wish i'd said that.

a moment of remembrance, a moment of reflection, a minute of silence, whatever you want to call it...what we need are moments of action so these other moments become unnecessary.  making it a more religious sounding experience doesn't do any good.  they only serve to make us feel better about ourselves while avoiding the real need to take steps to try to ensure horrid incidents never happen again.  they're not like that "get well envelope".  they're more like simply closing your eyes for a second and pretending the proverbial barn door never opened in the first place.                                                                                                     the preceding was a letter i had published by the milwaukee journal sentinel (1/21/'13).  after re-reading it, i felt there were things that i wish i'd included in the original letter, so....                                                           moments of silence, or whatever you call them, must be "declared".  why?  they don't seem to have to declare moments of joy or celebration.  they just happen.  we know when to be happy, shouldn't we be trusted to know when to be sad, when to reflect?  but, no.  they declare, we stop (at least some of us), silence, prayer, reflect..minutes up and we go on with the mundane day we were having.  and did it do any good?  not really.  we feel better, momentarily, thinking we have done our "part", whatever that is, and then ...nothing.  well, not nothing; as in this particular case, we now have bickering, name-calling, extended periods of debate, proposals, threats of insubordination, picketing, yadayadayada!  actually, more of the usual.  but, what i'm getting at is, if you add up all these moments of well-intended INaction you end up with basically nothing.  it's done, gone and forgotten, until the next time something happens that requires a new declared moment, and we feel the need to do it all over again.  so, like i said, don't worry about what to call them, but if you feel the need to observe, when that observation is over, don't stop there, because it is in your ACTIONS, the RAISING of your voices against fear-mongering, bigotry and hatred, that matter more than the sum total of all those scattered moments..no matter what you wish to call them.