NPR this morning...

Two things jumped out at me listening to NPR as I got ready this morning ---

The first was a horrible crime that happened in Brazil recently. The blurb at NPR says that this child's "gruesome death [...] emphasizes the daily reality of violent crime in Rio de Janeiro." The boy, 6 years old, was strapped into the backseat of his parents' car, when they were carjacked by two gun-toting teenagers. They weren't able to quite get him out of his seatbelt when the carjackers drove off, dragging his little body down the street. By the time they stopped the car and ran away, he was of course already dead. It's created an outcry in Brazil, and only horror here. But what haunted me most was the comment by the author Paulo Coelho, who said that we are all victims, but also all the murderers. We are all at fault when part of our society is so horribly brutalized as to commit such a crime.

The other commenters pointed out that a major part of the problem in Brazil is that so few of the violent crimes (2%) are punished, so the criminals feel they can act with impunity.

My Mom and I were discussing the high crime rate in New Orleans yesterday. It's much worse now than before Katrina. It's easy to sit in the safety of a house in the suburbs, thinking "oh, how horrible for those poor people"... but like Coelho said, we are also victims and perpetrators. To use a tired cliche, if we're not part of the solution, we're part of the problem. I don't know what can be done to make the lives of children born in poverty materially better, so that they don't grow up in a dangerous and brutal environment, but I think we all need to be thinking about it and coming up with solutions, because this can't go on. Although we are one of the wealthiest nations in the world, our crime rate (and a few other less than excellent statistics, such as the fact that we still have capitol punishment) -- put us in an ugly neighborhood: we are right down there with Brazil and the Middle East and some of the countries in Africa. Not in every neighborhood or city in our country, to be sure, but having one child grow up with drive-by shootings and goodness knows what else is one too many in a country this wealthy. It's not ok.

The reason Mom and I got into the discussion is because she mentioned the situation with the projects in New Orleans. There are several families who want to move back. The buildings themselves were not flooded or damaged. But the city doesn't want to let them move in. They would rather raze the buildings, and then create low-income housing dispersed throughout the city, so that there is not such a concentration of low-income families (and crime). Mom had a great idea: why not allow the families to move back into the buildings, which are good, sturdy buildings. But instead of just putting them back into the same situation, help them refurbish their apartments and make them nice. Each family could then have the opportunity to purchase their apartment, so that they would someday have something of their own. In this way, they would feel a sense of pride and a sense of ownership. The projects would not become as run-down, and the families, the good people who live there, would be able to keep the bad element out, with the help of us and the authorities. What do you think? I'd welcome any ideas for ways to improve not only New Orleans, but our other urban centers, and make our cities better places for all children, not only those with the good fortune to have parents with a decent job.

The other series I've been listening to on NPR, is entitled "God, Darwin and Dixie" -- today's installment had to do with the labels they've placed in the beginning of all science books in Alabama stating that Evolution is "just" a theory. Nevermind the fact that this demonstrates that the people (proponents of Intelligent Design) using that rhetoric are willfully disguising the fact that the term "theory" when used by scientists is much stronger than its everyday usage. A scientific theory is something that has been put to the test by a number of scientists (in this case for over 100 years), and which they have not found to be wrong. This doesn't mean it won't ever be shown to perhaps be mistaken, when we have learned more, but until then, it's the best explanation for all of the phenomena we see. Now I'm a Christian and I believe that God created the earth and all that is in it ... the fact that scientists have discovered that things evolve, that we may have evolved, does not bother me in the least. A god who is powerful and intelligent enough to say "Let there be light" and poof, there was light, is certainly capable of coming up with a system as intricate as evolution. Imagine the foresight involved.

Anyway, that's enough for today. I hope you have a wonderful one!!!