Sadness Across LI Sound

There's been a sad pall above all of us this week. We've become sadly immune to mass shootings, but last week's in Connecticut stood out. The loser with the guns murdered 20 very young children. It's like kicking puppies to a much more evil degree, and it's affected all of us. Our minds seek reasons and we try to separate ourselves from tragedy. It's to give us the illusion that we have control of our fates. Even when we hear of someone struck by lightning, we think "Well, I would NEVER have stayed outside during a storm." But the terrible truth of human existence is that shit DOES happen --whether we care to admit it or not. All we can do is try to bring light to the world, and ease the suffering of the victims. Instead, the naive among us seize the oppportunity to affix blame -- the violent video games, or lack of gun control. Please! The loser across the Sound from where I grew up on Long Island wasn't going to be deterred by gun laws -- there are 300 million guns in the US, and a deranged POS like him would have found a way to make himself into the monster he became... But I guess it comforts us to think we need to do SOMETHING when we hear of tragedies like last week's -- even if there's truly nothing to do except hope we're not the ones on the ill fated airplane, or in the wrong movie theatre, or school campus. On a happier note, Friday the Ds and D1's boyfriend Joel and I had a fun evening. We met Chris -- D1's doctor from Gainesville who has become a friend. He was in town for the yearly digestive disease meeting in Hollywood, and Dr. Barry and we met him at a great Mexican place in the Gulfstream Track shopping center. We drank some fine frozen margeritas, and caught up with doings in the world of academic medicine in Gainesville. Chris and Barry have trainees in common, and compared notes. Chris has 2 little girls, and enjoyed meeting D2 for the first time. As Barry noted -- girls are easier to raise at the beginning, and then present challenges as they age, while boys tend to become simpler creatures. Or, sometimes, the boys become supreme losers, like the one in Connecticut. We pray those types stay away from us.