Summer lurks, but it's not quite here at 7:30 a.m. The warmth feels good in my knees and back, and the dogs don't seem to mind. Even when we break out of the shade of Knoop Park, their spirits sing. Yoda dances, puts his paws on Audi. She ducks her head, and I tug gently on the lead to straighten them out. Just a little further, we're almost home, then you can get after one another.
(It's Yoda's last morning walk with us and while he has been a good boy--a most excellent dog who is uncommonly kind to turtles and scared of almost nothing--he's going home tonight. His owner is back from Iceland. Our experiment went well; he fit in with the girls and learned their ways. He earned a couple dozen nicknames--Yoda Ono, Yellow Tom, Yoga Pants among them--and made a few trips to the dog park. He didn't worry their food and they didn't worry his. But handling four dogs is a lot more difficult than handling three. He can come back any time for a visit, but like the song says, three is a magic number.)
Inside the gate they all slip their harnesses and race about the yard together for a few moments before slamming through the dog door and sacking out around the house. Dublin and Audi have their favorite chairs, Paris and Yoda stretch out on the cool concrete floor of the sunroom while I finish the crossword puzzle. I check my email. I pull up Facebook. I strip the sheets off the bed and throw them in the washer.
I load my golf clubs in the car, speak to a neighbor and drive off. It's just an ordinary Sunday.
The first I hear about it is a mention on the ESPN Radio show Izzy & Amin. Israel Gutierrez, the former Miami Herald sports reporter who co-hosts the show, says something about hearts going out to the people caught up in the tragedy in Orlando. Something like that. I'm not taking notes. I don't think much about it, except maybe it's a reference to the singer I'd never heard of who was shot to death by a suicidal fan. Sure, that's sad; another crazy person with a gun. What are you going to do?
Then he and Amin Elhassan pick up talking about Golden State's Draymond Green's flailing about on the basketball court and whether his repeated "accidental" blows to other players' groin regions during the NBA playoffs should earn him a suspension. (It did; he's sitting out Monday's game against the Cleveland Cavaliers.)
I really like this show, in part because neither of these guys is the typical mouth-breathing sports shouter who pumps out unconsidered hot takes with the consciencelessness of Klay Thompson. It's kind of remarkable, and encouraging, that they've both become rising stars at ESPN, an institution I'm deeply ambivalent about. Gutierrez doesn't make a thing about it--most fans who catch his appearances on TV or read his columns online probably never think about it--but he's an out gay man who got married last September.
And Elhassan, who was born in Sudan and grew up in New York and Sudan, had a very unusual route to sports pettifoggery--he was an engineering student at Georgia Tech when he took a flier on a low-level marketing job with the Atlanta Hawks. He eventually worked his way up to become assistant director of basketball operations for the Phoenix Suns. He was looking for another front-office job when he latched on as a columnist for ESPN.com.
And, while he doesn't make a thing about it, Elhassan is Muslim. And he isn't a U.S. citizen (yet).
While there's always a disconnect between history and the moment, hearts can and do change. There's a gay man and a Muslim talking nonsense on ESPN; nobody thinks anything about that. And they're being paid by Disney. There's something wonderful in that.
It's not until later I find out about Orlando.
And as I'm writing this, there's not too much I know. They're saying 53 dead, more than 100 wounded. They're saying it was a gay nightclub, and that the shooter, a man named Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen whose parents were born in Afghanistan, may have been upset by the sight of two men kissing. He may have been a "known quantity" to the FBI. He's dead now, so we'll likely never know exactly what his motivations were.
But we do know there are threads enough for anyone to pull on. He may have been radicalized, though his father is being quoted as saying this attack had nothing to do with religion. He might have had it in for America, he might have had it in for gay folks.
Maybe he could have been stopped if some of the people at the disco had brought their own weapons. People will argue that. Other people will argue that it makes no sense that a man like Mateen could have legally purchased firepower enough to allow him to kill and wound so many. A lot of people will be willing to reach for Orlando like a hammer with which they might smite their ideological enemies.
Some people will say that's what I'm about to do. So it be it.
In this country I live in, where bad things happen regularly, I do not expect those who vie for political power to change, for there are always those who are willing to provide cover for cowardice and to reward their stooges with campaign donations. So long as there is profit available, there will be those willing to contort the truth to maximize it. They really don't care how many people die.
But maybe enough of us do. Follow the money. Call them out.
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Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.
Editorial on 06/14/2016