Musings -- on the editor's mind

One. “The largest massacre in modern American history.”

Two. The definition of a massacre is premeditated killing of large numbers “of usually helpless or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty.”

Three. I hardly ever check Facebook. When I did last week, Audrey, a “friend,” a Native American from Minnesota, had posted the fact and history of Wounded Knee, the December 1890 massacre of some 300 Lakotas by the U.S. Army’s Seventh Calvary.

Four. As a journalist, words are my currency. Word choice, and what gets emphasized or omitted matters.

Five. Why are we, as a people, so forgetful, so willfully self-forgetful?

Six. Are “we” more united if “we” are collectively dazed, numb, exhausted and wrung out?

Seven. Is it possible that the pain and senseless tragedy, the innocence of the victims and lack of reason will make us more empathetic?

Eight. The once poet laureate of Maryland crafted this:

they ask me to remember

but they want me to remember

their memories

and I keep on remembering mine

– Lucille Clifton

Nine. Can we really, all of us, be in this together?

Ten. Sharing is hard.

Eleven. We can reach out to one another. I am convinced of this.