I’m sorry for my absence from these pages of late.
My life has been very hectic with family and friends lately, particularly one friend who was the victim of a vicious and brutal hate crime from which my friend is still recovering, both physically and psychologically.
I will say no more about the matter to preserve this person’s privacy, but the criminals (or as The Field might call them — animals) are still at large despite stealing my friend’s cell phone, driver’s license and using my friend’s credit card to pay their tax bill. Someday, I hope they receive the justice they so richly deserve for what they did.
I would ask all of you to hold my friend in your hearts and say a prayer ( if you hold such beliefs) that my friend can be healed of all the wounds that remain, that linger on long after the awful deed recedes into the past. Even more than justice I wish to see my friend made whole again, and able to return to the life that those of us who have never been victims of such senseless, terrorist acts will ever fully understand.
If you have had a friend or family matter who has suffered as the victim of a hate crime, my thoughts and prayers got out to the both of you this morning, another morning in America like any other, just not the way Ronald Reagan envisioned (and tried to sell to us all in its imaginary beauty as our reality), however.
For as long as there are people in this country and in the world that would do violence to foster hatred, so long as they threaten any person whom they feel, in their ugly blackened hearts, is different from them in some small, insignificant way, so long as the humanity of so many of our people is denied and degraded on a daily basis by those who hold and express such poisonous beliefs, and so long as our friends and family members must live in fear because there are those among us whose actions place their lives at risk, there can be no Great Society, and no Morning in America.
