I know this may seem like an odd title for a blog post, but I try to start all my articles (lately) with the word “Surviving”.

Image via Wikipediawants to argue that term won't win with me, but be that as it may, it is what I choose to title my article.

However what this is not going to be about is how to survive a school shooting.  I don’t have that answer.  I have had a gun pointed at my head with live ammunition in south Florida as a tourist.  I clearly know how that can loosen one’s bowels for sure, but I have never lost a child to a crazed shooter, nor have I felt the burning piercing pain of a bullet as it rips through vital organs or goes into my brain.

I was pushed to write about this today because a coach I follow on Facebook posted a poignant but badly timed video on her part about teenagers who had died in a car accident and how we need to tell our kids everyday we love them.  Of course we do, as well as telling our husbands, wives, moms and dads, and more the same thing.

I found myself writing that we also need to tell our children EVERY DAY OF THEIR CHILDHOOD YEARS that if any one posts anything on any social media platform about bringing a weapon to school that this is when the teen aged silly secret bond ends and you trust your parents/teachers/whomever with this information.  It has saved lives to rat out the writer.

Yes, kids post things for the shock and awe value they receive BUT it is even more shocking to hear a gun get fired and watch your friends get shot and killed.

I was thinking how about telling your children every day as they leave for school “I love you so much and remember if any one posts anything about a bomb, a gun, or any weapon that would make me cry at your grave, you need to tell the nearest adult.”  I am not trying to sound like a bad joke.  Kids tune us out.  We need to reach them with words and mental pictures of how death is forever.

You see these are the same kids who play violent video games (whether you have allowed it or not) and after they kill all the bad people one day they turn it on again and all those bad people are alive again.  Kids don’t grasp the fact that they will not live forever.  They can’t wrap their heads around the fact that death is final, after all they can turn the game on tomorrow and everyone is alive again.

We need to make them understand that this is not how life is…..we need to love them and protect them and give them permission to rat out the person making threats.  We need to teach them it is okay to be the rat, because rats save lives.

I want to thank a dear friend, Lynn, for sharing with me the idea for writing this article when she talked to me about the violence in video games these days.

Also before I end this article, here in Brooksville, FL where I live the sheriff’s department arrested a 13 year old boy for felony theft of an AK-47.  Yes you read that right.  He stole it because his mother would not buy him one.  WTF did he need an AK-47 for at age 13?  Scary stuff out there people!  Teach your children well and pray.

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What if Whitney was just tired of it all?

There is no way that any of us would not know that taking Xanax (or any other mood-altering drug) and getting into a bathtub of hot comforting water is a dangerous combination.

What if she really was just tired of it all?  By all reports her week did not go well.  She was reportedly “out of sync” in her speech, in her singing, in her manner of dress, walking unsteadily, clothes disheveled.

People are going to dissect her bones until there is nothing left to pick over, but I notice that no one has verbally asked what I am asking.

What if she was just tired of it all?  I do not think we will ever know.

Related articles

• Did Whitney Houston’s Mix Of Xanax & Alcohol Cause Her Death? (hellobeautiful.com)

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As I watched Lauren’s parents plea for help in the case of their missing daughter this morning on the Today Show I felt deep admiration for her mother who has written a blog article asking a person or persons to come forward and give up the information they are holding on to.

Mrs. Spierer is spot on – someone, or maybe more than one someone, knows where Lauren is right now at this very moment.

The people who saw her last know more than they are admitting to, some have hired attorneys.

With all the available ways to give anonymous information I have to ask how are these people sleeping at night?

There are students attending the university that may not realize that one little thing they know could lead to the authorities finding Lauren, and to final closure for her parents.  I realize that knowledge is scary but it is also very powerful.

I am a mother, I would be making this same plea if one of my children were to go missing.  I would also be “talking” to everyone on campus that night just as Mrs. Spierer is doing.  You see I also believe in my heart that secrets are being kept and secrets have the power to destroy you.  Please reach out by any means to help the Spierer family find their daughter.

My message to Mr. and Mrs. Spierer is this, I truly believe that your letter has been read by whomever knows where Lauren is, your message has been received, after all this person or persons live in fear so they are on constant alert to everything you do.  I wish you all the best in your search and I pray you get an answer soon.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/lauren-spierers-mother-releases-letter-daughters-abductor/story?id=14446770

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This has been an extremely emotional day for the United States with the Casey Anthony trial being brought to a close with a verdict of “not guilty”.  Those 2 words brought us to our knees.

The first thing I want everyone to remember is that unfortunately and sadly children die at the hands of their parents every day.  Do we know the names of these children?  No.  The national media doesn’t show up at every child killer’s trial, they couldn’t afford it or have enough reporters on hand.

The media tried Casey Anthony and now we have people wanting her blood.  Excuse me, but when did the court system in the USA unravel and leave you in charge?  It didn’t.

Twelve jurors were given this case to decide, and they couldn’t push the “guilty” button.  Let’s dissect that reasoning.  In order to push that button they had to believe beyond ALL reasonable doubt that Casey killed her daughter in cold blood.  They needed to believe that she killed her in a pre-meditated state of mind and then danced her daughter’s life away over the next 31 days.  That did not happen.

The state of Florida did not prove that, they couldn’t.  They were hell bent on a death penalty case and I do believe Casey is responsible for Caylee’s death.  I do believe she or someone she knows played a part in it.  I do not believe my state of Florida should have ever made it a death penalty case.  There was never enough evidence to convict on that charge.

Now we have double jeopardy, Casey can never be tried again.  She can shout it from Bok Tower that she killed her daughter and nothing can be done about it.  She is free as a bird, or is she?  I don’t think so. Everywhere she goes she will be recognized.  Her life has irrevocably been changed and unless she has major plastic surgery and never sees her family again, she will have fingers pointed at her wherever she goes.

While she will be free to go where she pleases, she will never be free.  She will live in a prison of her own making.

In the meantime as shocking as it is, we need to accept it and move on.  We can’t change anything – this is the way our country works.  Sometimes bad people win.  I don’t like it but I accept it because unfortunately there is always another Caylee.

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It is at times like this that I question why anyone becomes a police officer.  I talk to my friends who are married to a police officer, or have a family member on a force somewhere, the answer they give is what I expected to hear.  They wish these people close to them had chosen a different career.

One friend cringes whenever her young son states he wants to be a policeman like his dad.  Their family just endured the trial of a young officer they knew who was shot brutally in the head, execution style, 4 times.  The shooter called it self-defense.  He got sentenced several weeks ago, the judge handed down the death penalty.

Now we have this double killing of police officers to deal with here in Tampa, Fl.  I cannot even begin to wrap my head around how Jane Castor, Chief of Police, can handle a career like this on a daily basis.  She knows, as we all know, that at any moment the words “officer down” can come across the radio.

I also know life goes on and most people don’t want to read a blog like this, or watch the funeral on television.  We don’t want to live in fear, or be afraid to answer a phone or the doorbell when we have a police officer in our lives.

The shooter is a monster.  We can all sit around and pick apart how this monster was free to walk the streets.  We can ask ourselves what went wrong that night that he could shoot two well-trained officers in the head. 

It  all comes down to the fact that someone somewhere put a gun in this monster’s hands and he is now being accused of not 2, but 3 murders and possibly more.

The $100,000 reward definitely did the job.   A known informant came forward and the negotiations took two days, and ended with a meeting set to talk to the informant.  When the detectives arrived, the informant had convinced Dontae Morris to give himself up and the monster is now off the street.

Yesterday we had to go into the city for an appointment.  As we drove, we got closer and closer to the funeral church.  There was no traffic on the northbound side of Dale Mabry Avenue except for hundreds of police officers in cars, on motorcycles and at every intersection.  Those who stood at the side of the road raised their hands to their foreheads in a final salute as the two hearses passed by, we sat in our car and cried. 

On our way home we passed the entrance to the church where over 5000 people were in attendance.  At the driveway were two hook and ladder fire trucks with their ladders extended to the sky.  Hanging from the two ladders was a huge American flag.

Freedom is  just another word for nothing left to lose sang Janis Joplin. It seems these days that our freedom has become very costly in so many lives being lost because of a gun being in the hands of a criminal.   On this day where we celebrate being free let me leave you with this thought.  When you personally look down the barrel of a gun you are not thinking about losing your freedom, you do think about how sad your death will make others.  I know, I looked down that barrel.

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Two words screamed into a phone that drive the worst imaginable fear into the hearts of those who hear them, officer(s) down. 

This morning, here in Tampa, Florida those words rang out like arrows into our hearts.  Once again the United States is facing a funeral of a police officer and a second officer who was on life support has now passed away too.  Tampanians are placing red roses at the Memorial for Fallen Police Officers downtown.

This was a traffic stop. The 1994 red Camry had no license plate.  The passenger was wanted on a misdemeanor charge.   He pulls a gun and shoots at the officers over a misdemeanor charge?  They are now cop killers – what a way to be known, what a mark to leave on this world.

There is a gun in our home.  It hasn’t ever been used other than in target practice shooting.  In fact it probably needs to be cleaned and checked.  My husband had a liquor store, he owned a gun.  I have never asked him to get rid of it, in fact after I served on the Grand Jury for 6 months, I actually asked him to get it out and have it available.

We tend to take steps like this when we have lived through an event and feel the need to protect ourselves better.  One of the three murders we as Grand Jurors heard evidence on was a brutal home invasion.  If you tend to turn your head at CSI murder scenes – you would not want to see a real murder scene in pictures.

The great “Right to Bear Arms” argument will never be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction.  I believe in tougher gun laws. I know there is no way to ever remove guns from their owners at this point in our country’s existence.  There are ways to change laws though so that we can begin to make changes.  Change will take years, decades, but this problem is only going to keep getting worse.  Our children, grandchildren and so forth and so on will be left with an even bigger mess if changes don’t begin to take place regarding gun ownership, production and gun shows where purchases can be made with great ease.

I am still alive because I knew how to handle a dangerous situation.  I had worked for years at an inner city hospital.  I worked second shift, and I had to drive home at midnight.  One Friday night we all decided to head to a trendy neighborhood – loosely translated that means the area still had problems but was getting better.  As we approached the restaurant the driver in the car I was following lost control of her vehicle and ended up in the front porch of a house.  We all jumped out to find she had been shot.  She was a victim of a random shooting.  The shooter sat on his porch and picked her off-she died.

15 years later I was in Miami back in the days when tourists were also being picked off in white rental cars with Manatee County plates.  I write that description because that is how the national news reported it.  The criminals knew that tourists were in these cars.  Tourists have jewelry, money, cameras and more usually within reach of a smash and grab criminal. 

The area surrounding the airport was a perfect place for these crimes to take place.  I was stopped at a red light when suddenly a kid on a bicycle was leaning on my front hood.  Within seconds the passenger window of my white rental car with Manatee County plates was smashed.  I had a gun pointed in my face. 

I did not hesitate for one second.  I had been well-trained 15 years before and everything I learned saved my life.

I hit the gas, and that means I hit the kid.  When I finally felt safe and stopped the car to call the police, they told me the day before the same criminals had done a smash and grab at the same traffic light – the woman in that car was in the morgue.

As I said, I had no remorse.

These are clear examples of guns falling into the hands of people who do not care about human lives. 

Breaking news just came on the television-the second officer in this mornings shootings has now died.

We have had 4 officers shot in the last two weeks, 2 survived, 2 died.  Will this insanity ever stop?

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Boy does time fly.  40 years ago I was sitting in my office in downtown Cleveland when my mother called crying her eyes out.  When I finally got her calmed down she was able to tell me I had to go to Kent, Ohio and get my brother, Danny and bring him home.  The campus was closed for the year, grades would be mailed home we later learned and the administration as well as those “in charge” wanted everyone off campus as quickly as possible.

Kent, Ohio, pretty little town smack dab in the middle of farming in Ohio, a quiet area – now the most famous little town in the world.  4 people dead, the Ohio National Guard were the shooters. 

Who can forget the picture of Vecchio hovering over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller that was on every front page probably in the world?  She was 14-15 years old and a runaway who still goes back for the memorial services.

It was not the first time I was scared shitless in my then young life.  I remember as if it were yesterday the Cuban missile crisis.  That kept me up at nights.  I thought for sure we were going to die due to a nuclear bomb attack back when  I was still a virgin.  I had not had sex yet, experienced love and passion, marriage, children and was terrified we were going to die of radiation poisoning.  Thank God that ended quickly and I could still dream.

May 4, 1970 I was no longer a virgin.   I was married, had a little boy, and a great job in downtown Cleveland.  I was in a good place then that day changed our lives, our pretty little town, our Kent State U.

I promised my mom I would go get my brother. Our dad was very ill with cancer and could not drive so I told my boss I had to leave and took off for Kent State.  All we had 40 years ago was landline phones, no beepers, no cell phones, no internet, no modern convenient ways of communication. We had TV/Radio/Newspapers as our main way of learning things but on May 4th no one really knew what was happening in Kent.

By the time I got there it was growing dark.  I was flagged down and had to stop to be searched personally as well as having my car totally cleaned out.  By the time I got to my brother’s dorm the town was closed – I was an overnight guest of KSU and the Ohio National Guard.  I had to sleep in a dorm on the floor with people I did not know.

I did not sleep a wink none of us did.  We all were filled with the fear that someone would do something stupid.  These were kids-scared kids lying on the floors away from windows not knowing if bullets would fly again.

There have been many school shootings since Kent State, too many school shootings,  but this one remains on Richard Nixon’s head – here is what he said that provoked the students – it’s not pretty.

Richard M. Nixon, New York Times, May 2, 1970

Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’.
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin’.
Four dead in Ohio.

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We moved to Florida in January, 2005 and we rented a little townhouse in the tiny town of Homosassa in a very lovely development aptly named Sugarmill Woods.  One of the historic markers in Homosassa is the Yulee Sugar Mill and is now a State Park.

This is truly old Florida, it has its charm, it has its strangeness of wanting to hold onto the past too.  Families who have lived there for years don’t like change.  They don’t like new housing developments sprouting up.  I am not kidding when I tell you I would see people barefoot in Walgreen’s or WalMart.  There were people living there on the edge of poverty and people living there who had made millions of dollars.

Also living in Homosassa was a sick sad soul by the name of John Couey.  Couey was a registered sexual offender.

Couey had a long list of criminal offenses,  He had been arrested 24 times for burglary, carrying a concealed weapon without permit, and indecent exposure.  In 1978 he had been sent to prison for kissing a young girl while committing robbery. He was sent to prison for 10 years, paroled in two.  He was arrested soon again for fondling a 5-year-old girl.  Laws were more lenient then.

On February 24, 2005 the family of sweet innocent beautiful little Jessica Lunsford reported her missing.  Our little sleepy town went national news as reporters arrived, search parties were brought in and in the end Jessica was only yards away from her family the entire time.

The following is an excerpt from the Bill O’Reilly show regarding the errors the Citrus County Sheriff’s Department allegedly made regarding Couey:

GELMAN:Well, there are several reasons. A few months before Jessie was abducted, FDLE sent a letter to Sheriff Dawsy advising him to round up the sex offenders in the area. Couey was on that list, and no one ever went to search for him. We understand that just two weeks before Jessie was abducted, Couey was reported to law enforcement as living in that trailer right in front of her house. They were told where he was. They were told that he had a warrant for his arrest, that he was a sex offender and to pick him up. And no one went and got him.

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That is the day President John F. Kennedy was killed.  Many of you were not born yet-many were born and too young to remember the horror of it all.  Back then, as in way back then, we did not worry about terrorists – we worried about nuclear war, Fidel Castro and the Cuban missile crisis and the Christmas Dance.  I was in Geometry class.

I was a senior in high school and just this past weekend attended my 45th class reunion.  Of course the assassination came up, it was a big part of our lives then-still is when you look at how history has taken the closest thing to royalty in our country and yet forgiven them all their transgressions from infidelity to drunkenness behind the wheel.

How did Marilyn Monroe really die?  Was it a CIA plot?  How did JFK really die besides taking a bullet to the brain?  Who was really behind it? Who was really behind Sirhan Sirhan? Who really shot Lee Harvey Oswald and was it to shut him up?

For that matter who was really behind the shootings at Kent State which I have blogged about in the past?  The thing is there are theories all over the place and we end up believing the theory that strikes a chord in us of clarity and probability.

When a plane goes down taking everyone with it we are horrified because of the number of people who lost their lives.  Far more people die in a single day in car accidents but the shock and horror are missing.  9/11/01 is the worst shocking horrifying tragedy that happened in our lifetimes.  It scared us to our very core, we were all unsure as to if there would be further attacks.  We were attacked – 2985 plus or minus people died as a result of this attack, we lived in constant fear it would happen again.  If you watched the spot on ABC with Charles Gibson yesterday then you saw that there have been more than a dozen thwarted attacks in NYC since 9/11.  The report went on to talk about how connected the NYC police are with police personnel around the world and how the latest attack was to be on a commuter train.  It will never be over.  It was a horrific time in our lives and has changed us forever.

That is the shock and horror part BUT—————and there is always a but, as of 9/8/09 –  5,150 American soldiers have died in Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11 and where is the shock and horror over that? 

I don’t have an answer all I know is before this is over hundreds to thousands more will die and I wonder sometimes where is the shock and horror over these numbers?  It is something to think about.

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