Sandy Hook
Hi everyone, I am in Paris as I write this, and news and details are sparse here about the shooting in Connecticut, but we have heard of it, and everyone is saddened by it. So shocking, so sad. So unthinkable, to open fire on people, and especially children. And even more agonizing to think that the parents of those children must have been preparing for the holidays, picking gifts, planning family events, maybe talking about Santa Claus……and now they will be mourning their lost children and loved ones. A sudden, instant, turnaround of everything they hoped, believed and planned. And how will the other children ever feel safe in school again??
And sadly, this is not something we’ve never heard of, it’s not an event we are unfamiliar with. It brings instantly to mind the university shooting in Tennessee not so long ago, the terrible shooting at the Amish one room school house, and others all the way back to Columbine in Colorado. It is truly a national tragedy for us that such deeply troubled people go unnoticed, untreated and unstopped until they have taken all these young lives, and altered the course forever of the lives of those who survived it. Incredible trauma. And I dread thinking that we will hear of other events like this again one day. There have always been these terrible school and random shootings all the way back to my own youth. What rage and deep illness leads the perpetrators of these crimes to want to hurt so many, and carry out our worst nightmares on so many innocents.
My heart aches for the parents, the families, all of the victims, all of those who lost loved ones or friends. There are no words to make this better, and worse, there seems to be no way to stop it happening again. My heart and prayers go out to all of the people in Connecticut, affected by this event, and to all of us who go about our lives, thinking we are safe, leading our lives, carrying out our plans, and then a nightmare like this happens and changes each of us forever. We all talk about and worry about terrorism in the world, politicians argue about gun control…..but an event like this isn’t even about issues, it is just about immense sadness, and all those precious lives that were lost. You are all deep in my heart with profound sympathy and much love, Danielle
Back in the States, in New York, two days after I wrote my initial thoughts about the tragic school shooting at Sandy Hook, I’ve now watched some of the coverage on CNN, and heard the President speak at the Memorial in Newtown on Sunday night. I am bowled over by the magnitude of the tragedy, those shining young 6 and 7 year old faces that I hadn’t seen before while I was still in Paris. It is such an unthinkable, unfathomable event, the idea that a disturbed 20 year old person can enter a school, wielding an assault rifle, which he obtained in his own home——-and gunned down 20 children and 6 adults before taking his own life (and began by killing his mother before the rampage at the school). As I said in what I wrote from Paris, this is not the first time we have watched with horror events like this, at schools and universities. Something is desperately awry in our society and our world for something like this to happen, not once but several times. No society is entirely exempt from madness of this kind, but we seem to be more vulnerable to it than most nations. I know from my own work with our foundation which deals with mental illness that we do not do enough in this country for our mentally ill. Very sick young people slip through the cracks in our society far too often, sometimes they take their own lives, but in some instances like this one, they take other lives as well. And gun control is a sensitive issue in this country, and people clamor over their second amendment rights to bear arms—but there is no question, weapons are far easier to obtain in the US than in most other civilized countries, often with tragic results. President Obama answered the question eloquently as to whether we are doing enough to protect our children in this country, and his answer was No. I can only hope that the tragedy at the Sandy Hook school will lead to new and different measures to stop events such as this from happening again, although the staff at Sandy Hook was well prepared, and had had drills for situations like this one. The very fact that our schools need ‘drills’ to prepare for the possibility of a gunman attacking a school is a tragedy in itself.
Beyond the issues, the laws, the constitution, the possible solutions is the simple fact of 27 people dead, 20 of them children, 6 of them teachers who died trying to protect them. Grieving parents and grandparents and friends, the unthinkable loss of children so young. Those adorable smiling faces in the photographs being shown on TV. The unbearable ache in their parents’ hearts, the agony of an entire community mourning them. Having lost a son who was 19 years old, I know the terrible loss of losing a child only too well, the long, long string of days and months and even years when you simply have to get through each day as best you can, with a terrible ache in your soul. And to have young children die by violence, and even the young teachers and principal, must be a special kind of agony that none of us who haven’t lived through it can barely imagine. For this moment in time, like all of you, I can only offer my deepest sympathy and prayers, and tears, along with the entire nation. And the family of the perpetrator must be equally in shock, and dealing with their loss as well. No one can imagine an event like this, and the devastation it wreaks on all involved, and even those of us who are unrelated and only see it on the news. There are no words to express how sad we all are, how broken the grief stricken parents must feel right now. I send my love and prayers and sorrow as a mother, and my deepest condolences to all.
Love, Danielle
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I’m sure your words comforted many, Danielle. This is such a horrible, horrible incident I wish deeply it never happened. May the community be spared anymore pain for the rest of their lives. May the children and adults taken much too soon rest in peace.
Lorraine
I just heard on the news — a church is sending golden retrievers as comfort dogs for the children. What a wonderful idea in the midst of this senseless tradgedy.
If all countries came together (like we do for the olympics) to stop violence around the world, then we would have a heaven on earth. The way it was meant to me.
Bonnie
I just heard on the news — a church is sending golden retrievers as comfort dogs for the children. What a wonderful idea in the midst of this senseless tradgedy.
If all countries came together (like we do for the olympics) to stop violence around the world, then we would have a heaven on earth. The way it was meant to be.
Bonnie
Ms Steel, Thank you for putting into words what
all of us have felt these past days.
Some how we must do more for mental illness.
It is truly an illness and we should deal with it as such.
THAT WAS WELL SAID MY HEART GO OUT TO THOSE PARENTS .
Innocence stolen in such a horrible tradgedy. Children why children why anyone? I lost a friend to a gun but realized it was the problem behind the gun that I lost my friend to. Mental illness comes in many shapes and forms, different ages,different beliefs. How do we start the conversation on helping, curing, noticing the signs? Even when we know someone who is “off” or has a problem, what can we do? Even when we try to get them help something falls through the cracks. Violence like this comes from someone who’s thinking is not healthy nor happy,what do we do?
Like Danielle we need to be fearless and at least start the conversation and get involved when we knotice someone needs help.
Life will never be the same for these families, so incredibly sad.
Hug the people in your life a little longer this Christmas.
Dear Ms. Steel, I recently reread your novel “The Gift” not long before the Sandy Hook, shooting. Although the book was fiction I still find comfort in the way you wrote that some people only come in to our lives for a short time… I can only hope that with all the loss of life in the world that those that have read The Gift will find comfort in the words you wrote. For those that have not read the this novel maybe they should. Fiction yes, but comforting all the more. Sure brings me appreciation for those that touch my life. Thank you.
Hi Danielle – it is very sad about the children & the families involved in this – it is also very disturbing that our President acts like he’s concerned when he has such a lousy record -( Fast & Furious) 2000 to 3000 guns to the Mexican Cartel & let’s not forget how he did everything he could for our Ambassador in Bengazi !!! The State Dept tells what really happened . He’s disgusting & 100% Hypocrite. My condolences for the families & victims – peace Mike
Danielle your words are typically extremely tragically both ignorant and naïve.
Myself having bothered to look more independently at such events than you, the evidence concerning the Sandy Hook slayings and The Boston Bomb slayings suggests that these and most other terrorist attacks including, The Oklahoma City Bombs, The Russian Apartment Bombs, 9/11, 7/7, M3, Mumbai, Charlie Ebdo, and the recent Tunisian Hotels’ attacks are all ‘false flag’ operations initiated by the FBI, CIA, FSB, Mossad, MI6, MI5 and other powers that shouldn’t be, rather than by fundamentalist Muslim Terrorists, or lone nutters etc.
Our shadow governments’ agenda is to keep the general populations terrorised in very many regular ways therefore feeling that they aught to give up more of their civil rights and more of their money to fund such as the FSB, CIA, M16 and FBI to protect them at home, and to fund their armies for constant foreign wars to protect them.
The senior Russian, US and UK party politicians covertly condone these false flag crimes because their intention also is to control our hearts and our minds particularly by fear, because they know they cant obtain our love as most of us either know or suspect at the least, that they’re all fraudsters, yet most foolishly still go on voting for either the one party or the other party that we feel are the least fraudulent to us, at the time – so endemic ‘false flag’ terrorist operations are their best weapon to drive most of us albeit unwillingly back into their collectist/corporatist clutches to vote either for the one party or the other party every time.
In the Sandy Hook and Boston Bomb cases it’s likely that all of those immediately involved were either secret service agents, or their assets, including the ‘crisis actors’ and the tv crews.
Crisis Actors are used by the military to create the most authentic appearance of a bombing or shooting by using all the special effects of the film industry and genuine paraplegic actors are employed, so that the soldiers or in this case the public react as though it is the real thing. If their hoax goes awry they then declare it to be a terrorist training drill, but it it doesn’t go awry, it is allowed to go live and be reported as a real terrorist act.
From a quite extensive review of the albeit limited online evidence in both cases I suspect that this ‘crisis actor’ hoax method was used in these two cases, where a whole class in that primary school was made up of agents and their crisis actor assets who were all moved into the Sandy Hook area with accompanying children for that hoax shooting purpose.
When something like this occurs the secret services of our countries outsource the crisis actors and other assets to other countries, so typically the CIA and FBI in these two cases would likely have used Mossad or Saudi Crisis Actor and TV team assets to terrorise, we, the general public in this way, in order to supress in this case; US gun rights and to gain yet more funding for the FB1.
Whether it’s really either nutters, or muslim terrorists or our own out of control shadow governments who run any terror operation/s, also whether they are hoaxes using crisis actors, or real slayings, it’s all still very frightening when it continues, but what’s more frightening is the general naivety/ignorance regarding who are the usual suspects, with people like yourself always following what you’re told by the controlled corporate media.
Never really looking for yourselves but simply believing the powers that you know shouldn’t be, is the most frightening part of the modern world. You/we can never form any independent opinion at all if you/we merely follow the corporatist media spin (i.e their omissions and distortions) on matters, because the corporatist media by definition are centrally either nationally or globally controlled by the shadowy powers that shouldn’t be,
For example of the corporate media’s omission control:- when did you ever hear of a current or recent CIA/MI6/Mossad operation on the mainstream corporate media, yet even officially the CIA obtains $95 billion p.a. then of course there was Rumsfeld’s admission on the very eve of 9/11 that the Pentagon couldn’t account for $2.3 trillion dollars spending in that year alone. It later turned out to be more like $7.1 trillion in all. He then ‘declared a war on the bureaucracy’ and the very next day on 9/11/2001 the budget analysts’ office in the Pentagon was hit killing all except one of the pentagon’s budget analyst staff who were working on the disappearance of those $7.1 trillions, so the case into where those 7.1 trillion went was then closed as the people and the paperwork had been pin point accurately destroyed, alledgedly by a mad muslim pilot who couldn’t fly a single propeller Cesner. That’s how people like Rumsfeld cover up their shadow government’s frauding, extorting murderouus tracks, indeed he then used the 9/11 pretext to invade 5 Middle Estern/Cenral Asian Countries and now its Syria’s turn
You are typically extremely naeve and ignorant, and that really means ether that you are truly dumb, or you don’t really care at all, except about outward appearances concerning emoting.
Try googling ‘9/11 False Flag’. You should find dozens of often very carefully researched comprehensive documentaries about 9/11 revealing thousands of telling facts that you will have never heard from the mainstream corporate either media or government sources.
I wish you luck if you really look, because searching for the political and justice truths today is a matrix, a rabbit hole down which you can fall for several months or years before you gain traction on public events as they truly are. Its like a vast sky or sea gig saw. Its has to be pieced together till many of the parts really clearly fit together, because the senior party politicians, bench justices also their senior corporate allies general intent is to fleece and or slaughter the general public.