Fifty-six years ago, inspired and troubled by the recent assassinations of MLK and RFK, a friend & I put together an allegorical slide-show presentation for our 8th grade English class. We attempted to depict the possible extrapolation of gun violence if it were left unchecked, but we never imagined how bad it would get. It became one of the leading causes of death for school age children; also the leading cause of premature death in the United States, overall.
When my friend, Rob, and I reviewed the slides over fifty years later we were horrified to realize that a problem we thought would have been dealt with in its nascency by our elders had, instead, been allowed to metastasize. I am stricken each time I now watch our naive little fairy tale — it is as if the monster we depicted wrote the next 50+ years — and his pen is still in hand.
Our Substack and this companion web site and forthcoming Patreon page are being established as a home and public platform for that original slide show presentation. We hope that it will encourage further efforts to limit the impact of gun violence upon America’s young bodies and minds. We also want to encourage and stimulate artistic expression relating to the toll of gun violence upon our selves, our families, our schools and our communities across our nation.