Sobbing Into My Copy of Title IX

Having grown up in the United States, there are some things that you just take for granted.  Driving on the right side of the road, being universally hated by human rights activists and hitting “shift 2” to produce the @ symbol on a keyboard are among the more banal normalities of everyday life back home that you just miss when live across the pond.

One thing, that I also miss, is Title IX.  

Trying to explain the legal ins and outs of Title IX is about as easy as trying to get Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ (unabridged) tattooed onto your body.  

A subsection of the United States Education Amendment Act of 1972, Title IX--among other things--stated,

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

Controversial from day one, it would be years before Congress would draft and pass all of the clarifications and addendums that have since become the backbone for the sports programs of educational institutions from Kindergarten through NCAA Div. I championship games.  It was in 1979 that the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, imposed a three part assessment to assess the compliance of various educational institutions with Title IX.  Asking all institutions that received Federal Funding of any kind for educational programs to ask the following questions about their sports funding, aid, programming and assistance;   

• "All such assistance should be available on a substantially proportional basis to the number of male and female participants in the institution's athletic program."
• "Male and female athletes should receive equivalent treatment, benefits, and opportunities" regarding facilities.
• "The athletic interests and abilities of male and female students must be equally effectively accommodated.

Within a decade Title IX and it’s internal standards meant that US schools, from Kindergarten to college, were suddenly required to provide for equal numbers of male and female athletes, and spend more or less the same amount of money on athletic programs for each gender.  Gone were the days of women’s teams scraping together pennies from dues while their male counterparts were fully funded by Universities.

Title IX is perhaps one of the most impactful pieces of legislation ever passed in the United States.  It so shifted the way that US schools and educational institutions ran their athletics and sports programs that it changed the way people engaged in sports throughout their entire lives.  Title IX spawned a generation that revolutionized the access women had to sport, and then to high level international sport.  It has become such a stalwart of the American landscape that I imagine many Americans would find themselves in the same position I have; not even noticing the full breadth of Title IX’s ongoing impact, until suddenly it’s gone.

Welcome to the United Kingdom, circa 2015.  I, a pretty typical west-coast US inhabitant, have played some form of sport for most of my life.  Soccer (aka football), softball, Tae Kwon Do, in college I rowed for my university.  I grew up with afternoon practices and coaches that promised it wasn’t about winning or losing but only bought you ice cream if you won. and pointedly did not if you lost.  Born in the mid 1980’s I had no concept of Title IX.  My brothers, sisters and I all got dropped off for practice in the afternoon, and were all forced to sit through each other’s games, and drive across the state for championships.

I cared about being assigned as the second base in softball.  Not about whether my family could afford my team fees.

When I rowed at a university I never would have imagined that the men’s team would have access to races and facilities that we didn’t.  We were a team, they rowed in their divisions, we rowed in ours….but at the end of the day we all rowed in the same caliber of races that cost the University the same amount of money.  Women didn’t inherit the men’s old boats.  New gear was equally distributed.  Because in US athletics, there is legally no other way.

In short, I lived in an environment that, while not perfect, provided me the same access to athletics and outdoor education that my brothers had.  The question was not, “where can we find a club for the girls to play in” it was instead “how long is your practice again?”  A question whose groundbreaking potential I never realized until I moved to the United Kingdom and learned that access and equality are slippier concepts than they ought to be, and that “development” is not synonymous with “equality.”

Moving to Cambridge to begin graduate work in the fall of 2013 I was floored to find that many of the British women I was getting to know had not participated in sports before secondary school, and in many cases before university.  Or if they had, their parents had enrolled them in private clubs and paid out the nose to provide them with those opportunities.  I learned that it was semi-common for primary schools to fund a boys soccer (football) club, and not a girls club, and that this was perfectly legal.

As I’ve gotten into the habit, one of the first things I did at the University of Cambridge, was start looking around for sports I could get involved in, teams I could try out for or join, and as I’ve spent an ungodly number of hours sitting in a boat, rowing caught my fancy pretty fast.

I could not have found a better example of sexism in sport at Cambridge if I’d tried.  While I will never row at the University Level, I was floored to learn that it wasn’t until 2010 that the women’s blues team was not given access to the University Boat House.  And even then, it was only at the insistence of the team sponsors....a US investment firm.  At the college level women are consistently fighting for the right to participate in rowing to the same level as men.  For the termly “Bumps” races there are always extra divisions for male rowers.  Anecdotally, I know a half a dozen female rowers whose teams get “new boats” when they inherit the used boats that the mens teams give up when their *actually new* boat comes in every few years.  There are more “Blues” sports for men at the University Level and as a general rule, finding sponsorship for sports at the All Women’s colleges of Newnham, Murray Edwards and Lucy Cavendish, seems all but impossible.

I have to admit, it’s not that there aren’t amazing opportunities for women in sport in the UK, and it’s not as though women here don’t play sport. It’s simply that something seemingly normal, I now see as the luxury of growing up in an environment where equality in access was something everyone strove for---whether they liked it or not.  

Britain has some astounding female athletes, and I am very much looking forward to each of the Varsity Matches between the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford as the “blues battle it out,” but I do think that maybe it’s time that these ancient universities take the lead, and re-assess what access to sport means.  After all, a generation ago, Mia Hamm would have struggled to find a football (soccer) team to take her on, and today she is the top-scoring player of all time.

In the meantime, anytime anyone mentions University Sport, I’ll be quietly sitting in the corner.  Sobbing into my copy of Title IX.

Cambridge Colleges: Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi College, more properly "The College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary," founded in 1352 is the sixth oldest of the current Cambridge Colleges and remains the only of Cambridge's 32 colleges founded by Cambridge townspeople (also known as "Townies" in University slang).  Originally a very poor college, with no money to construct a chapel, and a library of only 55 books (all donated) Corpus has grown to become one of Cambridge's wealthiest colleges today, with assets valued in excess of £85 million in 2014.  Corpus also possess the largest silver collection of any college in Cambridge which augments the college's enviable position in the down-town of old-Cambridge within eye-line of the famous Kings College Chapel.


Today around 500 undergrads, grads and fellows are hosted by Corpus Christi at any given time, making it among the smaller of the "Old" Cambridge colleges, even today, as at it's founding, with simply the college master and two fellows, it was easily the smallest.   Corpus is also known for doing well annually on the semi-infamous Cambridge Tompkins Table.

With some buildings dating back to the college founding in the 1350's (and walls that may be older), Corpus Christi has (over the years) been mobbed by townspeople, set on fire, defended itself during the War of the Roses from a "tempestuous riot" several iterations of European plagues and  the chaos of the reformation.  During the reformation era, Corpus Christi was home to a newly constructed college chapel at the time, and an incredible library donated to the college by Matthew Parker, who (afraid manuscripts deemed "Catholic" might be destroyed) stipulated that should significant portions of the  collection be lost or damaged, ownership would then pass to Gonville and Caius College.  Over the years Corpus Christi has been built, repaired and rebuilt.  Meaning that the architecture of the college is a mish-mash of eras, styles and designs.  Significant portions of the colleges' current buildings, including the chapel, date from the mid 18th century, and by the early 20th century the college began to expand beyond it's original site with the construction of a sports field in West Cambridge.  By this time Corpus Christi's focus on the training of clergy had broadened to include a variety of academics studying in many fields.  By the mid 1960's Corpus opened a new site, Leckhampton court, to house it's growing population of Graduates and fellows.  It wasn't until 1983 that women were admitted for the first time as students to Corpus Christi College.  

The Parker Library at Corpus Christi College contains what is considered a particularly fine collection of over 600 medieval manuscripts, including the Canterbury Gospels.  Corpus Christi also owns the Eagle Pub (run by an outside company), and the Corpus Christi Playroom, a popular venue for student drama, comedy and music in Cambridge.  

Corpus has a long list of well known alum, including Scottish Reformer, George Wishart, Thomas Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury, Robin Coombes an immunologist, and author Helen Oyeyemi.  Most famous of all is playwright Christopher Marlowe.  Corpus Christi also, allegedly, plays host to a duck and ducklings each spring, working with St. Catherine's College across the road to shepherd the baby ducks towards the river each and every spring.

Currently Corpus Christi's most well-known feature is the "Chronophage," an imposing clock mounted in the outside wall of the college at the corner of Trumpington street and Bene't street.  The name means "Time Eater" in Greek.  Publicly unveiled in 2008, the clock only reflects an accurate time stamp once every five minutes, and features a locust forever leaping forward on top of a giant 24 carat gold clock face.  The locust "eats" the seconds of life away, and every hour is marked by the dropping of a link of chain into a wooden coffin located behind the clock.  Despite it being one of the most famous modern works of art on display in Cambridge (and certainly the most expensive) the Chronophage (also known as Rosalind) is one of my least favorite aspects of the town and haunts my dreams when deadlines are approaching.

Winter Snow in Cambridge

           On Sunday, January 25th, the BBC weather service was promising something called "Thunder Snow" across the southeast of England.  For almost a week photos had been trickling in from "The North" showing mini-snow falls, and lovely pictures of fat snowflakes drifting past windows in places like St. Andrews and Edinburgh.  To state that I was green with envy of "The North" for it's snow, would be akin to calling a lion stalking the Savannah a "kitty hunting a mouse."
           For a little clarification, in my rather limited perception of the world "winter" isn't really it's own season without at least one snow day.  It is instead a long, miserable, extension of the wet soggy British fall.  Days of rain and temperatures cold enough to make you wear a coat, but mild enough for you to leave it halfway open, cursing the rain as you and your bicycle wind your way back and forth from point A to point B in a city where cycle safety is an afterthought.  If that.
           "Winter" in my mind is the winter that I remember from when I was a kid.  You could feel it sneaking up on you starting in September, with air that got drier and colder as the nights grew longer and longer, until they were so cold that taking in a breath too deeply or quickly meant stinging your lungs with the cold.  Winter is that time when the ground goes hard with a frost that won't let go for months on end.  Digging it's claws further and further into the ground as icicles start to grow off the eaves of roofs and any water pipe left on begins to crack in the cold.  Winter is unforgiving in it's bite, and the snow comes in tiny perfect dry flakes.  The kind that take a moment to melt after they've settled on the end of your nose.  Flakes that form fluffy white snow that lasts for days and days and days, coating frozen river banks and lining all the roads.  Snow that dusts up into the air when you kick it, and creates crashpads for sleds careening down hills.
           Winter, as I remember it, goes on and on and on and on.  The only thing colder than a night full of swirling snowflakes endlessly meandering from sky to earth, is the sunny morning after.  The only sound the cracking of the trees as they freeze.
           That is winter. 
           These long grey rainy days.  The ones I've had both in Portland and now in Cambridge, don't feel like winter.  Air temperatures between 42 f and 51 f just doesn't feel the same, and there is a distinct difference between crunching across frozen ground, and trudging through mud that's just barely cold enough to make life miserable.
           But on Monday, February 2nd, despite the BBC promising "conditions clear enough to view the stars" Cambridge got a tiny little taste of winter.  Miniature light snowflakes that dusted through the air to form an overnight blanket of snow.  Not much, an inch here and there, less in most places.              
           But it was one frozen night.
           One little taste of winter.
           And while it doesn't necessarily feel like enough, I guess it'll have to do.

Fish: The Perfect Pet

Those parting moments between fish and aquarium keeper are neither particularly pleasant, nor particularly refined.  Watching a dear friend slip and swirl into the eternal void is never easy---even less so when you say your goodbye's kneeling in front of the fabled porcelain god.  But such is life, or so you think.  That is until it becomes obvious you'll have to plunge.  

This is the beginning of a really bad day, as well as the end of a two and a half week long emotional roller coaster ride, one that taxes your strength mentally, a struggle for life--a fight against that eternal wheel of fate, a battle that you lost against the inevitable.  Two and half dollars down the drain, well, in reality, on the bathroom floor.  You're not going to count the fifty three dollars and eighty cents that you spent on medication, tank supplies and supplements or the phone consultation with an 'expert'.  All that mattered was that stupid goldfish.  Yeah, the one that's now in the trash can wrapped in a series of paper towels.  You start to mop up the bathroom floor--Sydney, the cat, seems overly interested in the trash can and it takes you a few precious seconds too long to realize why.  Well, you think as you slam the back door behind the cat, nursing the three deep scratches on your left arm, at least Sydney's happy.  Sadly, you'll never know where to look for that stupid fish.  But that's not what gets to you, what gets to you is that it won't be the first.  

You, like every other amateur aquarium keeper, have dealt with days and weeks like this time and time again.  You repeat this same process, over and over--expecting a different result each time.   Fish are supposed to be fun, a family pet, those tanks are supposed to add dimension to a room, the endless undulating motion of the fish relaxing.  Instead fish are torture.  The only dimension that's been added to your living room is hell and the painful darting and spasmic death rattles that your fish seem to go through on far too regular a basis are anything but relaxing.  Yet still you persist.  

The tank was specially chosen--you read book after book, web page after web page, on what you needed to do, and how to do it.  You had the perfect beginner's tank.  Ten gallons--neither too big, nor too small.  You then meticulously picked through pet store after pet store until you had the perfect gravel, the perfect heater, the perfect lamp.  Your next step was to purchase a plethora of chemicals and medications to test your tap water for 'fish friendliness' and then alter it if necessary.  Next you let that ten gallon tank with ideal chemically altered water sit in your living room and grow algae for a month and a half--just to ensure the safety of your first six fish--zebra danios that lasted less than half an hour.  Maybe your mistake was in the fish, so you try guppies--they're supposed to be pretty hardy right?  Wrong.   As far as you can tell  they ate each other, since most of them disappeared that first night.   And even the guppies weren't as bad as the  neon tetras.  You discovered, far too late, that they were small enough to get sucked into the filter--they died first, but still the overall impression gave your four year old nightmares for a week.  So much for family fun.  

The tank sat empty after that for almost two weeks, until a friend suggested aquatic plants.  They weren't fish, true, but they were a lot easier to care for and if the filter could be turned up really high, the leaves and stems would undulate relaxingly in that crystal clear water--that is if you can keep the water 'crystal clear'.  If you add fertilizer your plants grow beautifully--but then so does the algae coating the tank walls.  Not a problem until you discover that scraping off that algae and cleaning the tank kills your plants.  So you're back to square one: fish.  At least they don't dissipate when they die-- not if you find them in the first couple of days anyway.  

This time though, it was going to be different.  You were getting goldfish.   After all, they were nearly immortal, right?  Your mother kept two of them alive in your kitchen sink for three months after you won them at a school science fair when you were seven.  If she could do it, you could do it--and at your disposal, you had far better equipment than a kitchen sink. 

Two flushes later, you're taping a paper sign to the toilet--warning your children not to use it, and wondering if this is some sort of postmortem vengeance on the part of the goldfish?  

You double bagged it on the way home--just to be sure it didn't go the way the miniature cat fish had.  Then the transition to your newly cleansed and balanced tank was slow.  A teaspoon of water from the bag into the sink, a teaspoon of water from the tank into the bag.  Twenty four hours later your fish was still alive.  A first.  Unfortunately it had developed small white spots on all of its fins and its tail.  A phone call to your aunt--a woman with a beautiful fifty gallon tank--garnered you this advice, "It's a fish, honey.  Flush it."  Instead you drove twenty miles back into town to consult with the owner of the pet store.  You came home with no advice and roughly fifty dollars worth of medication--most of which required you to immediately contact poison control should it ever touch your skin.  Strangely enough the medication did nothing but prolong the spasmodic suffering of your fish--the probable cause of your clogged toilet.  

For two and a half weeks it languished in the back of your tank.  Staring dolefully at you every time you entered the room, that last day it had gotten so bad that you refused to go through your living room and instead sent the nine year old to sign for the FedEx.  Then you woke up one morning, and it was gone,  Gone with it all the responsibility for its life, liberty and well being, leaving you with an empty fish tank, fifty three dollars and eighty cents short on rent, a sick cat and a clogged toilet.  

Maybe you'll try feeder fish next--after all, they're only ten cents each and your house can hardly be the worst place for a fish already slated for something's dinner, to end up.  

Can it?             

Christmas Letter Guide

As a single person who is frighteningly close to 30, I get a *lot* of Christmas Letters each year, but almost never send one. I just haven't really figured out how to approach them, what to write--why to write it. So I went looking on the internet and discovered a dearth of "how-to-write-a-Christmas-letter" articles. I thought I could help.

How To Write a Christmas Letter:

Greeting:  1-2 paragraphs on how it’s Christmas.  Assume we have NO IDEA WHAT THAT MEANS.  Seriously.  Just gush on and on about how quickly the year has gone by and blah blah blah about how each year is better than the next, then joke about Santa.  Insert something here about how charming the weather is where you live, or how you can’t possibly believe that another WHOLE YEAR is just GONE!  Vague sentences about how well “everyone” is doing (except Grandma who kicked the bucket in March, or The Challenging Teen whose goal in life seems to be to struggle) and how excited you are for next year are appropriate in this space!  Details can include prizes, top grades, new cars.  The works.  Lie if you need too.

The Adorable Child(ren): This section is where we can all oooh and ahhhh over your child aged 3-10.  Quotes are good, as are sweet parental notes about what a good singer, or listener, or etc. your child is.  Favorite foods can be included.  Notes sent home by the teacher about bullying behaviour should be avoided, but if you must address this try something like “Henri(etta) has developed a great ability to assert herself with other children!”  When you are doing your family photograph do remember that blonde children are preferred.

The Challenging Teen: WE LOVE THEM SO MUCH DESPITE HOW HORRIBLE THEY ARE is basically the gist of this bit.  You will brush over the hours you have spent screaming at your teenager, and ignore the pot you found in their bedroom and the watered down Whiskey you and your spouse have been sipping on the last few weeks to cope with the kidnapping of Elf on the Shelf which has traumatized The Adorable Child(ren) and made the Santa-lie harder to maintain.  In this section your teenager, while still a teenager, is charming and really enjoys volunteering at that Animal Shelter!  Even if it does happen to be court mandated community service.

The College Kid!: You are probably wiping a tear away as you tell us about another year on honors for your little adult (squee!!!!).  Who knew a 19 year old could still gain an inch!  And that mission to trip to Africa that just *changed* Eric(a)’s life forever.  It’s Nobel Prize Material here, and Eric(a) will now be studying Ancient English Literature (switching from French Art) so that s/he can get a job working for an aid agency rocking orphaned children to sleep someday for a solid middle class income, travel benefits and health insurance. Add a note about some anticipated graduation date, and a suspected significant other.  Remember you are SO looking forward to meeting the “special friend” of your young adult--and really, who cares if they swear they’re “just friends,” you know better.

Pets: Fido is probably technically younger than everyone besides The Adorable Child(ren), however as having accomplished a higher percentage of his life span, he can go last in the “children” section.  In this space you can plug in a sentence or two about how lucky you are to still have your geriatric dog or cat.  We all know he shits on the carpet, bit a neighbor kid and can’t keep food down.  But what we really don’t know is how grey his adorable little whiskers are.  Include that.  If Fido is a fish, lie.

Spouse: If you are under 35, we all know (from last year) that a promotion has got to be on the way soon here!  Mention how much fun (insert hobby here) is, and spin marital discord as “diverse interests.”  If over 35 and employed refer to work as “stable and great” and if unemployed, refer to life as a an “adventure” and say spouse is “trying new things.”  If divorced, make some sad attempt at a witty comment before slinking off to the watered down whiskey to feel lonely by yourself.

Self--If pregnant talk about how exciting baby bump is, and how much fun sleepless nights sometime in February are going to be.  Joke jovially about the 15 pounds you have gained as a result of the pregnancy.  Hahaha what a surprise! If not pregnant make a nice note about perfect family size being exactly the number of children you have.  Refer to work as “fun” and family life/housework as “rewarding.”  Avoid detail.  Avoid mentioning the 15 pounds you have gained.

Travel: No matter where you went in the last twelve months it was AMAZING.  Camping for 9 hours in the rain?  Best trip of your life.  An overnight in the Wal-Mart parking lot because Spouse forgot to change the oil in the minivan and it quit running en-route to the in-laws?  As a family you have never felt so close. Migraine in Hawaii for four days with a screaming Adorable Child(ren) with The Challenging Teen gone missing?  You have never been happier.  Were you in Europe?  You met the pope!  Who has heard of The College Kid and would like to preemptively congratulate them on discovering poverty in Africa!  What a trip!

Conclusion: And finally, wrap this puppy up with some trite quote about how blessed life can be and how much you are looking forward to school starting again so that your little darlings can go back to earning perfect marks far, far away from you for ⅔ of the day.  Observe that each year is better than the last (don’t mention your aching back, pot belly and wrinkles) and make sure you scrawl something unintelligible in the corner of the paper so your 792 relatives and close friends know you thought about them specially.

And don’t forget to mention Jesus.

Cambridge at Christmas

            There's nothing quite like Christmas time in Cambridge.  The grey British sky is almost as unwelcoming as the constant wind coming in off the heath.  The cold keeps people inside, but it doesn't have that wintertime bite that waits for us just the other side of January.  Our days will get colder, and the sun still sinks behind the hedges before 3pm.  Dusk sits outside almost as long as the daylight does, with the sunlight that does filter through always having that end-of-day light yellow feel to it.  
           Walking along King's Parade in the shadow of the looming chapel, it's almost eerie.  No more tour guides, with their little yellow flags bopping on sticks above the crowd, no more buses full of secondary students trailing along behind teachers who are earnestly telling them that they too, can go to Oxbridge, and no more tourists asking if you are a Cambridge student and then they can take your picture.  The handful of punts meandering up and down the river underneath the bridges and past the empty fields are full of bundled up people joking about mulled cider and bad ideas.  The porters wile away empty time in their empty lodges, watching re-runs of cricket, or football (proper) to help push the hours along.  The rush of students asking for post or directions long since packed up and gone home.  
            Wandering down the halls of the colleges there is a quiet camaraderie as people pass one another here or there.  Footsteps that are usually drowned out by the chatter of people echo along the ancient stone paths. People share one of maybe a thousand reasons for watching bits and bops of rubbish scoot along the sidewalk on Kings Parade rather than curling up by a fire and Christmas tree, or drinking white wine in the sun as the holiday creeps closer and closer.  Home is too far away, there isn't money, lab samples will die if left alone.  Maybe there isn't much of a home left anymore back where-ever you came from.  Maybe you are just one of those people who follows home to each new place.
            One thing we all share is that as the departments and colleges have emptied out, slowly but surely, we are still here.  Wandering in and out of department offices, taking stabs and productivity while sitting next to empty desks.  Once in a while we meet up, drinking coffee and perusing book shops, "will you be here over Christmas?"  Knowing with each passing day that the answer is more and more likely to be "Yes, will you?"
             Outside of the city centre, in the places where Cambridge is real, not just "school" the bustle of everyday life in the days before Christmas continues to hum along.  Primark is sold out of unicorn sweaters and pre-teens text back and forth in a crowded December mall.  People run last minute errands and the Sainsbury's has mulled wine on offer for Christmas morning but the turkeys have all sold out.
            And for the first, and last, time in 2014, the lights are clicking off in many of the college libraries across the university.  Usually open 12-24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 350 some odd days a year each and every year, the empty aisles and desks signify how different Cambridge becomes around Christmas week.

December 16th

On December 14th 2012 26 teachers and children went to school one morning and never came back home.

Newton Connecticut was devastated.  Even in a nation where school shootings have become common, and public mass shootings almost rampant, the deaths of 20 young grade-schoolers and the adults who tried to protect them was shocking.  It was one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.  Families were left shattered, and while the nation mourned, at the end of the day nothing much changed.

On December 16th 2014 at least 145--maybe more--teachers and children went to school one morning and never came back home.  

The lives of hundreds if not thousands of people in Peshawar Pakistan can never again be the same.  Families have been gutted and if healing is even possible it will take decades if not years.  A nation, and a world, are in shock.  The idea that children can be targets goes far beyond unsettling, and reminds us that evil exists in every corner of the world.

Watching the news coverage unfold from the European side of the pond, I can only hope that as the hyperbole begins my US friends and family have a chance to read articles that go beyond our usual understanding of violence in the middle east as "Terrorism" (even if in this case it may well be) and dismissing the actions of these men as representative of Islam in any way, shape or form.  I hope that the pictures splashed across the internet and the front lines of papers are those of families standing together, mosques worshiping and mourning, mothers holding hands.  Not photos of seven men holding guns.  I  hope that the stories told are those of students accomplishments and dreams.  Not the stories of violent idealists who have hijacked a religion and a God to justify the destruction they seek in the world.  

I can only hope that when American families learn more and more about what happened on December 16th 2014, they are reminded that all people are human, and that the loss of a child in Pakistan is felt as deeply and horribly as the loss of a child in Newton.  That the tragedy of the future cut short is not lessened by where a child was born, what religion they worshiped or language they spoke.  And that we as a nation don't dismiss these deaths as easily as we dismiss the hundreds who die in ongoing drone strikes in the mountains of Pakistan and it's neighbors.  I can hope that this might remind us as a nation and a world, that a senseless death is just that; senseless.  That maybe a constant escalation of violence will not someday bring us peace.  That getting a bigger gun won't end the bloodshed.

But in a world full of violence, much of it precipitated and carried out by the US military, I suppose that's all I can do.  Is hope.