body stiff, distorted,  his coat, lusterless, bore no resemblance to his burnished copper body, glinting in the sun, following me, nipping if I ignored him.  Often, I thought he thought I was a horse or he a human.

The two surviving horses spent hours standing in the spot where he died, licking the pipe fence from which I had hosed off his blood, smelling the ground, neighing.  They even failed to rush to their hay when I fed them.  Eventually, I opened their gates.  They ran across the rugged canyon land constantly for fifteen minutes, dream horses running in the wind.

 

 

Miracle, Star’s mother, deceased, July 2010.  Rosie who “adopted” Star after Miracle died, and Cool, the other orphaned horse I raised.

Miracle and Star as a newbornRosie, who "adopted" Star after Miracle died.

Writing on the Rim

/ Juliana Lightle / 11 Comments

The canyon edge looms out my bedroom windows,

pale adobe, stark.

Fall to death or serious injury!

I will not fall; I love living on the edge.

Rain brings a one hundred foot deluge,

a roar of water, cascading, screaming.

Someone said my house is pink; it is not pink!

It is the color of the canyon, the worldwide color,

Moroccan, pueblo, Saudi, Mali, Navaho, Timbuktu,

Desert, alive and lovely.

Three bucks watch me through my bedroom windows.

They see me move; they stare.

Isabella stands rigid, watching.

I kneel to her level; follow her eyes.

The bobcat casually climbs the canyon wall, impervious.

He marks the cedar tree, walks a deer path, disappears.

He is a secret, rarely seen.

The huge hoot owl’s voice echoes down the canyon,

drifting through my dreams.

A young road runner calls, scratchy,

running across the patio–on the edge.

In the spring the mocking bird sings all night,

“This is my territory.”

I sing all year, full of joy.

I live in beauty on the rim.

I decided to reblog this because it is the season for giving thanks, and I am eternally grateful for the privilege of living in such a beautiful place.  Yesterday, my family and I took a hike here, saw deer, lovely colorful rocks, bunnies, and native plants the names of which I do not know.  I live in beauty on the rim of wonder!!  I feel blessed!!