Tracy K. Lorenz / With Fresh Eyes

Typing Out Loud

There’s probably a correlation between how poorly a job pays and how may inspirational quotes adorn the walls of the office.

If unicorns existed cavalry charges would have been a lot more terrifying.

When the first people land on Mars they can make up their own rules and laws and there’s nothing NASA can do about it.

I wish during the Mueller report they had a camera on Putin, he must have been laughing like hyena. “Comrades, our stupid little joke
paralyzed an entire country for two years. Can you believe these nimrodskis?”

And Mueller, I have never seen a guy who less wanted to be wherever he was and that includes video footage of Rachel Maddow's first date. Mueller knew for two years that he had absolutely nothing and hoped the day would never come. It came, he got roasted.

But now and he and the rest of his staff can join OJ in the search for the real killer.

For someone, today is the very last day they will walk around without a traumatic scar.

And I hope it’s not me.

One difference between man and dogs is man thinks entering the water via belly-flop is wrong.

For decades we were warned about the dangers of picking up hitchhikers. Now there are entire businesses formed around giving strangers a ride.

It would be depressing to be sentenced to fifty years in prison and realize that your parole officer hasn’t even been born yet.

I’ve taken my dog to work. It’s odd that he’s not amazed when he gets off the elevator. He walked into a little room, the door closed, ten seconds later it opened and he was in a completely different place.  You’d think he’d be, like, “Whoa, dude.”

Ya know when a baby cries and the tear rolls down their cheek and into its mouth? That’s their introduction to the world of recycling.

After the age of 26, the number of times you hear “I think I’m going to hurl” decreases dramatically.

A porcupines is cute until you realize it's just a spiked rat.

Traffic doesn’t care how rich or poor you are, it doesn’t care about your nation of origin or sexual preference.  All it cares about is making you late.



Printed by permission of the author. Email him at Lorenzat
large@aol.com. Get Tracy’s latest book at BarnesandNoble.com or Amazon.com, or  download it from www.fastpencil.com.
Only $3.99, cheap.

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WITH FRESH EYES ...

We Dare Not Look

Daquan Spivey was 18 years old when he was gunned down one sultry summer evening in 2013 on a tough Chicago street. His father, George Spivey, received the call of his son’s murder at the halfway house where he was residing, after a prison stint. Father and son had visited earlier that day and were attempting to patch together a fractured relationship, an effort to reconcile described by the father as “cautiously circling each other, trying to figure each other out.” George was in a job reentry program and directed the choir at his church. Daquan was not in a gang; he did not do drugs. His grades in school were laudable – he had his sights on college.

Daquan and a friend were on their bikes headed home that day after a neighborhood party. They were confronted by two other young men, also on bikes, who mistook them for rival gang members. The two strangers pulled out guns and started shooting. The friend survived; Daquan was killed. George spoke in the aftermath of his son’s death, saying “A part of me has been taken away. Stolen. For what? Because you (the shooters) thought he was someone else.”

This is but one of several heart-wrenching stories profiled in the searing new book An American Summer – Love and Death in Chicago by renowned author Alex Kotlowitz. He gives voice to the many victims of gun violence, who are often callously blamed and forgotten by society. He gives voice to those on the front lines, such as the selfless social worker let go by the Chicago schools due to budget cuts, leaving one social worker remaining in an overcrowded and undernourished high school. He chronicles the accounts of parents wrestling with grief in the wake of the loss of a child, efforts that range the spectrum from erecting makeshift memorials to advocacy work to spinning into an isolating, debilitating depression. A mother facilitates a support group. One works to get guns off the streets. One mother cuts herself. She was braiding her 6-year-old daughter’s hair on the family’s front porch when a drive-by shooting occurred, hitting her daughter. She died in her mother’s arms. “The moment I cut myself, it burns,” the mother says. “I’m in so much pain I stop thinking of my daughter – and I have some peace.”

One commentator said the stories in Kotlowitz’s book “dispel cheap explanations, revealing people’s depth of humanity lost in the headlines.” But, assumptions are made. Kotlowitz writes of one mother who lost her son to gun violence in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. She lamented that the “first thing they want to do is stereotype our kids as gang members.” The author confirmed this, referencing online comments to the Chicago Tribune on her son’s murder, in which readers suggested that her son must have belonged to a street gang. The mother responded, “My kid wasn’t a gang member. He was nineteen, on the way to the Air Force. People just assume how the community is.”

I hear assumptions too. Earlier this year, a new arrival to Muskegon logged in to a local group Facebook page, inquiring about her new community. She received several helpful suggestions and recommendations.

Mixed in with these comments, however, were a few offensive remarks, warning her to stay clear of Muskegon Heights. One resident implored her not to drive through that city, even during the day.

So, it is sometimes the case that broad brushstrokes are painted of the “others” whom we should fear and avoid, without putting forward an ounce of effort to understand, reach out, and reconcile. It is the fractured world we now live in, and it is our loss if we fail to mend these divides.

Contact Rich at richmskgn@gmail.com