Happy times on a sad day

[captainsblog]

Emily and the full (as it turned out) posse all made it to the Ren Faire this morning. Or possibly early this afternoon; the "okay we're here!" call didn't roll in until close to four hours after they left, and we got one "I'm lost!" call from about an hour down the road, but they did, and I'm sure are doing, just fine. They're in my (slightly larger) car, so I've been tooling around in hers today. I hadn't been in it except for one brief errand since we bought it, and dayum, after all that Craigs-itas late in June, she wound up with a nice ride!

Cameron's mom has called here since they last checked in, just to be sure we're okay with how late they're likely to be out. We are.  They're good kids, and in just over two weeks, she's going to be on campus for a good long time. Trust has to happen before that moment arrives, or it likely never will, and it has.

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Their adventures are coming on yet another day when Buffalo made the national news, and this time not for something silly or even morbidly funny, but for a headline topper even on an international level: a shooter went off in a downtown restaurant at 2-ish this morning, killing four people, including the groom who was the guest of honor at the party celebrating his prior wedding, and wounding four others. (Earlier reports upped the death toll to five, but the fifth was, apparently, an unrelated homicide somewhere else in the city.)

Early this afternoon, a SWAT team raided a home near UB's Main Street campus and took in a guy believed to be a suspect. BPD is being its usual tight-lipped self about the details, while the mayor and other elected officials are falling over themselves to call for peace and prayers in the face of such violence. Apparently they think that "separation of Church and State" refers to a pothole in downtown Rochester.

One of the odder highlights of the local paper's story about the shooting was this:

An East Side religious leader, who supports anti-violence efforts, stood at the corner of Main and Swan streets shortly after 10 a.m. Elder Curtis Jeffries of True Bethel Baptist Church said he heard initial reports of the shootings on a police scanner. He came downtown to pray for the victims and their families.

"We have so much dispair going on right now in our region and our community," he said. "It's painful to see things going on like this, so I really came out to spend a moment in prayer for the family members, for our community and our city. We see so much death right now."

Oddity #1 is that at least one of the deceased was acquainted with the Rev. Darius Pridgen, pastor of that selfsame church and currently a candidate for city council. Oddity #357 about him? His name recently appeared (along with our resident gubernatorial candidate and fan of horse sex Carl Paladino)<==VERY NSFW link) on a website which outed dozens of public and political figures in New York who have concealed-carry permits. The Rev had no comment when the story broke locally earlier this week, and I somehow suspect he's going to be even less down with talking about it now.

Pridgen for Common Council- preaches like Jesus, packs heat like Mao.

Comments

[luckycee.livejournal.com]

"separation of Church and State" refers to a pothole in downtown Rochester.

Naturally this made me laugh out loud.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

I'm with Luckycee. You're in rare form, Captain!