paradox :: soft, cuddly guns

our annual spring exhibition is fast approaching and this year's theme is paradox. i was collecting ideas on pinterest (of course) and then i came across natalie baxter's work somehow or other and suddenly felt very inspired. 

so this weekend, i dug out the sewing machine and loads of scraps from various quilts and other projects and i got down to work. making soft, cuddly guns.

i think in these politically charged times, i was drawn to creating something political. each gun will have a stick in the top (to make them easier to hang), with a flag hanging from it - kind of like those toy guns with a flag that pops out and says "pow." the flags will have words on them that are at odds with the violence of guns. words like love and peace and happy.

i made a dozen of them, but i'm not sure that i'm finished as of yet. i was discussing it with husband and he had some good ideas. perhaps a sort of soft, plush jesus icon in the middle, since the mantra of certain subsets of the land of my birth these days is "more guns, more jesus." you don't get much more paradoxical than that. and it just might be the final title of my work.

it was very good to be making something again. i had missed it. i love that i had some scraps of gold and silver from long-ago making some pants for sabin, those shiny bits are just the right touch for my soft, cuddly guns.

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norwegian state broadcaster nrk implements quiz before comment policy to ensure that those leaving comments read and understood the article.

all news sites should do this.

norway for the win.

paranoia and pistols

i try to call mom and she doesn't answer the phone. i guess she's still mad at me for supposedly taking her glasses (which were found, there in her house). i also apparently took that big picture of dad that she puts in the chair with a stuffed cat and a blanket and talks to. but that too was found on her dining table. and does she express remorse for her accusations? apparently not, she experiences only the immediate joy of being reunited with her precious possessions.

was this paranoia and thinking the worst of others always there in my mother or is it the disease? and why me? because i was the last one there, visiting her? perhaps she associates me with the glasses because i was the one who found them for her, stuffed into a paper bag in their cases, just before i left, so i was imprinted on her mind along with them. or maybe, all of the furniture from her basement that has peopled my various apartments and which was freely and generously given by her, has imprinted me on her brain as the one who comes and takes things away. maybe this is why she can hurl wild accusations of her thieving daughter around. and i can't say that they don't hurt, even while i know they're not true. who is this person and who does she think i am?

it's this paranoia and thinking the worst of people that made me worry about all the guns in that house. her expired permit to carry a concealed weapon (incidentally not a photo id) was on the table in the living room, but that didn't stop her from loading two heavy bowling ball-sized bags full of guns and ammo into her car the other day (turns out she had a new permit there among her stacks of mail). i don't know what she was planning to do with them, but i had visions of her shooting her  beautiful granddaughter in a haze of paranoia one day. and it takes my breath away to even write that. that said, i have also laughed hysterically over my pistol-pakkin' mama. if you're not laughing, you're crying with this disease.

the guns are packed safely away now, so the horror scenario that flashed across my mind isn't going to happen. but undoubtedly many others will with this cruel disease. i have to grow a thicker skin.

beyond logic and reason

last friday, south dakota's governor signed a bill which will allow teachers to carry firearms into their K-12 classrooms in the state of my birth. the bill does not mandate that teachers carry a firearm, but it authorizes an ominously-named "sentinel" who has had training (ala law enforcement training), to carry a gun on school premises. (you can see a whole list of all the bills he signed on friday here - there is probably reason to be alarmed on numerous counts, but that's another story.)

when i first read it in a new york times facebook post on friday, my initial reaction was a flush of embarrassment. people know i'm originally from south dakota and they will ask me about it, holding me responsible, taking me to task (tho' i haven't voted in south dakota for years (i vote in illinois, as it was the last state where i lived before moving to denmark)). but people took me personally to task back in the era of the monica lewinsky saga - "what are you doing to your president?" ("what monica did, given the chance," was always my pithy answer). alas i have no pithy answer for this one.

after a couple of days of thinking, my embarrassment hasn't abated. mostly, i think that south dakota was duped into this by a clever gun lobby. they got some numbskull of a freshman member of the house to introduce the bill, fed him a bunch of lines about it making schools safer, especially rural, isolated schools (where, to my knowledge, there have been no shootings) and some ego-stroking about being on the leading edge of the arming teachers movement and the republican-controlled legislature and governor steamed it right through. without thought or substantive debate. and frankly, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. and if they're not, i'm certainly feeling ashamed enough for them too.

even the largest newspaper in the state, the sioux falls argus-leader (which my parents refer to as the scene of the crime, since they met there), hasn't had a single editorial on the topic (at least not that i can find online). and they too should be ashamed of themselves.

a powerful gun lobby pushes such an detestable piece of legislation through in a conservative, sparsely-populated state and thinks it will start a domino effect of legislation in other states. and sadly, they're probably right. because we now live in a world where we legislate our to alleviate our fears. lawmakers are reactive, not proactive. but all of the legislation in the world can't prevent the lunacy of an individual with easy access to firearms.

these school shootings that have been happening (for years now - i remember one in the early 90s when i was a student at the university of iowa) are tragic and horrible and shouldn't happen. but how anyone can think that ensuring that there are guns present in a school can possibly help is simply beyond my ability to logically comprehend.

growing up with guns

i really do hate to use one of my last posts leading to number 2000 on the connecticut shooting, but i find i have a bit more to say, so use it i shall. tho' i do think that what jenna said about it is so well put that there's not really more to say.

i got a mail from a friend about the way that he, like many of us americans, was raised around guns.  and i have to admit that i was too. we had a really lovely rather bauhaus-style pistol in the buffet drawer and a number of shotguns standing down at the bottom of the basement stairs. i remember peeking in the drawer at the pistol to scare myself or show it conspiratorially to some friend, but never actually daring to touch it. it wasn't loaded anyway and i don't recall any bullets in the buffet drawer, so i imagine it was quite harmless. and i also imagine it's still there, tho' i didn't check when i was home last summer.

i loved (and still do) the story about it - my mother had inherited it from her aunt, who had been married to a banker in sgt. bluff, iowa. back in the 50s, someone had tried to kidnap her - it was such a wild story that it was written up in a one of those 50s detective magazines, mostly because as i recall, aunt mimi was feisty enough to escape from the kidnappers. but afterwards, her husband bought the pistol to protect her, in case it happened again. and we ended up with it in our buffet drawer. i think my dad tried to sell it to someone at one point, but it came back shortly afterwards, so that didn't really stick.

i also remember as a kid going with my mom to trap shooting competitions - she was pretty good and could compete with the best of the men. i always thought that was pretty cool. and a little bit as my sister often says, "mom is such a boy." i spent a lot of time reloading her ammunition with the reloader we had in the back room - a little dose of gunpowder, some bb's, a cap and a crimp (probably not in that order). i quite enjoyed that as a child.

pheasant hunting is a big thing in the area where i grew up, so hunting was a normal thing to me. many a meal was spent spitting out shot bb's from bites of meat. i never tried shooting pheasants myself, but i remember both of my parents doing so (that was in the days before they were all pen-raised with little sunglasses on). my folks weren't deer hunters that i can recall - dad always said something about how it would really only be sporting when the deer had guns too, but we did occasionally get deer meat from someone else. even today, i'm by no means against hunting (we have a friend who we allow to hunt on our lake - and we thoroughly enjoyed some ducks not long ago), i just don't do it myself.

i remember some raffle or other where dad won a gun, which only added to the 3-4 already at the bottom of the basement stairs, but i don't recall those guns being used that much after mom stopped trap-shooting. sometimes against the odd rabbit that was eating the apple trees or a nasty opossom or skunk that came around. i know i never had any desire to either mess with the guns or use them or even learn about them. they were just there, a fact of life. and i had no interest in them at all.

in the second grade, i was given a bb gun for christmas. we still lived in town at that point and i was told that it was meant to be used to shoot the dog next door, who was a really annoying barker. i probably did plunk him a couple of times (he was really annoying), but mostly, i think we shot at cans with that bb gun. and it certainly couldn't have killed anything, at least not with my shooting skills.

last summer, while we were back home, my cousin took sabin and her cousins out shooting at cans and jars. sabin thought it was fun. and i think it's a fine activity as long as there is adult supervision and proper instruction, which there was.

the fact is that most americans grow up around guns. they're a fact of life, they're in people's homes. we also all know someone who had an accident with one...a kid in the grade ahead of me shot off his toe (it must have been where he kept his brain, because he never amounted to anything after that) and one of my sister's classmates accidentally shot his little brother in the eye and wrecked his vision (but fortunately, didn't kill him).

but none of the guns in our home were assault weapons or semi-automatics. there needs to be more rules surrounding the possession of such guns - because it's just unnecessary to have them. you don't hunt with such guns, there would be nothing left to eat. it seems ironic that there are more rules surrounding obtaining a driver's license than a gun permit and more paperwork for registering a car than a gun.

and completely absurd that there is more support of keeping deadly guns in the hands of people than in ensuring that they have proper health insurance. a skewed set of priorities.

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on a less serious note, how much do i love this?
read the follow-up post as well.