Guns in Schools

Today The Huffington Post had an article about putting guns in the hands of school maintenance staff. Apparently this is the favored option for the school board in Montpelier, Ohio.  I think it's a reprehensible idea thought up by  people who are so far into their mounds of paperwork they forgot what human is.  No doubt.

 HuffPost Article

My first reaction to thinking about janitors being made to have guns, is what an abuse of power. Its also my last thought. And in between there are some  reasons as to why this is such an example of poor thinking.

1. A lot of these guys in maintenance work are veterans. Many of them come with the standard fair of ailments, including but not limited to having psychological disorders such as depression and post traumatic stress disorder, drug and alcohol dependency etc...

2. A large percentage of the people who work in maintenance are Black or Hispanic.

3. A large percentage of the people who work in maintenance are poor and undereducated.

This call for putting decent hard working folk into the line of fire because for some reason their lives are not valued on the level that the teachers and principals with their degrees and high end degrees are, is reprehensible, elitist and smacks virulently of racism.

And I can think of a few agencies that I believe might have some very strong words for this kind of egregious and deplorable behavior--for starters, The Department of Veteran's Affairs, The NAACP, and The ADL--just to name a few.

And last of all, beside anything else, who the hell said it was okay to put guns into schools?!! They come around my kid's school with that crap, I will have an issue--big time!   

Devarim 4:12

For as long as I can remember I remember my father when I was little saying something about drawing a shim aleichem and something more that I don't remember

I for some reason after listening to Choni Goldman's Nisbia was compelled to look up what the words meant that my falter said to me all those years ago.  And below is what I came up with...

Devarim

12. The Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of the words, but saw no image, just a voice.

יב. וַיְדַבֵּר יְהֹוָה אֲלֵיכֶם מִתּוֹךְ הָאֵשׁ קוֹל דְּבָרִים אַתֶּם שֹׁמְעִים וּתְמוּנָה אֵינְכֶם רֹאִים זוּלָתִי

Transliteration:
                           Vayedaber Hashem aleichem
                           mitoch ha’esh
                           kol devarim atem shom’im
                           utmunah einechem ro’im
                           zulati kol

It makes perfect sense to me. I had hearing problems as a kid. Sometimes I couldn't hear at all. And I had a habit of reading lips. It would  stand to reason that I would come up with some strange transliteration, considering I didn't know Hebrew and I was 3 or 4 years of age.
My father, of righteous memory, was always troubled by things that were wrong…This was a beautiful way of consoling me and himself as well without burdening me with the sadness of understanding his words. Lovely and today almost 9 years after his passing--may he be blessed--I was always close to my father, and now I feel that I've come a lot closer to what he wanted for me.