A MINDLESS,HEARTLESS TRAGEDY

On Saturday morning sitting in our kitchen having our morning coffee and watching the news on television my wife and I were moved to tears over the tragedy in Newport, Connecticut. I decided then that I would write something on this today (Monday … I like to keep my computer in my office … if I take it home I will end up working there). But later on that morning I received an email from a very good friend, Lennox Raphael, who lives now in Copenhagen. In my mind Lennox expressed so exactly how I personally feel about the tragedy, that although his words are not precisely mine, they express exactly how I feel … about everything. So, with his very kind permission, I publish his e mail to me below as if it were my own.


Hi, Robin,

That is what a good friend said to me when I had Papaya: "Lennox, you are making your grandchildren!"

And I’m thinking of this right now because I am so saddened by what happened in Connecticut yesterday, hours after I left New York to return to Copenhagen.

So painful that young lives can be snapped out so easily, so casually, as tho they are flies, when they are actually angels. I think it was ex-Commissioner Bernard who said some years ago that Trinidad was experiencing a satanic wave: well, not just Trinidad&Tobago. Seems to be everywhere.

The enormity of this cruelty has been derailed by customary jet lag.

Even the snow that covers Copenhagen seems to be crying.

The world is never easy.

I know (in Trinidad) we feel at times our world & values are crumbling before our eyes; but it's everywhere.

Here, in Denmark, where there is at least one bank robbery a week, irrational acts are commonplace.

About a year ago the front page of the bestselling newspaper here, ExtraBladet, was covered with snapshot photos of young kids who had been knifed by their parents, as fallout from parents caught up in jealousy.

And not so long ago that massacre of young people in Norway.

In Trinidad & Tobago adults are poor examples of commendable behavior. And I am alarmed when I see the public language that is considered acceptable.

There is so much rage in everything. I noticed this the five weeks I spent there recently. Even the way people drive cars; the way politicians speak. Everything is bait instead of debate.

Words do break bones.

If anything, with all the good we have going for us, we are an increasingly careless nation bent on stretching the rubberband to breaking point.

A satanic wave seems to be embedded in all levels of the society.

Impatience replaces Intolerance.

Public conversation is punctuated by insults.

We seem to forget that young people are convinced by good examples.

There seems to be a death wish in the society.

I admire people like you who can make a point without prolonging scars.

Too much picong is ruining the society.

We have to pull back from the emotional cliff.

I was thinking of some of these things while in Washington getting Papaya her Kazakhstan visa and while in New York where people instead of helping a distraught man who was pushed unto the subway tracks would chose to take photos of him being savaged by the train.

Skyscrapers become tents.

And even the New York Post would splash the unforgivable photo on its front page, the photographer, when criticized, said he was using his flash to warn the incoming train that smashed the poor man to bits.

So the Connecticut fever is everywhere in varying doses.

Well, I don't want to continue in this vein. This is the season of the Christ.

And our children & grandchildren are holy and ought to be shielded from the mindless savagery of our times.

God bless,

L



Incidentally, you can get more of Lennox at the following address:


http://www.servinghousejournal.com/ContentsIssue6.aspx