My husband, John’s late Grandma Ann lived in Roseburg, Oregon, a small town in southern Oregon. Ann was a woman of habit, retired school teacher who got her hair set every week. It nearly always looked perfect. She ate meals everyday with her friend’s at the King’s Table, an all you can eat buffet. And when I say “every day”, I mean it. Every day, for decades, even when company came over.
Sometimes the company was John, then a child, along with his parents, visiting from California. Roseburg, then a logging town, was not surprisingly home to many lumberjacks. As you can imagine, being a lumberjack is heavy work and consequently, a lot of the lumberjacks were very large men. They not only ate a great deal but they also saw a great deal at King’s Table with their all you can eat buffet. According to John, the lumberjacks ate so much that the restaurant made a policy change. No more all you can eat. Each diner was limited to one plate.
How would the lumberjacks get enough to eat? One day, John saw a lumber jack amble toward the buffet. He picked up a plate, walked past the salads, walked past the vegetables, and straight to the mashed potatoes. Like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he piled his plate with a mountain of potatoes. Then he walked over to the meat section and stuck as many fried chicken legs into his potato peak as humanly possible. He’d done it. He’d packed 5 million calories of starchy, greasy, protein onto one plate.
Roseburg, a small town in a beautiful state, made the news on the first day of this month. A young man committed a mass shooting at the local community college, killing several people. The U.S. has seen an increase in mass shootings. Nonetheless, the majority of gun deaths are not due to mass shootings, they are the day to day shootings, intentional and unintentional, which occur in the U.S. at an alarming rate. The mass shootings capture our attention because they seem so random, are so severe, and tend to occur in small “safe” towns.
Understandably, people are upset. I am really upset. I am tired this issue, which is so divisive in my country. I am so tired of people not even being able to talk about it in a civil manner. I am tired of people presenting opinion and what they wish were true as actual truth. I am tired of people using emotional reasoning, greed, and religious fervor to argue against laws that would prevent death while still upholding the constitution.
Some people seem to think that unless they have the right to their own personal mountain of guns that they are being oppressed and made unsafe.
How many people have to die?
We’ve had enough.
Enough.
Oh my gosh! A visit to Anne always included lunch at the King’s Table. The food line was never crowded where I filled my plate at the vegetable selection.
I was so disheartened by the editorial in the Roseburg paper telling President Obama not to come to Roseburg because his gun policies were so wrong. I know that a significant number of people in Roseburg agree with the editor, but I also know that Roseburg, like many places in America is divided on the subject.
Yes, it’s a devisive issue and it’s treated like religious belief.
The editorial only adds to the sadness already felt by so many. How can they turn their back on a man who wants to offer support to these people. I doubt he plans to speak on any gun policy
Well written Liz.
It’s hard to understand. Thanks, Mom.
I just heard that other public officials in Roseburg have spoken out again the editor and said that he doesn’t speak for them or the community.
Yes, too many people have died and it’s not going to end. There needs to be more dialogue around this topic. Thank you for blogging about it.
Thank you, Carrie.
What astounds me is that pro-gun/lack of regulation proponents continue to spout the same tired arguments, even in the face of all the recent university shootings. You’d think they’d be alarmed enough to realize what is, isn’t working.
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