Bears, wild bears, euthanized for being bears caught in the midst of peak tourist season. I was in Yellowstone a month ago, and I get it. I was a human in a car and felt trapped by the number of other humans in cars and couldn't wait to get out even though I would have loved to linger and actually experience the beauty. But when there are so many humans, and then there's a human near you and your cubs, and then you protect yourself and your cubs because you're stressed and closed in anyway, how can we blame you for killing the human? How can we kill you for that? Oh, because we can. Because we get so indignant when a bear or a shark or a sand tunnel kill us, as if we should be invincible, as if we're not invading their territory or testing the limits of gravity. We have the responsibility to understand our place in the world--not as the center but as a player--yet we choose again and again to blame the other. Oh, mother bear. Oh, Cecil the Lion. Oh, great white. We are we, not versus.
In Hutchinson right now, it's homebuilders versus progress, versus the future. The great debate of 2015 is sidewalks, and it's largely a debate over $1200 per home. Sidewalks, such a seemingly simple thing, must be advocated for to get us at least on par with what other communities have been doing for dozens of years. Sidewalks or no sidewalks is a hundred year decision. We decide the future now.
And then there are shootings and people who say "that's just Hutch" and little people being moved without warning and women who only get a week of maternity leave and the fact that my Grandma Lentz will never meet the baby and the exhaustion of Facebook and the unknowns of childbirth.
Otherwise, joys:
