sad and shocked

I think I shouldn't read the news before I start writing. I mean, the news is always bad and shocking, but you notice when it hits close to home. The first story up this morning was the shooting in the mall in Salt Lake City. I went to Brigham Young University, just 40 miles south of Salt Lake, and Trolley Square was a popular place to go on the weekends. (Not having had a car, and not having dated anyone with a car, I've never been, but nonetheless it's part of my cultural awareness.) Plus, my sister lives nearby. What is extra-terrible is that on a Monday evening there were probably lots of families there. Most people in Salt Lake are LDS, and Monday night is considered family night, which might just as easily involve going out for dinner together or some other light outing as staying home together. I really wish I hadn't seen the picture of the dad and kids who were probably doing just that, and got to be part of a shoot-out, instead. It's hard to imagine something like this happening in a place where everyone is squeaky-friendly. (The easy access to guns, OTOH, is unfortunately not a surprise to me. The whole intermountain area--UT, ID, WY, MT, etc.--is filled with descendants of mountain men who hunted and trapped to sustain life, and the right to bear arms is still important to a lot of people. Usually the people who get killed with these guns, though, are kids who are playing with guns that are supposedly not loaded. Not in deliberate shootings.)

Okay, time to find Something Cheerful to Read, to get my mind off of something I can't do anything about.