100,000 and counting

On April 19, 1993, my friend Laurie Barry called me saying she heard the sound of many, many children screaming and crying. While she lived in Michigan at the time, as the news unfolded it turned out that what she heard, right at the time of the attack, was the sound of children screaming and crying in Oklahoma City during the bomb attack by Timothy McVeigh.

I never did sort out Laur’s ability to feel such things–they were part of her gift for empathy and prophecy. But today I join her in once again hearing children screaming and crying in the face of a terror no one–especially children–should have to face.

Their cry is matched by the cries of the 18-year-olds not so infrequently involved in loss of life on the side of the perpetrator–from this most recent shooter in Texas back to Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha. And of younger…