When word of the tragedy in Connecticut became known, my mind flashed back to another horrible school tragedy that involved children in a school. The year was 1958 and the city was Chicago. If you are nearing that first Social Security check or have been getting them, you may remember seeing the story about the horrible fire at Our Lady Of Angels Catholic school in Chicago on December 1st 1958.

Of the 1600 or so students and faculty at OLA 92 children and 5 nuns perished. The school started on fire around 2PM and was engulfed in fire quickly. While technically up to fire code, the school like many school buildings of the day was a fire-trap – a disaster just waiting to happen. And it did. OLA was an old 2 story with high ceilings. The building was made of mostly highly combustible material with only a couple of exits. And to top it off extinguishers and hoses were 7 to 8 feet off the floor, thus not easily accessible.

After the horror was cleaned up and the victims were buried, America got to work correcting the problems similar to OLA throughout the country. The school I attended at the time didn’t even pass the lax fire code of the time. It was gone in a few years as were other similar schools throughout the country. There are a lot of parallels between the tragedy in Chicago and the tragedy in Newtown, Conn. There was no question what back then what needed to be done and Americans across the country were eager to get it done.

The reason I am so familiar with the tragedy at OLA is 1) I was the same age as many of the victims and 2) my aunt, Sister Mary Ethel, had just finished her teaching day and had just returned to the convent when the fire broke out. The tragedy and its victims haunted her the rest of her life. But she was somewhat soothed by how vigorously the country went about correcting the problems. Let us hope we are also soothed by the vigor to correct our problems follow Sandy Hook Elementary.

Australia’s John Howard: avoiding ‘the American Disease.’
There are some parallels between our gun situation in America today and Autralia’s situation in the late 1990s, less than a couple decades ago. At that time Australia had experienced a mass shooting at Port Arthur, Tasmania in April of 1996 leaving 35 dead and 18 seriously wounded. Prime Minister John Howard declared “We do not want the American disease imported into Australia.” He then set about leading his party to enact some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world. Death by gun in Australia has dropped dramatically since laws have passed. We need to do the same here.

Boehner And The Clown College
Boehner’s attempt to pull a stunt and to then have it blow up in his face showed many things to the American people:
1) He has no control of his causcus.
2) He obviously knows the so-called “fiscal cliff” is nothing but media hype. Were it not, would he walk out like that?
3) Republicans do not want to govern. They want to impose (dictate, maybe) their philosophy as law without any of the work or study. Where they have done this, especially in the economy, we have had huge failures.

LaPierre Rewrites Commandments

Looks like the new second Great Commandment is “Shoot your Neighbor as you would want your Neighbor to shoot you.”

Happy Holidays All
And thanks so much for reading. Let us hope that Republicans see the light and begin working for the the majority of Amricans, not just the .1 of 1% that has all the money. Please take care so we have all of us together next year to work for a better country and state.