imagine if
don’t shoot
Jeez, America, stop shooting each other. At least in Australia we only drown refugee babies, jail children, beat young Indigenous men to death in jail cells with phone books.
I am thinking today of the Albanian security guard who came out of her way to welcome us to the Cloisters, a museum in Tryon Park which seems to have salvaged all the bits of bombed-out churches and cathedrals in Europe that had survived, as splinters, the War to Unending War. We saw the daunting entry price and had retreated to the entrance hall to confer. “We have our tours available in German,” she told my companion, twinklingly. Then, turning to me, the Australian, “I’m not sure we have anything available in your language.”
18 comments on “don’t shoot”
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we also do those other things, but shooting is such an efficiently freeing thing. Especially, if behind a badge, you are permitted to do it as a remedy for the slightest infractions.
The badge: the tiniest shield.
Yes, Rich, it could well be this is the difficulty we are experiencing downunder. A want of efficiency.
I almost recommended the Cloisters to you, which I really love. I thought you’d have seen a lot of the real thing in Europe, though. One of the founders of this museum was one of the “Monuments Men,” who was commissioned to find, protect, and restore to their proper owners monuments, paintings, sculptures, etc. that were looted by the Nazis during WWII.
Did you get in? I know it’s really expensive, but I’ve been twice.
We did! The Albanian security guard also pointed out to us that the $25 entry fee was ‘recommended.’ She said, you can pay a dollar, if you like. I thought of you when we were there, Cynthia, it seemed somehow your kind of place. Now I wonder how incredible it feels that our two shades have passed in the same soft monument.
I just saw a movie in which a man remarked to an Austrian woman, “My daughter really wants to go to your country. She wants to see the kangaroos.”
That, and eat some of our famous strudel.
I don’t understand why, after the adoption of the taser, ever more people are being shot by police. Our town just had a really sad incident last weekend in which a teenager had a fight with his grandfather, with whom he lived, and beat him. The grandparents ran down to the bottom of the driveway and called the police. When they arrived, the boy was brandishing an antique gun, so the cops shot and killed him. Of course, we must ask the question, why did the grandfather not keep his gun collection in a locked case?
This is a really good question, Cynthia. And in Australia at least, tasers seem to have been used to justify and increase brutality, to make it more convenient and excusable, as a supplement rather than a replacement for other guns. They’re just a weapon.
Is this in New York?
Yup the Cloisters is in Tryon Park, top of Manhattan. The photo was on a bus back from 207th St. I just loved the superimposition on the flag. Like it has always had these instructions embedded in invisible ink.
Not to mention the black deaths in custody :-( in both countries
Preach.
It will never stop!
Not until the last surviving three-year-old shoots his two-year-old sister in the face as they’re trying to throw all the guns into the clogged dead sea, surrounded by piles of bleeding corpses.
I find that Charlton Heston said it best: his gun will have to be pried from his “cold, dead heart.” I mean, hand.
You came to the Cloisters???
I live just down the street!!!
Wow, are you kidding Rita? Oh, that feels… Well, how good it would have been to see you that day. You would have had to tag along, we didn’t stop from morning til night. Took the subway right up to the end at 207th St so I could see Spuytens Duvel. Picked blackberries. Hiked down through the park among the squirrels. Wandered in Washington Heights a ways, for like, 6 minutes. It was rushy, humid, but glorious. I will be back in September I hope, let us organise ourselves for then. I’d so love to meet you.