Today is Greg Hatcher’s 39th birthday. Greg is responsible for turning me on to a show called “Star Trek” when we were freshmen in high school. Our French Teacher, Mr. Post, was from Potlatch, Idaho, and burned down his house once.

Well, Joe turned me on to most of the bands I like, so it all evened out. I had the Jam blaring in the car on my way to work today, as it happens.

Joe is also the person with whom I collaborated on my very first ‘zine, called Visions, about thirty years ago. That story is here, for those who came in late.

I hope things work out ok for you and the kids.

Hopefully, this incident will soon die off, and you will be able to get back to teaching your kids GOOD stuff.

Btw, let me congratulate you… if there had been courses like yours in my school, I wouldn’t have felt so bad about being a comics fan growing up. (Granted, it was more my own family than the other kids who hassled me over it!) The fact your students appreciate your class even after this event shows how much good you have already done to them. I hope you are able to continue it for a long time.

Not sure about the wisdom of calling a 15-year old hospitalised shooting victim an “idiot punk kid”, though. It certainly is possible, as you concede, that he fears retribution, considering that the other kids ALREADY SHOT HIM.

It’s possible. But even if that’s the case… it’s STILL dumb. Putting the shooters away lessens the chances overall of people in the neighborhood getting shot. Leaving them free and armed to continue roaming around, popping off at anyone with whom they have a grudge, is increasing those chances. You have to start somewhere.

And, if what Chris says is true and this code of silence is the one spread by some self-important hiphop figure, that’s even more maddening.

What the hell’s going on in Seattle these days, anyway? Between this and the Tuba Guy being beaten to death, every story I read from the city makes me more and more depressed.

Think how it is living here. I love this town, but lately that love is tinged with frustration all the time…. the kind of frustration that happens, say, when you see your sister that used to be full of joy turning bleak because she’s going out with a guy that beats her up. You love her but you want to shake her and ask what the hell she’s thinking. Lately that’s how I feel about what my town is becoming.

Story: Violence takes iconic Tuba Man – http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/386267_robert04xx.html

I completely understand your frustration with what this means for your program, though. My mum’s a teacher aide, and does a lot of work with her school’s after-hours program, which is constantly threatened with closure. God knows what those kids would do without it, right? So I wish the kid in question was able to take the effect he’s having on your program into consideration, but it’s still hard not to empathise with a kid who doesn’t want to get himself shot again.

Having been on this earth far longer than I have, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, but never underestimate the mere IDEA of brutality.

No actual shooting here, but a few weeks ago, someone shot out the windows of two of our sheds, and tagged one of our dugouts with graffiti that threatened a school shooting. For a middle of nowhere 160-kid school, that’s a big deal. Police say they caught the kid that did it, but still, that echoes around the school for a long time.

In three years, my co-workers and I have become confidantes, go-betweens for kids who can’t talk to their teachers or parents, and our program has become a safe haven. These are more than some kids I work with, they are MY kids, MY students. When an 8th grader wants to say how much she hates church because they say she’s not allowed to like a boy who isn’t a Christian, they don’t tell the parents that make them go, they tell me. When a second grader, the middle child of a family of seven, is feeling ignored and neglected, she comes and makes me laugh. Dammit, these kids need this.

And because I live in California,come January, it could all be taken away. We live in a rural area, and a lot of students are farm kids who go home and work and raise cattle and sheep and other animals, and still others would rather be at home drinking (I hope soda) and playing video games. Given this, we still average about 60 kids a day. Which is great, except the state wants 96. In fact, they want us to AVERAGE 96, so we would have to make up for it by pulling down nearly the entire school, 120 or so kids.

And so, come January, the ax may fall, and the program could well be cut. And frankly, I’m scared. And I’m praying that for the sake of your kids, and of mine, that somehow we make this right.