Blood on the Door

This morning, my seven-month old found the
way to his dad's office, climbing up a step to
get there. He discovered electrical cords hanging
from his dad's scanner and was pulling
on them when I arrived on the scene
(having only paused to set down
my hot cup of tea before pursuing my babe
into the office). It looked like he was fixing to
pull the scanner onto his head.
I think, "we need to baby proof this weekend."
But I am not sure that we can remedy everything
this busy boy might find to get into.
The only other answer is to watch him, carefully.
That is my job right now.

Eating chocolate chip pancakes in the
shadow of Tower Hill this morning. That would
be Prospect Park for you Minneapolis natives.
I've heard that Bob Dylan wrote All Along the 
Watchtower about this once operating water
tower, with a "witches hat." Now our water
all comes from little plastic bottles, doesn't it?
My shoulder hurts and I shift in my seat,
contemplating the pain, along with the budding
trees. I think that chocolate is causing inflammation
in my forty-year old joints. If someone were
to human proof my world, they would remove
all access to chocolate.

What about our access to uranium? Can we
somehow move all of the world's available
uranium to a safe stock pile in the middle of
South Carolina? Can we prevent
instantaneous, planet-wide genocide?

Talk-too-much radio guys say that
1500 nuclear weapons is just too few
to demonstrate our power. I wonder what
would happen if we demonstrated our morality
instead of our power. What does it
say of a people who have this capacity
for such indiscriminate mass destruction?
Nuclear weapons are not yet programmed to
consider religion, age, gender, disabilities, or,
for that matter, the potential gifts that one
might bestow on humankind in the future.
There is no blood on the doors.

So how does one human proof?
Promote peace.
Peace within, peace outside,
peace across borders.

My seventeen-year old daughter is
a part of this peace, whether
she knows it. This year, she lives in
Nagasaki, Japan. She goes to school with
descendants of survivors of the atom bomb.
She walks in and around ground zero daily.
She has learned Japanese. She has learned to
respect their culture. She has learned to eat
their food. She is forever bicultural. The
future of the children of Nagasaki will
always now be her concern, her future.
And maybe that is the only way you human proof.
You give people the reason and the tools to
always be on watch over this busy busy species,
ever bent on self destruction.