What we have lost

by liberal japonicus

With this comment by the Count, which names Las Vegas shooting victim Michelle Vo, age 32, 19 out of the 58 victims names,or just about one-third, have been posted as comments. Janie and the Count have been doing this, I went back after I realized what they were doing and added links, but for the past handful of names, Janie and the Count have found links.

I started adding the links to try to give a sense of what was lost/what we have lost. I looked for individual articles (as opposed to obituaries) from local news sources rather than what has been published in by either national media or the Las Vegas Review Journal, which has listed the victims in their crimes section. The Count and Janie have followed that, trying to find links that present the victim in a way that helps make clear what was taken away. I especially appreciate Janie finding this NYTimes article by a NYTimes reporter who discussed his connection to one of the victims. Janie also listed Floyd East, Jr., the officer killed in a shooting at Texas Tech, thinking that maybe we should expand this. However, according to the Gun Violence Archive, roughly 450 gun homicides have occurred since the Las Vegas mass shooting. 

In the last comment, the Count provided the name and Janie the link, about Michelle Vo's death as it related to a person she had just met at the concert site, Kody Robertson. The Count's comment came as I was reading this article on William Walker. I'm a big believer in diversity, because with diversity comes new ideas, new outlooks, new possibilities. The person that is shut out might have, under other circumstances, had an insight to a cure for cancer, or been able to do something that would have changed life for the better. That second article shows that we can usually only talk about what we know we have lost. All the possibilities, unseen chances and relationships, the network of potentials that undergird our lives can only be hinted at.

With google, it is relatively simple to find an article, but at this point, where we still have 2/3rds of the victims to go, I thought it would be good to post the google spreadsheet, open for comments, so anyone from ObWi who finds a link they think is particularly good can post it in a comment, so that spreadsheet is here. Though I'm not sure about the math of the probabilities, I think that it is not inconceivable that someone reading here knew one of the victims personally and it is much more probable that someone knew someone who knew a victim. The list so far, hot linked to the articles that they were linked to in the comments, are below

1. Lisa Romero, 48
2. Denise Salmon Burditus, 50
3. Rhonda LeRocque, 42
4. Victor Link, 55
5. Charleston Hartfield, 34
6. Chris Hazencomb, 44
7. Calla Medig, 28
8. Thomas Day, Jr., 54
9. Jack Beaton, 54
10. Keri Galvan, 31
11. Rocio Guillen, 40
12. Cameron Robinson, 28
13. Jennifer Irvine, 42
14. Candice Bowers, 40
15. Kelsey Breanne Meadows, 28
16. Stacee Ann Etcheber, 50
17. Carrie Rae Barnette, 34
18. Kurt Allen Von Tillow, 55
19. Michelle Vo, 32 and this 

Comments

[Countme-a-Demon]

I think Janie, not I, must have provided the link for Michelle Vo and the accompanying article about her new friend, Kody Robertson, who she met that night and who ended up trying to breathe life back into her moments later.

Frankly .... scratch that .... let me start over.

I'm having a very rough time reading the links. But don't stop.

450 homicides since Vegas. Spit in the ocean.

Why not just set up firing squads? The contestants .... because this must be a game, or just a mindless tradition, right .... could be chosen by lottery.

Here's a name: Tessie Hutchinson.

[liberal japonicus]

You are right, I've edited the post to show that it was Janie. Sorry about that.

But remember that Tessie Hutchinson arrived a little late to the festivities and when her name is drawn, she only thinks of protesting then.

The parallels to those urban black youth that we are told are the bulk of these numbers (I first wrote are 'responsible' for the high numbers, but I didn't want to be accused of putting words in anyone's mouth, though I'm now wondering if that is proper usage. This group is responsible for the high numbers? Or does someone think they are responsible?) display similar traits of being late to the party and only complaining when it is their ox getting gored. No sense is getting rid of the lottery just for that...

[russell]

thanks for this LJ.

the dude brought 23 firearms - 10 suitcases worth - into the hotel. nobody noticed anything amiss.

there are possible solutions to this stuff, but i doubt any of them are achievable politically.

the real problem is not so much guns per se, but us. we consider this stuff to be regrettable, but acceptable.

100,000 people a year killed or injured by firearms. there's a life you could link to for each of them

[Countme-a-Demon]

lj and Janie are doing a great job on this.

Thank you.

[Countme-a-Demon]

John Joseph Phippen

[JanieM]

It is a shredding thought that there are so many names to list that we can't hope to keep up with it. But I am not only going to continue with the Las Vegas losses, but to add other names now and then as well. It seems only fitting, given the phenomenon implied by the Count's mention of Tessie Hutchinson.

I also found out that the daughter and granddaughter of my beloved cousin Donnie, who died when he was in his early forties, were at the concert. They are okay. That is, they weren't shot. Whether they're okay in other ways I doubt, but I don't actually know them, so would have to go through several degrees of inquiry to get in touch.

When I was about three years old, I announced to my grandma, who took care of me while my mother worked in those earliest years: "I'm stupid."

Grandma said, "Jane, you are not stupid." Outraged. She was the kind of grandma who said things like, "Don't take names to yourself" as a general principle.

I said, "Yes I am, Donnie said so." Donnie was a couple of years older than I was, and I adored him. So Donnie got a chiding, though it was a pretty pro forma affair, since Grandma adored him too.

[Girl from the North Country]

Clearly, that story gives a completely misleading impression of his character then, since you adored him so much. On the other hand, I suppose he was only 5, an age when many little boys love telling little girls that they're stupid. I'm guessing he changed his tune as you both grew up, and I'm sorry you had to lose somebody so beloved when he was so young, JanieM.

[JanieM]

Yes, GftNC, it was just little kid stuff. Donnie was more mischievous than anything else, then and later. He had a tough life; the last time I saw him he was in a wheelchair and couldn't live independently, but he was as positive and cheerful as anyone I'd ever met. He was bedridden for the last part of his life, but even then he volunteered on a hotline for other veterans, and kept it up until his eyesight got so bad that he couldn't see to write notes on the calls any longer.

Our paths diverged widely, but I remember him with great fondness.

[wonkie]

Thank you. I have been reading some of the links, but it is making me too sad

[liberal japonicus]

Wonkie, I totally understand.

It's rather strange for me to be doing all this. Under normal circumstances, I'm not really a person who likes to make people feel sad, and the closer the person is to me, the increasingly longer lengths I am willing to go so the idea that I'm doing something that seems to be intentionally make people feel shitty is uncomfortable, to say the least. I feel there is enough crap in the world without having to add to it. However, this conflicts with my several times stated feeling about the importance of memory.

Looking up these details makes me feel sad, but the constant thought in the back of my mind is that these people deserve to be remembered, and this is the only way that I can help with that, which ends up making the people here feel sad. Sometimes, this seems like virtue signalling, I'm telling everyone here to memento mori as if I have this figured out and I've charged myself with telling y'all. As if.

The Diameter Of The Bomb
by Yehuda Amichai

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.

[Girl from the North Country]

That's a wonderful poem, lj. Thank you.

[Bruce Baugh]

I find I've got no words of my own. I need to quote.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB6w4Bhc8bc

and

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9ny4Pm0QbPU/VwnF_qJFGlI/AAAAAAAALew/1BSNAzPu65QkgBsg86ofGUBD6V1iFg_Pw/s1600/watch%2Bthis2.jpg

[wonkie]

That was a very moving poem, LJ